We investigate the causal uncertainty surrounding the flash crash in the U.S. Treasury bond market on October 15, 2014, and the unresolved concern that no clear link has been identified between the start of the flash crash at 9:33 and the opening of the U.S. equity market at 9:30. We consider the contributory effect of mini flash crashes in equity markets, and find that the number of equity mini flash crashes in the three-minute window between market open and the Treasury (...) Flash Crash was 2.6 times larger than the number experienced in any other three-minute window in the prior ten weekdays. We argue that (a) this statistically significant finding suggests that mini flash crashes in equity markets both predicted and contributed to the October 2014 U.S. Treasury Bond Flash Crash, and (b) mini-flash crashes are important phenomena with negative externalities that deserve much greater scholarly attention. (shrink)

In this paper we propose an approach to multi-source belief revision where the trust or credibility assigned to informant agents can be revised. In our proposal, the credibility of each informant represented as a strict partial order among informant agents, will be maintained in a repository called credibility base. Upon arrival of new information concerning the credibility of its peers, an agent will be capable of revising this strict partial order, changing the trust assigned to its peers accordingly. Our goal (...) is to formalize a set of change operators over the credibility base: expansion, contraction, prioritized, and non-prioritized revision. These operators will provide the capability of dynamically modifying the credibility of informants considering the reliability of the information. This dynamics will reflect a new perception of trust assigned to the informant, or extend the set of informants by admitting the addition of new informant agents. (shrink)

An intelligent model of the incremental capacity curve of an automotive lithium-ferrophosphate battery is presented. The relative heights of the two major peaks of the IC curve can be acquired from high-current discharges, thus enabling the state of health estimation of the battery while the vehicle is being operated and in certain cases, aging mechanisms can be suggested. Our model has been validated using a large dataset representing different degradation scenarios, obtained from a recently available open-source database.

This article reports the findings of AI4People, an Atomium—EISMD initiative designed to lay the foundations for a “Good AI Society”. We introduce the core opportunities and risks of AI for society; present a synthesis of five ethical principles that should undergird its development and adoption; and offer 20 concrete recommendations—to assess, to develop, to incentivise, and to support good AI—which in some cases may be undertaken directly by national or supranational policy makers, while in others may be led by other (...) stakeholders. If adopted, these recommendations would serve as a firm foundation for the establishment of a Good AI Society. (shrink)

Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It does so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical (...) goal is to describe what the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information. (shrink)

Lejos de la interpretación de Leon Battista Alberti como prototipo del "hombre universal", GARIN ha reconocido el carácter contradictorio del pensamiento albertiano. En efecto, en la extensa y polifacética obra del humanista genovés coexisten dos visiones antagónicas del hombre y el mundo. A una le corresponde la confianza en la razón, a la otra la constatación del carácter absurdo de la existencia. Este Alberti "sombrío" se expresa en las páginas de Momus y las Intercenales. En ellas, la apelación a una (...) existencia simulada es abordada a través de una risa desacralizadora del ideal humano que alumbró el temprano Renacimiento italiano. Far from the interpretation of Leon Battista Alberti as a prototype of the "universal man", GARIN has analyzed the contradictory nature of Alberti's thought. In fact, in the extensive and versatile work of the Genoese humanist two opposite visions of man and the world coexist: one believes in the power of reason, the other acknowledges the absurdity of life. It is in Momus and the Intercenales that this "somber Alberti" is present. In these texts the appeal to a simulated life is addressed through a form of laughter that demystifies the human ideal of the early Italian Renaissance. (shrink)

La idea de que el cuerpo (σῶμα) es una tumba (σῆμα) donde el alma permanece encerrada cumpliendo un castigo por una antigua culpa es transmitida por Platón, quien la atribuye a los órficos. Filón de Alejandría utilizó en diversos pasajes de su obra esta metáfora de procedencia órfica. Nuestro interés consiste en analizar el sentido que Filón le asigna y el modo en que reelabora el significado que le fue asignado en la tradición órfica y en la interpretación platónica. Intentaremos (...) mostrar que Filón utiliza la metáfora de dos maneras distintas que manifiestan la fuerte ambivalencia existente en su pensamiento respecto de la valoración del cuerpo humano. The idea that the body (σῶμα) is a tomb (σῆμα) where the soul remains confined as a punishment for an ancient fault is transmitted by Plato, who attributes it to the orphics. Philo of Alexandria made use of this metaphor of orphic origin in various passages of his work. Our interest is to analyze the sense that Philo assigns to it and the way in which he reelaborates the meaning that was ascribed to it in orphic tradition and in the platonic interpretation. We will try to demonstrate that Philo uses the metaphor in two different ways that show the strong ambivalence existing in his thought with respect to the value of the human body. (shrink)

AI is revolutionizing everyone’s life, and it is crucial that it does so in the right way. AI’s profound and far-reaching potential for transformation concerns the engineering of systems that have some degree of autonomous agency. This is epochal and requires establishing a new, ethical balance between human and artificial autonomy.

This theme issue has the founding ambition of landscaping Data Ethics as a new branch of ethics that studies and evaluates moral problems related to data (including generation, recording, curation, processing, dissemination, sharing, and use), algorithms (including AI, artificial agents, machine learning, and robots), and corresponding practices (including responsible innovation, programming, hacking, and professional codes), in order to formulate and support morally good solutions (e.g. right conducts or right values). Data Ethics builds on the foundation provided by Computer and Information (...) Ethics but, at the same time, it refines the approach endorsed so far in this research field, by shifting the Level of Abstraction of ethical enquiries, from being information-centric to being data-centric. This shift brings into focus the different moral dimensions of all kinds of data, even the data that never translate directly into information but can be used to support actions or generate behaviours, for example. It highlights the need for ethical analyses to concentrate on the content and nature of computational operations — the interactions among hardware, software, and data — rather than on the variety of digital technologies that enables them. And it emphasises the complexity of the ethical challenges posed by Data Science. Because of such complexity, Data Ethics should be developed from the start as a macroethics, that is, as an overall framework that avoids narrow, ad hoc approaches and addresses the ethical impact and implications of Data Science and its applications within a consistent, holistic, and inclusive framework. Only as a macroethics Data Ethics will provide the solutions that can maximise the value of Data Science for our societies, for all of us, and for our environments. (shrink)

This paper substitutes a structural hermeneutics for the sequential approach to the Tractatus and its manuscript, which leaves the manuscript completely unexplained. All the pieces come together only if we recognise that Wittgenstein's book is a hierarchical object that was composed following a top-down strategy. Therefore, we realise that the “summary on scattered sheets” represents the perspicuous version of the manuscript, the correlations with the Notebooks become obvious and the “supplements” can be reconstructed. A correct dating of the composition allows (...) us to understand how it was possible, without digital technologies except from an ingenious application of the decimal system, to achieve this formal masterpiece. (shrink)

The article discusses the process of “conceptual borrowing”, according to which, when a new discipline emerges, it develops its technical vocabulary also by appropriating terms from other neighbouring disciplines. The phenomenon is likened to Carl Schmitt’s observation that modern political concepts have theological roots. The authors argue that, through extensive conceptual borrowing, AI has ended up describing computers anthropomorphically, as computational brains with psychological properties, while brain and cognitive sciences have ended up describing brains and minds computationally and informationally, as (...) biological computers. The crosswiring between the technical languages of these disciplines is not merely metaphorical but can lead to confusion, and damaging assumptions and consequences. The article ends on an optimistic note about the self-adjusting nature of technical meanings in language and the ability to leave misleading conceptual baggage behind when confronted with advancement in understanding and factual knowledge. (shrink)

The paper provides an axiological analysis of the concepts of respect for information and of information dignity from the vantage point provided by Information Ethics and the conceptual paradigm of object-oriented analysis (OOA). The general perspective adopted is that of an ontocentric approach to the philosophy of information ethics, according to which the latter is an expansion of environmental ethics towards a less biologically biased concept of a ‘centre of ethical worth’. The paper attempts to answer the following question: what (...) is the lowest possible common set of attributes which characterises something as intrinsically valuable and an object of respect, and without which something would rightly be considered intrinsically worthless or even positively unworthy and therefore rightly disrespectable in itself? The thesis developed and defended in the paper is that the minimal condition of possibility of an object’s least intrinsic worthiness can be identified with its abstract nature as an information entity. Thus, all entities, interpreted as clusters of information, have a minimal moral worth qua information objects (i.e. qua information), that deserves to be respected. The principles elaborated in the course of the analysis are those of ‘reflective respect’ (A’s respect towards all members of A’s class motivated by A’s respect towards A not qua individual, but qua instantiation of a class of entities), ‘ontic uniformity’ (A’s recognition of A’s membership to the class of information entities) and ‘ontic solidarity’ (A’s recognition of any information entity’s dignity). (shrink)

This study investigates the antecedents of human rights infringements by emerging market firms. We used fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to examine HRIs in 245 firms based in eight emerging markets, between 2003 and 2012. Our findings disclose three equifinal configurations of high levels of HRIs, all involving EFs that have expanded to a high number of foreign markets: large, old, low performing state-owned enterprises operating in high quality institutions’ home and host markets, small, young, over-performing EFs operating in low (...) quality institutions’ home and host markets, and finally large, old, high performing SOEs, operating in low quality institutions’ home and host markets. We contribute to the literature by examining a novel dataset on HRIs by EFs, and by building a configurational explanation of HRIs that bridges the arguments of the institutional theory and strain theory literatures on corporate wrongdoing. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some conceptual undercurrents, which flow beneath the surface of the literature on information and computer ethics (ICE). It focuses on the potential impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on our lives. Because of their 'data superconductivity', ICTs are well known for being among the most influential factors that affect the ontological friction in the infosphere. As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly (...) evolving. The task is to formulate an ethical framework that can treat the infosphere as a new environment worth the moral attention and care of the human inforgs inhabiting it. We have begun to see ourselves as connected informational organisms (inforgs), not through some fanciful transformation in our body, but, more seriously and realistically, through the re-ontologization of our environment and of ourselves. (shrink)

The previous chapters have provided a detailed overview of the variety of ethical challenges posed by the development of ICTs. By way of conclusion, in this epilogue I would like to invite the reader to look into the possible future of Information and Computer Ethics. More specifically, I shall try to forecast how the convergence of two fundamental trends of our times, globalization and the development of the information society, may interact with the ethical problems analysed in this book. The (...) exercise will not be based on some untenable technological determinism. Humanity is, and will remain, firmly in charge of its destiny and hence be responsible for it. Rather, it will mean adopting the farmer's view that, with enough intelligence, toil and a bit of luck, one might be able to tell today what one will probably reap tomorrow. Before trying to ‘look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not’ (Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene III, 59–62), two clarifications might be in order. First, the future of globalization is a phenomenon too complex even to sketch in this brief epilogue. For a synthetic, well-balanced and informed overview, the reader may wish to consult Held and McGrew (2001) and consider that this chapter is written from what Held et al. (1999)) have defined as a ‘transformationalist perspective’, according to which ‘globalization does not simply denote a shift in the extensity or scale of social relations and activity. (shrink)

This work fulfills the need for a conceptual and technical framework to improve understanding of Information Quality (IQ) and Information Quality standards. The meaning and practical implementation of IQ are addressed, as it is relevant to any field where there is a need to handle data and issues such as accessibility, accuracy, completeness, currency, integrity, reliability, timeliness, usability, the role of metrics and so forth are all a part of Information Quality. -/- In order to support the cross-fertilization of theory (...) and practice, the latest research is presented in this book. The perspectives of experts from beyond the origins of IQ in computer science are included: library and information science practitioners and academics, philosophers of information, of engineering and technology, and of science are all contributors to this volume. -/- The chapters in this volume are based on the work of a collaborative research project involving the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Google and led by Professor Luciano Floridi, University of Oxford. -/- This work will be of interest to anyone handling data, including those from commercial, public, governmental and academic organizations. The expert editors’ contributions introduce issues of interest to scientists, database curators and philosophers, even though the issues may be disguised in the language and examples common to a different discipline. (shrink)

This article argues that an ethical framework will help to harness the potential of AI while keeping humans in control.

This study examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) from the retail sector deal with four challenges they face when adopting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies: the challenge of developing well-performing CSR projects and programs, building competitive advantages based on CSR, responding to local stakeholder issues in the host countries and learning from different CSR experiences on a worldwide basis. Based on in-depth case studies of two globally leading retail MNCs (with strong operations in Latin America), the concept of Transverse CSR Management (...) emerged. Transverse CSR Management is defined as a distinctive form of organizational configuration that crosses different functional areas, country operations, and the boundaries of the firm. In particular, this article makes three main contributions: (1) we identify four central challenges faced by MNC managers when developing their CSR strategies; (2) we propose the concept of Transverse CSR Management to face these central challenges (together, at the same time) and identify its key elements (top management, external stakeholders, functional areas, and country subsidiaries); and (3) we propose four mechanisms (hierarchical, relational, cultural, and collaborative) through which the concept of Transverse CSR Management can be implemented by practicing managers. This study provides valuable insights for MNC managers in headquarters and subsidiaries on the issues they need to address in order to successfully deal with the four CSR-related challenges. (shrink)

O uso de drogas é complexo e multicausal com impactos para as pessoas, famílias e sociedade. Este estudo investigou legislações, políticas públicas e estratégias, que possam diminuir vulnerabilidades e contribuir para os ODS. Foi realizado levantamento documental, em legislações e documentos, para análise da realidade social, a partir das experiências profissionais, e ainda levantamento bibliográfico, na BVS e LILACS, de 2016 a 2018. Observou-se que o Estado se mantém disciplinador e entre as políticas mais relevantes estão a Redução de Danos, (...) os CAPS e o Consultório de Rua, marcadas pelo empirismo, obstáculos e desafios em relação à universalidade e equidade. Estratégias intersetoriais, podem ser utilizadas para se obter melhores condições de saúde e bem-estar, saneamento e água, educação, trabalho. A promoção da saúde corrobora na redução das vulnerabilidades e equidade, com maior sensibilização e qualificação dos profissionais das redes de atenção social, para acolher a população com competência e dignidade. (shrink)

If we read the Tractatus logico-philosophicus according to the decimal numbering of its propositions, we may understand, finally, the section about the self and the limits of language and world. Proposition 5.64 follows 5.63 (not 5.634); 5.634 follows 5.633 (not 5.6331); and so on. Thus, it becomes clear that the picture of the visual field (TLP 5.6331) cannot be what scholars have always quoted and discussed, i.e. a draft of an eye inside its field of sight. Actually, Wittgenstein’s original drafts (...) depict (to criticise it) the ordinary way of representing the visual field. Following him, the field of vision is ‘without limits’; it does not have a form that implies the existence of an eye, as far as the phenomenological experience does not have a form that implies the existence of an ‘I’. As a result, the current reproductions of the 5.6331 image must be rectified, and all references to this similitude should be radically amended. (shrink)

Inducement prizes have been long used to stimulate individuals and groups to accomplish diverse goals. Lately, governments have become more and more interested in these prizes and sought to include this kind of incentives within the set of policy tools available to promote science, technology, and innovation. To date, however, there has been little empirically-based scientific knowledge on how to design, manage, and evaluate innovation prizes. This note discusses aspects of the prize phenomenon and the opportunities and challenges related with (...) the use of innovation prizes as a government policy instrument. Compared to other incentive mechanisms, prizes are likely to present advantages to, for example, accelerate the development and commercialization of technologies that are held back for diverse reasons and help to leverage public money with external ideas, collaborative efforts, and the participation of diverse individuals and organizations. Still, despite these advantages and other interesting features of prizes, there are key questions that policy-makers and scholars must address to better understand this kind of incentives and further improve prize designs and implementations before governments move forward to a more widespread use of innovation prizes in science and technology policies. (shrink)

O uso de insetos para consumo por vezes é defendido alegando-se que tais animais: (1) são menos capazes de sofrer; (2) são pouco prejudicados com a morte; ou (3) deveriam ter um status moral menor (isto é, que deveriam receber uma menor consideração diante de danos equivalentes). Neste artigo desafiarei essas três alegações. Defenderei também que, mesmo que essas alegações fizessem sentido, delas não se segue que a exploração sobre insetos é justificável. Por fim, discutirei sobre o grau de importância (...) que deveríamos dar à situação dos insetos (e outros invertebrados) em geral. (shrink)

Objetiva-se fazer uma breve explanação sobre a problemática da representação teatral e os seus efeitos sobre os espectadores a partir do caráter etnológico, através da crítica realizada pelo filósofo Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Fundamenta-se_ _com base na obra _Carta a D’Alembert sobre os espetáculos. _Nesta obra, Rousseau apresenta uma crítica à representação social através do teatro francês do século XVIII. Na _Carta _o autor discorre toda sua crítica ao teatro francês do século XVIII e expressa as razões para não fundar uma (...) companhia de teatro em Genebra, atribuindo aos jogos e espetáculos cívicos uma importância pedagógica em oposição aos espetáculos teatrais produzidos na época. Assim, iremos, no presente artigo, tratar sobre essa dualidade entre ser e parecer que se evidencia como um jogo de oposição entre uma sociedade corrompida pelos espetáculos teatrais e outra livre dos efeitos corruptores da cena teatral. Nessa última, o único espetáculo possível são as festas populares. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

The philosophy of information (PI) is a new area of research with its own field of investigation and methodology. This article, based on the Herbert A. Simon Lecture of Computing and Philosophy I gave at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, analyses the eighteen principal open problems in PI. Section 1 introduces the analysis by outlining Herbert Simon's approach to PI. Section 2 discusses some methodological considerations about what counts as a good philosophical problem. The discussion centers on Hilbert's famous analysis (...) of the central problems in mathematics. The rest of the article is devoted to the eighteen problems. These are organized into five sections: problems in the analysis of the concept of information, in semantics, in the study of intelligence, in the relation between information and nature, and in the investigation of values. (shrink)

The history of the transmission, recovery and posthumous influence of ancient scepticism is a fascinating chapter in the history of ideas. An extraordinary collection of philosophical texts and some of the most challenging arguments ever devised were first lost, then only partly recovered philologically, and finally rediscovered conceptually, leaving Cicero and Sextus Empiricus as the main champions of Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism respectively. This chapter outlines what we know about this shipwreck and what was later salvaged from it.

This paper presents a belief revision operator that considers time intervals for modelling norm change in the law. This approach relates techniques from belief revision formalisms and time intervals with temporalised rules for legal systems. Our goal is to formalise a temporalised belief base and corresponding timed derivation, together with a proper revision operator. This operator may remove rules when needed or adapt intervals of time when contradictory norms are added in the system. For the operator, both constructive definition and (...) an axiomatic characterisation by representation theorems are given. (shrink)

This paper introduces and studies a declarative framework for updating views over indefinite databases. An indefinite database is a database with null values that are represented, following the standard database approach, by a single null constant. Typically a database is represented by a single set of facts |$D$| that model what is known to be true. This paper proposes a model of an indefinite extensional database that is more expressive with respect to the closed-world assumption (CWA) adapted for the setting (...) of indefinite databases (Libkin, 1995, A semantics-based approach to design of query languages for partial information. In Semantics in Databases, vol. 1358 of LNCS, pp. 170–208. Springer; der Meyden, 1998, Logical approaches to incomplete information: a survey. In Logics for Databases and Information Systems, pp. 307–356. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, USA). More specifically, in our model, databases are determined by two sets of facts: |$D$| representing, as usual, all facts that are true in the database, and |$E$| that is meant to represent exceptions to the ‘unknown range’, i.e. facts that cannot be unknown. Intuitively, unless they are explicitly implied to be true by the first set, the facts specified as exceptions are assumed false. The semantics is given by means of a two-level CWA tailored to the case of indefinite information. The paper characterizes the semantics of indefinite databases in terms of their possible worlds that are obtained by instantiating occurrences of null values by concrete constants and defines several classes of database repairs that realize view-update requests. Most notable is the class of constrained repairs. Constrained repairs change the database ‘minimally’and avoid making arbitrary commitments. They narrow down the space of alternative ways to fulfill the view-update request to those that are grounded, in a certain strong sense, in the database, the view and the view-update request. (shrink)

A filosofia de Sartre é reconhecida pela defesa irrestrita da liberdade: a purificação absoluta do campo transcendental fundamenta O Ser e o Nada. Mas essa obra gerou uma série de críticas devidas à dificuldade para passar ao plano concreto e descrever a sociedade e a história. Esse artigo tem por objetivo colocar em relevo a situação, contrapartida da liberdade e, desse modo, mostrar que nos anos 40 Sartre amplia a noção de situação, ou engaja a liberdade, permitindo a passagem da (...) ontologia à história. (shrink)

La complejidad inherente a la pluralidad ontológica requiere ser entendida con nuevos conceptos y metáforas: por un lado, tienen que superar la compartimentación de lo diferenciado y, por otro, tienen que construir puentes de sentido en favor de un enfoque más integrador de la realidad. Hay que evitar la fragmentación tanto desde una perspectiva objetiva como subjetiva, respectivamente, a través de la generación de clasificaciones abiertas y de vínculos simbólicos indirectos que puedan compensar la especialización disciplinar. Nociones como nivel, mapa, (...) mundo de la vida y red contribuyen a esta tarea. (shrink)

"Livre publié à l'occasion de la série d'expositions, Affinités Sélectives, au Paleis voor Schone Kunsten à Bruxelle, organisées par Bernard Marcadé.

From Prototractatus to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The author aims to show that in the notebook in which Wittgenstein composed his Tractatus there is no discontinuity between the part published as ‘Prototractatus’ and the last few pages, not published because quite indistinguishable from the final work. The process by which the propositions are combined is homogeneous, following a rigorously top-down strategy: from the six main propositions on the first page to further levels of commentary and, finally, to the more detailed remarks of (...) the last stages. The puzzling chaos of the manuscript derives from his chronological recording of coherent interventions relating to the most different branches of the logic tree. In the first as in the final stage, these interventions were possible thanks to a ‘twin’ text, possibly organized on separate sheets of paper. Therefore, if we read the Tractatus by progressive levels of commentary, rather than sequentially, we then find the same progression of thought developed by Wittgenstein himself during the three years of compiling his manuscript. (shrink)

É possível afirmar que a filosofia da liberdade de Sartre contenha as bases de uma Ética? Algo corrente de sua biografia é que ele, como sequência de sua obra magna pretendia escrever uma Moral; mas essa pretensão acabou se resumindo a simples anotações de trabalho publicadas postumamente. Algo similar ocorre quando ele publica sua segunda grande obra, que também teria seu volume prático, jamais levado a termo. Considerando que toda a filosofia de Sartre está pautada no princípio da liberdade humana (...) absoluta e irrestrita, essa não seria a razão de tal malogro? No intuito de introduzir essa questão escrevemos esse artigo. (shrink)