Mobile health research involving pervasive sensors, mobile apps and other novel data collection tools and methods present new ethical, legal, and social challenges specific to informed consent, data management and bystander rights. To address these challenges, a participatory design approach was deployed whereby stakeholders contributed to the development of a web-based commons to support the mHealth research community including researchers and ethics board members. The CORE platform now features a community forum, a resource library and a network of nearly 600 (...) global members. The utility of the participatory design process was evaluated by analyzing activities carried out over an 8-month design phase consisting of 86 distinct events including iterative design deliberations and social media engagement. This article describes how participatory design yielded 55 new features directly mapped to community needs and discusses relationships to user engagement as demonstrated by a steady increase in CORE member activity and followers on Twitter. (shrink)

The starting point of this article is the observation that the emergence of the Anthropocene rehabilitates the need for philosophical reflections on the ontology of technology. In particular, if technological innovations on an ontic level of beings in the world are created, but these innovations at the same time _create_ the Anthropocene World at an ontological level, this raises the question how World creation has to be understood. We first identify four problems with the traditional concept of creation: the anthropocentric, (...) ontic and outcome orientation of traditional concepts of creation, as well as its orientation of material fabrication. We subsequently develop a progressive concept of World creation with four characteristics that move beyond the traditional conceptuality: (1) a materialistic concept of creation that accounts for (2) the ontogenetic process and (3) the ontic and ontological nature of creation, and (4) is conceptualized as semantic creation of the World in which we live and act. (shrink)

This paper presents the main topics, arguments, and positions in the philosophy of AI at present (excluding ethics). Apart from the basic concepts of intelligence and computation, the main topics of ar-tificial cognition are perception, action, meaning, rational choice, free will, consciousness, and normativity. Through a better understanding of these topics, the philosophy of AI contributes to our understand-ing of the nature, prospects, and value of AI. Furthermore, these topics can be understood more deeply through the discussion of AI; so (...) we suggest that “AI Philosophy” provides a new method for philosophy. (shrink)

Much of cognitive science is committed to the modular approach to the study of cognition. The core of this approach consists of a pair of assumptions - the anatomical and the functional modularity assumptions - which motivate two kinds of inference: the anatomical and the functional modularity inferences. The legitimacy of both of these inferences has been strongly challenged, a situation that has had surprisingly little impact on most theorizing in the field. Following the introduction of an important, yet rarely (...) made, distinction between two functional concepts - the distinction between cognitive working and cognitive role - this paper analyses these kinds of inference, and refocuses the attention on new aspects of their main limitations. It is argued that both the anatomical and functional modularity inferences can, and do, operate in three distinct modes in contemporary cognitive science, and that seeing this is essential to understanding both the power and the limitations of these methodological tools. (shrink)

This paper pertains to research works aiming at linking ethics and automated reasoning in autonomous machines. It focuses on a formal approach that is intended to be the basis of an artificial agent’s reasoning that could be considered by a human observer as an ethical reasoning. The approach includes some formal tools to describe a situation and models of ethical principles that are designed to automatically compute a judgement on possible decisions that can be made in a given situation and (...) explain why a given decision is ethically acceptable or not. It is illustrated on three ethical frameworks—utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics and the Doctrine of Double effect whose formal models are tested on ethical dilemmas so as to examine how they respond to those dilemmas and to highlight the issues at stake when a formal approach to ethical concepts is considered. The whole approach is instantiated on the drone dilemma, a thought experiment we have designed; this allows the discrepancies that exist between the judgements of the various ethical frameworks to be shown. The final discussion allows us to highlight the different sources of subjectivity of the approach, despite the fact that concepts are expressed in a more rigorous way than in natural language: indeed, the formal approach enables subjectivity to be identified and located more precisely. (shrink)

On a souvent considéré qu'une philosophie de l'esprit devait choisir parmi les traits distinctifs du mental celui qu'elle retiendrait pour le mettre en relief. Il ne serait pas possible de faire place dans une même philosophie aux trois faits majeurs : l'intentionnalité du mental (on discerne les pensées de quelqu'un en disant à quoi il pense), le holisme du mental (impossible de concevoir un état d'esprit isolé du tout d'une vie mentale), la part impersonnelle du mental (les acteurs ne manifestent (...) pas seulement des capacités mentales attachées à leurs personnes respectives, mais aussi des manières de penser communes, des institutions de sens formant ce qu'on appelle un esprit objectif). Ainsi, les théories intentionalistes de l'esprit ont généralement exalté le sujet aux dépens des totalités symboliques, tandis que les théories des structures de l'esprit ont paru faire de l'acteur un simple figurant sur la scène du signifiant. De tels partis pris signalent l'échec de bien des philosophes à concevoir clairement les conditions d'une analyse holiste des phénomènes de l'esprit. Ce livre utilise les ressources analytiques de la logique des relations de C.S. Peirce pour développer une conception holiste de l'intentionnalité de l'esprit (tant subjectif qu'objectif). Ce faisant, il introduit, par l'analyse d'exemples plutôt que par un simple survol historique des doctrines, aux problèmes discutés dans les grandes philosophies de l'esprit de ce temps : phénoménologie, individualisme, structuralisme, pragmatisme. (shrink)

Synthetic biology, materials chemistry and soft robotics are fast becoming leading disciplines within the field of practices which look to nature for inspiration and opportunities. In this article I discuss how these molecular-scale practices fit within the existing trends of bio-informed design defined at the macro level, that is, bionics, biomimetics and more specifically biomimicry. Based on the metaphysical views underlying bio-informed design practices, I argue that none of them currently fit the biomimicry model, as they are not consistently concerned (...) with environmental sustainability. While biomimetic chemistry loosely belongs to the field of biomimetics, and soft robotics to the field of bionics, both practices have a profound impact on their respective fields, as they question the places of nature and engineers. (shrink)

Adopting a broadly compatibilist approach, this volume's authors argue that the behavioral and mind sciences do not threaten the moral foundations of legal responsibility. Rather, these sciences provide fresh insight into human agency and updated criteria as well as powerful diagnostic and intervention tools for assessing and altering minds.

: While the work of such expositors as Max H. Fisch, James J. Liszka, Lucia Santaella, Anne Friedman, and Mats Bergman has helped bring into sharp focus why Peirce took the third branch of semiotic (speculative rhetoric) to be "the highest and most living branch of logic," more needs to be done to show the extent to which the least developed branch of his theory of signs is, at once, its potentially most fruitful and important. The author of this paper (...) thus begins to trace out even more fully than these scholars have done the unfinished trajectory of Peirce's eventual realization of the importance of speculative rhetoric. In doing so, he is arguing for a shift from the formalist and taxonomic emphasis of so many commentators to a more thoroughly pragmaticist and "rhetorical" approach to interpreting Peirce's theory of signs. (shrink)

This article discusses the peculiar features of quantum entanglement and quantum non-locality within the algebraic approach to relativistic quantum field theory (RQFT). The debate on the ontology of RQFT is considered in the light of these well-known but little discussed features. In particular, this article examines the ontic structural realist understanding of quantum entanglement and quantum non-locality and its contribution to this debate.

Expert judgment can be seen throughout climate science and even more prominently when discussing climate tipping points. To provide an accurate characterization of expert judgment we begin by evaluating the existing literature on expertise as it relates to climate science as a whole, before then focusing the literature review on the role of expert judgment in the unique context of climate tipping points. From this we turn our attention to the structured expert elicitation protocols specifically developed for producing expert judgments (...) about tipping points. We highlight that expert elicitation is not only used for the quantification of uncertainty in this context, but also for the very identification and characterization of tipping points and their interactions, making expert judgment in itself a genuine scientific output. The central role of expert judgment in this domain raises several epistemic issues that require careful attention. Among other topics, we discuss the relationship between expert judgment and modeling, as well as the nonepistemic values that are involved in the production of expert judgments, highlighting how the elicitation protocols can be used to manage these values. In the perspective of climate change, clarifying the epistemic foundations of expert judgment in this context can help to navigate the epistemic situation between self-defeating alarmism and blind dismissal, thus contributing to a better understanding of the challenges related to climate (and Earth system) tipping points. (shrink)

A-theorists and B-theorists debate whether the "Now" is metaphysically distinguished from other time slices. Analogously, one may ask whether the "I" is metaphysically distinguished from other perspectives. Few philosophers would answer the second question in the affirmative. An exception is Caspar Hare, who has devoted two papers and a book to arguing for such a positive answer. In this paper, I argue that those who answer the first question in the affirmative---A-theorists---should also answer the second question in the affirmative. This (...) is because key arguments in favor of the A-theory are more effective asarguments in favor of the resulting combined position, and key arguments against the A-theory are ineffective against the combined position. (shrink)

In this paper, using definability of types over indiscernible sequences as a template, we study a property of formulas and theories called "uniform definability of types over finite sets" (UDTFS). We explore UDTFS and show how it relates to well-known properties in model theory. We recall that stable theories and weakly o-minimal theories have UDTFS and UDTFS implies dependence. We then show that all dp-minimal theories have UDTFS.

Traditionally, discussions of moral participation – and in particular moral agency – have focused on fully formed human actors. There has been some interest in the development of morality in humans, as well as interest in cultural differences when it comes to moral practices, commitments, and actions. However, until relatively recently, there has been little focus on the possibility that nonhuman animals have any role to play in morality, save being the objects of moral concern. Moreover, when nonhuman cases are (...) considered as evidence of moral agency or subjecthood, there has been an anthropocentric tendency to focus on those behaviors that inform our attributions of moral agency to humans. For example, some argue that the ability to evaluate the principles upon which a moral norm is grounded is required for full moral agency. Certainly, if a moral agent must understand what makes an action right or wrong, then most nonhuman animals would not qualify (and perhaps some humans too). However, if we are to understand the evolution of moral psychology and moral practice, we need to turn our attention to the foundations of full moral agency. We must first pay attention to the more broadly normative practices of other animals. Here, we begin that project by considering evidence that great apes and cetaceans participate in normative practices. (shrink)

Nelson’s stochastic quantum mechanics provides an ideal arena to test how the Born rule is established from an initial probability distribution that is not identical to the square modulus of the wavefunction. Here, we investigate numerically this problem for three relevant cases: a double-slit interference setup, a harmonic oscillator, and a quantum particle in a uniform gravitational field. For all cases, Nelson’s stochastic trajectories are initially localized at a definite position, thereby violating the Born rule. For the double slit and (...) harmonic oscillator, typical quantum phenomena, such as interferences, always occur well after the establishment of the Born rule. In contrast, for the case of quantum particles free-falling in the gravity field of the Earth, an interference pattern is observed before the completion of the quantum relaxation. This finding may pave the way to experiments able to discriminate standard quantum mechanics, where the Born rule is always satisfied, from Nelson’s theory, for which an early subquantum dynamics may be present before full quantum relaxation has occurred. Although the mechanism through which a quantum particle might violate the Born rule remains unknown to date, we speculate that this may occur during fundamental processes, such as beta decay or particle-antiparticle pair production. (shrink)

La chimie est délaissée des philosophes et historiens des sciences. Cette discipline ne serait-elle pas bonne à penser? Qu’est-ce que ce silence, ce mépris ou cette méconnaissance nous enseignent sur le régime du savoir en chimie? Inversement, la chimie méprisée, méconnue ou simplement ignorée ne signalerait-elle pas les travers des philosophes et les limites de leur pouvoir de conceptualiser et de penser? Cet ouvrage donne un aperçu de la complexité de ces questions en adoptant un point de vue symétrique où (...) se croisent les regards des chimistes et des philosophes. En abordant les problématiques posées par les théories de la matière et en étudiant la question du corps du chimiste et de son statut social, ce volume s’interroge aussi sur l’image de la chimie et sur le rejet du « chimique » au profit du « naturel » très en vogue aujourd’hui. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a discrete solution for the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. I argue that Achilles overtakes the tortoise after a finite number of steps of Zeno’s argument if time is represented as discrete. I then answer two objections that could be made against this solution. First, I argue that the discrete solution is not an ad hoc solution. It is embedded in a discrete formulation of classical mechanics. Second, I show that the discrete solution cannot (...) be falsified experimentally. (shrink)

The main concern of this paper is the design of a noetherian and confluent normalization for LK 2. The method we present is powerful: since it allows us to recover as fragments formalisms as seemingly different as Girard's LC and Parigot's λμ, FD, delineates other viable systems as well, and gives means to extend the Krivine/Leivant paradigm of `programming-with-proofs' to classical logic ; it is painless: since we reduce strong normalization and confluence to the same properties for linear logic using (...) appropriate embeddings ; it is unifying: it organizes known solutions in a simple pattern that makes apparent the how and why of their making. A comparison of our method to that of embedding LK into LJ brings to the fore the latter's defects for these `deconstructive purposes'. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Kierkegaard himself hardly requires introduction, but his thought continues to require explication due to its inherent complexity and its ...

... EARTH AND GODS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF Martin Heidegger the language of science ...

Many families of patients hold the view that it is their right to be present during a loved one's resuscitation, while the majority of patients also express the comfort and support they would feel by having them there. Currently, family presence is more commonly accepted in paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation than adult CPR. Even though many guidelines are in favour of this practice and recognise potential benefits, healthcare professionals are hesitant to support adult family presence to the extent that paediatric family (...) presence is supported. However, in this paper, we suggest that the ethical case to justify family presence during paediatric resuscitation is weaker than the justification of family presence during adult resuscitation. We go on to support this claim using three main arguments that people use in clinical ethics to justify FPDR. These include scarcity of evidence documenting disruption, psychological benefits to family members following the incident and respect for patient autonomy. We demonstrate that these arguments actually apply more strongly to A-FPDR compared with P-FPDR, thereby questioning the common attitude of healthcare professionals of allowing the latter while mostly opposing A-FPDR. Importantly, we do not wish to suggest that P-FPDR should not be allowed. Rather, we suggest that since P-FPDR is commonly allowed, so should A-FPDR. This is because the aforementioned arguments that are used to justify FPDR in general actually make a stronger case for A-FPDR. (shrink)

Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, such as helping to commit crimes or producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback, learns from humans' expressed preferences over multiple outputs. Another approach is constitutional AI, in which the input from humans is a list of high-level principles. But how do we deal with potentially diverging input from humans? How can we aggregate the input into consistent data about "collective" (...) preferences or otherwise use it to make collective choices about model behavior? In this paper, we argue that the field of social choice is well positioned to address these questions, and we discuss ways forward for this agenda, drawing on discussions in a recent workshop on Social Choice for AI Ethics and Safety held in Berkeley, CA, USA in December 2023. (shrink)

There is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the traditional way of defining the A-theories of time. One reason is that these definitions rest on an ontological question—‘Do the future and the past exist?’—to which no non-speculative answer can be provided. Another reason is that these definitions fail to distinguish between various A-theories of time at all times and, therefore, cannot be regarded as essential to them. In the present paper, I make a fresh start in the debate, by introducing two (...) questions whose specific answers allow one to get a comprehensive categorization of the A-theories of time. This alternative way of defining the A-theories of time addresses the two above-mentioned issues and reveals the metaphysical singularity of underrated theories, such as the growing block theory. (shrink)

After a period in which Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) stood as a cross-cutting issue under the Eigth European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (R & I), Horizon 2020, its further development and implementation has reached a crossroad. It turned out that there is a lack of consistent integration of RRI in Europe’s R & I practices (Novitzky et al. 2020), and dedicated funding for RRI is almost entirely absent in the Ninth European Union Framework Programme for R (...) & I, Horizon Europe. At the same time, global challenges like climate change become increasingly more urgent and thus continue to call for collective efforts of scientific research and industry, policy makers and civil society. Further, the emergence of disruptive technologies like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics raises several new societal concerns. Finally, the growing disbelief in science, as shown during the Corona pandemic, demonstrates the importance of aligning R & I policy and societal values all the more. For reasons as these, the disinvestment in a dedicated Science With and For Society programme line for RRI in Horizon Europe did not result in decreased academic attention for embedding science in society. On the contrary, a dedicated research community emerged that engages in the academic discourse of RRI and tries to contribute to projects on topics such as responsible data governance, responsible AI, and responsible agroecology within the Horizon Europe framework programme, sometimes even without the use of the frame RRI. (shrink)

How should we update de dicto beliefs in the face of de se evidence? The Sleeping Beauty problem divides philosophers into two camps, halfers and thirders. But there is some disagreement among halfers about how their position should generalize to other examples. A full generalization is not always given; one notable exception is the Halfer Rule, under which the agent updates her uncentered beliefs based on only the uncentered part of her evidence. In this brief article, I provide a simple (...) example for which the Halfer Rule prescribes credences that, I argue, cannot be reasonably held by anyone. In particular, these credences constitute an egregious violation of the Reflection Principle. I then discuss the consequences for halfing in general. (shrink)

This discussion paper proposes that a meaningful distinction between science and technoscience can be found at the level of the objects of research. Both notions intermingle in the attitudes, intentions, programs and projects of researchers and research institutions – that is, on the side of the subjects of research. But the difference between science and technoscience becomes more explicit when research results are presented in particular settings and when the objects of research are exhibited for the specific interest they hold. (...) When an experiment is presented as scientific evidence, which confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, this agrees with traditional conceptions of science. When organic molecules are presented for their capacity to serve individually as electric wires that carry surprisingly large currents, this would be a hallmark of technoscience. Accordingly, we propose research on the ontology of research objects. The focus on the material presence of research objects makes this a specifically philosophical project. (shrink)

In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational (...) practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness. (shrink)

Technoscience is often perceived as an expression of the primacy of utilitarian values that would take over the field of pure and disinterested science. A number of scientists deplore that the age of science for its own sake is coming to an end, that technologyhas overtaken science. This common view expressed by active scientists is shared by cultural historians. In a paper describing technoscience as a cultural phenomenon, Paul Forman comes to a similar conclusion. He argues that technoscience is a (...) reversal of the values attached to science. Whereas modernity was characterized by the high cultural rank of science and scientists, postmodernity is characterized the loss of confidence and tustworthiness of scientists. Modernity, accroding to Forman rested on the primacy of science to and for technology, post-modernity is characterized by the the primacy of technology over science. The modern assumption that scientfic research would bring about not only knowledge but technological applications in addition, has been superseded in the 1980s according to Formann, and basic research is no longer considered as a key source of technologial innovation. Forman also points to this technological turn is the science studies which more and more identified science and technology. I would like to discuss this interpretation from the case study of converging technologies. By converging technologies I first refer to the current research programs launched in various countries. More precisely I refer to the US program entitled Converging technologies for improving human performances launched in 2002 and the European program CTEKS (Converging technologies for the European Society) launched in 2004. They are especially relevant because science is not even mentioned as they seem to focus exclusively on technology. Should we consider these programmes as the confirmation of Forman's claim about the primacy of technology over science? In a preliminary conceptual analysis I will try to disentangle the notion of technoscience from the vague connotation of utilitarianism. Then I will consider to what extent the views and values attached to converging technologies express a prinacy of technology over science. For this purpose it is useful to distinguish between converging technologies as national research programs and the daily practices of research in which technologies converge. I will argue that the views and values that active scientists attach to their research can deeply differ from that of policy makers. However in no case can technosccience be described as a primacy of technology over science. (shrink)

This paper both elaborates and interrogates the transactional model of human experience at the center of Shannon W. Sullivan's Living Across and Through Skins. In particular, it highlights the need to supplement her account with a psychoanalytic reading of our gendered subjectivities. Moreover, it stresses the necessity to focus on such humanly important—and irreducibly somatic—phenomena as grief and eros.

Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as nondomination is modally robust in that it requires not simply reducing the probability of uncontrolled interference by others but entirely eliminating that possibility. In this article, I consider whether freedom as nondomination provides an attractive analysis of official discretion, particularly in the context of the criminal law, an area of recurring interest for Pettit. I argue that not only does the modally robust character of freedom as nondomination have some rather unattractive implications in the (...) criminal law, but that it sits poorly with Pettit’s more general ambitions to provide a consequentialist framework for the evaluation of social institutions. Drawing on recent work by Niko Kolodny, I develop an ‘anti-deference’ interpretation of nondomination and contrast it to Pettit’s modally robust conception. (shrink)

Neural reuse theories suggest that, in the course of evolution, a brain structure may acquire or lose a number of cognitive uses while maintaining its cognitive workings (or low-level operations) fixed. This, in turn, suggests that homologous structures may have very different cognitive uses, while sharing the same workings. And this, essentially, is homology thinking applied to brain function.

The mental and the social are ‘two sides of the same coin’. In other words, ‘social relations are internal relations’. In showing how this was the point of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the practice of ‘following a rule’, Peter Winch has made an important contribution to social philosophy.

Philosophers are often asked for their views on the "meaning of the times." But how should philosophy deal with world events? And what makes a philosopher more qualified than anyone else to editorialize in the daily paper? In this book, Descombes's intention is not to offer his own reading of the signs of the times, but to interrogate modern philosophers about how they come up with the barometers they use to tell us about modern reason and the spirit of the (...) times. For Descombes, a "philosophical discourse of modernity" should be rejected, for the true subject of modernity belongs not to philosophers, but to writers, moralists, and sociologists of individualism. (shrink)

Although capital punishment has been gradually disappearing from liberal democracies, philosophers remain divided as to its permissibility. The first part of this chapter considers arguments in favor of retention and abolition, with particular attention to recent contractualist arguments. I then consider the United States Supreme Court’s incrementalist approach, under the rubric of “evolving standards of decency.” On this view, the Constitution is limited to sweeping up stragglers; like Minerva’s owl, the Constitution announces a philosophy of punishment only in hindsight. The (...) final section draws on Feinberg’s suggestion that punishment reflects a society’s particular “symbols of infamy.” A society may come to rethink its symbols of infamy, such as capital punishment, but that is unlikely to be because philosophical argument has silenced all reasonable doubt. (shrink)