The usefulness of machine learning algorithms has led to their widespread adoption prior to the development of a conceptual framework for making sense of them. One common response to this situation is to say that machine learning suffers from a “black box problem.” That is, machine learning algorithms are “opaque” to human users, failing to be “interpretable” or “explicable” in terms that would render categorization procedures “understandable.” The purpose of this paper is to challenge the widespread agreement about the existence (...) and importance of a black box problem. The first section argues that “interpretability” and cognates lack precise meanings when applied to algorithms. This makes the concepts difficult to use when trying to solve the problems that have motivated the call for interpretability. Furthermore, since there is no adequate account of the concepts themselves, it is not possible to assess whether particular technical features supply formal definitions of those concepts. The second section argues that there are ways of being a responsible user of these algorithms that do not require interpretability. In many cases in which a black box problem is cited, interpretability is a means to a further end such as justification or non-discrimination. Since addressing these problems need not involve something that looks like an “interpretation” of an algorithm, the focus on interpretability artificially constrains the solution space by characterizing one possible solution as the problem itself. Where possible, discussion should be reformulated in terms of the ends of interpretability. (shrink)

Meier et al. describe a pilot study that developed METHAD, an AI-based Medical Ethics Advisor tool that draws on the principlism approach and was tested using text-book cases and clinical et...

In recent years, new forms of high-tech controlled environment agriculture (CEA) have received increased attention and investment. These systems integrate a suite of technologies – including automation, LED lighting, vertical plant stacking, and hydroponic fertilization – to allow for greater control of temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and light in an enclosed growing environment. Proponents insist that CEA can produce sustainable, nutritious, and tasty local food, particularly for the cities of the future. At the same time, a variety of critics (...) raise concerns about its environmental impacts and energy use, high startup costs, and consumer accessibility challenges, among other issues. At this stage, however, relatively little research has explored actual consumer knowledge and attitudes related to CEA processes and products. Guided by theories of sense-making, this article draws from structured interviews with local food consumers in New York City to examine what people know and think about high-tech CEA. From there, it explores the extent to which CEA fits into consumer conceptualizations of what makes for “good food.” Key findings emphasize that significant gaps in public understanding of CEA remain, that CEA products’ success will depend on the ability of the industry to deliver on its environmental promises, and that concerns about “unnatural” aspects of CEA will need to be allayed. Given the price premium at which high-tech CEA products are currently sold, the industry’s expansion will depend in large part on its ability to convince value-oriented food consumers that the products meet the triple-bottom-line of economic, social, and environmental sustainability goals. (shrink)

In recent years, Cesar Chavez’s life and legacy have been subjected to increased scrutiny. The ensuing reevaluations of Chavez, wittingly or not, are matters of ethical, as well as historical and biographical, concern. This article has two aims. First, it reconstructs Chavez’s account of exemplarity and uses it to assess his legacy. Second, it provides an account of exemplarity situated within social practices. As I argue, exemplarity operates through social practices, rather than mystically as posited by a contagion model. The (...) end result is an ethically nuanced reassessment of Chavez and an account of exemplarity that includes its social dimension. (shrink)

Pandemics first and foremost hit those who are most vulnerable, and the COVID-19 pandemic is not different. Although the infection rate in the nation’s poorest neighborhoods is twice as it is in th...

Para responder a la pregunta: ¿Qué es la literatura?, Sartre propone el concepto de unidad como su característica exclusiva que la relaciona con la sociedad por la vía del compromiso. Se analiza tal exclusividad, así como las objeciones de Adorno a la noción de compromiso, para encontrar, en medio de sus grandes diferencias, algunas afinidades que permitan establecer las relaciones entre la literatura y la sociedad.

This article discusses the issue of arrangement /ordering of compulsory-comprehensive maqāsid. In this respect, the main purpose is to help clarify the ordering problem. To accomplish this task, the classical and contemporary studies on this subject were reviewed. Within the scope of this research, it has been determined that the universal principles are generally listed in the order of religion, nafs, mind, generation and property. However, alternative orderings can be found where the nafs is placed at the forefront. The focal (...) point of the ordering problem is emerges from the question of whether Allah's rights/otherworldly maqāsid should be priorities or servants' rights/worldly maqāsid. The conflict between religion, which is an otherworldly value, and other principles played an active role in this classification of maqāsid. Many legal scholars who placed religion in the first place in the classical period did not clearly explained the justification of their arrangement. Also, many of today's researchers also stated that religion should come first. The scholars who put both the religion and the nafs in the center have listed many evidence for their preference. The legal scholars who put religion at the center have pointed the verse " I have not created the jinn and men but they may worship Me" as the basis for their views. Accordingly, the main purpose of the creation of human being is to serve Allah. Because the most important right to be fulfilled is the right of Allah religion should take precedence over other virtues in maqasid. Religion is also the only essential way that leads to eternal happiness. According to the legal scholars who put religion into the center, other maqasid principles are secondary. Correlatively, other principles serve religion. The hadith "The debt to Allah is more worthy of being paid." has been made the basis. Since religion constitutes the essence of the maqāsid, it is also a requirement of reason to make religion essential. According to another reason they stated, the obligation of jihad also ensures that religion is at the center. The obligation of jihad causes lives to be sacrificed to protect the religion. This means that religion is superior to the nafs and other principles. Because jihad, which is the order of religion, is fard. The scholars who maintain that the rights of the servants should take precedence over the right of Allah have cited also a lot of evidence. We come across with their views presented as a weak view in the sources or as an answer to a possible question. There is no clear information about to whom these views belong. Therefore, it is stated that no one introduces the nafs to religion. As a matter of fact, it is stated that it is not correct to qualify these views as an independent view defended by scholars. In other words, the view putting the nafs at the center and the evidence to this preference at this point should be regarded as hypothetical. We are of the view that these claims of contemporary writers need to be proven. The basic reason of the views that puts the nafs in the center is based on the pre-acceptance that maslahahs like the nafs are the right of servants while religion is the right of Allah. The given reasons can be addressed under three main headings: punishments, mitigation of prayers, and concern with non-Muslims. In case where the rights of the servant and Allah unite, the rights of the servant should be preferred. Because, the rights of servants are on hardship, and the rights of Allah are on breadth and mercy. On the contrary to the rights of the servants, postponing or neglecting the right of Allah will not harm Allah. It is clear that if the rights of the servants face postponement, they will suffer serious damage. The fact that killing a man who both abandoned his religion and killed someone unfairly, not for his departure from religion, but for retaliation, that is, the right of a servant, is a concrete example of this. The shortening of the prayer during the journey, the patient’s abandoning standing in prayer and the fasting, and other examples also require the human to be in the center. Today, there are researchers who take the nafs to the center. The existence of religion for humans and society reflects the view of these researchers. Because it is clear that religion will remain dysfunctional where there is no human and society. When these evidences are examined carefully, it can be concluded that the opinion that defends the nafs to be at the center of comprehensive maqāsid is preferable. (shrink)

Content of the Turkish book: -/- Prof. Dr. Yaman Örs* is one of the most important professors who studied and improved the studies in bioethics in Turkey. The book consists of his related papers in Turkish. There are five main chapters in this book: (1) Main Lines of Yaman Örs’s Approach to Scientific Philosophy, (2) His Writings on Ethics, (3) The Ethics of Philosophy, (4) His Writings on Bioethics, and (5) His Papers on Medical Ethics. For each chapter, small introductory (...) parts are written by the editor in order to make it easier for the reader to follow the thoughts of Örs. -/- *Department of Medical Ethics (Ret.), School of Medicine, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey. (shrink)

Resemblances obtain not only between objects but between properties. Resemblances of the latter sort - in particular resemblances between quantitative properties - prove to be the downfall of a well-known theory of universals, namely the one presented by David Armstrong. This paper examines Armstrong's efforts to account for such resemblances within the framework of his theory and also explores several extensions of that theory. All of them fail.

The public rejection of scientific claims is widely recognized by scientific and governmental institutions to be threatening to modern democratic societies. Intense conflict between science and the public over diverse health and environmental issues have invited speculation by concerned officials regarding both the source of and the solution to the problem of public resistance towards scientific and policy positions on such hot-button issues as global warming, genetically modified crops, environmental toxins, and nuclear waste disposal. The London Royal Society’s influential report (...) “Public Understanding of Science”, which spearheaded the now-thriving area of science... (shrink)

It has been almost 20 years since the field of bioethics was galvanized by a controversial series of multinational AZT trials employing placebo controls on pregnant HIV-positive women in the developing world even though a standard of care existed in the sponsor countries. The trove of ethical investigations that followed was thoughtful and challenging, yet an important and problematic methodological assumption was left unexplored. In this article, I revisit the famous “double standard of care” case study in order to offer (...) novel consideration of the placebo orthodoxy that underlies much of the ethical debate. This majority view found in medical research is that placebo-controlled trials are methodologically superior to comparative trials that use active controls. I challenge this orthodoxy and argue that lives were unnecessarily lost in these trials as a result. Furthermore, current HIV research on vaccines and microbicides is now poised to repeat the error of subscribing to the placebo orthodoxy. (shrink)

Because “evidence” is at issue in evidence-based medicine (EBM), the critical responses to the movement have taken up themes from post-positivist philosophy of science to demonstrate the untenability of the objectivist account of evidence. While these post-positivist critiques seem largely correct, I propose that when they focus their analyses on what counts as evidence, the critics miss important and desirable pragmatic features of the evidence-based approach. This article redirects critical attention toward EBM’s rigid hierarchy of evidence as the culprit of (...) its objectionable epistemic practices. It reframes the EBM discourse in light of a distinction between objectivist and pragmatic epistemology, which allows for a more nuanced analysis of EBM than previously offered: one that is not either/or in its evaluation of the decision-making technology as either iconoclastic or creedal. -/- . (shrink)

In this article, the views of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (d. 2022) on the change of the fatwa are discussed. Other issues of the fatwa method are generally excluded from the scope. At the point of solving new problems, the change of the fatwa is important. The aim of the study is to reveal al-Qaradawi's contribution to the issue of changing the fatwa. In this study, in which the qualitative research method was used, thematic reading was made. As it is known, scholars (...) have adopted the idea that the provisions open to ijtihad can be changed. According to al-Qaradawi, there is even a consensus on this. Likewise, there is a consensus that the final provisions are not subject to change. al-Qaradawi mentioned that independent ijtihad activities should continue. Because only in this way can fiqh remain alive and dynamic. Therefore, it can solve new problems. Therefore, the idea that the door of ijtihad is closed cannot be accepted. On the other hand, scholars should take into account the ancient jurisprudence. It should contribute to this information by adding or correcting it. The principles that allow the change of the fatwa are four in the form of time, place, situation and custom. al-Qaradawi stated that he added six new elements to these. These are as follows: The change of information, the change of people's needs, the change of people's power and possibilities, umumu'l-balwa, the change of social, economic and political conditions, the change of opinion and idea. The author has reached these six elements as a result of a deep research. Muftis should take these factors into consideration when issuing a fatwa. Because the maslahah of the servants and the principle of convenience require this. (shrink)

While most of healthcare research and practice fully endorses evidence-based healthcare, a minority view borrows popular themes from philosophy of science like underdetermination and value-ladenness to question the legitimacy of the evidence-based movement’s philosophical underpinnings. While the feminist origins go unacknowledged, those critics adopt a feminist reading of the “gap argument” to challenge the perceived objectivism of evidence-based practice. From there, the critics seem to despair over the “subjective elements” that values introduce to clinical reasoning, demonstrating that they do not (...) subscribe to feminist science studies’ normative program——where contextual values can enable good science and justified decisions. In this paper, I investigate why it is that the critics of evidence-based medicine adopt feminist science’s characterization of the problem but resist the productive solutions offered by those same theorists. I suggest that the common feminist empiricist appeal to idealized epistemic communities is impractical for those working within the current biomedical context and instead offer an alternate stream of feminist research into the empirical content of values (found in the work of Elizabeth Anderson and Sharyn Clough) as a more helpful recourse for facilitating the important task of legitimate and justified clinical decision-making. I use a case study on clinical decision-making to illustrate the fruitfulness of the latter feminist empiricist framework. -/- See response by Sharyn Clough: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1aN See reply by Maya Goldenberg: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1oY. (shrink)

The United States’ ambitious Precision Medicine Initiative proposes to accelerate exponentially the adoption of precision medicine, an approach to health care that tailors disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention to individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. It aims to achieve this by creating a cohort of volunteers for precision medicine research, accelerating biomedical research innovation, and adopting policies geared toward patients’ empowerment. As strategies to implement the PMI are formulated, critical consideration of the initiative's ethical and sociopolitical dimensions is needed. (...) Drawing on scholarship of nationalism and democracy, we discuss the PMI's construction of what we term “genomic citizenship”; the possible normative obligations arising therefrom; and the ethical, legal, and social challenges that will ensue. Although the PMI is a work in progress, discussion of the existing and emerging issues can facilitate the development of policies, structures, and procedures that can maximize the initiative's ability to produce equitable and socially sensitive outcomes. Our analysis can also be applied to other population-based, precision medicine research programs. (shrink)

Whole genome and exome sequencing techniques raise hope for a new scale of diagnosis, prevention, and prediction of genetic conditions, and improved care for children. For these hopes to materialize, extensive genomic research with children will be needed. However, the use of WGS/WES in pediatric research settings raises considerable challenges for families, researchers, and policy development. In particular, the possibility that these techniques will generate genetic findings unrelated to the primary goal of sequencing has stirred intense debate about whether, which, (...) how, and when these secondary or incidental findings should be returned to parents and minors. The debate is even more pronounced when the subjects are adolescents, for whom decisions about return of SFs may have particular implications. In this paper, we consider the rise of “genomic citizenship” and the main challenges that arise for these stakeholders: adolescents' involvement in decisions relating to return of genomic SFs, the types of SFs that should be offered, privacy protections, and communication between researchers and adolescents about SFs. We argue that adolescents' involvement in genomic SF-related decisions acknowledges their status as valuable stakeholders without detracting from broader familial interests, and promotes more informed genomic citizens. (shrink)

The standard counterexamples to David Lewis’s account of intrinsicality involve two sorts of properties: identity properties and necessary properties. Proponents of the account have attempted to deflect these counterexamples in a number of ways. This paper argues that none of these moves are legitimate. Furthermore, this paper argues that no account along the lines of Lewis’s can succeed, for an adequate account of intrinsicality must be sensitive to hyperintensional distinctions among properties.

Jamieson, Hangen, Lee, and Yaeager present their empirical findings as evidence for the effects of reappraising arousal on affective responses. This comment highlights the important contribution of the research by Jamieson and colleagues, but offers alternative ways of conceptualizing it.

Through the use of culturally appropriate videos on precision medicine research (PMR) that were developed and tailored to five racial and ethnic groups of patients, and subsequent focus-group discu...

The founder of the Şemsiyye branch, one of the main branches of the Halvetiyye sect, is Şemseddîn-i Sivâsî. Sivasî is originally from Zile. After he went to Sivas, he became famous with the title of "Sivasî" due to the fact that this place became the center of his activities and Zile was a settlement center connected to Sivas at that time. The person who witnessed Sivâsî's scientific, conscientious, political, cultural and military influences, as one of the people closest to him, (...) is his nephew and son-in-law, Receb-i Sivâsî, who also served as a sheikh in the asitane in Sivas. Recep Efendi was privy to the secrets of Şemseddîn-i Sivâsî for about fifty years and after the death of Şemseddîn Efendi, he wrote the work called Necmü’l-hüdâ fî Menâkıbı'ş-Şeyh Şemseddîn Ebi's-senâ, in which he shared first-hand information about his life. Although Necmü’l-hudâ seems to be a work devoted to Sivâsî, with topics such as Şemseddîn-i Sivâsî's birth, his family, his scientific and spiritual development, his services, his caliphs, his circle of influence and his participation in the Eğri Excursion, Recep Efendi also included important information reflecting his Sufi thoughts between the lines of the work. In this study, Receb-i Sivâsî's thoughts about the friends of God and the so-called Sufis, which he mentioned as a Halvetî-Şemsî sheikh, in the context of his work called Necmü’l-hudâ, were discussed. The names that influenced his thoughts about the friends of Allah and the so-called Sufis in Necmü’l-huda, especially Şemseddîn-i Sivasî, were emphasized, in addition, attention was drawn to the function of Recep Efendi's Sufi views in transferring the thoughts of Sufis and Şemseddîn-i Sivâsî to the next generations. (shrink)

It is a thrill to have two scholars whom I admire greatly commenting on my own work. I want to thank Professors Miriam Solomon and Inmaculada de Melo-Martin for their careful reading and attention to the book. I found their positive evaluation of the research very encouraging and still both commentaries offer critical challenges that warrant attention. This response will address two points of discussion: normative theorizing on trust; whether the conceptual resources, specifically the crisis of trust framework, can address (...) the present situation of COVID vaccine hesitancy.Solomon and de Melo-Martin question the limited attention I give to evaluating the propositional claims and the... (shrink)

The evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement is touted as a new paradigm in medical education and practice, a description that carries with it an enthusiasm for science that has not been seen since logical positivism flourished (circa 1920–1950). At the same time, the term ‘‘evidence-based medicine’’ has a ring of obviousness to it, as few physicians, one suspects, would claim that they do not attempt to base their clinical decision-making on available evidence. However, the apparent obviousness of EBM can and should (...) be challenged on the grounds of how ‘evidence’ has been problematised in the philosophy of science. EBM enthusiasm, it follows, ought to be tempered. The post-positivist, feminist, and phenomenological philosophies of science that are examined in this paper contest the seemingly unproblematic nature of evidence that underlies EBM by emphasizing different features of the social nature of science. The appeal to the authority of evidence that characterizes evidence-based practices does not increase objectivity but rather obscures the subjective elements that inescapably enter all forms of human inquiry. The seeming common sense of EBM only occurs because of its assumed removal from the social context of medical practice. In the current age where the institutional power of medicine is suspect, a model that represents biomedicine as politically disinterested or merely scientific should give pause. (shrink)

Color conveys critical information about the flavor of food and drink by providing clues as to edibility, flavor identity, and flavor intensity. Despite the fact that more than 100 published papers have investigated the influence of color on flavor perception in humans, surprisingly little research has considered how cognitive and contextual constraints may mediate color–flavor interactions. In this review, we argue that the discrepancies demonstrated in previously-published color–flavor studies may, at least in part, reflect differences in the sensory expectations that (...) different people generate as a result of their prior associative experiences. We propose that color–flavor interactions in flavor perception cannot be understood solely in terms of the principles of multisensory integration but that the role of higher-level cognitive factors, such as expectations, must also be considered. (shrink)

This paper examines the conclusions that one must draw from the finding that there are values in science. The value-ladenness of scientific claims puts the nature and role of empirical evidence into question, as seen in recent discussions in the philosophy of medicine regarding evidence-based medicine and feminist science studies, which maintains the normativity of its feminist claims. Within the critical literature and debates surrounding evidence-based medicine (EBM), one finds a championing of the lessons learned from post-positivist science studies: the (...) evidence-based effort to ground medical decision-making in the most rigorous sources of scientific evidence obscures the social values that necessarily enter into all decision-making contexts, the complex social context of clinical practice being no exception. The critics of EBM claim that to try to derive a formal methodology governed by pre-established rules, guidelines, and hierarchies of information misplaces the contextual and social features of biomedical knowledge and practice, thereby obscuring the power interests that so problematically dictate large factions of biomedical research and practice. Yet possible relativist implications follow from this finding, and we find that the EBM critics amply criticize EBM’s tacit theory of evidence, but then fail to formulate a constructive alternative theory of evidence within this fact-value interplay. After overviewing some such criticisms of evidence-based medicine, I turn to contemporary critical science studies, especially the feminist empiricism of Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Helen Longino, for workable alternative theories of evidence within a framework of normative scientific claims. I will suggest these theories fail to guide medical decision-making because of some undesirable consequences of Quinean fact-value holism: the denial that our values have logical content and are therefore not empirically examinable relativises even these nuanced conceptions of evidence. A naturalized look at how facts and values actually interact in medical decision-making suggests that this fact/value holism is not realistic. I provide an illustrative example of a physician devising a treatment recommendation for a patient to demonstrate that in practice, facts and values intermingle in the decision-making process without indeterminacy and subsequent appeals to moral and political frameworks, as feminist empiricism suggests. In the end, value-laden evidence can retain its adjudicative force and normativity. (shrink)

General utterances are described as words that express more than one singular at the same time in terms of the meaning they contain. Schools have adopted different approaches about the value of showing these singulars that general utterances contain. Accordingly, while Hanafi scholars accepted that the indication of general utterances was certain, the majority of scholars claimed that the indication of these general utterances implied suspicion. This difference of opinion about the indicator of general utterances was not limited to the (...) theoretical field and became a source for the provisions in different fields. While Shafi'i scholars argue that the indication of general utterances is not certain, they have argued that the general addresses are addressed to the addressees in the period of revelation, and that these addresses do not cover all the people who will come until the Day of Judgment. Today, some academics who defend historicity get involved in the discussion at this point and present these arguments as reference sources of historicity. In the same way, they argue that scholars who claim that the indication of the general utterances is not certain have put forward some views that lead to historicity. In this study, this claim is discussed, and the historical reference value of the arguments put forward at the point of the indicator of general utterances is examined. (shrink)