This paper analyzes the collaboration between healthcare professionals and algorithms in making decisions within the realm of public healthcare. By extending the concept of ‘tinkering’ from previous research conducted by philosopher Mol (Care in practice. On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms Verlag, Amsterdam, 2010) and anthropologist Pols (Health Care Anal 18: 374–388, 2009), who highlighted the improvisational and adaptive practices of healthcare professionals, this paper reveals that in the context of digitalizing healthcare, both professionals and algorithms engage in what (...) I call ‘collaborative tinkering’ as they navigate the intricate and unpredictable nature of healthcare situations together. The paper draws upon an idea that is increasingly common in academic literature, namely that healthcare professionals and the algorithms they use can form a hybrid decision-making entity, challenging the conventional notion of agency and intelligence as being exclusively confined to individual humans or machines. Drawing upon an international, ethnographic study conducted in different hospitals around the world, the paper describes empirically how humans and algorithms come to decisions together, making explicit how, in the practice of daily work, agency and intelligence are distributed among a range of actors, including humans, technologies, knowledge resources, and the spaces where they interact. The concept of collaborative tinkering helps to make explicit how both healthcare professionals and algorithms engage in adaptive improvisation. This exploration not only enriches the understanding of collaborative dynamics between humans and AI but also problematizes the individualistic conception of AI that still exists in regulatory frameworks. By introducing empirical specificity through ethnographic insights and employing an anthropological perspective, the paper calls for a critical reassessment of current ethical and policy frameworks governing human–AI collaboration in healthcare, thereby illuminating direct implications for the future of AI ethics in medical practice. (shrink)

Though increasing numbers of people know that eating meat is detrimental to our own health and the planet's, many still can't be convinced to give up eating meat. But how can we change behavior when common arguments, scientific data, and information aren't working? Acclaimed anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst changes the dialogue. In Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals, she shifts the focus from the present looking forward to the future looking back-imagining a world in which most of no (...) longer use animals for food, clothing, or other items. By shifting the viewpoint, van Voorst offers a clear and compelling vision of what it means to live in a world without meat. A massive shift is already taking place-everything van Voorst covers in this book has already been invented and is being used today by individuals and small organizations worldwide. Hopeful and persuasive, entertaining and informative, Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals offers a tantalizing vision of what is not only possible but perhaps inevitable. (shrink)

We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system to achieve stability: the structure (...) of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Knowledge representation, which lies at the core of artificial intelligence, is concerned with encoding knowledge on computers to enable systems to reason automatically. The aims are to help readers make their computer smarter, handle qualitative and uncertain information, and improve computational tractability.

Charles Demuth is widely recognized as one of the most significant American modernists. His precisionist cityscapes, exquisite flowers, and free-wheeling watercolors of vaudeville performers, homosexual bathhouses, and cabaret scenes hang in many of the country's most prestigious collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Art Institute of Chicago, and in Demuth's Lancaster, Pennsylvania, family residence, now home of the Demuth Foundation. At a (...) time when many American artists remained tied to Europe, Demuth "Americanized" European modernism. This collection of 155 of his letters offers valuable views of the arts and letters colonies in Provincetown, New York, and Paris. Besides offering information on Demuth's own works, the letters also shed light on the output of his contemporaries, as well as references to their trips, liaisons, and idiosyncrasies. Demuth numbered among his correspondents some of the most famous artists and writers of his time, inluding Georgia O'Keeffe, Eugene O'Neill, John Reed, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, and William Carlos Williams. In his travels in the United States and abroad, he encountered many other talented contemporaries: Peggy Bacon, Muriel Draper, Marcel Duchamp, the Stettheimer sisters, artists and writers, patrons, and gallery owners. Whether he is offering to pick up a copy of Joyce'sUlyssesfor Eugene O'Neill or trying to convince Georgia O'Keeffe to decorate his music room, Demuth is always in the thick of art and literary life. Flamboyant in attire but descreet in his homosexuality, Demuth also reveals in his letters the life of a talented homosexual in the teens and twenties. With his best friends Robert Locher and Marsden Hartley, he circulated through the art colonies of Greenwich Village, Provincetown, and Paris, meeting everyone. The book also contains reprints of some short appraisals of Demuth and his work that were published during his lifetime, long out of print, including pieces by A. E. Gallatin, Angela E. Hagen, Marsden Hartley, Helen Henderson, Henry McBride, Carl Van Vechten, Rita Wells, and Willard Huntington Wright. Author note:Bruce Kellneris Emeritus Professor of English, Millersville University, and a member of the Demuth Foundation Board of Directors. He is the author or editor of 10 other books. (shrink)

This is a review of Henk Woldring's book on Karl Mannheim.

Van Gelder's example of a dynamical model is a Perceptron. The similarity of dynamical models and Perceptrons in turn exemplifies the close relationship between dynamical and algorithmic models. Both are models, not literal descriptions of brains. The brain states of standard modeling are better conceived as processes in the dynamical sense, but algorithmic models remain useful.

"This is the book that I have been waiting for for twenty years. With exceptional clarity, Draine introduces the underlying physics and brings the basic pieces together to describe the multiphase structure of the interstellar and intergalactic medium. Combined with many useful tables and figures, this book will rapidly become a hit with students and researchers alike. It continues the fine tradition of Princeton professors writing seminal books on this topic."--Ewine van Dishoeck, Leiden University "A true tour de force, providing (...) a definitive account of the physics of interstellar matter. Written with authority and insight by a master of the subject, Bruce Draine's book will be a treasured guide for new graduate students as well as a comprehensive and rigorous reference for galactic and extragalactic researchers."--Eve Ostriker, University of Maryland "Draine has written an interstellar-medium textbook worthy of Lyman Spitzer, updated thirty years later. His coverage of atomic, molecular, radiative, thermal, and dynamical processes is excellent. Most valuable to students and professionals are the combinations of physical processes with multiwavelength observations appropriate for the modern astronomer."--J. Michael Shull, University of Colorado at Boulder "This book is a comprehensive account of the physical processes that take place in the interstellar medium and that determine its behavior. It is likely to become the bible on the subject."--Alexander Dalgarno, Harvard University "This is an outstanding text on an important topic in astrophysics. Draine carefully goes into the physical processes, providing a unifying discussion that is often missing in other treatments."--Christopher F. McKee, University of California, Berkeley. (shrink)

Professors Ackerman and Alstott contrast their proposal for stakeholding with Philippe Van Parijs’s proposal for a universal basic income. InThe Stakeholder Society, Ackerman and Alstott proposed that the federal government give all U.S. citizens an $80,000 grant as they reach adulthood. The program’s revenue cost is to be funded by an annual wealth tax of 2 percent and a “payback” requirement at death. Although stakeholding and basic income share common foundations in liberal political theory, Ackerman and Alstott discuss the principled (...) and practical advantages of stakeholding and introduce Tony Blair’sU.K. proposal forChildren’s Savings Accounts, which shares important features with stakeholding. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is modest. It is argued that if the nature of the "equivalence" between first-quantized particle theories and second-quantized (Fock Space) theories is examined closely, if the inadequacies of de Muynck's "indexed particle" version of Fock Space are recognized, and if the question is not begged against modal metaphysics, then van Fraassen's attempted deflation of ontological issues in quantum theory can be seen to fail.

A research project by the Schools of Theology and Psychology of Australia’s Charles Sturt University surveyed a large sample of Salvation Army officers. This article considers survey responses to two questions relating to end-of-life care: the use of pain medications that may shorten life, and the cessation of fluid and food intake. The results of the analyses are evaluated in terms of Michael Banner’s proposal that moral theology should more assiduously converse with ‘patient ethnographic study’, which the survey instantiates to (...) some extent. Banner’s proposal and the results of the survey are contrasted to Peter Singer’s analytical moral philosophical dictums on end-of-life care. The results are also compared to a metastudy by Andrea Rodríguez-Prat and Evert van Leeuwen of 14 ethnographic studies of those who wish to hasten death at the end of life. We conclude that respondents exemplify a form of moral reasoning that is embedded within Christian spirituality; counters the assumptions of Singer’s approach; contrasts the diminishment of ‘meaning’ at the end of life, as seen in Rodríguez-Prat and van Leeuwen; and deserves further respectful ethnographic study. (shrink)

This issue considers the ethics of a healthcare provider intervening into a patient’s genitalia, whether by means of cutting or surgery or by ‘mere’ touching/examination. Authors argue that the permissibility of such actions in the absence of a relevant medical emergency does not primarily turn on third-party judgments of expected levels of physical harm versus benefit, or on related notions such as extensiveness or invasiveness; rather, it turns on the patient’s own consent. To bolster this argument, attention is drawn to (...) the status of the genitals as ‘intimate’ anatomy—a status that is not fully erased by being in a medical context. In this editorial, we draw on the work of Talia Mae Bettcher on ‘intimate agency’ to explore why unconsented interventions into the genitalia may constitute a distinctive sort of personal violation compared to unconsented contact with various other parts of the human body. In their feature article, Marit van der Pijl and colleagues1 argue it is unethical for healthcare providers to perform unconsented episiotomies on persons in labour. In particular, they suggest that, outside of certain rare emergencies in which, for example, the person giving birth is incapacitated1 and the procedure cannot be delayed until consent becomes possible without introducing a significant risk of serious harm (call these ‘medically necessary’2 procedures), ‘presumed consent’ is the incorrect standard to apply. Instead, they stress that, especially when a proposed intervention involves a person’s genital, sexual or reproductive organs, the need to obtain their explicit consent in advance of proceeding must be honoured. As the authors note, the broader social significance of our genitalia—widely regarded as ‘private’ anatomy—is not erased by being in a medical context (see also 2–4). Boundaries must still be observed. Ethically, this ‘leaves a very small margin for error because invasion of these body parts …. (shrink)

It is argued that Pettit’s conception of “contestatory democracy” is superior to deliberative, direct and epistemic democracy. The strong and weak points of these conceptions are discussed drawing upon the work of a.o Bruce Bimber. It is further argued that ‘contestation’ and ‘information’ are highly relevant notions in thinking about, just, viable and sustainable design for E-democracy.

This book is unique in both its subject matter and its approach. It focuses on the collaboration of J. Derrida, J.-F. Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller, D. Carroll, F. Jameson and others at the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine and on the application of critical theory for the analysis of contemporary American visual art. The critical and philosophical analysis concerns the art of Bruce Nauman, Kosuth, Burden, Christo, Wodiczko, Johns, Rauschenberg, and others. The focus of the (...) book is on irony and the sublime. The book also includes the original Prologue by G. van Den Abbeele (Dean of the School of Humanities at UC Irvine 2013-2018) on the history of Critical Theory in the United States, and at UCI, in particular. The CTI's uniqueness consisted in it being one of the best centers of the Critical Theory studies in the United States. (shrink)

In The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility (2015), Bruce Waller sets out to explain why the belief in individual moral responsibility is so strong. He begins by pointing out that there is a strange disconnect between the strength of philosophical arguments in support of moral responsibility and the strength of philosophical belief in moral responsibility. While the many arguments in favor of moral responsibility are inventive, subtle, and fascinating, Waller points out that even the most ardent supporters of moral (...) responsibility acknowledge that the arguments in its favor are far from conclusive; and some of the least confident concerning the arguments for moral responsibility—such as Van Inwagen—are most confident of the truth of moral responsibility. Thus, argues Waller, whatever the verdict on the strength of philosophical arguments for moral responsibility, it is clear that belief in moral responsibility—whether among philosophers or the folk—is based on something other than philosophical reasons. -/- He goes on to argue that there are several sources for the strong belief in moral responsibility, but the following four are particularly influential: First, moral responsibility is based in a powerful “strike back” emotion that we share with other animals. Second, there is a deep-rooted “belief in a just world”—a belief that, according to Waller, most philosophers reject when they consciously consider it, but which has a deep nonconscious influence on what we regard as just treatment and which provides subtle (but mistaken) support for belief in moral responsibility. Third, there is a pervasive moral responsibility system—extending over criminal justice as well as “common sense”—that makes the truth of moral responsibility seem obvious, and makes challenges to moral responsibility seem incoherent. Finally, there is the enormous confidence we have in the power of reason, which mistakenly leads us to believe that our conscious, rational, and critically reflective selves are constantly guiding our behavior in accordance with our deep values. -/- In these comments, I would like to discuss the many points of agreement I have with Waller, providing along the way additional fuel for his skeptical fire (i.e., his moral responsibility skepticism and his skeptical analysis of the source of our strong belief in moral responsibility). I will also discuss, however, my one main point of disagreement—i.e., his desire to preserve the conception of free will. Waller believes free will can “flourish” in the absence of moral responsibility (see Ch.8), while I maintain they that the variety of free will that is of central philosophical and practical importance is the sort required for moral responsibility in a particular but pervasive sense. This sense of moral responsibility is set apart by the notion of basic desert and is purely backward-looking and non-consequentialist (see Pereboom 2001, 2014; Caruso and Morris, forthcoming). Understood this way, the sort of free will at issue in the historical debate is a kind of power or ability an agent must possess in order to justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or treatments in response to decisions or actions that the agent performed or failed to perform. (shrink)

Offers a compelling vision of how to achieve and conduct a liberal but democratic society through the ideal of Neutrality--between people and ideas of the good--and using the tool of Neutral dialogue.

How do the arts inform and cultivate our service to God? In this addition to an award-winning series, distinguished philosopher Bruce Ellis Benson rethinks what it means to be artistic. Rather than viewing art as practiced by the few, he recovers the ancient Christian idea of presenting ourselves to God as works of art, reenvisioning art as the very core of our being: God calls us to improvise as living works of art. Benson also examines the nature of liturgy (...) and connects art and liturgy in a new way. This book will appeal to philosophy, worship/liturgy, art, music, and theology students as well as readers interested in engaging issues of worship and aesthetics in a postmodern context, including Christian artists and worship leaders. (shrink)

Can we legitimately speak of ethicsexperts? Recent literature in philosophy and medical ethics addresses this important question but does not offer a satisfactory answer. Part of the problem is the absence of an examination of what it means to be an expert in general. I therefore begin by reviewing my analysis of expertise which appeared earlier in this journal. We speak of two kinds of experts: persons whose expertise is in virtue of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (performative (...) expertise). Applying this analysis to the domain of ethics, I argue that we may speak of ethical expertise in three epistemic senses: a) expertise indescriptive ethics, b) expertise inmetaethics, c) expertise innormative ethics, and in a performative sense: d) expertise inliving a good life. I conclude with a brief description of some social roles of ethics experts. (shrink)

In a fascinating paper, “Ask the Philosopher,” Dimitrios Dentsoras shows how philosophers were once integrally engaged in society as agents of practical advice on how to govern and indeed on how to live. Over the centuries, beginning in Roman times, this social role has diminished to a point where professional philosophers are largely socially irrelevant. What has changed? This paper outlines an argument that identifies a central contribution to its own demise that professional philosophy itself has made. That contribution has (...) to do with how philosophical critique is conceived and operates. Philosophical teaching and publishing focus is on undermining opposing positions, or on eliminating opposition, rather than seeking deeper and genuine understanding. Examining certain elements of this eliminative function presents a possibility of seeing a renewal of philosophy’s previous functions of truth-seeking and accessing the Good. (shrink)

In November 2018, the practice of health care ethics consultation crossed a major threshold when 138 candidates took the inaugural Healthcare Ethics Consultant Certification Examination. This accomplishment, long in the making, has had and continues to have both advocates and critics. The Healthcare Ethics Consultant Certification Commission, a functionally autonomous body created and funded by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, was charged with overseeing creation of the certification process, developing the exam, and formulating certification standards and policies to (...) assess candidates’ qualifications. In this essay, as members of the commission, we describe the process of developing, administering, and scoring the certification examination as well as the historical context and the outlook for certification. By detailing the decisions and actions of the commission, we aim to provide a transparent account of the commission's efforts to develop a psychometrically sound, reliable, and secure examination through a deliberative, fair, and data‐driven process. (shrink)

Schürmann a conçu son projet philosophique comme un sauvetage des phénomènes. Car ceux-ci sont menacés à la fois par les principes logiques qui les déterminent et par leur propre précarité ontologique. Toutefois le principe n’a-t-il pas en lui-même un pouvoir phénoménalisant? Le phénomène lui-même en sa singularité n’est-il pas si intimement marqué par la négativité qu’il peine à apparaître? On propose donc d’interroger le diasozein ta phainomena de Schürmann en sauvant le sauvetage lui-même du risque d’une dissolution des phénomènes par (...) eux-mêmes et sous les principes. (shrink)