Ensuring the trustworthiness of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence is an important interdisciplinary endeavour. In this position paper, we argue that this endeavour will benefit from technical advancements in capturing various forms of responsibility, and we present a comprehensive research agenda to achieve this. In particular, we argue that ensuring the reliability of autonomous system can take advantage of technical approaches for quantifying degrees of responsibility and for coordinating tasks based on that. Moreover, we deem that, in certifying the legality (...) of an AI system, formal and computationally implementable notions of _responsibility_, _blame_, _accountability_, and _liability_ are applicable for addressing potential responsibility gaps (i.e. situations in which a group is responsible, but individuals’ responsibility may be unclear). This is a call to enable AI systems themselves, as well as those involved in the design, monitoring, and governance of AI systems, to represent and reason about who can be seen as responsible in prospect (e.g. for completing a task in future) and who can be seen as responsible retrospectively (e.g. for a failure that has already occurred). To that end, in this work, we show that across all stages of the design, development, and deployment of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), responsibility reasoning should play a key role. This position paper is the first step towards establishing a road map and research agenda on how the notion of responsibility can provide novel solution concepts for ensuring the _reliability_ and _legality_ of TAS and, as a result, enables an effective embedding of AI technologies into society. (shrink)

For social species, having strong and high-quality social relationships is an important safety cue. Loneliness occurs when an individual perceives they have insufficient relationships resulting in feelings of lack of safety. States of perceived unsafety are linked to an increased tendency to construe ambiguous information – information lacking a unique clear interpretation – as threatening. Here, we explore whether the ambiguity of social cues of interpersonal rejection moderates effects of loneliness on feelings of rejection while undergoing social exclusion. Data were (...) collected in 2021; 144 adults completed a progressive social exclusion paradigm where they were randomly assigned to be equally included, excluded, or over-included. Social exclusion/inclusion cues became more pronounced over the course of multiple rounds of a ball-tossing game (Cyberball) resulting in a scenario where ambiguity was highest in earlier rounds and decreased over time. Participants reported feelings of loneliness prior to the task and feelings of rejection throughout the task. Results demonstrated that higher loneliness predicted increased feelings of rejection regardless of exclusion condition. Notably, this positive relationship was strongest during earlier rounds when social cues were most ambiguous. These findings contribute to our understanding of how loneliness modulates social perception to enable organisms to adequately adapt to changing circumstances. (shrink)

Ford, Norman M Throughout history Catholics held the commonly accepted views of the times regarding human reproduction, and these views changed as advances were made in scientific knowledge. Hence, it would be best to begin with Aristotle's views on human reproduction.

Ford, Norman M Doctors and nurses understand the personal dignity of their patients and their natural desire to be healthy and happy. The aged with failing memories or mental impairments are persons whose dignity and moral worth remain intact. They also know patients differ in their personal circumstances, their faith, their stages of life's journey and their attitude to sickness and approach of death. This awareness enables them to adequately perform their valuable professional services from a subject centred perspective (...) as well as from an objective approach based on our shared rational human nature. All this needs to be re-affirmed for patients, especially the aged, those living with post coma unresponsiveness, Alzheimer's disease and any other unconscious state. (shrink)

This research explored the feasibility of using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis in novel combination with other techniques to study comprehension of epistemic adverbs expressing doubt and certainty (e.g., evidently, obviously, probably ) as they relate to health communication in clinical settings. In Study 1, Australian English speakers performed a dissimilarity-rating task with sentence pairs containing the target stimuli, presented as “doctors' opinions.” Ratings were analyzed using a combination of cultural consensus analysis (factor analysis across participants), weighted-data classical-MDS, and cluster analysis. (...) Analyses revealed strong within-community consistency for a 3-dimensional semantic space solution that took into account individual differences, strong statistical acceptability of the MDS results in terms of stress and explained variance, and semantic configurations that were interpretable in terms of linguistic analyses of the target adverbs. The results confirmed the feasibility of using MDS in this context. Study 2 replicated the results with Canadian English speakers on the same task. Semantic analyses and stress decomposition analysis were performed on the Australian and Canadian data sets, revealing similarities and differences between the two groups. Overall, the results support using MDS to study comprehension of words critical for health communication, including in future studies, for example, second language speaking patients and/or practitioners. More broadly, the results indicate that the techniques described should be promising for comprehension studies in many communicative domains, in both clinical settings and beyond, and including those targeting other aspects of language and focusing on comparisons across different speech communities. (shrink)

When Did I Begin? investigates the theoretical, moral, and biological issues surrounding the debate over the beginning of human life. With the continuing controversy over the use of in vitro fertilization techniques and experimentation with human embryos, these issues have been forced into the arena of public debate. Following a detailed analysis of the history of the question, Reverend Ford argues that a human individual could not begin before definitive individuation occurs with the appearance of the primitive streak about two (...) weeks after fertilization. This, he argues, is when it becomes finally known whether one or more human individuals are to form from a single egg. Thus, he questions the idea that the fertilized egg itself could be regarded as the beginning of the development of the human individual. The author also differs sharply, however, from those who would delay the beginning of the human person until the brain is formed, or until birth or the onset of conscious states. (shrink)

In books on the calculus of probability, there have been many accounts as to what is the meaning of the term “probable.” We can readily divide them into three groups. The first sometimes defines probability in terms of the ratio between the number of cases favorable to an event and the number of equally possible cases. Sometimes probability is defined in some way other than this, but the above formulation, or one similar to it is used to describe the “measure (...) of probability.” This concept is what is called “the classical concept” of probability and was held by the great workers in the field of probability from the beginning of the eighteenth and opening of the nineteenth centuries, including James Bernoulli, Thomas Bayes, and the Marquis de Laplace. The second conceives of probability as a logical relation between hypothesis and evidence. Following this conception, one could identify “probability” with “degree of confirmation.” We will term this the “logical concept.” The third group identified probability with the relative frequency with which a property occurs in a specified class of elements. We will call this the “frequency concept.”. (shrink)

Suppose it were known, by someone else, what you are going to choose to do tomorrow. Wouldn't that entail that tomorrow you must do what it was known in advance that you would do? In spite of your deliberating and planning, in the end, all is futile: you must choose exactly as it was earlier known that you would. The supposed exercise of your free will is ultimately an illusion. Historically, the tension between foreknowledge and the exercise of free will (...) was addressed in a religious context. According to orthodox views in the West, God was claimed to be omniscient (and hence in possession of perfect foreknowledge) and yet God was supposed to have given humankind free will. Attempts to solve the apparent contradiction often involved attributing to God special properties, e.g. being 'outside' of time. However, the trouble with such solutions is that they are generally unsatisfactory on their own terms. Even more serious is the fact that they leave untouched the problem posed not by God's foreknowledge but that of any human being. Do human beings have foreknowledge? Certainly, of at least some events and behaviors. Thus we have a secular counterpart of the original problem. A human being's foreknowledge, exactly as would God's, of another's choices would seem to preclude the exercise of human free will. Various ways of trying to solve the problem – e.g. by putting constraints on the truth-conditions for statements, or by 'tightening' the conditions necessary for knowledge – are examined and shown not to work. Ultimately the alleged incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is shown to rest on a subtle logical error. When the error, a modal fallacy, is recognized, and remedied, the problem evaporates. (shrink)

Proximity and interpersonal contact are prominent components of social connection. Giving affective touch to others is fundamental for human bonding. This brief report presents preliminary results from a pilot study. It explores if exposure to bonding scenes impacts the activity of specific muscles related to physical interaction. Fingers flexion is a very important component when performing most actions of affectionate contact. We explored the visuo-motor affective interplay by priming participants with bonding scenes and assessing the electromyographic activity of the fingers (...) flexor muscle, in the absence of any overt movements. Photographs of dyads in social interaction and of the same dyads not interacting were employed. We examined the effects upon the electromyographical activity: during the passive exposure to pictures, and during picture offset and when expecting the signal to perform a fingers flexion task. Interacting dyads compared to matched non-interacting dyads increased electromyographic activity of the fingers flexor muscle in both contexts. Specific capture of visual bonding cues at the level of visual cortex had been described in the literature. Here we showed that the neural processing of visual bonding cues reaches the fingers flexor muscle. Besides, previous visualization of bonding cues enhanced background electromyographic activity during motor preparation to perform the fingers flexion task, which might reflect a sustained leakage of central motor activity downstream leading to increase in firing of the respective motor neurons. These data suggest, at the effector level, an implicit visuo-motor connection in which social interaction cues evoke intrinsic dispositions toward affectionate social behavior. (shrink)