In the past few years, several democratic governments have published their National AI Strategies (NASs). These documents outline how AI technology should be implemented in the public sector and explain the policies that will ensure the ethical use of personal data. In this article, I examine these documents as political texts and reconstruct the political imaginary that underlies them. I argue that these documents intervene in contemporary democratic politics by suggesting that AI can help democracies overcome some of the challenges (...) they are facing. To achieve this, NASs use different kinds of imaginaries—democratic, sociotechnical and data—that help citizens envision how a future AI democracy might look like. As part of this collective effort, a new kind of relationship between citizens and governments is formed. Citizens are seen as autonomous data subjects, but at the same time, they are expected to share their personal data for the common good. As a result, I argue, a new kind of political imaginary is developed in these documents. One that maintains a human-centric approach while championing a vision of collective sovereignty over data. This kind of political imaginary can become useful in understanding the roles of citizens and governments in this technological age. (shrink)

Higher education students experience high rates of negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, and depression. Although emotions are known to influence attitudes per se, previous research has not examined how emotionality may relate to attitudes toward plagiarism. This study sought to examine how positive and negative emotionality relates to students’ positive attitudes, negative attitudes, and subjective norms concerning plagiarism. University students completed the Attitudes Toward Plagiarism questionnaire and measures of anxiety, stress, depression, and negative and positive affect. Extending on previous (...) research, it was found that a lack of positive affect and negative emotionality, specifically stress, were significant predictors of attitudes toward plagiarism. Emotionality predicted 8.9% and 10% of the variance in positive plagiarism attitudes and subjective norms, respectively. Interestingly, gender was unable to predict subjective norms relating to plagiarism. Support for negative and positive emotionality predicting attitudes toward plagiarism challenges the assumption that emotions do not predict attitudes within the plagiarism context. These findings are practically relevant, as they highlight the necessity of implementing interventions directly targeting mental health within the higher education setting. (shrink)

Walls can be physical; they can also be psychological, social, political, economic, and ontological. Theological walls are ontological and typically also moral, though when we break down the “religion/non-religion” distinction and consider other dimensions of religious life beyond doctrinal ones, they are also psychological, social, and increasingly political. Among Enlightenment era philosophers eager to provide a genealogy of religious and political divisiveness was Rousseau, who held that “Those who distinguish civil from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken. The two (...) forms are inseparable.” Yet despite this perceptive critique, contemporary religious apologetics for salvific and/or doctrinal exclusivism still abound. Indeed, self-described “post-liberal” apologetics is often insular, and promotive of the view that polarized and polemical religious apologetics should be taken as a normal state of affairs. In this paper I argue against this view where ‘good fences to make good neighbors.’ The paper aims to explain how post-liberal apologetics has had a significant dampening effect on comparative and global philosophy. But while a critique of post-liberalism’s retrenchment strategies would seem largely negative, the main burden of the paper is to provide a positive response to it, one which reaffirms genuine “engagement” as a method and goal of global philosophy. One key to success in this endeavor is establishing a methodologically proper balance between concerns for similarity and uniqueness, or form and content. I try to show how establishing this balance is better-achieved when comparative philosophy is taken as multi-disciplinary study, able to utilize insights from not just from philosophic and theological traditions but also from psychology and the emerging field of cognitive science of religions. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 8, August 2024, Page 101-103.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to present the development and evaluation of an art psychotherapy brief treatment method for complex depression for patients referred to mental health services.Background: Art Psychotherapy literature describes a range of processes of relational change through the use of arts focused and relationship focused interventions. Complex depression has a prevalence of 3% of the population in the West and it is recorded that in 2016 only 28% of that population were receiving psychological treatment. This (...) study was developed to test the hypothesis of whether an accessible and acceptable approach to the treatment of complex depression could be developed in relation to existing evidence-based practice within mental health services.Method: The United Kingdom Medical Research Council phased guidance for complex intervention development was used to develop the intervention. The process included producing a literature overview, systematic description of clinical practice, including a logic model and a clinical protocol. The art psychotherapy protocol described an arts-based dynamic interpersonal therapy approach, offered 1:1 over 24 sessions. Further to this the intervention was tested for referrer acceptability. The intervention is in the early stages of evaluation, using changes to the patient's depression and anxiety measured pre- and post-treatment with a follow-up measure at 3 months following completion of treatment.Results: Phase I of the study provided a good basis for developing a logic model and protocol. The authors found that there was good clinical consensus about the use of a structured clinical art psychotherapy method and the literature overview was used to support specific examples of good practice. The verification of clinical coherence was represented by a logic model and clinical protocol for delivering the intervention. The acceptability study demonstrated very high levels of acceptability for referrers reporting that ADIT was acceptable for patients with complex/major depression, that they were likely to refer to ADIT in the future that the use of arts was likely to improve accessibility the use of arts was likely to improve outcomes and that offering ADIT was an effective use of mental health resources.Discussion: Phase I of this intervention development study demonstrated theoretical and practice coherence resulting in a clinical protocol and logic model. Whilst Phase II of this study showed promising results, Phase II would need to be sufficiently scaled up to a full trial to further test the intervention and protocol. (shrink)

Associant théorie de la métaphore et conception hétéropolitique de l'utopie, cet article montre comment la métaphore de l'esclavage, dans les textes féministes, constitue un instrument heuristique nous incitant à redéfinir à la fois nos sociétés et nos théories.

In Marshall's Tendencies (Sutton, 2000), John Sutton poses some fairly deep questions for economists, especially for empirical work. In particular, when (if ever) is it safe to behave as though the applies? In that paradigm, we are attempting to extract and estimate the model from the data and are only kept from doing so because, while economic analysis captures the main , there are many small influences that we cannot exactly take into account. That paradigm, which Sutton traces to an (...) analogy of Marshall's likening economic predictions to predictions of the tides, leads to the econometric estimation of economic relationships, taking statistical account of the unincluded small influences by placing them in a random disturbance term. Sutton states (p. 5),. (shrink)

Franklin (U. of Colorado) challenges the postmodern or constructivist criticism of science and the post-Kuhnsian climate that dismisses science as a bit of a shady business. His nine essays, most previously published, defend science as a reasonable enterprise based on valid experimental evidence and critical discussion, which provides people with knowledge of the physical world. After establishing his own view of constructivism and postmodernism, he sets out four case studies then uses them to examine issues such as how discord (...) between experimental results is resolved, the calibration of experimental apparatus, and its legitimate use in validating results, and how experimental results provide reasonable grounds for a belief in both the truth of physical theories and the existence of the entities the theories concern. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The presence of luck in our cognitive as in our moral lives shows that the quality of our intellectual character may not be entirely up to us as individuals, and that our motivation and even our ability to desire the truth, like our moral goodness, can be fragile. This paper uses epistemologists' responses to the problem of “epistemic luck” as a sounding board for this fragility; it locates the source of much of the internalist-externalist debate in epistemology in divergent, value-charged (...) “interests in explanation,” which epistemologists bring with them to discussions of knowledge and justification. In so doing, It delineates commonalities and key differences between those authors I describe as virtue reliabilists and those I describe as virtue responsibilists, while showing how they each provides resources for leading beyond the impasse between internalism and externalism as standardly understood in the literature. (shrink)

This book contains 22 essays on the ethics of research involving human subjects written over a 15-year period. Topics addressed include the ethics of clinical trials, controversial study designs, and informed consent.

This paper formulates generalized versions of the general principle of relativity and of the principle of equivalence that can be applied to general abstract spaces. It is shown that when the principles are applied to the Hilbert space of a quantum particle, its law of coupling to electromagnetic fields is obtained. It is suggested to understand the Aharonov-Bohm effect in light of these principles, and the implications for some related foundational controversies are discussed.

This article investigates how mid-thirteenth-century theologians grappled with questions of angelic embodiment and corporeal life-functioning. Regent masters such as Alexander of Hales, Richard Fishacre, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure variously employed scriptural and patristic sources in conjunction with Aristotelian philosophy to develop a basic metaphysics of angels according to which these inherently incorporeal spiritual creatures assume bodies not on account of any necessity on their part, but rather simply so that we humans might understand their (...) divinely-ordained ministries. Because the relationship between angels and their bodies is strictly occasional and extrinsic, aiming at human instruction, embodied life-functions that are natural to humans are not natural to angels. Rather, angels merely act in anthropomorphic ways in order to fittingly reveal the divine will to human comprehension. (shrink)

Nietzsche often appears, especially in his writings from the middle period, to endorse psychological egoism, namely the claim that all actions are motivated by, and are for the sake of, the agent’s own self-interest. I argue that Nietzsche’s position in Human, All Too Human should not be so understood. Rather, he is claiming, more weakly and more plausibly, that no action is entirely unegoistic, entirely free of egoistic motivations. Thus some actions might be motivated both by egoistic and unegoistic motives, (...) on his view. Nietzsche’s argument may, in other words, be understood to be directed specifically against Schopenhauer’s portrayal of moral motivation, as pure, entirely unalloyed altruism, to show that this sort of action is impossible, not to rule out the possibility of any altruistic motive whatsoever. In light of Schopenahuer’s moral psychology, to which Nietzsche to some extent adhered at that time, I develop a concept of motivation and reconstruct Nietzsche’s argument. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage with the radical critique of human rights moralism. Radical critics argue that: human rights are myopic ; human rights are demobilising ; human rights are paternalistic ; and human rights are monopolistic. I argue that critics offer important insights into the limits of human rights as a language of social justice. However, critics err insofar as they imply that human rights are irredeemably corrupted and they under-estimate the subversive potential of the moral ideas that underpin (...) the discourse. Building on the idea of human rights as claims, I set out the politicising features of human rights as they are deployed in a practical context of disagreement, conflict, and imbalances of power. I illustrate this discussion with reference to the contemporary struggles of irregular migrants. (shrink)

In ethical theory, different concepts of autonomy can be distinguished. In this article we explore how these concepts of autonomy are combined in theory in the citizenship paradigm, and how this turns out in the practice of care for people with acquired brain injury. The stories of a professional caregiver and a client with acquired brain injury show that the combination of various concepts of autonomy in practice leads to tensions between caregivers and clients. These dynamics are discussed from a (...) care ethics perspective, stressing the importance of relationships and interdependence, as well as paying attention to various, sometimes conflicting, perspectives in a deliberative dialogue. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with objections to theism that revolve around prudential considerations. The prospects of prudential arguments that aim to show that God doesn't exist seem to me dim. But I consider whether prudential considerations can give us pragmatic reasons for not believing that God exists. I also consider how prudential considerations can figure in debunking arguments against theist belief. I then turn to the question of whether we should want God to exist. In answering this question, I consider (...) a further kind of prudential argument – an argument that moves from claims about what would follow from God's existence or nonexistence, to prudential conclusions. In particular, I consider axiological arguments purporting to show that God's existence would make our lives worse. I end by briefly considering questions relating to nihilism, meaning, and significance. (shrink)

Le Commentaire du Traité de l'âme d'Aristote par Thomas d'Aquin est le cinquième des commentaires fondamentaux des oeuvres d'Aristote traduits en langue française. Avec celui des Physiques, de la Métaphysique, de l'Interprétation et des Analytiques, il fonde l'édifice de la philosophie de Thomas d'Aquin et assure les contreforts de sa théologie. Ce traité se présente comme un vaste essai de définition de l'âme et principalement de l'âme humaine, avec en filigrane, une question lancinante : cette âme est-elle immortelle? Si ce (...) traité est l'un des plus courts d'Aristote, et selon ses propres termes, encore à l'état d'ébauche, il est construit avec une rigueur méthodologique qui en fait une sorte de modèle pour toute réflexion philosophique. Thomas propose une explication reconnue comme des plus limpides, et introduit à un livre encore loué deux millénaires plus tard par Hegel, Marx ou Darwin. Comme le reste de l'oeuvre d'Aristote, il connaît aujourd'hui un regain d'intérêt remarquable et le commentaire de Thomas offre un guide très sûr pour son intelligence. (shrink)

The conference committee is one of the most important joint committees in het American Congress, appointed to reconcile differences between bills adopted in the two houses of Congress in different forms.Each house is authorized to call for a conference. Usually, only the most important bills are submitted to a conference committee, and minor bills wilt be adopted by concessions of one of the houses.Each house commits his conferees, and can give them instructions on how to vote. These instructions however are (...) not imperative. The number of conferees in each delegation is not necessarily equal, but each delegation votes as a unit and in the way determined by the majority in the delegation. The committee only is allowed to examine the matters in disagreement and cannot add any new provisions to the bills.When an agreement is reached a conference report is written and signed by the majority of the conferees in each delegation, after which it is sent back to the houses for approval.The bill as modified by the conference committee can be adopted or rejected, in which case a second conference can be asked for. No amendments are allowed. The conference committee, sometimes called the «Third House of Congress» not only has become a very powerful institution but also a necessary one. It is responsible for about one third of the legislation including the most important bills.lts necessity is confirmed by its two century-existence, and the fact that it has been copied in other federal states such as the Federal Republic of Germany and Switzerland. (shrink)