Pour cerner les caractéristiques récurrentes de la jurislittérature, qui réfléchit la juridicité en littérarité, huit études visent ici à dégager les points cardinaux de son exigeante méditation sur un droit incarné, ainsi que certains tropismes d'écriture qui mettent la juridicité en état de grâce.

This book explains how the logic of theory change employs formal models in the investigation of changes in belief states and databases. The topics covered include equivalent characterizations of AGM operations, extended representations of the belief states, change operators not included in the original framework, iterated change, applications of the model, its connections with other formal frameworks, and criticism of the model.

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

The growth of self-tracking and personal surveillance has given rise to the Quantified Self movement. Members of this movement seek to enhance their personal well-being, productivity, and self-actualization through the tracking and gamification of personal data. The technologies that make this possible can also track and gamify aspects of our interpersonal, romantic relationships. Several authors have begun to challenge the ethical and normative implications of this development. In this article, we build upon this work to provide a detailed ethical analysis (...) of the Quantified Relationship. We identify eight core objections to the QR and subject them to critical scrutiny. We argue that although critics raise legitimate concerns, there are ways in which tracking technologies can be used to support and facilitate good relationships. We thus adopt a stance of cautious openness toward this technology and advocate the development of a research agenda for the positive use of QR technologies. (shrink)

Changing preferencesis a phenomenonoften invoked but rarely properlyaccounted for. Throughout the history of the social sciences, researchers have come against the possibility that their subjects’ preferenceswere affected by the phenomenato be explainedor by otherfactorsnot taken into accountin the explanation.Sporadically, attempts have been made to systematically investigate these in uences, but none of these seems to have had a lasting impact. Today we are still not much further with respect to preference change than we were at the middle of the last (...) century. This anthology hopes to provide a new impulse for research into this important subject. In particular, we have chosen two routes to amplify this impulse. First, we stress the use of modellingtechniquesfamiliar from economicsand decision theory. Instead of constructing complex, all-encompassing theories of preference change, the authors of this volume start with very simple, formal accounts of some possible and hopefully plausible mechanism of preference change. Eventually, these models may nd their way into larger, empirically adequate theories, but at this stage, we think that the most importantwork lies in building structure.Secondly,we stress the importance of interdisciplinary exchange. Only by drawing together experts from different elds can the complex empirical and theoretical issues in the modelling of preference change be adequately investigated. (shrink)

Daniel Weiskopf has recently raised an apparently powerful objection against the so-called “extended mind thesis” with regard to beliefs. His argument is that since alleged cases of “extended beliefs” lack a characteristic feature of beliefs properly so called (newly acquired beliefs are usually integrated with already existing beliefs rapidly, automatically and unconsciously), they do not count as genuine beliefs properly so called. We defend the extended mind thesis by arguing that Weiskopf is wrong. First, we suggest an alternative account of (...) informational integration that is compatible with externally stored beliefs’ being beliefs properly so called, emphasizes the crucial role action plays for cognition, and stresses the embodied and situationally embedded nature of human cognizers. Second, we argue that even if informational integration were usually rapid, automatic, and unconscious, this would not be an essential feature of beliefs. Third, we argue that even if rapid, automatic, and unconscious informational integration were characteristic of our commonsense conception of beliefs, externally stored “beliefs” would still be sufficiently similar to beliefs properly so called for them to be grouped together for all practical and scientific purposes. (shrink)

Humans’ indigenous microbes strongly influence organ functions in an age‐ and diet‐dependent manner, adding an important dimension to aging biology that remains poorly understood. Although age‐related differences in the gut microbiota composition correlate with age‐related loss of organ function and diseases, including inflammation and frailty, variation exists among the elderly, especially centenarians and people living in areas of extreme longevity. Studies using short‐lived as well as nonsenescent model organisms provide surprising functional insights into factors affecting aging and implicate attenuating effects (...) of microbes as well as a crucial role for certain transcription factors like forkhead box O. The unexpected beneficial effects of microbes on aged animals imply an even more complex interplay between the gut microbiome and the host. The microbiome constitutes the major interface between humans and the environment, is influenced by biosocial stressors and behaviors, and mediates effects on health and aging processes, while being moderated by sex and developmental stages. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Historical Perspective Progressivism: Five Themes Progressivism Today.

Background In nursing homes, residents’ relatives represent important sources of support for nurses. However, in the heightened stress of emergency situations, interaction between nurses and relatives can raise ethical challenges. Research objectives The present analysis aimed at elaborating a typology of nurses’ experience of ethical support and challenges in their interaction with relatives in emergency situations. Research design Thirty-three semi-structured interviews and six focus groups were conducted with nurses from different nursing homes in Germany. Data were analysed according to Mayring’s (...) method of qualitative content analysis. Participants and research context Participants were licensed nurses working in nursing homes. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was granted by Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences (02.07.2020) and the Ethics Committee of Hannover Medical School (Nr. 8866_BO_K_2020; 27.01.2020). Interviewees were anonymised and focus group were pseudonymised during transcription. All participants provided written consent. Findings/results In emergency situations, relatives can represent important sources of support for nurses. However, they may also give rise to different challenges, relating to four ethical conflicts: (1) the challenge of meeting the information needs of relatives while providing appropriate care to all residents; (2) the challenge of managing relatives’ demands for hospitalisation when hospitalisation is not deemed necessary by nurses; (3) the challenge of managing relatives’ demands for lifesaving treatment when such treatment contradicts the will of the resident; and (4) the challenge of attempting to initiate hospitalisation when relatives oppose this course of action. Several external factors make these conflicts especially challenging for nurses: fear of legal consequences, a low staffing ratio, and a lack of qualified nursing staff. Conclusions Conflict between nurses and relatives typically revolves around hospitalisation and the initiation of lifesaving treatment. Whether nurses perceive interaction with relatives as supportive or conflictual essentially depends on the quality of the relationship, which may be negatively influenced by a number of external factors. (shrink)

Sven Bernecker presents an analysis of the concept of propositional (or factual) memory, and examines a number of metaphysical and epistemological issues crucial to the understanding of memory. -/- Bernecker argues that memory, unlike knowledge, implies neither belief nor justification. There are instances where memory, though hitting the mark of truth, succeeds in an epistemically defective way. This book shows that, contrary to received wisdom in epistemology, memory not only preserves epistemic features generated by other epistemic sources but also (...) functions as a source of justification and knowledge. According to the causal theory of memory argued for in this book, the dependence of memory states on past representations supports counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a given proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it in the present. The book argues for a version of content externalism whereupon the individuation of memory contents depends on relations the subject bears to his past physical or social environment. Moreover, Bernecker shows that memory doesn't require identity, but only similarity, of past and present attitudes and contents. The notion of content similarity is explicated in terms of the entailment relation. (shrink)

Justification as Ignorance offers an original account of epistemic justification as both non-factive and luminous, vindicating core internalist intuitions without construing justification as an internal condition knowable by reflection alone. Sven Rosenkranz conceives of justification, in its doxastic and propositional varieties, as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing and of being in a position to know. His account contrasts with recent alternative views that characterize justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing. Instead, he develops a suitable (...) non-normal multi-modal epistemic logic for knowledge and being in a position to know that respects the finding that these notions create hyperintensional contexts. He also defends his conception of justification against well-known anti-luminosity arguments, shows that the account allows for fruitful applications and principled solutions to the lottery and preface paradoxes, and provides a metaphysics of justification and its varying degrees of strength that is compatible with core assumptions of the knowledge-first approach and disjunctivist conceptions of mental states. (shrink)

This book argues that we need to explore how human beings can best coordinate and collaborate with robots in responsible ways. It investigates ethically important differences between human agency and robot agency to work towards an ethics of responsible human-robot interaction.

Many ethicists writing about automated systems attribute agency to these systems. Not only that; they seemingly attribute an autonomous or independent form of agency to these machines. This leads some ethicists to worry about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps in cases where automated systems harm or kill human beings. In this paper, I consider what sorts of agency it makes sense to attribute to most current forms of automated systems, in particular automated cars and military robots. I argue that whereas it indeed (...) makes sense to attribute different forms of fairly sophisticated agency to these machines, we ought not to regard them as acting on their own, independently of any human beings. Rather, the right way to understand the agency exercised by these machines is in terms of human–robot collaborations, where the humans involved initiate, supervise, and manage the agency of their robotic collaborators. This means, I argue, that there is much less room for justified worries about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps than many ethicists think. (shrink)

An alarming number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued that mind extends beyond the brain and body. This book evaluates these arguments and suggests that, typically, it does not. A timely and relevant study that exposes the need to develop a more sophisticated theory of cognition, while pointing to a bold new direction in exploring the nature of cognition Articulates and defends the “mark of the cognitive”, a common sense theory used to distinguish between cognitive and non-cognitive processes Challenges (...) the current popularity of extended cognition theory through critical analysis and by pointing out fallacies and shortcoming in the literature Stimulates discussions that will advance debate about the nature of cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In the middle of the 1980s, logical tools were discovered that make it possible to model changes in belief and knowledge in entirely new ways. These logical tools turned out to be applicable both to human beliefs and to the contents of databases. This is the first textbook in this new area. It contains both discursive chapters with a minimum of formalism and formal chapters in which proofs and proof methods are presented. By using different selections from the formal section (...) the book can be used on all levels of University education. (shrink)

This book investigates central issues in the philosophy of memory. Does remembering require a causal process connecting the past representation to its subsequent recall and, if so, what is the nature of the causal process? Of what kind are the primary intentional objects of memory states? How do we know that our memory experiences portray things the way they happened in the past? Given that our memory is not only a passive device for reproducing thoughts but also an active device (...) for processing stored thoughts, when are thoughts sufficiently similar to be memory-related? The Metaphysics of Memory defends a version of the causal theory of memory, argues for direct realism about memory, proposes an externalist response to skepticism about memory knowledge, and develops a contextualist account of the factivity constraint on memory. (shrink)

Self-driving cars hold out the promise of being safer than manually driven cars. Yet they cannot be a 100 % safe. Collisions are sometimes unavoidable. So self-driving cars need to be programmed for how they should respond to scenarios where collisions are highly likely or unavoidable. The accident-scenarios self-driving cars might face have recently been likened to the key examples and dilemmas associated with the trolley problem. In this article, we critically examine this tempting analogy. We identify three important ways (...) in which the ethics of accident-algorithms for self-driving cars and the philosophy of the trolley problem differ from each other. These concern: the basic decision-making situation faced by those who decide how self-driving cars should be programmed to deal with accidents; moral and legal responsibility; and decision-making in the face of risks and uncertainty. In discussing these three areas of disanalogy, we isolate and identify a number of basic issues and complexities that arise within the ethics of the programming of self-driving cars. (shrink)

Formal representations of values and norms are employed in several academic disciplines and specialties, such as economics, jurisprudence, decision theory and social choice theory. Sven Ove Hansson closely examines such foundational issues as the values of wholes and the values of their parts, the connections between values and norms, how values can be decision-guiding and the structure of normative codes with formal precision. Models of change in both preferences and norms are offered, as well as a method to base (...) the logic of norms on that of preferences. Hansson has developed a unified formal representation of values and norms that reflects both their static and their dynamic properties. This formalized treatment, carried out in terms of both informal value theory and precise logical detail, will contribute to the clarification of certain issues in the basic philosophical theory of values and norms. (shrink)

Proponents of situated affectivity hold that “tools for feeling” are just as characteristic of the human condition as are “tools for thinking” or tools for carpentry. An agent’s affective life, they argue, is dependent upon both physical characteristics of the agent and the agent’s reciprocal relationship to an appropriately structured natural, technological, or social environment. One important achievement has been the distinction between two fundamentally different ways in which affectivity might be intertwined with the environment: the “user-resource-model” and the “mind-invasion-model.” (...) The twofold purpose of this paper is to complement the debate about situated affectivity in general and about “mind invasion” in particular by, firstly, connecting it to situationist research in social psychology and, secondly, broadening the perspective to not only accommodate decidedly detrimental “invasions” but also potentially beneficial forms of “mind shaping” that include the manipulation of an agent’s experiential life and behaviour through the moulding of both the agent’s environment and the agent’s body. (shrink)

I explain the New Riddle of Induction (Goodman 1946, 1955) in very brief words.

Is more information always better? Or are there some situations in which more information can make us worse off? Good (1967) argues that expected utility maximizers should always accept more information if the information is cost-free and relevant. But Good's argument presupposes that you are certain you will update by conditionalization. If we relax this assumption and allow agents to be uncertain about updating, these agents can be rationally required to reject free and relevant information. Since there are good reasons (...) to be uncertain about updating, rationality can require you to prefer ignorance. (shrink)

According to T. M. Scanlon's 'buck-passing' analysis of value, x is good means that x has properties that provide reasons to take up positive attitudes vis-à-vis x. Some authors have claimed that this idea can be traced back to Franz Brentano, who said in 1889 that the judgement that x is good is the judgement that a positive attitude to x is correct ('richtig'). The most discussed problem in the recent literature on buckpassing is known as the 'wrong kind of (...) reason' problem (the WKR problem): it seems quite possible that there is sometimes reason to favour an object although that object is not good and possibly very evil. The problem is to delineate exactly what distinguishes reasons of the right kind from reasons of the wrong kind. In this paper we offer a Brentano-style solution. We also note that one version of the WKR problem was put forward by G. E. Moore in his review of the English translation of Brentano's Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Before getting to how our Brentano-style approach might offer a way out for Brentano and the buck-passers, we briefly consider and reject an interesting attempt to solve the WKR problem recently proposed by John Skorupski. (shrink)

How do we ascribe subjective probability? In decision theory, this question is often addressed by representation theorems, going back to Ramsey (1926), which tell us how to define or measure subjective probability by observable preferences. However, standard representation theorems make strong rationality assumptions, in particular expected utility maximization. How do we ascribe subjective probability to agents which do not satisfy these strong rationality assumptions? I present a representation theorem with weak rationality assumptions which can be used to define or measure (...) subjective probability for partly irrational agents. (shrink)

The paper explores a structural account of propositional justification in terms of the notion of being in a position to know and negation. Combined with a non-normal logic for being in a position to know, the account allows for the derivation of plausible principles of justification. The account is neutral on whether justification is grounded in internally individuated mental states, and likewise on whether it is grounded in facts that are already accessible by introspection or reflection alone. To this extent, (...) it is compatible both with internalism and with externalism about justification. Even so, the account allows for the proof of principles that are commonly conceived to depend on an internalist conception of justification. The account likewise coheres both with epistemic contextualism and with its rejection, and is compatible both with the knowledge-first approach and with its rejection. Despite its neutrality on these issues, the account makes propositional justification luminous and so is controversial. However, it proves quite resilient in the light of recent anti-luminosity arguments. (shrink)

When is it morally acceptable to expose others to risk? Most moral philosophers have had very little to say in answer to that question, but here is a moral philosopher who puts it at the centre of his investigations.

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

The framework of Solomonoff prediction assigns prior probability to hypotheses inversely proportional to their Kolmogorov complexity. There are two well-known problems. First, the Solomonoff prior is relative to a choice of Universal Turing machine. Second, the Solomonoff prior is not computable. However, there are responses to both problems. Different Solomonoff priors converge with more and more data. Further, there are computable approximations to the Solomonoff prior. I argue that there is a tension between these two responses. This is because computable (...) approximations to Solomonoff prediction do not always converge. (shrink)

Recent studies on neural pathways in a broad spectrum of vertebrates suggest that, in addition to migration and an increase in the number of certain select neurons, a significant aspect of neural evolution is a “parcellation” (segregation-isolation) process that involves the loss of selected connections by the new aggregates. A similar process occurs during ontogenetic development. These findings suggest that in many neuronal systems axons do not invade unknown territories during evolutionary or ontogenetic development but follow in their ancestors' paths (...) to their ancestral targets; if the connection is later lost, it reflects the specialization of the circuitry.The pattern of interspecific variability suggests (1) that overlap of circuits is a more common feature in primitive (generalized) than in specialized brain organizations and (2) that most projections, such as the retinal, thalamotelencephalic, corticotectal, and tectal efferent ones, were bilateral in the primitive condition. Specialization of these systems in some vertebrate groups has involved the selective loss of connections, resulting in greater isolation of functions. The parcellation process may also play an important role in cell diversification.The parcellation process as described here is thought to be one of several underlying mechanisms of evolutionary and ontogenetic differentiation. (shrink)

Mainstream moral theories deal with situations in which the outcome of each possible action is well-determined and knowable. In order to make ethics relevant for problems of risk and uncertainty, moral theories have to be extended so that they cover actions whose outcomes are not determinable beforehand. One approach to this extension problem is to develop methods for appraising probabilistic combinations of outcomes. This approach is investigated and shown not to solve the problem. An alternative approach is then developed. Its (...) starting-point is that everyone has a prima facie moral right not to be exposed to risk. However, this right can be overridden if the risk-exposure is part of an equitable system for risk-taking that works to the advantage of the individual risk-exposed person. (shrink)

The introduction of self-driving vehicles gives rise to a large number of ethical issues that go beyond the common, extremely narrow, focus on improbable dilemma-like scenarios. This article provides a broad overview of realistic ethical issues related to self-driving vehicles. Some of the major topics covered are as follows: Strong opinions for and against driverless cars may give rise to severe social and political conflicts. A low tolerance for accidents caused by driverless vehicles may delay the introduction of driverless systems (...) that would substantially reduce the risks. Trade-offs will arise between safety and other requirement on the road traffic system. Over-reliance on the swift collision-avoiding reactions of self-driving vehicles can induce people to take dangerous actions, such as stepping out in front of a car, relying on its fast braking. Children travelling alone can violate safety instructions such as the use of seatbelts. Digital information about routes and destinations can be used to convey commercial and political messages to car users. If fast passage can be bought, then socio-economic segregation of road traffic may result. Terrorists and other criminals can hack into a vehicle and make it crash. They can also use self-driving vehicles for instance to carry bombs to their designed places of detonation or to wreak havoc on a country’s road system. (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer the question of what defines mnemonic confabulation vis-à-vis genuine memory. The two extant accounts of mnemonic confabulation as “false memory” and as ill-grounded memory are shown to be problematic, for they cannot account for the possibility of veridical confabulation, ill-grounded memory, and wellgrounded confabulation. This paper argues that the defining characteristic of mnemonic confabulation is that it lacks the appropriate causal history. In the confabulation case, there is no proper counterfactual dependence of the state of (...) seeming to remember on the corresponding past representation. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the relation between recent philosophical discussions about meaning in life (from authors like Susan Wolf, Thaddeus Metz, and others) and the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). Our goal is twofold, namely, to argue that considering the axiological category of meaningfulness can enrich AI ethics, on the one hand, and to portray and evaluate the small, but growing literature that already exists on the relation between meaning in life and AI ethics, on the other hand. We (...) start out our review by clarifying the basic assumptions of the meaning in life discourse and how it understands the term ‘meaningfulness’. After that, we offer five general arguments for relating philosophical questions about meaning in life to questions about the role of AI in human life. For example, we formulate a worry about a possible meaningfulness gap related to AI on analogy with the idea of responsibility gaps created by AI, a prominent topic within the AI ethics literature. We then consider three specific types of contributions that have been made in the AI ethics literature so far: contributions related to self-development, the future of work, and relationships. As we discuss those three topics, we highlight what has already been done, but we also point out gaps in the existing literature. We end with an outlook regarding where we think the discussion of this topic should go next. (shrink)

Memory occupies a fundamental place in philosophy, playing a central role not only in the history of philosophy but also in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Yet the philosophy of memory has only recently emerged as an area of study and research in its own right. -/- The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory is an outstanding reference source on the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting area, and is the first philosophical collection of its kind. The (...) forty-eight chapters are written by an international team of contributors, and divided into nine parts: -/- The nature of memory The metaphysics of memory Memory, mind and meaning Memory and the self Memory and time The social dimension of memory The epistemology of memory Memory and morality History of philosophy of memory. -/- Within these sections, central topics and problems are examined, including: truth, consciousness, imagination, emotion, self-knowledge, narrative, personal identity, time, collective and social memory, internalism and externalism, and the ethics of memory. The final part examines figures in the history of philosophy, including Aristotle, Augustine, Freud, Bergson, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, as well as perspectives on memory in Indian and Chinese philosophy. -/- Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind and psychology, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as psychology and anthropology. (shrink)