Alan M. Turing’s last published work and some posthumously published manuscripts were dedicated to the development of his theory of organic pattern formation. In “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” (1952), he provided an elaborated mathematical formulation of the theory of the origins of biological form that had been first proposed by Sir D’Arcy Wendworth Thompson in On Growth and Form (1917/1942). While arguably his most mathematically detailed and his systematically most ambitious effort, Turing’s morphogenetical writings also form the most thematically (...) self-contained and least philosophically explored part of his work. We dedicate our inquiry to the reasons and the implications of Turing’s choice of biological topic and viewpoint. We will probe for possible factors in Turing’s choice that go beyond availability and acquaintance with On Growth and Form. On these grounds, we will explore how and to what extent his theory of morphogenesis actually ties in with his concept of mechanistic computation. Notably, Thompson’s pioneering work in biological ‘structuralism’ was organicist in outlook and explicitly critical of the Darwinian approaches that were popular with Turing’s cyberneticist contemporaries—and partly used by Turing himself in his proto-connectionist models of learning. Resolving this apparent dichotomy, we demonstrate how Turing’s quest for mechanistic explanations of how organisation emerges in nature leaves room for a non-mechanist view of nature. (shrink)

Organizations have increasingly relied on team-based reward systems to boost productivity and foster collaboration. Drawing on the literature on ethics and justice as well as appraisal theories of emotion, we examine how team-based reward systems can have an insidious side effect: They increase the likelihood that employees remain silent when observing a team member engage in unethical behavior. Across four studies adopting different methods, measures, and samples, we found consistent evidence that people are less likely to report (i.e., speak up (...) or provide anonymous feedback about) a team member’s unethical behavior in team-based than in individual-based reward systems. Furthermore, our research reveals that this effect is primarily driven by a decrease in the experience of moral anger, which subsequently leads to a decreased likelihood of reporting unethical behavior when it benefits the team rather than the individual. We do not find support for perceived indirect benefit or envy as alternative explanations, suggesting that the decision to report a team member’s unethical behavior is not driven by calculative and selfish motives, but by moral motives. Finally, we establish that the effect is contingent on the observer and the perpetrator being members of the same team; it dissipates when the observer and the perpetrator are part of different teams. Our work contributes to research on reward systems and business ethics and provides practical implications for human resource practices. (shrink)

Barba non facit philosophum. L'habit ne fait pas le moine. In those proverbs, Latin and French, we find the classical opposition between appearance and reality—between the accessory (the superficial, the beard, the clothing) and the essential (the profound, the philosopher, the monk), the latter being independent from and unchanged by the former. Berliner questions this dichotomy. As an anthropologist, he reviews many situations in which humans wear masks or use other techniques to cover their identities: cosplaying, puppy play, historical reenactments, (...) live-action role-playing, and the use of pseudonyms. Cosplayers, the subject of Berliner's first case study, impersonate characters from movies or video games. On the basis of lengthy interviews, he concludes that role-players change when they wear the costumes of their favorite heroes, behaving, for instance, with more self-confidence. A little psychological experiment not cited in this book suggests the same. In 2012, Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky asked a group of students to perform a task demanding concentration. Those given a white medical coat to wear during the experiment performed better, probably because they were more prone to adopt traits and postures attributed to doctors—postures thought to enhance concentration. Berliner believes that, in the case of more immersive games, such changes are not necessarily temporary. They can persist after the acting is done. In other words, in some contexts at least, clothes can change the man.To impersonate a historical figure such as Napoleon, another case covered in Berliner's book, the reenactor must pay attention to minute details of the figure's life, habits, and social environment. The reenactor may then experience a moment de bascule, during which he is so much absorbed in his role that he forgets he is playing a character. As such, the activity of imitating is a way of learning some particular forms of paying attention to the individual serving as model. I regret that this aspect of disguise is not discussed when Berliner approaches animal role-playing. He affirms instead that identification with animals “rests upon our imagining what an animal is.” To imitate animals, however, we must first learn about, watch, and interact with them. Imitation is never fully based on the imagination; our imaginations are opened by prior, more or less proximate interactions with the beings that serve as models. It is far from easy to imagine, out of the blue, using our bodies in the ways that imitating animals requires.Despite the book's title, Becoming Other, Gilles Deleuze is barely mentioned in it, probably because he was very critical of the concept of imitation, which is omnipresent in Berliner's thought. Still, the way in which Berliner uses the concept is Deleuzian to a degree. Deleuze is skeptical of the concept of imitation because the success of an imitation is usually judged by whether the model and the imitation correspond in appearance—the imitation, in that case, does not bring any novelty to the world. In contrast to Deleuze, who proposes to abandon the concept of imitation, Berliner invites us to study it in new ways. Indeed, his book teaches us how creative imitation can be. What counts is not whether an imitation is successful but whether it is fruitful, and that we measure by whether it transforms us. The imitator does not become an alter ego of the model impersonated but a superego, an ego more aware of all its capacities. Even if it is never made explicit, the contrast between successful and fruitful—a contrast dear to Vinciane Despret—structures Berliner's analyses, which are a valuable contribution not only to anthropology but also to philosophy. (shrink)

An argument for the inclusion of the human perspective within science and how it makes science possible.

Believing is not much like premeditated intentional action, but neither is it completely reflexive. If we had no more control over believing than we have over our automatic reflexes, it would be hard to make sense of the idea of epistemic virtues. There is, after all, no excellence of the eye blink or the knee jerk. If there are epistemic virtues, then our degree of voluntary control over believing must lie somewhere between the extremes of what we experience with passive (...) reflexes and intentional actions. Believing is not the only human activity that lies between these extremes. A number of behaviors and bodily processes do. Using some of these as a model, I will give an account of the nature of our voluntary control over believing and argue that it is necessary to ground the conviction that epistemic virtues do make sense. (shrink)

Issues of nature conservation, and socio-cultural movement called ecologism, are vivid becouse o f it’s many controvertions and actual validity in terms o f sustainable development. This paper presents contemporary motives o f preserving the nature, scientific ways of it’s realization, and chosen issues o f so called „ecological spirituality”. Reflection on the abilities and perils of science and spirituality, with reference to philosophy and practical conservation activity, will be led. Finally, there will be an attemption to answer the question (...) about relation between nature preservation, science and ecological spirituality, and to define the spiritual condition and trends in contemporary ecologism. (shrink)

L'anthropologie sud-africaine a historiquement été divisée en deux écoles: l'une, associée aux universités de langue afrikaans, appuyait l'apartheid; l'autre, associée aux universités anglophones, s'opposait à la ségrégation et à la discrimination raciale. L'anthropologie afrikaner se focalisait sur la culture, la tradition et l'ethnicité, tandis que l'école rivale voulait étudier l'Afrique du Sud comme une société unique, en transformation rapide. Cette opposition, qui a parfois été exagérée, a été la plus marquée dans la période de renforcement de l'apartheid, dans les années (...) soixante et soixante-dix, mais il y a toujours eu un débat considérable sur les objets mêmes des recherches en anthropologie, en particulier sur la nature des groupes «raciaux» et «tribaux» en Afrique du Sud. Ces problèmes, fondamentaux d'un point de vue politique, ont forcé les anthropologues à se confronter aux grandes questions posées par les politiques gouvernementales. Cet article retrace l'histoire de ces débats sur la classification des populations en Afrique du Sud. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the normative role of conventions in sports. However, the approach I have in mind does not dispatch the theory of interpretivism. What I offer is a synthesis that aims to show how interpretivism works in concert with – and relies heavily on – conventions. To make this point, I will argue that historical, cultural, and even simple preferential needs and desires help to determine what counts as athletic ‘excellence’ in sports.

A paradox of self-reference in beliefs in games is identified, which yields a game-theoretic impossibility theorem akin to Russell’s Paradox. An informal version of the paradox is that the following configuration of beliefs is impossible:Ann believes that Bob assumes that.

Like most realistically oriented philosophers, I accept that the growth of explanatory power of cognitive system is a sign of the cognitive progress. In other words, I assumecertain version of the principle of „inference to the best explanation”. In the paper I propose a unified and more sophisticated criterion for the „betterness” of explanation, which is formulated in van Fraassen's terminology.

Brytyjska estetyka została w XVIII wieku zapoczątkowana pracami A.A.C. Shaftesbury’ego i Josepha Addisona. Shaftesbury jako pierwszy wskazał na specyfikę doświadczenia estetycznego, odmiennego od bezpośredniego doznania zmysłowego, odwołując się do pojęć zmysłu wewnętrznego ( inward sense ) oraz bezinteresowności jako warunku tego doświadczenia. Do wyobraźni czytelników przemawiał pochodzący z Moralistów przykład pasterza podziwiającego piękno oceanu: „Doża, jako pan młody, który w majestatycznym bucentaurze płynie na łonie swej Tetydy – mówi jeden z rozmówców tego dialogu – posiada mniej niż biedny pasterz, który, (...) swobodnie wyciągnięty na zwisającej skale lub szczycie wysokiego cypla, zapomina o swych stadach i podziwia piękno oceanu” [Shaftesbury 1790, 328]. Ocena piękna wiąże się z przyjemnością płynącą z kontemplacji zjawisk, nie odnosi się do realnego istnienia przedmiotów. Pojęcie bezinteresowności w filozofii Shaftesbury’ego rozumiane jest jednak znacznie szerzej. Oznacza ono pewien sposób percypowania zjawisk poddanych kontemplacji i osądowi estetycznemu. Skoro zaś smak estetyczny opiera się na odrębnej władzy zmysłu wewnętrznego, podmiotowego warunku doświadczenia piękna, bezinteresowność odwołuje się także do określonej postawy, gdy obserwator porzuca własne, indywidualne upodobanie (związane z doznawaniem przyjemności, nie zaś piękna), a wydaje sąd, który ma mieć charakter obiektywny. Podając powody zepsucia smaku, Shaftesbury pisze m.in. (shrink)

Proceedings of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Revisiting Turing and his Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World" at the 2012 AISB and IACAP Symposium that was held in the Turing year 2012, 2–6 July at the University of Birmingham, UK. Ten papers. - http://www.pt-ai.org/turing-test --- Daniel Devatman Hromada: From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents - Michael Zillich: My Robot is Smarter than Your Robot: On the Need for (...) a Total Turing Test for Robots - Adam Linson, Chris Dobbyn and Robin Laney: Interactive Intelligence: Behaviour-based AI, Musical HCI and the Turing Test - Javier Insa, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Sergio España - David Dowe and M.Victoria Hernandez-Lloreda: The anYnt Project Intelligence Test (Demo) - Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Javier Insa, David Dowe and Bill Hibbard: Turing Machines and Recursive Turing Tests — Francesco Bianchini and Domenica Bruni: What Language for Turing Test in the Age of Qualia? - Paul Schweizer: Could there be a Turing Test for Qualia? - Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti: Jazz and Machine Consciousness: Towards a New Turing Test - William York and Jerry Swan: Taking Turing Seriously (But Not Literally) - Hajo Greif: Laws of Form and the Force of Function: Variations on the Turing Test. (shrink)

This article develops a media philosophical framework for addressing the intersection of epigenetics and complex dynamical systems in theoretical biology. In particular, it argues that the theoretical humanities need to think critically about the computability of epigenomic regulation, as well as speculatively about the possibility of an epigenomics beyond complexity. The fact that such a conceptual framework does not exist suggests not only a failure to engage with the mathematics of complexity, but also a failure to engage with its history. (...) Both epigenetics and the application of complex dynamical systems to biology originate in the mid-twentieth-century work of Conrad Hal Waddington. The article demonstrates how this genealogy of epigenetic complexity reveals the need for a speculative conception of epigenomic mediation beyond mathematical complexity. Using Whitehead’s philosophy as a conceptual anchor, the “epimedial landscape” serves as a first pass at a media philosophical revision of the complex dynamical systems view of the epigenetic landscape. (shrink)

IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND THE SIT-IN AND WAR AND THE CHRISTIAN CONscience, Paul Ramsey describes politics as a realm of "deferred repentance." Despite several troubling implications of this phrase, I believe the concept of repentance in his work provides an illuminating point of entry into a theological discussion of political judgment. I begin with the question of what Ramsey means by "deferred repentance" and proceed to a wider discussion of his theology of repentance and call for creative political reconstruction. This (...) involves recognition of his debts to H. R. Niebuhr's war articles from the 1930s and '40s and his use of repentance as the determinative motif for a Christian response to war. I also examine the significance of the concept in Ramsey's debates in the 1960s and '70s over how the Vietnam War might be justified. He uses repentance in each of these engagements to demonstrate the reliance of all political judgments on a prior theological account of certain features of human interaction, namely, the contingency and temporality of created existence. (shrink)

Drones deployed to monitor endangered species often crash. These crashes teach us that using drones for conservation is a contingent practice ensnaring humans, technologies, and animals. This article advances a crash theory in which pilots, conservation drones, and endangered megafauna are relata, or related actants, that intra-act, cocreating each other and a mutually constituted phenomena. These phenomena are entangled, with either reciprocal dependencies or erosive entrapments. The crashing of conservation drones and endangered species requires an ethics of care, repair, or (...) reworlding. Diffractions, disruptions that expose difference, result from crashes and reveal the precarious manner by which technologies, laws, and discourses bring nature and culture together. To support crash theory, this article presents three ethnographic cases. A drone crash in the United Kingdom near white rhinoceroses while building machine learning training data exhibits the involvement of the electromagnetic spectrum; the threat of crashes in the Pacific Northwest near Puget Sound orcas discloses the impacts of drone laws; and drone crashes in Sri Lanka among Asian elephants presents the problems of technoliberal ideals around programming natural worlds. Throughout the article, a methodology is developed, parallelism, which attends to the material similarities in lateral phenomena. (shrink)

It is common to encounter the criticism that Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority is flawed because it appears to justify too much. This essay examines the extent to which the service conception accommodates this critique. Two variants of this critical strategy are considered. The first, exemplified by Kenneth Einar Himma, alleges that the service conception fails to conceptualize substantive limits on the legitimate exercise of authority. This variant fails; Raz has elucidated substantive limits on jurisdiction within the service conception (...) of authority, albeit reluctantly and equivocally. The second, exemplified by Scott Hershovitz, alleges that the service conception fails to conceptualize procedural limits on the legitimate exercise of authority. He objects that the normal justification thesis fails to deny legitimacy to rational and expert dictators. This argument is more potent, but its force is concealed when it is aimed at the normal justification thesis rather than the quite separate jurisdictional limits of Raz’s theory. Clarifying those jurisdictional aspects of the service conception shows why the first argument fails and exposes the real strength of the second. Both variants have important consequences for our understanding of the service conception. (shrink)

The clinical concept of projective identification encompasses both unconscious fantasies of putting aspects of oneself into another person, as well as interpersonal processes aimed at evoking a corresponding response in another person, all for purposes of defensive evacuation, control and/or communication.1 In thinking about this complex situation, we need to consider its interpersonal dimensions as well as the intrapsychic processes that take place in each party. Louise Braddock's paper is thought provoking, far-reaching, and important in its use of concepts from (...) analytic philosophy to attempt to bring clarity on both fronts. Her account makes use of two crucial philosophical notions... (shrink)

. Values in the cultural timescapes of science. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 385-402.

Joseph H. Kupfer _Visions of Virtue in Popular Film_ Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999 ISBN 0-8133-6721-2 236 pp.

Psychophysical scales can be constructed under suitable restrictions from appropriate data, but they still do not justify privileged internal sensations.

We analyse the reception of Niklas Luhmanns social metatheory in Slovenian social. The first part outlines the intellectual climate that prevailed in the decade before the post-socialist transition. The decline of the previously dominant Marxist ideology created space for other social theories. Luhmanns ideas were the most prominent among social macro theories in the initial phase. The second part describes variations in the reception of his ideas. The initial affirmative approach was upgraded by a number of more selective and critical (...) approaches. The third part shows that, although his ideas are no longer quite so prominent, his work is both well recognized and firmly embedded in Slovenian social thought. (shrink)

Koehler's (1996t) target article raised, and various commentators discussed, two issues that seem far separated but actually have a great deal in common. These are the value of “ecologically valid” research and the effect of direct experience on base-rate usage. Koehler discussed the former as a methodological issue and the latter as a normative one, and no commentator chose to incorporate them, but directly experienced base rates are a good example of ecologically valid research. The state of the literature with (...) regard to directly experienced base rates is reviewed, and the emerging perception, that direct experience has a profound Bayesian effect on base-rate usage, is rejected. (shrink)