Le regain actuel de la sociologie de l'art semble lié à un essai de constitution d'un programme de 'sociologie des œuvres', différencié de la classique sociologie de la production et de la réception artistiques. Ce programme, épigone des théories de la communication, fait l'hypothèse de codes iconiques et plastiques. L'étude des interprétations des rayures de D. Buren et de la pyramide du Grand Louvre de I. M. Pei invalide l'existence de tels codes. La grande variabilité des interprétations est alors (...) expliquée dans le cadre du modèle inférentiel avancé par Sperber et Wilson (1989). L'absence de code et le caractère auto-réfutant de certaines propositions met en doute les chances de succès de ce programme de recherche. (shrink)

Je me propose une évaluation du travail effectué par Jeanne Hersch sur les droits de l�homme. A-t-elle tenté de «fonder» les droits, c�est-a-dire, de développer des argumentations contraignantes qui en établissent la validité ? Elle dérive les droits d�une conception normative de la nature humaine, s�appuyant sur la volonté, qui doit être libre, plutôt que sur la raison. Ses «fondements» ne sont pas des argumentations, mais des présupposés anthropologiques. Elle tente d�expliquer les échecs des droits de l�homme par une (...) analyse de leur tendance naturelle à se multiplier, se différencier, s�opposer l�un à l�autre. (shrink)

L'Agence pour l'évaluation de la recherche et de l' enseignement supérieur avait édité en 2008 deux listes différentes pour le classement des revues philosophiques. En novembre 2009 est parue une nouvelle liste « actualisée ». Des changements importants différencient la nouvelle liste des précédentes. On analyse la portée et les limites de ces changements. In 2008, the Agency for Assessment of Research and Higher Education in France published two separate lists to rank philosophical journals. A new and updated list (...) appeared in November 2009, with significant changes: fewer titles were included and internal ranking was abandoned. This paper discusses the scope and limitations of these changes. (shrink)

L’objectif de cet article est de présenter deux axes généraux d’analyse des jeux vidéo. Le premier axe précise les différents degrés de différenciation entre le play et le game . Le second axe, la « composition actantielle », permet d’évaluer la relation nouée par le joueur avec la collectivité. La combinaison de ces deux critères révèle une forte polarisation entre deux expositions contemporaines : celle du Grand Palais à Paris , et le festival GamerZ d’Aix-En-Provence. Partant de cette observation, nous (...) ferons l’hypothèse que le jeu vidéo ne suit pas le même rythme d’évolution dans les champs médiatiques et esthétiques.This article describes two overall research directions in analyses of video games. The first specifies degrees of differentiation between play and game . The second, derived from the “actantial model”, is used to assess the relationships forged by a player with the community. Combining the two reveals a high degree of polarisation between two contemporary exhibitions: Game Story at the Grand Palais in Paris and GamerZ in Aix-En-Provence. Based on this observation, we put forward the hypothesis that video games are changing at a different pace in the media and in aesthetics. (shrink)

Le présent article vise à éclairer la nature des activités perceptives et cognitives attribuées au νοῦς d’Anaxagore, en particulier à lever les difficultés liées à l'évaluation de la part des dimensions mécaniques, cognitives et téléologiques dans l'activité du νοῦς cosmique, par une comparaison avec l'usage des verbes γιγνώσκω, νοέω et du substantif νοῦς dans le contexte du champ de bataille homérique. Les rangeurs d'hommes homériques partagent avec le νοῦς d'Anaxagore une description de leurs activités en termes de tri, d'extraction (...) et de mise en ordre, par l'usage commun des verbes διακρίνω, ἀποκρίνω, διακοσμέω. Or l'analyse des opérations perceptives et cognitives de ceux-là révèle un modèle d'action immanente, liant la perception des singularités au sein de touts complexes et mouvants à l'appréhension globale des positions passées, présentes et possibles des troupes en action. Pensé sur ce modèle, le νοῦς d'Anaxagore sera conçu selon un modèle de perception par immersion dont sa nature physique très particulière le rend capable : c'est en faisant intégralement corps avec le mélange matériel que le νοῦς se rend capable d'en faire le tri et d'en anticiper les états possibles. L'illimitation de sa connaissance et de son pouvoir a néanmoins une conséquence qui le différencie du chef homérique : n'avoir aucun choix du fait de la puissance de réaliser toutes les différenciations possibles. (shrink)

Cet article pose la question de savoir si les quarks — constituants élémentaires de la matière et dernières particules de la physique des hautes énergies à avoir été confirmées — peuvent être observés de manière directe ou indirecte. D’abord, des définitions antérieures de « l’observation » en physique seront examinées — en l’occurrence, celles proposées par Grover Maxwell, Bas van Fraassen et Dudley Shapere. Puis, leurs résultats seront comparés à une définition du concept d’observation et à une différenciation entre l’observation (...) directe et indirecte. Une possibilité de mettre en évidence les quarks de manière expérimentale est le phénomène des jet-events, qui représentent un type spécifique de désagrégation dans les détecteurs de particules. Ces jet-events contribuent à l’étude de cas ici centrale, puisqu’ils sont la preuve la plus convaincante à ce jour des quarks. L’examen de jet-events et leurs évaluations par des physiciens mènent à la conclusion que les quarks ne peuvent être observés, ni directement ni indirectement. Cette thèse sera comparée aux points de vue de Kristin Shrader-Frechette et Michela Massimi sur l’observabilité des quarks. On en tire la conclusion que les quarks ne sont pas observables, si l’on entend employer le terme « observation » dans un sens non métaphorique et en conservant une relation avec ses usages dans la vie quotidienne. (shrink)

Le philosophe parle de phenomenes et de noumenes. Pourquoi ne donnerait-il pas son attention a l'etre du livre, au bibliomene? Cette suggestion de Gaston Bachelard est ici reprise et prolongee. Voue aux fondations, le present ouvrage dresse une correspondance entre textualite et interrogativite, assez puissante pour indexer les modalites du pensable sur les grands types de textes, de la science a la theologie et a la poesie. L'auteur s'adresse a ceux qui ecrivent des textes. Comme a ceux qui s'interrogent sur (...) leur dimension essentielle pour la culture et sa transmission. L'intervention d'une philosophie du texte est opportune dans le concert des disciplines objectivantes. Elle introduit une idee neuve en philosophie: la positivite du texte. Il lui revient, comme naguere a la philosophie du langage, de conquerir le niveau fondamental du probleme et d'en redeployer les dimensions oubliees: le tournant textuel etend le pensable au textualisable, au lieu de le limiter au dicible. Il fait du texte un terme theoriquement marque pour la pensee elle-meme, plutot que discours, et interpretation, dont les concepts sont derives. Exigeante textualite: les conditions de la signifiance se retrouvent comme criteres de plenitude des grands textes ou de deficience des textes triviaux. Une logique de la typicalite prevoit des prototypes et des cas limites, des hybrides et des interfaces. La critique propose leur evaluation, diagnostique la troncature des sous-textes ou des non-textes. Elle differencie la pensee au sein du texte, le travail dans l'oeuvre, une proposition d'existence grace au livre, l'education meme du vivre par Le Livre. (shrink)

L’auteur part de la distinction générale entre les droits de l’homme, les droits fondamentaux et les droits civiques. Etant donné que cette séparation terminologique n’est pas appliquée dans les traités européens, il note qu’une différenciation stricte entre les droits de l’homme, les droits fondamentaux et les droits civiques n’est pas indispensable, ni cohérente. C’est pourquoi il se tourne vers les valeurs communes en analysant et en évaluant la normalisation législative des droits de l’homme dans l’Union européenne : le Traité sur (...) l’Union européenne, la Charte des droits fondamentaux, ainsi que d’autres prescriptions et pratiques des institutions européennes. La paix, qui est le principal objectif de l’unification européenne, peut se maintenir surtout grâce à la liberté et le respect des droits fondamentaux et des droits de l’homme. Le pilier le plus important de la construction d’une identité européenne commune est la prise de conscience des valeurs européennes communes, des droits fondamentaux et des droits de l’homme qui marquent l’espace culturel européen de manière spécifique et qui constituent l’âme de l’Europe. (shrink)

Current advances in research, development and application of artificial intelligence systems have yielded a far-reaching discourse on AI ethics. In consequence, a number of ethics guidelines have been released in recent years. These guidelines comprise normative principles and recommendations aimed to harness the “disruptive” potentials of new AI technologies. Designed as a semi-systematic evaluation, this paper analyzes and compares 22 guidelines, highlighting overlaps but also omissions. As a result, I give a detailed overview of the field of AI ethics. Finally, (...) I also examine to what extent the respective ethical principles and values are implemented in the practice of research, development and application of AI systems—and how the effectiveness in the demands of AI ethics can be improved. (shrink)

How should an impartial social observer judge distributions of well-being across different individuals when there is uncertainty regarding the state of the world? I explore this question by imposing very weak conditions of rationality and benevolent sympathy on impartial betterness judgments under uncertainty. Although weak enough to be consistent with all the main theories of rationality, these conditions prove to be sufficient to rule out any heterogeneity in what is good for individuals, to require a neutral attitude to uncertainty on (...) the part of the social observer, and to require that both individual and social betterness be strongly separable. (shrink)

Against those who identify genealogy with reductive genealogical debunking or deny it any evaluative and action-guiding significance, I argue for the following three claims: that although genealogies, true to their Enlightenment origins, tend to trace the higher to the lower, they need not reduce the higher to the lower, but can elucidate the relation between them and put us in a position to think more realistically about both relata; that if we think of genealogy’s normative significance in terms of a (...) triadic model that includes the genealogy’s addressee, we can see that in tracing the higher to the lower, a genealogy can facilitate an evaluation of the higher element, and where the lower element is some important practical need rather than some sinister motive, the genealogy can even be vindicatory; and finally, that vindicatory genealogies can offer positive guidance on how to engineer better concepts. (shrink)

Building on prior research related to impact of information communication technology and operational risk management in the context of medium and small enterprises, the focus of this study was to investigate the relationship between ICT operational risk management and performances of MSEs. To achieve the focus, the research investigated evaluating models for understanding the value of ICT ORM in MSEs. Multiple regression, Repeated-Measures Analysis of Variance and Repeated-Measures Multivariate Analysis of Variance were performed. The findings of the distribution revealed that (...) only one variable made a significant percentage contribution to the level of ICT operation in MSEs, the Payback method. It may thus be inferred that the Payback method is the prominent variable, explaining the variation in level of evaluation models affecting ICT adoption within MSEs. Conclusively, in answering the two questions degree of variability explained and predictors, the results revealed that the variable contributed approximately 88.4% of the variations in evaluation models affecting ICT adoption within MSEs. The analysis of variance also revealed that the regression coefficients were real and did not occur by chance. (shrink)

L’analyse du double emploi du verbe « valoir » dans l’évaluation et l’appréciation éclaircit quelques aspects de la valeur. Évaluer, c’est prendre conscience d’un être qui est valorisé ou valeureux, non d’un être qui a une valeur. La valeur appartient à l’être même d’un objet. Il n’est pas question de demander si celui-ci la possède ou non, de résoudre le problème et de prouver la solution. Toute évaluation est une épreuve : l’objet convainc l’évaluateur en lui révélant la (...) valeur intrinsèque, celle-ci n’est pourtant pas une propriété. (shrink)

Black and Wilensky (1979) have made serious methodological errors in analyzing story grammars, and in the process they have committed additional errors in applying formal language theory. Our arguments involve clarifying certain aspects of knowledge representation crucial to a proper treatment of story understanding.Particular criticisms focus on the following shortcomings of their presentation: 1) an erroneous statement from formal language theory, 2) misapplication of formal language theory to story grammars, 3) unsubstantiated and doubtful analogies with English grammar, 4) various non (...) sequiturs concerning the generation of non‐stories, 5) a false claim based on the artificial distinction between syntax and semantics, and 6) misinterpretation of the role of story grammars in story understanding.We conclude by suggesting appropriate criteria for the evaluation of story grammars. (shrink)

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system on (...) the performance of students. (shrink)

Evaluation of clinical ethics support services (CESS) has attracted considerable interest in recent decades. However, few evaluation studies are explicit about normative presuppositions which underlie the goals and the research design of CESS evaluation. In this paper, we provide an account of normative premises of different approaches to CESS evaluation and argue that normativity should be a focus of considerations when designing and conducting evaluation research of CESS. In a first step, we present three different approaches to CESS evaluation from (...) published literature. Next to a brief sketch of the well-established approaches of ‘descriptive evaluation’ and ‘evaluation of outcomes’, we will give a more detailed description of a third approach to evaluation—‘reconstructing quality norms of CESS’—which is explicit about the normative presuppositions of its research (design). In the subsequent section, we will analyse the normative premises of each of the three approaches to CESS evaluation. We will conclude with a brief argument for more sensitivity towards the normativity of CESS and its evaluation research. (shrink)

Recently, moral deliberation within care institutions is gaining more attention in medical ethics. Ongoing dialogues about ethical issues are considered as a vehicle for quality improvement of health care practices. The rise of ethical conversation methods can be understood against the broader development within medical ethics in which interaction and dialogue are seen as alternatives for both theoretical or individual reflection on ethical questions. In other disciplines, intersubjectivity is also seen as a way to handle practical problems, and methodologies have (...) emerged to deal with dynamic processes of practice improvement. An example is responsive evaluation. In this article we investigate the relationship between moral deliberation and responsive evaluation, describe their common basis in dialogical ethics and pragmatic hermeneutics, and explore the relevance of both for improving the quality of care. The synergy between the approaches is illustrated by a case example in which both play a distinct and complementary role. It concerns the implementation of quality criteria for coercion in Dutch psychiatry. (shrink)

With the increasing demand for ethical standards in the current business environment, ethical leadership has received particular attention. Drawing on self-verification theory and social exchange theory, this study investigated the effect of leaders’ core self-evaluation on the display of ethical leadership and the moderating role of employees’ exchange ideology in the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ job performance. Consistent with the hypotheses, the results from a sample of 225 dyads of employees and their immediate leaders showed a positive relationship (...) between leaders’ core self-evaluation and ethical leadership. Moreover, the results showed that ethical leadership mediates the effects of leaders’ core self-evaluation on employees’ job performance. Furthermore, we found that employees’ exchange ideology moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

It is hard to argue with the proposition that value for money should guide health spending. However, even after decades of development, economic evaluation is still a work in progress. As applied, it deals poorly with issues of social justice, ageing and end of life issues; cases involving small numbers—such as decisions about orphan drugs—are also contested. Unfortunately, differences in incremental cost-effectiveness ratios are presented with a degree of precision which contributes to an ‘illusion of validity’.1 Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (...) has suggested that ‘when all the requirements of ubiquitous market-centred evaluation have been incorporated into the procedures of cost–benefit analysis, it is not so much a discipline as a daydream’.2 As with any approach to public decision making, the use of economic evaluation rests on an implicit social licence, including that the decision making is fair and reasonable. Many countries have developed special policies for rare, ‘ultrarare’ or ‘orphan’ diseases to moderate the effect of a ubiquitous application of economic evaluation. The threshold for defining ‘small’ or rare is a matter of judgement and ranges between 2 and 80 per 100 000 population.3 Magalhaes challenges the ethical basis of special programmes for low incidence conditions and argues against such provisions. In this commentary, I will argue the contrary: that there are good reasons …. (shrink)

Although clinical ethics consultation is a high-stakes endeavor with an increasing prominence in health care systems, progress in developing standards for quality is challenging. In this article, we describe the results of a pilot project utilizing portfolios as an evaluation tool. We found that this approach is feasible and resulted in a reasonably wide distribution of scores among the 23 submitted portfolios that we evaluated. We discuss limitations and implications of these results, and suggest that this is a significant step (...) on the pathway to an eventual certification process for clinical ethics consultants. (shrink)

The descriptions 'good' and 'bad' are examples of thin concepts, as opposed to 'kind' or 'cruel' which are thick concepts. Simon Kirchin provides one of the first full-length studies of the crucial distinction between 'thin' and 'thick' concepts, which is fundamental to many debates in ethics, aesthetics and epistemology.

In Algorithms & Autonomy, Rubel, Castro, and Pham (hereafter RCP), argue that the concept of autonomy is especially central to understanding important moral problems about algorithms. In particular, autonomy plays a role in analyzing the version of social contract theory that they endorse. I argue that although RCP are largely correct in their diagnosis of what is wrong with the algorithms they consider, those diagnoses can be appropriated by moral theories RCP see as in competition with their autonomy based theory. (...) Most notably, proponents of consequentialism and virtue ethics can appropriate RCPs insights. This is good news because RCP’s social contract theory is vulnerable to a well known class of counterexamples. The most significant contribution of RCP, if I am right, is in their identification, presentation, and evaluation of concrete cases involving algorithms and not in the more controversial claims about theoretical ethics that RCP themselves see as central to what they are doing. (shrink)

One of the central concepts in Charles Taylor’s philosophy is that of strong evaluation. What is strong evaluation? The crucial idea is that human relations to the world, to self and to others are value-laden. In the first subsection the central features of the concept of strong evaluation are discussed, namely qualitative distinctions concerning worth and the role of strong evaluation for identity. The nature of strong evaluations both as background understandings and explicit judgements is clarified. It is also claimed (...) that strong evaluation is not precisely a matter of second-order desires, but of evaluative beliefs. In subsection 1.2, some additional and less central characterizations are scrutinized: contingent conflicts, articulacy, discriminacy, reflectivity, depth. The claim is that most of these are not criterial for the distinction between strong and weak evaluations. In the third subsection various criticisms are taken up (from Ernst Tugendhat, Jurgen Habermas, Owen Flanagan, Joel Anderson), which are relevant for defining strong evaluations and assessing the role strong evaluation has in ethics. The terminological solutions are here connected to substantive issues in moral theory. I will defend Taylor against three aspects of a Kantian critique that the notion of strong evaluation is too broad, and overlooks crucial distinctions. Should one distinguish between moral and other values more clearly? Should one distinguish between categorical and optional goods more sharply? Should one distinguish between the whole “moral map” and one’s own orientation more clearly? I think these are indeed essential questions, but they are to be answered within the realm of qualitative distinctions concerning worth. The Kantian attempts to segregate one type of issue as involving strong evaluation and another type of issue as not involving it are misguided. In the fourth subsection I put forward three critical claims in an attempt to show that the notion of strong evaluation as Taylor defines it is too narrow (or at least ambivalent about how narrow it is). These critiques are inspired by more comprehensives approaches to ethics (e. g. by Joseph Raz or Paul Ricoeur). First, is strong evaluation restricted strictly to second-order self-evaluation (as some formulations by Taylor seem to suggest), or does it cover value-judgement in general (as some other formulations by Taylor seem to suggest)? In the broad sense, strong evaluations also include first-order judgements made in various different situations, and background commitments to goods. I suggest that the broad sense be adopted. Second, how does the distinction between strong and weak evaluations relate to “small” values? Third, can self-evaluation succeed without the deontic layer of reasons and norms and if not, does the concept of strong evaluation cover that as well? I defend a different line from Taylor on the issues of small values and the deontic realm. This will lead to a suggestion of “strong evaluation in an extended sense”. (shrink)

A key question about the value of truth in epistemology is whether the truthfulness of some proposition is a factor in our evaluation of beliefs. The traditional view—evidenced in introductory texts and academic journals :349–369, 2002, p. 350)—is that the truth of a belief should not impact our evaluations of it. Recent work has raised empirical objections to this default position of truth-insensitivity by suggesting that our ordinary belief evaluations assign considerable weight to the truth value of the believed proposition. (...) If correct, this work grants truth a larger role in our epistemology—suggesting that it serves both as an element of our ordinary epistemic evaluations and as an intuitive norm for belief evaluation :4009–4030, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0727-z, Philos Phenomenol Res 93:348–367, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12218). However, this position is not convincing. In this paper, I argue that this empirical work, while revelatory of some interesting features of belief evaluation, falls far short of demonstrating that belief evaluation is truth-sensitive, or that truth-sensitivity is intuitive. (shrink)

The public is largely innumerate, making systematic mistakes in estimating some politically relevant facts, such as the share of foreign-born citizens. In two-step or multistep flow models, such mistakes could be corrected if better-informed citizens were able to convince their peers, in particular by using good arguments citing reliable sources. In six experiments, we find two issues that dampen the potential power of this two-step flow process. First, even though participants were more convinced by good than by poor arguments, many (...) did not change their minds, even when confronted with good arguments. Second, participants are not inclined to spontaneously generate arguments that cite reliable sources, even when they have just been influenced by such arguments. Both issues should put a significant brake in the spread of political numeracy through the two-step flow process, in particular in non-dialogic contexts. (shrink)

Historically, biocentrists have ascribed interests to organisms via an account of function. One promising account of function for this purpose is the organizational or autopoietic account of function, according to which some entity x has a function of self-maintenance when the parts of x contribute to the goal of self-maintenance. In this paper, I will present the autopoietic account of interests and provide some reasons for thinking that this account is promising. I will also present a possible issue for the (...) biocentrist who uses the autopoietic account of function given the following two claims: what it means to be a biological “self” is ambiguous, and the autopoietic account of interests relies on a self boundary. I argue that the proponent of this account then needs to choose a definition of individual and explain why that definition is morally relevant. Otherwise, the proponent of the autopoietic account has not given an account of what constitutes a harm or a benefit for a biological individual, and there are good reasons to believe that this is a necessary component of any account of interests. (shrink)

Charles Taylor is one of the leading living philosophers. In this book Arto Laitinen studies and develops further Taylor's philosophical views on human agency, personhood, selfhood and identity. He defends Taylor's view that our ethical understandings of values play a central role. The book also develops and defends Taylor's form of value realism as a view on the nature of ethical values, or values in general. The book criticizes Taylor's view that God, Nature or Human Reason are possible constitutive sources (...) of value – Laitinen argues that we should drop the whole notion of a constitutive source. (shrink)

Systematic ethics support in community health services in Norway is in the initial phase. There are few evaluation studies about the significance of ethics reflection on care. The aim of this study was to evaluate systematic ethics reflection in groups in community health , - from the perspectives of employees participating in the groups, the group facilitators and the service managers. The reflection groups were implemented as part of a research and development project.

Prior work has established that laypeople do not consistently treat moral questions as being objectively true or as merely true relative to different perspectives. Rather, these metaethical judgments vary dramatically across moral issues and in response to different social influences. We offer a potential explanation by examining how objectivists and relativists are evaluated in different contexts. We provide evidence for a novel account of metaethical judgments as signaling tolerance or intolerance of disagreement. The social implications of signaling tolerance or intolerance (...) in different contexts may motivate different metaethical judgments. Study 1 finds that relativists are perceived as more tolerant, empathic, having superior moral character, and as more desirable as social partners than objectivists. Study 2 replicates these findings with a within-participants design and also shows that objectivists are perceived as more morally serious than relativists. Study 3 examines evaluations of objectivists and relativists regarding concrete moral issues, finding these results vary across situations of moral agreement and disagreement. Study 4 finds that participants' metaethical stances likewise vary when responding in the way they think would make a person who agrees or disagrees with them evaluate them more positively. However, in Study 5, we find no effect on metaethical judgment of telling participants they will be evaluated by a person who agrees or disagrees with them, which suggests either a failure to induce reputational concerns or a more limited influence of reputational considerations on metaethical judgments, despite strong effects on social evaluation. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argumentation framework to support Issue-Based Information System style debates on design alternatives, by providing an automatic quantitative evaluation of the positions put forward. It also identifies several formal properties of the proposed quantitative argumentation framework and compares it with existing non-numerical abstract argumentation formalisms. Finally, the paper describes the integration of the proposed approach within the design Visual Understanding Environment software tool along with three case studies in engineering design. The case studies show the potential (...) for a competitive advantage of the proposed approach with respect to state-of-the-art engineering design methods. (shrink)

This paper defends the use of quasi-experiments for causal estimation in economics against the widespread objection that quasi-experimental estimates lack external validity. The defence is that quasi-experimental replication of estimates can yield defeasible evidence for external validity. The paper then develops a different objection. The stable unit treatment value assumption, on which quasi-experiments rely, is argued to be implausible due to the influence of social interaction effects on economic outcomes. A more plausible stable marginal unit treatment value assumption is proposed, (...) but it is demonstrated to severely limit the usefulness of quasi-experiments for economic policy evaluation. (shrink)

On a view implicitly endorsed by many, a concept is epistemically better than another if and because it does a better job at ‘carving at the joints', or if the property corresponding to it is ‘more natural' than the one corresponding to another. This chapter offers an argument against this seemingly plausible thought, starting from three key observations about the way we use and evaluate concepts from en epistemic perspective: that we look for concepts that play a role in explanations (...) of things that cry out for explanation; that we evaluate not only ‘empirical' concepts, but also mathematical and perhaps moral concepts from an epistemic perspective; and that there is much more complexity to the concept/property relation than the natural thought seems to presuppose. These observations, it is argued, rule out giving a theory of conceptual evaluation that is a corollary of a metaphysical ranking of the relevant properties. -/- conceptual ethics, explanation, naturalness, epistemic value, concept/property, semantic internalism. (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that an evaluation of the overall explanatory power of a theory is less problematic and more relevant as an assessment of the state of knowledge than evaluation of statistical explanations of single occurrences in terms of likelihoods that are assigned to explananda.

In this article I want to reconstruct some threads of the recent discussions on pragmatism and genealogy. As a starting point for this discussion, I will discuss Koopman’s proposal of a division of labor between genealogy and pragmatism. While preserving his emphasis on the centrality of problematization in genealogical inquiry, I will try to challenge his ideas about the incompatibility between genealogies that problematize, and genealogies that vindicate. In the subsequent parts of the paper, I aim at developing the hypothesis (...) about the compatibility between problematization and vindication by discussing two different pragmatist approaches to genealogy: Hans Joas’s genealogy of human rights, and Mathieu Queloz’s pragmatic genealogy. In the final part of the article, I will sketch a possible contribution to the understanding of the normative status of genealogies, by focusing on Dewey’s concept of evaluation. More specifically, I hope to show that evaluative genealogy inquiries can preserve their sui generis normative force, without being reduced to a tool for defending and backing ready-made moral and political positions. (shrink)

Several recent studies have found that when the other’s gain is greater, even subjects’ reward may seem like a loss and lead to a negative experience. These studies indicate the complexity of reward evaluation in the context of social comparison. The satisfaction rating of reward outcome not only depends on objective social comparison but also on subjective evaluation. However, less is known about the neural time course of subjective evaluation. Therefore, we employed a 2 × 2 within-subjects factorial design, in (...) which we manipulated the reward distribution for the subjects. Electroencephalography responses were recorded, while two subjects concurrently but independently performed a simple dot-estimation task that entailed monetary rewards. Behavioral results showed that the subjects were more satisfied with the advantageous distribution, regardless of upward or downward comparison. The analysis of event-related potentials revealed that disadvantageous distribution elicited a larger P2 than advantageous distribution, and this effect was not modulated by comparison direction. In contrast, the late positive potential showed an effect of comparison direction independent of subjective evaluation. The data suggest that subjective evaluation acts upon the early stage of reward processing and manifests in the P2 component, whereas social comparison plays a role in the later appraisal process. (shrink)

In forming groups—corporations, teams, academic departments, juries—humans gain new ways of acting in the world. Jennifer Lackey argues that groups need to be held responsible for their actions, and therefore need to be subject to epistemic evaluation. To criticize receptive or reckless behavior on the part of a corporation, for example, we need some account of what it is for a group to believe something, and for a group belief to be justified. In Lackey’s account, group epistemic states are a (...) function of the states of individual operative members. After raising some difficulties for her formulation of this function, this article raises questions about Lackey’s operative-member account can apply to new types of group agent, with a particular focus on the epistemic status of algorithmic systems that harvest human data. (shrink)