When harm is caused by multiple injurers, damages are allocated among the responsible injurers in proportion to their relative responsibility for harm. This Article shows that a proportional allocation of liability between strictly-liable injurers distorts incentives to take precautions. The effects of this distortion depend on the nature of the injurers’ precautions. If precautions are complements, injurers compete for lower liability shares, which results in excessive care-taking. If precautions are substitutes, injurers are afflicted by moral hazard, which gives rise to (...) insufficient care-taking. By illuminating injurers’ strategic incentives, this Article highlights a tension between equity and efficiency under a proportional allocation of liability. (shrink)

The promises and risks of Artificial Intelligence permeate current policy statements and have attracted much attention by AI governance research. However, most analyses focus exclusively on AI policy on the national and international level, overlooking existing federal governance structures. This is surprising because AI is connected to many policy areas, where the competences are already distributed between the national and subnational level, such as research or economic policy. Addressing this gap, this paper argues that more attention should be dedicated to (...) subnational efforts to shape AI and asks which themes are discussed in subnational AI policy documents with a case study of Germany’s 16 states. Our qualitative analysis of 34 AI policy documents issued on the subnational level demonstrates that subnational efforts focus on knowledge transfer between research and industry actors, the commercialization of AI, different economic identities of the German states, and the incorporation of ethical principles. Because federal states play an active role in AI policy, analysing AI as a policy issue on different levels of government is necessary and will contribute to a better understanding of the developments and implementations of AI strategies in different national contexts. (shrink)

Scientists confronted with multiple explanatory hypotheses as a result of their abductive inferences, generally want to reason further on the different hypotheses one by one. This paper presents a modal adaptive logic MLA s that enables us to model abduction in such a way that the different explanatory hypotheses can be derived individually. This modelling is illustrated with a case study on the different hypotheses on the origin of the Moon.

_Abduction of generalizations_ is the process in which explanatory hypotheses are formed for an observed, yet puzzling generalization such as ``pineapples taste sweet" or ``rainbows appear when the sun breaks through the rain". This phenomenon has received little attention in formal logic and philosophy of science. The current paper remedies this lacuna by first giving an overview of some general characteristics of this process, elaborating on its ubiquity in scientific and daily life reasoning. Second, the adaptive logic $\LAG$ is presented (...) to explicate this process formally. (shrink)

This paper is the result of the EMERGING ICT FOR CITIZEN VEILLANCE-workshop organized by the JRC, Ispra, Italy, March 2014. The aim of this paper is to explore how the subject participates in surveillance situations with a particular focus on how users experience everyday tracking technologies and practices. Its theoretical points of departure stem from Surveillance Studies in general and notions of participatory surveillance and empowering exhibitionism :199–215, 2004) in particular. We apply these theoretical notions on smartphones and its users (...) to investigate the combination of participation and surveillance. Empirically, the paper uses interviews held with urban nightlife visitors to uncover practices of smartphone use. This qualitative and explorative study contributes to the concept of participatory surveillance by discussing to what extent smartphone-users’ actions and motivations can be seen as forms of surveillance and how that influences these actors in a public space. We finish by setting out directions for studying mobile technologies of the self. (shrink)

In the literature on doxastic attitudes, the notion ‘belief’ is used in both a coarse-grained and a fine-grained manner. While the coarse-grained notion of ‘belief,’ as the doxastic attitude that expresses any form of assent to its content, is a useful technical concept, the fine-grained notion, which tries to capture the folk notion of ‘belief’ in contrast with other doxastic concepts such as ‘acceptance’ or ‘degrees of confidence,’ is utterly ambiguous. In order to dispel this ambiguity, I introduce first a (...) new framework for describing doxastic attitudes that does not rely on a specific fine-grained primitive notion of ‘belief.’ This framework distinguishes two different doxastic attitudes, i.e. the theoretical and the practical, and explains how various doxastic concepts such as ‘accepting,’ ‘having a degree of confidence’ and the folk notion of ‘belief’ all describe a particular interpretation of one or both of the distinguished doxastic attitudes. Next, by focusing on ongoing debates over the difference between ‘acceptance’ and ‘belief’ on the one hand and between ‘degrees of confidence’ and ‘(plain) belief’ on the other, I argue that much precision can be gained in philosophical analysis by taking a reductionist stance concerning any specific fine-grained and primitive notion of ‘belief.’. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide an overview of surveillance theories and concepts that can help to understand and debate surveillance in its many forms. As scholars from an increasingly wide range of disciplines are discussing surveillance, this literature review can offer much-needed common ground for the debate. We structure surveillance theory in three roughly chronological/thematic phases. The first two conceptualise surveillance through comprehensive theoretical frameworks which are elaborated in the third phase. The first phase, featuring Bentham and Foucault, offers architectural (...) theories of surveillance, where surveillance is often physical and spatial, involving centralised mechanisms of watching over subjects. Panoptic structures function as architectures of power, not only directly but also through disciplining of the watched subjects. The second phase offers infrastructural theories of surveillance, where surveillance is networked and relies primarily on digital rather than physical technologies. It involves distributed forms of watching over people, with increasing distance to the watched and often dealing with data doubles rather than physical persons. Deleuze, Haggerty and Ericson, and Zuboff develop different theoretical frameworks than panopticism to conceptualise the power play involved in networked surveillance. The third phase of scholarship refines, combines or extends the main conceptual frameworks developed earlier. Surveillance theory branches out to conceptualise surveillance through concepts such as dataveillance, access control, social sorting, peer-to-peer surveillance and resistance. With the datafication of society, surveillance combines the physical with the digital, government with corporate surveillance and top-down with self-surveillance. (shrink)

In this article, we critique the ways in which the people involved in the development and application of AI systems often visualize and talk about AI systems. Often, they visualize such systems as shiny humanoid robots or as free-floating electronic brains. Such images convey misleading messages; as if AI works independently of people and can reason in ways superior to people. Instead, we propose to visualize AI systems as parts of larger, sociotechnical systems. Here, we can learn, for example, from (...) cybernetics. Similarly, we propose that the people involved in the design and deployment of an algorithm would need to extend their conversations beyond the four boxes of the _Error Matrix_, for example, to critically discuss _false positives_ and _false negatives_. We present two thought experiments, with one practical example in each. We propose to understand, visualize, and talk about AI systems in relation to a larger, complex reality; this is the requirement of _requisite variety_. We also propose to enable people from diverse disciplines to collaborate around _boundary objects_, for example: a drawing of an AI system in its sociotechnical context; or an ‘extended’ Error Matrix. Such interventions can promote meaningful human control, transparency, and fairness in the design and deployment of AI systems. (shrink)

Pig farmers and scientists appear to have different perspectives and underlying framing on animal welfare issues as tail biting and natural behaviour of pigs. Literature proposes a joint learning process in which a shared vision is developed. Using two different settings, a symposium and one-to-one dialogues, we aimed to investigate what elements affected joint learning between scientists and pig farmers. Although both groups agreed that more interaction was important, the process of joint learning appeared to be rather potentially dangerous for (...) the farmer–scientist relationship. During the symposium, farmers were only moderately open for scientific knowledge and the issue of tail biting had the tendency to run into a deadlock. The setting was an influencing element for the degree of success, because the dialogues did lead to improved mutual trust and understanding of each other’s framing and context. Another element was the degree of usability and absoluteness of scientific facts. They were frequently not concrete enough, too uncertain or not relating to the context of the farmers. In addition, some scientific facts were not recognized by the farmers. Both groups appeared to react and argue from their praxis, including their local environment, way of living, handling and understanding their environment. These praxises appeared to function as a filter, influencing the way of observing the environment, inducing ‘blind spots’ and misunderstandings. Stepping in each other’s praxis might provide concrete and fusing insights, required to realize joint learning processes. (shrink)

After many policy attempts to tackle the persistent rise in the costs of health care, physicians are increasingly seen as potentially effective resource stewards. Frameworks including the quadruple aim, value-based health care and choosing wisely underline the importance of positive engagement of the health care workforce in reinventing the system–paving the way to real affordability by defining the right care. Current programmes focus on educating future doctors to provide ‘high-value, cost-conscious care’ (HVCCC), which proponents believe is the future of sustainable (...) medical practice. Such programmes, which aim to extend population-level allocation concerns to interactions between an individual doctor and patient, have generated lively debates about the ethics of expanding doctors’ professional accountability. To empirically ground this discussion, we conducted a qualitative interview study to examine what happens when resource stewardship responsibilities are extended to the consulting room. Attempts to deliver HVCCC were found to involve inevitable trade-offs between benefits to the individual patient and (social) costs, medical uncertainty and efficiency, and between resource stewardship and trust. Physicians reconcile this by justifying good-value care in terms of what is in the best interest of individual patients–redefining the currency of value from monetary costs to a patient’s quality of life, and cost-conscious care as reflective medical practice. Micro-level resource stewardship thus becomes a matter of working reflexively and reducing wasteful forms of care, rather than of making difficult choices about resource allocation. (shrink)

Many of our concepts are introduced to us via, and seem only to be constrained by, roughand-ready explanations and some sample paradigm positive and negative applications. This happens even in informal logic and mathematics. Yet in some cases, the concepts in question – although only informally and vaguely characterized – in fact have, or appear to have, entirely determinate extensions. Here’s one familiar example. When we start learning computability theory, we are introduced to the idea of an algorithmically computable function (...) (from numbers to numbers) – i.e. one whose value for any given input can be determined by a step-by-step calculating procedure, where each step is fully determined by some antecedently given finite set of calculating rules. We are told that we are to abstract from practical considerations of how many steps will be needed and how much ink will be spilt in the process, so long as everything remains finite. We are also told that each step is to be ‘small’ and the rules governing it must be ‘simple’, available to a cognitively limited calculating agent: for we want an algorithmic procedure, step-by-minimal-step, to be idiot-proof. For a classic elucidation of this kind, see e.g. Rogers (1967, pp. 1–5). Church’s Thesis, in one form, then claims this informally explicated concept in fact has a perfectly precise extension, the set of recursive functions. Church’s Thesis can be supported in a quasi-empirical way, by the failure of our searches for counterexamples. It can be supported too in a more principled way, by the observation that different appealing ways of sharpening up the informal chararacterization of algorithmic computability end up specifying the same set of recursive functions. But such considerations fall short of a demonstration of the Thesis. So is there a different argumentative strategy we could use, one that could lead to a proof? Sometimes it is claimed that there just can’t be, because you can never really prove results involving an informal concept like algorithmic computability.. (shrink)

For the first time, this book classifies how attention shifts, and argues that self-awareness, reflection, and even morality, are best thought of as dynamic...

The assumption that we largely lack reasons for accepting testimony has dominated its epistemology. Given the further assumption that whatever reasons we do have are insufficient to justify our testimonial beliefs, many conclude that any account of testimonial knowledge must allow credulity to be justified. In this paper I argue that both of these assumptions are false. Our responses to testimony are guided by our background beliefs as to the testimony as a type, the testimonial situation, the testifier's character and (...) the truth of the proposition testified to. These beliefs provide reasons for our responses. Thus, we usually do have reasons, in the sense of propositions believed, for accepting testimony and these reasons can provide evidence for the testimonial beliefs we form. (shrink)

The influential proposal that the analytical component of a theory is captured by its ‘Carnap sentence’ is critically scrutinized. A counterexample which makes the suggestion problematic is presented.

This article examines the origin of experiential organization, especially whether it is salient or selective. Aron Gurwitsch believes it is salient and William James that it is selective. I argue that Gurwitsch is right, and recount his argument and his critique of James, but I also pose my own critique and critical questions on the issue. -/- Gurwitsch's argument attempts to show that the organization of consciousness is not arbitrary or merely selected in some way by the subject. He claims (...) that when consciousness is organized it is found as already organized. -/- This is important for Gurwitsch's philosophical system because if he can establish that consciousness is always originally organized, then his famous claim that the theme, thematic-field, margin structure of consciousness is an invariant patterning impervious to the subject's whim, mood, or possible noetic training, is protected at the very start. (shrink)

There is a considerable amount of research being done on attention by cognitive psychologists. I claim that in the process of measuring and mapping consciousness, these researchers have missed important phenomenological findings. After a synopsis and illustration of the nature of attention as described by Aron Gurwitsch, I critique the assumptions of current psychological research on this topic. Included is discussion of the metaphor of attention as a beam or spotlight, the concept of selective attention as the standard accomplishment, and (...) the cognitive bestowal of organization on otherwise unorganized data. It is concluded that cognitive psychologists and others working on attention can benefit from Gurwitsch's work, and that a credible account of attention is crucial to the success of any comprehensive statement on the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

The term ‘consciousness’ is usually reserved only for the focus of attention. This restriction empties the phenomenology of consciousness of some of its richness. Rather than conceiving of consciousness as one-dimensional, researchers should consider that consciousness has a three-dimensional organization. Conscious presentations are structured in a focus, context and margin pattern. Inclusion of these other dimensions of consciousness as consciousness is important for an adequate relation between scientific method and phenomenology. The problem becomes especially acute when transformations in consciousness -- (...) attentional and temporal continuity -- are considered. Using Aron Gurwitsch's work, this paper presents an alternative to Galen Strawson's view of consciousness and the self, as an example of the usefulness of this fuller conception of consciousness. I argue here that there is significant attentional and temporal continuity in consciousness, and that this continuity provides for a sense of the self as a distinct, but continuous experience. (shrink)

Extended cognition theorists claim that the definition of cognition can be extended to include not only the brain, but also the body and environment. In a series of works, Mark Rowlands has envisioned a new science of mind that explores the externalism of consciousness and cognition. This paper connects Rowlands’ work with the phenomenology of Aron Gurwitsch. It shows how Gurwitsch’s field of consciousness, in particular his conception of the marginal halo, can provide a distinct, organized way of thinking about (...) extended cognition. A key question considered is from where do cognitive processes project and disclose meanings? By thinking of location as locus—a projecting pathway of points of intentional opportunity—organization in extended cognition becomes organization in a field of consciousness. The marginal halo in the field of consciousness is articulated as this locus of intentionality, what Rowlands calls “the noneliminable intentional core”. Problems of cognitive bloat and personal character are addressed in light of the findings. In addition to situating Gurwitsch’s work within the extended mind movement for the first time, this study highlights the importance of the marginal halo, largely neglected in previous Gurwitsch scholarship. (shrink)

Quine, criticism of Quine's Naturalized Epistemology.

Proceedings of the 8th Amsterdam Colloquium, 1991.

L’identité juive de Jésus est un fait avéré. Dans le christianisme cependant, l’ignorance de la variété des courants d’idée dans le judaïsme au début de notre ère a conduit certains à placer l’enseignement de Jésus entièrement en marge ou même en dehors du judaïsme et à tirer argument de l’originalité de son message contre son origine juive. De même, certains courants de type monophysite ont sous-estimé, voire nié l’enracinement humain de Jésus et sa « racination » juive . Au sein (...) de milieux « post-chrétiens », à l’antisémitisme latent ou affiché, l’identité juive de Jésus fait scandale. Dans le judaïsme, parler de Jésus reste difficile, et tout messianisme fait peur. Depuis la deuxième moitié du XIXe s., toutefois, des savants juifs ont beaucoup fait pour réintroduire Jésus dans l’histoire du judaïsme. Les autorités de l’Église catholique et d’autres Églises ont rappelé sans détour la judéité de Jésus. L’humanité de Jésus et son enracinement historique ont retrouvé leur place dans la théologie, sans préjudice pour l’intégrité de la foi chrétienne. Il faut mentionner également les recherches sur les origines juives du christianisme. L’affirmation de l’identité juive de Jésus par les chrétiens et par les juifs est l’une des pierres de touche de la vérité des relations et du dialogue entre eux aujourd’hui. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Lived Experience and Cognitive Science Reappraising Enactivism’s Jonasian Turn” by Mario Villalobos & Dave Ward. Upshot: As a reply to the criticism that anthropomorphism and modern science are incompatible, targeting Jonasian phenomenology and Varelian enactivism, I suggest considering the concept of modern anthropomorphism, which seems prima facie compatible with the pluralistic situation of today’s life sciences. My further claim is that the phenomenological method is intrinsically linked with this sort of anthropomorphism.