This paper set out to provide a skeptical perspective to the view that IT has the potential to bring people into the global community. While not doubting the merits of IT’s capabilities it proposed that such claims be qualified in view of disparities in the distribution of wealth between nations and between peoples. It focused attention on the plight of students at the University of Fort Hare, in the Eastern Cape, which is the poorest of South Africa’s nine provinces. It (...) argued instead that IT has the likelihood of accentuating instead of bridging existing inequalities in wealth between countries and between peoples. It contended that not‘everybody’ is predisposed to becoming a role player in the global agenda given that access to IT and online facilities is stratified by income. This, the paper posited, is most likely to exacerbate the "global digital divide"—the growing disparity in wealth between countries of the North and the South, and between peoples, the information "haves" and "have-nots". The U.S.’s 1999 expenditure on IT, which stood at $762 as opposed to South Africa’s expenditure in the same year, which was $10.6, illustrates the "divide". But while on the surface the University of Fort Hare’s situation seemed very gloomy, the paper outlined positive, but modest initiatives not only to provide access to IT and online facilities, but also to quip staff and students with requisite skills to enable them to be role players in the global agenda. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How do non-experts single out numbers for reference? Linnebo has argued that they do so using a criterion of identity based on the ordinal properties of numerals. Neo-logicists, on the other hand, claim that cardinal properties are the basis of individuation, when they invoke Hume’s Principle. I discuss empirical data from cognitive science and linguistics to answer how non-experts individuate numbers better in practice. I use those findings to develop an alternative account that mixes ordinal and cardinal properties to (...) provide a detailed answer to the question: how do we in fact semantically individuate numbers? (shrink)

According to Hempel’s influential theory of explanation, explaining why some a is G consists in showing that the truth that a is G follows from a law-like generalization to the effect that all Fs are G together with the initial condition that a is F. While Hempel’s overall account is now widely considered to be deeply flawed, the idea that some generalizations play the explanatory role that the account predicts is still often endorsed by contemporary philosophers of science. This idea, (...) however, conflicts with widely shared views in metaphysics according to which the generalization that all Fs are G is partially explained by the fact that a is G. I discuss two solutions to this conflict that have been proposed recently, argue that they are unsatisfactory, and offer an alternative. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction General Scenario for the Transmission of Information and Its Application to Genetics Semiotic Dimensions of Biological Information Syntactic Dimension I: Measuring the Statistical Entropy of Signals and Messages Syntactic Dimension II: Estimating the Algorithmic Complexity of Signals and Messages Semantic Dimension: Classifying the Mutual Complexity of Transmitters and Receivers Acknowledgment References Further Reading.

In this text I investigate the increasing usage of the Rights of Nature to approach the task of Stewardship for the Earth. The Ecuadorian constitution of 2008 introduces the indigenous concept of Pachamama and interpretes nature as a subject of rights. Reflecting the two 2017 cases of the Whanganui River and the Gangotri and Yamunotri Glaciers, my main argument is that, although the language of individual rights relies on modern subjectivity as well as the constitutionalism of the secular nation state, (...) it is obviously seen as a trans-cultural tool to justify Human Stewardship over the Earth in the Age of Anthropocene. I argue that the new Rights of Nature debate “provides” a straightforward justification of the Stewardship for the Earth and it includes two moments aimed to transcend European Modernity. The Rights Approach justifies obligations towards nature beyond human interests and it appeals to indigenous knowledge as an alternative sphere of argumentation. The relation of this endevor to the Anthropocene is twofold: The indigenous worldviews can now be translated into Rights of Nature because of the two core items of the Anthropocene that are gaining more and more acceptance: the idea of the Earth as a system and of history as a non-linear process. The scientific description of the Earth system offered by the Anthropocene supports holistic narratives of the Rights of Nature and facilitates the recognition of non-Western worldviews. At the same time the Rights of Nature help to clarify the normative claims implicit in the Anthropocene because the integrity of natural items and processes is presented as the explicit reason for a responsible human stewardship towards the Earth. (shrink)

Machine learning is used more and more in scientific contexts, from the recent breakthroughs with AlphaFold2 in protein fold prediction to the use of ML in parametrization for large climate/astronomy models. Yet it is unclear whether we can obtain scientific explanations from such models. I argue that when machine learning is used to conduct causal inference we can give a new positive answer to this question. However, these ML models are purpose-built models and there are technical results showing that standard (...) machine learning models cannot be used for the same type of causal inference. Instead, there is a pathway to causal explanations from predictive ML models through new explainability techniques; specifically, new methods to extract structural equation models from such ML models. The extracted models are likely to suffer from issues though: they will often fail to account for confounders and colliders, as well as deliver simply incorrect causal graphs due to ML models tendency to violate physical laws such as the conservation of energy. In this case, extracted graphs are a starting point for new explanations, but predictive accuracy is no guarantee for good explanations. (shrink)

The study of human-human communication and the development of computational models for human-agent communication have diverged significantly throughout the last decade. Yet, despite frequently made claims of “super-human performance” in, e.g., speech recognition or image processing, so far, no system is able to lead a half-decent coherent conversation with a human. In this paper, we argue that we must start to re-consider the hallmarks of cooperative communication and the core capabilities that we have developed for it, and which conversational agents (...) need to be equipped with: incremental joint co-construction and mentalizing. We base our argument on a vast body of work on human-human communication and its psychological processes that we reason to be relevant and necessary to take into account when modeling human-agent communication. We contrast those with current conceptualizations of human-agent interaction and formulate suggestions for the development of future systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Drawing a framework from strategic stakeholder theory and using 1999 to 2010 panel data from the United Kingdom’s (UK) non-life insurance industry, we examine the effect of reinsurance on the decisions to donate to charities, and the amount given. We find that reinsurance substitutes for charitable giving as it optimizes the interests of multiple stakeholders. We further note that corporate giving is directly related to the size and age of insurers, proportion of female directorships and insider ownership, but generally inhibited (...) by chief executive officer (CEO) bonus plans, dominant shareholders, and financial experts on the board. Interestingly, when reinsurance interacts with board-level variables we find that the donations decision is positively related to CEO bonus plans, and negatively linked with inside ownership and the proportion of female board members. Our research results could have important implications for stakeholders. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest in line with dual process models that interoceptive skills affect controlled decisions via automatic or implicit processing. The “framing effect” is considered to capture implicit effects of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on decision-making. We hypothesized that cardiac awareness, as a measure of interoceptive skills, is positively associated with susceptibility to the framing effect. Forty volunteers performed a risky-choice framing task in which the effect of loss versus gain frames on decisions based on identical information was assessed. The results (...) show a positive association between cardiac awareness and the framing effect, accounting for 24% of the variance in the framing effect. These findings demonstrate that good interoceptive skills are linked to poorer performance in risky choices based on ambivalent information when implicit bias is induced by task-irrelevant emotional information. These findings support a dual process perspective on decision-making and suggest that interoceptive skills mediate effects of implicit bias on decisions. (shrink)

In this article we focus on how the language of developmental psychology shapes our conceptualisations and understandings of childrearing and of the parent-child relationship. By analysing some examples of contemporary research, policy and popular literature on parenting and parenting support in the UK and Flanders, we explore some of the ways in which normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing are imported into these areas through the language of developmental psychology. We go on to address the particular attraction of developmental psychology (...) in the field of parenting and upbringing within our current cultural context. Drawing on the work of (among others) Zygmunt Bauman, we will show how developmental psychology, as one of the instruments that contributes to a breaking down of our existential condition into a series of well-defined, and thus apparently manageable, tasks and categories, displaces rather than confronts the possibly limitless depth of the enormity of the reality of ‘being a parent’. (shrink)

Can private companies legitimately regulate sharing markets, and if yes, how? Whereas scholars have either criticized sharing platforms for expanding into private and public arenas or welcomed them to counterbalance encroaching government regulations, studies document their unbridled popularity. On the basis of a special version of social contracts theory pioneered by James Buchanan, we develop a heuristics that helps guide reasoning about the legitimacy of the sharing economy’s regulatory function. First, we discuss the conditions under which free and responsible individuals (...) deliberately subject themselves to rules without their prior direct participation, that is, exit, voice, and constitutional limits. Second, we suggest sharing platforms can use novel ordo-responsibilities to establish a sharing constitution that takes these conditions into account. Third, we argue that sharing platforms can legitimately do so within an enabling institutional environment in society, the provision of which relies on the joint efforts of sharing platforms, political actors, and civil society. (shrink)

Die Verfassung von Ecuador enthält als weltweit erste Rechte der Natur. Natur wird neben Menschen und Körperschaften als Rechtsträger benannt. Ihr wird ein Recht auf Existenz und Regeneration zugesprochen, das unabhängig von menschlichen Rechten gilt und von allen Menschen weltweit eingeklagt werden darf. Die Verfassung stützt sich auf den indigenen Naturbegriff Pachamama und erläutert deren Schutzanspruch durch das andine Konzept des Guten Lebens. Die Umweltethik bezeichnet ein holisitisches Naturverständnis als „Ökozentrismus“, wenn der Natur als überindividueller Ganzheit ein irreduzibler Schutzstatus zugesprochen (...) wird. Der umweltethische Ökozentrismus der Verfassung von Ecuador lässt sich erfolgreich gegen drei Kritiken verteidigen. Ökozentrische Positionen seien, 1) unvereinbar mit dem methodischen Individualismus der Menschenrechte. Ökosysteme selbst seien 2) „bloß“ vom menschlichen Beobachter abhängige Entitäten, die 3) über kein inhärentes Kriterium für Schädigungen verfügten. Die Konkretisierung des Ökozentrismus in Bezug auf die Verfassung von Ecuador erlaubt drei Thesen: 1) Der Schutz der Natur als überindividueller Ganzheit darf nicht als alleiniges ethisches Prinzip missverstanden werden. Innerhalb eines pluralistischen Holismus besitzt der Ökozentrismus nicht per se Vorrang gegenüber den Interessen individueller Naturwesen und juristischer Personen. 2) Da Ökosysteme im Gegensatz zu individuellen Naturwesen keine ontologisch selbstständigen Entitäten sind, lassen sich deren Rechte nicht analog zu denen natürlicher Personen begründen. Die Environmental Personhood ist gemäß der Association Theory der Rechtspersönlichkeit als ein menschliches Konstrukt zu verstehen. 3) Der Maßstab für die Schädigung von Ökosystemen kann nicht als ein der Natur inhärentes, objektives Kriterium „aufgefunden“ werden. Ökologische Schäden an der „Integrität, Stabilität und Schönheit“ der Natur sind vielmehr Schäden an menschlichen Werten. Als solche entspringen sie im Falle der ecuadorianischen Verfassung vor allem nichtinstrumentellen menschlichen Bezugnahmen auf die Natur. Der Natur wird hierbei eudaimonistischer Wert und moralischer Selbstwert zugeschrieben. (shrink)

The principal task of Marxist ethics is not to formulate particular moral principles or to implement them but to describe and explain moral reality. Ethics is not a philosophical discipline although as a science of morals in its own rights it is based on philosophical premises of historical materialism. Trying to define the principal tasks of Marxist ethics in the socialist society the author contends that Marxist ethics should determine the contents, the forms and the ways in which the communist (...) morality develops and functions: in the analysis and scientific examination of the social reality it should reveal the causes of contradictions and moral conflicts in the socialist society, it should also identify favourable conditions for an extensive acceptance of the communist morality. (shrink)

Ștefan Bolea ABSTRACT: In the present paper I analyze the theme of death in Gothic Metal songs such as Forever Failure by Paradise Lost, Everything Dies by Type O Negative, The Hanged Man by Moonspell or Gone with The Sin by HIM. The subthemes I am mostly interested in are the...

Resumen Este artículo analiza si en la teoría de los cuatro ethe de la modernidad capitalista, desarrollada por Bolívar Echeverría, no está contenida una debilidad de principio. Se trata de saber si para arribar a sus más altas aportaciones, esta teoría no termina pagando un precio que debiera dar que pensar. ¿Acaso renuncia a la crítica de la ideología, por lo menos en la radicalidad realizada por los autores de la Teoría crítica, inspirados en este punto originalmente por Georg Lukács?This (...) article is analyzing if in the theory of the four ethe of capitalist modernity, developed by Bolívar Echeverría, isn’t included a basic weakness. It is about understanding if for to arrive to its highest contributions, this theory is not paying a too high prize. Does it possibly renounce to the critique of ideology, at least in the radicality fulfilled by the authors of Critical theory, inspired in this point originally by Georg Lukács? (shrink)

Critical posthumanism is a theory paradigm that has become hugely influential across the humanities and social sciences in the last twenty years. This volume collects essays written over the last decade by one of the founders and leading figures of this movement.