Der Band versammelt Beiträge renommierter Vertreter unterschiedlicher Disziplinen zu der Frage, ob wir tatsächlich einen Zugang zur Wirklichkeit haben oder lediglich von unseren eigenen Konstruktionen der Wirklichkeit umgeben sind. In der Debatte kommt der Sprache eine zentrale Rolle zu. Konstruktivistische Positionen gehen davon aus, dass unsere Wörter und Sätze nie die Dinge an sich bezeichnen, sondern dies immer aus einer bestimmten Perspektive tun. Einer ‚Wirklichkeit an sich‘ nachzujagen, ist zwecklos, als wichtig gilt das Aufzeigen der Perspektiven. Nicht selten geschieht das (...) in aufklärerischer Absicht, wenn etwa Formulierungen wie die von der „Größe eines Volkes“, der „historischen Bestimmung einer Nation“ oder der „Natur des Geschlechts“ kritisch hinterfragt werden. Diesen Versuchen, die Wirklichkeit als interessengeleitet konstruierte auszuweisen, wird mit dem Argument begegnet, der Akt der Aufklärung diene letztlich nur dazu, die jeweils eigene Position als die ‚eigentlich richtige‘ durchzusetzen. Außerdem widerspreche die Annahme eines umfassenden Konstruiertseins unserer Wirklichkeitsbilder jeder Alltagserfahrung von der Präsenz und Widerständigkeit der Welt. An diesem Punkt der Kontroverse setzt der vorliegende Band an. Andreas Gardt : Wort und Welt. Konstruktivismus und Realismus in der Sprachtheorie Markus Gabriel : Der Neue Realismus zwischen Konstruktion und Wirklichkeit John R. Searle : The Philosophy of Perception and the Bad Argument Bernhard Pörksen : Der Blick des Kritikers. Die Debatte über den Konstruktivismus in der deutschsprachigen Kommunikationswissenschaft – ein Beispiel für die Auseinandersetzung zwischen realistischen und relativistischen Wissenschaftlern Siegfried J. Schmidt : Wie wirklich ist die Wirklichkeit? Heinz Bude : Realitäten in der Wirklichkeit Paul Kirchhof : Rechtssprache zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit Paul-Gerhard Klumbies : Gott – bewusst gemacht oder bewusstgemacht? Eine theologische Rückmeldung zu Konstruktivismus und Neuem Realismus Wolf-Andreas Liebert : Können wir mit Engeln sprechen? Über die eigenartige Wirklichkeit der Verständigung im Religiösen Gerhard Roth : Wahrnehmung und Erkenntnis: Grundzüge einer neurobiologisch fundierten Erkenntnistheorie Thomas Fuchs : Die gemeinsame Wahrnehmung der Wirklichkeit. Skizze eines enaktiven Realismus Alexander Ziem/Björn Fritsche : Von der Sprache zur Wirklichkeit: Die konstruktivistische Perspektive der Kognitiven Linguistik Max Düsterhöft/Robert Jacob/Marco Lehmann-Waffenschmidt : Konstruiert oder real? Die konstruierte Alltagswirklichkeit des Geldes Ludwig Jäger : „Outthereness". Über das Problem des Wirklichkeitsbezugs von Zeichen Matthias Attig : Begriffsrealismus als sprachwissenschaftliches Problem. Überlegungen zur kategorialen Eigenart von Termini Josef Klein : ‚Betrachten der Wirklichkeit‘ und politisches Framing. Am Beispiel der CDU-Wahlkampagne 2013 Ekkehard Felder : Wahrheit und Wissen zwischen Wirklichkeit und Konstruktion: Freiheiten und Zwänge beim sprachlichen Handeln. (shrink)

This study provides evidence on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firms’ credit ratings. We find that credit rating agencies tend to award relatively high ratings to firms with good social performance. This pattern is robust to controlling for key firm characteristics as well as endogeneity between CSR and credit ratings. We also find that CSR strengths and concerns influence credit ratings and that the individual components of CSR that relate to primary stakeholder management matter most in explaining firms’ (...) creditworthiness. Overall, our results suggest that CSR performance conveys important non-financial information that rating agencies are likely to use in their evaluation of firms’ creditworthiness, and that CSR investments—particularly those that extend beyond compliance behavior to reflect what is desired by society—can lead to lower financing costs resulting from higher credit ratings. (shrink)

This study fills an important gap in the literature by providing causal evidence of the impact of relaxing financial constraints on corporate social responsibility (CSR). To isolate this causal link, we examine the enactment of anti-recharacterization laws in some U.S. states, an exogenous shock that has strengthened creditor rights and eased financial constraints of the treated firms. Our difference-in-difference analysis suggests that relaxing financial constraints leads to higher CSR. This evidence is more pronounced in financially constrained firms, firms with more (...) analyst dispersion and increased volatility of cash flows. We also find that the most impacted firms are those with increased post-shock debt financing. In sum, our evidence suggests that easing access to external finance drives corporate goodness, in particular in firms that value external financing. (shrink)

A unique dataset is exploited to provide insight into the impact of management quality practices on corporate social responsibility for a sample of US manufacturing firms. Our results suggest that MQPs are positively and significantly related to a firm’s CSR rating. This confirms that intangible assets affect corporate outcomes. We also show that superior MQPs matter more in explaining the CSR dimensions that are related directly to the firm’s primary stakeholders.

It is well documented that the language skills of preschool children differ substantially and that these differences are highly predictive of their later academic success and achievements. Especially in the early phases of children’s lives, the importance of different structural and process characteristics of the home learning environment (HLE) has been emphasized and research results have documented that process characteristics such as the quality of parental interaction behavior and the frequency of joint activities vary according to the socio-economic status (SES) (...) of the family. Further, both structural and process characteristics are associated with children’s language development. As most of the studies focus on single indicators or didn’t take the dynamics of parenting behavior across age into account, the present paper aims to investigate the associations of different characteristics of the home learning environment as well as their potentially changing impact on the language skills of 2-year-old children. Using data of 2.272 families of the infant cohort study of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), longitudinally assessed process characteristics (sensitivity in the sense of maternal responsivity to the child’s behavior and signals in mother–child interaction; maternal stimulation behavior which goes beyond the child’s actual level of action and development; frequency of joint picture book reading) and structural characteristics (mother’s education, equivalised household income, parental occupational status) were considered. Language skills (vocabulary and grammar) of the children at the age of two were measured by a standardized and validated parent report instrument (child language checklist). Results showed that (1) all three process characteristics of the home learning environment (HLE) are associated with the family’s SES; (2) across three assessment waves nearly all process characteristics predicted children’s vocabulary and grammar skills with some process-specific changes across waves; (3) despite separate direct effects of nearly all HLE-process characteristics in each wave, the amount of explained variance in a joint model including the HLE facets from each wave is hardly higher than in the separate models; and (4) socioeconomic background predicted both language facets of the children in each model even when controlling for the assessed process characteristics of the home learning environment. (shrink)

Retrotransposon-derived elements (RDEs) can disrupt gene expression, but are nevertheless widespread in metazoan genomes. This review presents a hypothesis that repressive RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) facilitate the large-scale accumulation of RDEs. Many RBPs bind RDEs in pre-mRNAs to repress the effects of RDEs on RNA processing, or the formation of inverted repeat RNA structures. RDE-binding RBPs often assemble on extended, multivalent binding sites across the RDE, which ensures repression of cryptic splice or polyA sites. RBPs thereby minimize the effects of RDEs (...) on gene expression, which likely reduces the negative selection against RDEs. While mutations that change splice sites in RDEs act as an off-on switch in exon formation, mutations that decrease the multivalency of RBP binding sites resemble a rheostat that enables a more gradual evolution of new RDE-derived exons. RBPs might also repress aberrant processing of active retrotransposons, thus increasing the chance that full-length copies are made. Taken together, in this review, it is proposed that RBPs facilitate the widespread accumulation of intronic RDEs by repressing RNA processing while chaperoning their potential to gradually evolve into new exons. (shrink)

This bibliography is a comprehensive listing of published works by John Locke, including all known editions and translations of his works, abridgments and selections in anthologies and several works which he edited or translated, from the first editions to the present. It covers not only the works published during Locke's lifetime, but also those printed from the voluminous manuscripts he left behind at his death in 1704. In addition, Locke's works are set in their original controversial context: entries are provided (...) for the works Locke wrote about and for the attacks and defenses his writings provoked during and immediately following his lifetime. An appendix contains a list of works incorrectly attributed to Locke. Three indexes complete the bibliography: an index to the names of the editors, the translators, and authors of works cited in the annotations; an index to the titles of anonymous works; and a language index that lists all the works that have been translated into each language. (shrink)

In this paper we relate the board's attributes to the firm's opacity as measured by the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread. We find that larger boards and outside directors are associated with reduced opacity, especially in freestanding firms. However, directors' excess control is associated with a significant increase in firm's opacity. We also find that the presence of family pyramidal holding defuses any potential monitoring benefits of board attributes. Our findings suggest that the firm's ultimate ownership structure is (...) not neutral in determining the monitoring effectiveness of the board of directors. This might help explain existing mixed evidence on the monitoring role of the board of directors. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, students were facing great challenges. Learning was shifted from the classroom to the home of the students. This implied that students had to complete their tasks in a more autonomous way than during regular lessons. As students’ ability to handle such challenges might depend on certain cognitive and motivational prerequisites as well as individual learning conditions, the present study investigates students’ cognitive competencies as well as affective-motivational factors as possible predictors of coping with this new learning (...) situation at home. The study uses data of Starting Cohort 2 of the German National Educational Panel Study. Data of two measurement points are analyzed: Predictors were assessed at the earlier time point, when students mostly attended seventh grade of a secondary school. They completed competence tests in reading as well as mathematics and rated affective-motivational aspects in terms of willingness to exert effort, learning enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation. One and a half years later − during the COVID-19 pandemic and the first period of school closures − the second measurement point took place. Students’ parents rated the situation of learning at home with respect to students’ coping with the new situation and parents’ difficulties to motivate them. Regression analyses controlling for school track, students’ gender, and parents’ educational level and parental stress revealed that students’ reading competencies and their willingness to exert effort were significant predictors of their coping with the new learning situation at home. Moreover, parents reported that boys were more difficult to motivate to learn during this time as compared to girls. Other predictors turned out to be non-significant when entered simultaneously in the regression analyses. The results point to the importance of children’s prerequisites for autonomous learning situations without structuring elements by teachers within the school context. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges, especially for families. Both the public and the scientific community are currently discussing the extent to which school closings have worsened existing social differences, especially with regard to children’s academic and socio-emotional development. At the same time, parents have had to manage childcare and home schooling alongside their jobs and personal burdens posed by the pandemic. Parents’ possibilities for meeting these cognitive and emotional challenges might also depend on the different conditions in families. (...) For this reason, the present paper investigates the structural and process characteristics of the family as well as children’s and parents’ psychological characteristics that predict how parents assess their ability to support their child’s learning during homeschooling as well as parents’ perceived emotional stress caused by school closure. The study analyses data of the Newborn Cohort Study of the German National Educational Panel Study. The two dependent variables were measured during the COVID-19 pandemic after the first school closure in Germany, at a time when the children of this cohort were attending second grade. Besides a number of control variables, families’ structural characteristics [socioeconomic status, education], process characteristics, parents’ psychological characteristics, and the child’s psychological characteristics from earlier waves were included as predictors. The results of structural equation models show that perceived stress was associated with structural factors and the preceding psychological stress of parents. Parents with higher preceding stress reported higher perceived stress. Interestingly, higher-educated parents also reported more stress than lower educated parents during the pandemic. The effect was the other way around for SES – parents with lower SES reported more stress than parents with higher SES. The self-reported abilities to support the learning of the child seemed to be mainly predicted by the parent’s education as well as preceding psychological stress. To sum up, the results identify important aspects that determine how parents handle the challenges of the school closures. Especially, socially disadvantaged families carry their burden into the pandemic. (shrink)

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media (...) of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media -- books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television -- while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory. (shrink)

This study provides novel evidence of the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on investment sensitivity to cash flows. We posit that CSR affects investment–cash flow sensitivity (ICFS) through information asymmetry and agency costs, commonly viewed as the two channels through which investment responds to the availability of internal cash flows. We find that CSR performance leads to a decrease in ICFS. We further find that ICFS decreases (increases) when CSR strengths (concerns) increase. Finally, we find that the effect of (...) CSR on ICFS is driven by the areas Community, Diversity, and Human Rights. In sum, the findings of this study stress the relevance of CSR—in particular, of CSR activities that extend beyond compliance behavior and reflect what is desired by society—in reducing market frictions and improving firms’ access to financial capital. (shrink)

This study aimed to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by modeling and testing both mediational protective and risk pathways simultaneously. Drawing on two national samples from different Western European countries—the United Kingdom and Germany, the proposed model considered observed sensitive parental interactive behaviors and tested child vocabulary as protective pathways connecting parental education with children’s behavioral outcomes; the risk pathways focused on negative parental disciplinary practices linking parental education, parental distress, and children’s difficult temperament to children’s behavioral difficulties. (...) Further, the tested model controlled for families’ income as well as children’s sex and formal child care attendance. Children with comparatively higher educated parents experienced more sensitive interactive behavior, had more advanced vocabulary, and exhibited fewer behavioral difficulties. Children with a comparatively higher level of difficult temperament or with parents who suffered from distress tended to experience more negative disciplinary behavior and exhibited more behavioral difficulties. Additionally, children’s vocabulary skills served as a mechanism mediating the association between parental education and children’s behavioral difficulties. Overall, we found similar patterns of results across the United Kingdom and Germany with both protective and risk pathways contributing simultaneously to children’s behavioral development. The findings suggest that promoting parents’ sensitive interactive behaviors, favorable disciplinary practices, and child’s vocabulary skills have potential for preventing early behavioral difficulties. (shrink)

Sraffa was one of two persons whom Wittgenstein explicitly acknowledged in the preface of the Philosophical Investigations. However, little is known of Sraffa’s influence on Wittgenstein. On the basis on the yet unpublished letters from Wittgenstein to Sraffa and interviews with Georg Kreisel, the influence of Sraffa on Wittgenstein is investigated.

Making good decisions in extremely complex and difficult processes and situations has always been both a key task as well as a challenge in the clinic and has led to a large amount of clinical, legal and ethical routines, protocols and reflections in order to guarantee fair, participatory and up-to-date pathways for clinical decision-making. Nevertheless, the complexity of processes and physical phenomena, time as well as economic constraints and not least further endeavours as well as achievements in medicine and healthcare (...) continuously raise the need to evaluate and to improve clinical decision-making. This article scrutinises if and how clinical decision-making processes are challenged by the rise of so-called artificial intelligence-driven decision support systems (AI-DSS). In a first step, this article analyses how the rise of AI-DSS will affect and transform the modes of interaction between different agents in the clinic. In a second step, we point out how these changing modes of interaction also imply shifts in the conditions of trustworthiness, epistemic challenges regarding transparency, the underlying normative concepts of agency and its embedding into concrete contexts of deployment and, finally, the consequences for (possible) ascriptions of responsibility. Third, we draw first conclusions for further steps regarding a ‘meaningful human control’ of clinical AI-DSS. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's (...) approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science. (shrink)

Die biographischen Dialoge entfalten ideengeschichtliches Denken als eigene Kunst des Verstehens. Sie zeigen Gestalten der Nachdenklichkeit zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft. Karl Jaspers" Buch "Die Psychologie der Weltanschauungen" (1919) entwickelte 1919 ein philosophisches Interesse an der inneren Dynamik moderner Menschen. Seinem interdisziplinären Blick folgen die zwölf Gespräche, die Matthias Bormuth als Ideenhistoriker mit Wissenschaftlern, Künstlern und Schriftstellern führte. Unter anderem in den Werdegängen von Johannes Grützke, Inge Jens, Hartmut Lange, Michael Triegel, Michael Krüger und Martin Warnke verbinden sich individuelle und (...) gesellschaftliche Geschichte. Die biographischen Dialoge entfalten ideengeschichtliches Denken als eigene Kunst des Verstehens. In den Gesprächen entstehen - mit Uwe Johnson gesprochen - "Ich-Geschichten". Sie bieten unterschiedliche Verflechtungen von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Medium von Buch und Bild. Im Vergleich der intellektuellen Lebensläufe zwischen Ost und West spiegeln sich auch die historischen Zäsuren von 1945 und 1989. (shrink)

Eleven pairs of newly commissioned essays face off on opposite sides of fundamental problems in current theories of knowledge. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in epistemology. Questions addressed include: Is knowledge contextual? Can skepticism be refuted? Can beliefs be justified through coherence alone? Is justified belief responsible belief? Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in contemporary epistemology, (...) whilst also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers. (shrink)

The environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and (...) environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice. (shrink)

Simulations are used in very different contexts and for very different purposes. An emerging development is the possibility of using simulations to obtain a more or less representative reproduction of organs or even entire persons. Such simulations are framed and discussed using the term ‘digital twin’. This paper unpacks and scrutinises the current use of such digital twins in medicine and the ideas embedded in this practice. First, the paper maps the different types of digital twins. A special focus is (...) put on the concrete challenges inherent in the interactions between persons and their digital twin. Second, the paper addresses the questions of how far a digital twin can represent a person and what the consequences of this may be. Against the background of these two analytical steps, the paper defines first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation. (shrink)

Epistemic deontology is the view that the concept of epistemic justification is deontological: a justified belief is, by definition, an epistemically permissible belief. I defend this view against the argument from doxastic involuntarism, according to which our doxastic attitudes are not under our voluntary control, and thus are not proper objects for deontological evaluation. I argue that, in order to assess this argument, we must distinguish between a compatibilist and a libertarian construal of the concept of voluntary control. If we (...) endorse a compatibilist construal, it turns out that we enjoy voluntary control over our doxastic attitudes after all. If, on the other hand, we endorse a libertarian construal, the result is that, for our doxastic attitudes to be suitable objects of deontological evaluation, they need not be under our voluntary control. (shrink)

We investigate a lattice of conditional logics described by a Kripke type semantics, which was suggested by Chellas and Segerberg – Chellas–Segerberg (CS) semantics – plus 30 further principles. We (i) present a non-trivial frame-based completeness result, (ii) a translation procedure which gives one corresponding trivial frame conditions for arbitrary formula schemata, and (iii) non-trivial frame conditions in CS semantics which correspond to the 30 principles.

This paper presents a translation which allows one to describe constructive provability within classical first-order logic.

This paper begins by pointing out the commonality of phenomenology and pragmatism, particularly by referring to Husserl and Dewey, respectively, but it soon turns to fundamental differences. The common starting point is the acknowledgement of everyday experience as the basis of any scientific proposition as well as any non-scientific notion of the world. Phenomenology and pragmatism are allies in their rejection of scientism. However, while Husserl reflects on the structure of experience in order to establish a theoretical view that allows (...) us to scrutinize ordinary and scientific experience from without, from some privileged standpoint, Dewey states that the process of experience, properly conceived and due to its entanglement with action in a contingent world, is always already self-reflective. Philosophy is thus conceived of as the practice of internal criticism that relies on the very form of contingent experience, not, as in Husserl’s work, as some transcendental foundation drawing upon an ideal of timeless reason. Husserl’s conception of philosophy is scientific, while anti-scientistic, whereas Dewey sees philosophy as structurally different from science while mediating between it and all other forms of experience. (shrink)

According to William Alston, we lack voluntary control over our propositional attitudes because we cannot believe intentionally, and we cannot believe intentionally because our will is not causally connected to belief formation. Against Alston, I argue that we can believe intentionally because our will is causally connected to belief formation. My defense of this claim is based on examples in which agents have reasons for and against believing p, deliberate on what attitude to take towards p, and subsequently acquire an (...) attitude A towards p because they have decided to take attitude A. From the possibility of intentional belief, two conclusions follow. First, the kind of control we have over our propositional attitudes is direct; it is possible for us to believe at will. Second, the question of whether what we believe is under our control ultimately depends on whether our will itself is under our control. It is, therefore, a question of the metaphysics of free will. (shrink)

We study the Vapnik–Chervonenkis density of definable families in certain stable first-order theories. In particular, we obtain uniform bounds on the VC density of definable families in finite $\mathrm {U}$-rank theories without the finite cover property, and we characterize those abelian groups for which there exist uniform bounds on the VC density of definable families.

Is it possible to argue that one’s memory is reliable without using one’s memory? I argue that it is not. Since it is not, it is impossible to defend the reliability of one’s memory without employing reasoning that is epistemically circular. Hence, if epistemic circularity is vicious, it is impossible to succeed in producing a cogent argument for the reliability of one’s memory. The same applies to any other one of one’s cognitive faculties. I further argue that, if epistemic circularity (...) is vicious, it is impossible to produce a cogent argument for the reliability of anything. For example, if epistemic circularity were vicious, a cogent argument for the reliability of one’s car would not be possible. The seeming viciousness of epistemic circularity even threatens, I propose, the possibility of justification and knowledge. Much, therefore, hangs one the question of whether epistemic circularity is indeed bad. I argue that epistemic circularity, or bootstrapping, need not be bad. When we use a crystal ball—a source perspicuously guilty of unreliability—to confirm its own reliability, bootstrapping is foolish. When we attribute reliability to a witness solely because the witness says he is reliable, bootstrapping is dogmatic. Foolish and dogmatic bootstrapping are bad. However, when a witness provides a rich body of testimony, using that testimony to gauge the witness’s reliability need not be a vicious form of circularity. When done critically, I argue, such reasoning exemplifies a form of bootstrapping that is benign. (shrink)

Trust is one of the big buzzwords in debates about the shaping of society, democracy, and emerging technologies. For example, one prominent idea put forward by the High‐Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence appointed by the European Commission is that artificial intelligence should be trustworthy. In this essay, we explore the notion of trust and argue that both proponents and critics of trustworthy AI have flawed pictures of the nature of trust. We develop an approach to understanding trust in AI (...) that does not conceive of trust merely as an accelerator for societal acceptance of AI technologies. Instead, we argue, trust is granted through leaps of faith. For this reason, trust remains precarious, fragile, and resistant to promotion through formulaic approaches. We also highlight the significance of distrust in societal deliberation, as it is relevant to trust in various and intricate ways. Among the fruitful aspects of distrust is that it enables individuals to forgo technology if desired, to constrain its power, and to exercise meaningful human control. (shrink)

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...) Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. (shrink)