This article explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an “object of care” for use in examining the relationship between creativity and responsibility in the sciences and beyond. Through three short sketches from different disciplinary lenses—literature, science and technology studies, and feminist studies—readers get a sense of the different ways scholars might consider Shelley’s text as an object of care. Through an analysis and synthesis of these three sketches, the authors illustrate the value of such an object in thinking about broad cultural (...) issues. The article acts as a kind of boundary object by creating distinct, yet overlapping narratives from an object that is owned by many social worlds. The three sketches reveal Frankenstein as a thoughtful consideration about what it means to care for, or fail to care for, one’s creation, rather than as a cautionary tale about the evils of scientific hubris. Although infrastructures at universities often prevent interdisciplinary dialogue, the article concludes that purposeful boundary objects created around objects of care like Frankenstein can help build bridges and create shared meanings for new interdisciplinary spaces. (shrink)

Phishing is a fraudulent form of email that solicits personal or financial information from the recipient, such as a password, username, or social security or bank account number. The scammer may use the illicitly obtained information to steal the victim’s money or identity or sell the information to another party. The direct costs of phishing on consumers are exceptionally high and have risen substantially over the past 12 years. Phishing experiments that simulate real world conditions can provide cybersecurity experts with (...) valuable knowledge they can use to develop effective countermeasures and prevent people from being duped by phishing emails. Although these experiments contravene widely accepted informed consent requirements and involve deception, we argue that they can be conducted ethically if risks are minimized, confidentiality and privacy are protected, potential participants have an opportunity to opt out of the research before it begins, and human subjects are debriefed after their participation ends. (shrink)

How should we look at the world? How can we live our lives fully? In How to Look at Everything, acclaimed photographer David Finn turns his keen focus on how to experience the world around us in greater depth. The author of Abrams' best-selling books How to Look at Sculpture, How to Look at Photographs, and How to Visit a Museum here turns to the problem of developing an enriched way of seeing. In a thoughtful series of essays, (...) he offers a personal view of how to enjoy more fully the pleasures that make life truly worth living: beautiful sights, fascinating objects, shared experiences, and warm companionship. (shrink)

This paper examines the often overlooked parallels between the critical theory of the German Frankfurt School and Science and Technology Studies in Britain, as an attempt to articulate a critique of science as a social phenomenon. The cultural aspect of the German and British arguments is in focus, especially the role attributed to the humanities in balancing cultural and techno-scientific values in society. Here, we draw parallels between the German argument and the Two Cultures debate in Britain. The third and (...) final purpose of the paper is to explain why these efforts in support of the humanities would in the end prove fruitless, even somewhat self-defeating. The key factor is the instrumentalist analysis of science adopted in both arguments, which played into the hands of the emergent “entrepreneurial university” with its strengthened emphasis upon the economico-technological aspect of science and consequent neglect of the humanities. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss whether existing organisations that seek to integrate a range of stakeholders in the field of information and communication technology and ageing are adequately meeting the needs of each of these stakeholder groups, and to determine whether a new, or re‐organised, mechanism is needed to better meet the needs of stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThe authors identify, describe, assess and compare the adequacy of various candidate multi‐stakeholder mechanisms in order to improve stakeholder co‐operation.FindingsThe authors' principal finding is (...) that the stakeholder co‐ordination mechanisms discussed in this paper are not adequate to foster e‐inclusion co‐operation, co‐ordination and collaboration among all different types of stakeholders.Practical implicationsThis analysis offers direction in how a new organisation, or the expansion of an existing mechanism, could ensure that currently un‐met needs are addressed. The strengths and weaknesses of the stakeholder co‐ordination mechanisms discussed here demonstrate that some organisational types are better for performing certain tasks and for integrating particular types of stakeholder. Thus, a federated, multi‐dimensional organisation offers one possibility for addressing the needs of all different types of stakeholders.Originality/valueThis paper provides an avenue of response to various calls for closer stakeholder collaboration by the European Commission and other stakeholders, in order to improve the quality of life for older persons and to meet European social objectives. (shrink)

In “A Tension in the Strong Program: The Relation between the Rational and the Social”, Shahram Shahryari (2021) advances the following thesis: In his Strong Program in the sociology of science, David Bloor blames traditional philosophy of science for adopting a dualist strategy in explaining scientific developments, as it employs rational explanation for successful science and social explanation for flawed science. Instead, according to Bloor, all scientific developments should be explained monistically, i.e. in terms of social causes. This is (...) also referred to as the Symmetry Principle, and it is a key tenet in the Strong Program. The author detects a tension here, as Bloor apparently asserts that traditional philosophy of science deploys two kinds of explanation, and simultaneously insists that there is only one kind, i.e. social explanation. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper, the evolution of science, logically, methodologically, and even psychologically, is an involved interplay of acute conjectures and blunt refutations. Like biological evolution, it is an endless round of blind variation and selective retention. But unlike biological evolution, it incorporates, at the stage of selection, the use of reason. Part I of this two-part paper begins by repudiating the common beliefs that Hume’s problem of induction, which compellingly confutes the thesis that science is rational in the way (...) that most people think that it is rational, can be solved by assuming that science is rational, or by assuming that Hume was irrational (that is, by ignoring his argument). The problem of induction can be solved only by a non-authoritarian theory of rationality. It is shown also that because hypotheses cannot be distilled directly from experience, all knowledge is eventually dependent on blind conjecture, and therefore itself conjectural. In particular, the use of rules of inference, or of good or bad rules for generating conjectures, is conjectural. Part II of the paper expounds a form of Popper’s critical rationalism that locates the rationality of science entirely in the deductive processes by which conjectures are criticized and improved. But extreme forms of deductivism are rejected. The paper concludes with a sharp dismissal of the view that work in artificial intelligence, including the JSM method cultivated extensively by Victor Finn, does anything to upset critical rationalism. Machine learning sheds little light on either the problem of induction or on the role that logic plays in the development of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper, the evolution of science, logically, methodologically, and even psychologically, is an involved interplay of acute conjectures and blunt refutations. Like biological evolution, it is an endless round of blind variation and selective retention. But unlike biological evolution, it incorporates, at the stage of selection, the use of reason. Part I of this two-part paper begins by repudiating the common beliefs that Hume’s problem of induction, which compellingly confutes the thesis that science is rational in the way (...) that most people think that it is rational, can be solved by assuming that science is rational, or by assuming that Hume was irrational (that is, by ignoring his argument). The problem of induction can be solved only by a non-authoritarian theory of rationality. It is shown also that because hypotheses cannot be distilled directly from experience, all knowledge is eventually dependent on blind conjecture, and therefore itself conjectural. In particular, the use of rules of inference, or of good or bad rules for generating conjectures, is conjectural. Part II of the paper expounds a form of Popper’s critical rationalism that locates the rationality of science entirely in the deductive processes by which conjectures are criticized and improved. But extreme forms of deductivism are rejected. The paper concludes with a sharp dismissal of the view that work in artificial intelligence, including the JSM method cultivated extensively by Victor Finn, does anything to upset critical rationalism. Machine learning sheds little light on either the problem of induction or on the role that logic plays in the development of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In his 2016 book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, Alasdair MacIntyre spends considerable time discussing how disputes between different moral theorists and different forms of practice might be adjudicated. A crucial addition to the tradition-constituted historical narrative approach of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is his introduction of what he calls ‘sociological self-knowledge’. The present article outlines what MacIntyre means by this and suggests that his approach here dovetails well with Christian ethicists who have advocated the use of critical realist (...) sociology in Christian ethics. MacIntyre’s account stresses the importance of ‘a grasp of the nature of the roles and relationships in which one is involved’, a grasp helpfully conceptualized by critical realists. Daniel Finn also notes that the use of critical realism to analyze structures must be paired with a basic typology, and MacIntyre’s sociological self-knowledge, I argue, rests on precisely such a typology between two different types of moral practices. The article concludes by suggesting much more attention be paid to these ‘moral-social’ analyses when addressing apparently intractable disagreements in Christian social ethics. (shrink)

"Wisdom in the Open Air" traces the Norwegian roots of the strain of thinking called "deep ecology" - the search for the solutions to environmental problems by examining the fundamental tenets of our culture. Although Arne Naess coined the term in the 1970s, the insights of deep ecology actually reflect a whole tradition of thought that can be seen in the history of Norwegian culture, from ancient mountain myths to the radical ecoactivism of today. Beginning with an introduction to Norway's (...) emphasis on nature and the wild, Reed and Rothenberg explore the birth of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s. What follows is a collection of writings by prominent Norwegian thinkers on humanity and nature, most never before published in English. From Peter Wessel Zapffe, a twentieth-century Kierkegaardian figure, the list goes on to include Arne Naess, activist/critic/artist Sigmund Kvaloy, wilderness educator Nils Faarlund, novelist Finn Alnaes, sociologist Johan Galtung, and social reformer Erik Dammann. Their points of view offer thoughts on the significance of modern life and what it means to be human in the face of deteriorating environmental global trends of the 20th century. "Wisdom in the Open Air" asks and answers a fundamental question concerning the ecomovement: what is the role of deep, often abstract, thinking in the attempt to avert a very real ecological crisis? (shrink)

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

Why study notations, diagrams, or more broadly the variety of nonverbal “representations” or “signs” that are used in mathematical practice? This chapter maps out recent work on the topic by distinguishing three main philosophical motivations for doing so. First, some work (like that on diagrammatic reasoning) studies signs to recover norms of informal or historical mathematical practices that would get lost if the particular signs that these practices rely on were translated away; work in this vein has the potential to (...) broaden our view of the specific normativity of mathematics beyond logical proof. Second, some work focuses on signs to highlight the open-ended and “nonrigorous” aspects of mathematical practice, and the role of these aspects in the historical development of mathematics. The third motivation is based on the following observation: the reason differences in signs matter in mathematics is that humans are finite agents, with cognitive and computational limitations. Accordingly, studying signs can be a way to study how human computational constraints shape the mathematics that we do, and to tackle the topic of mathematical understanding. (shrink)

A collection of 14 essays honoring the life and work of Oxford philosopher Wiggins touching on topics from ancient philosophy to ethics, metaphysics and the theory of meaning. The contributing scholars debate many of the seminal issues of Wiggins' work, including the determinancy of distinctness, relative identity, naturalism in ethics, logic and truth in moral judgments, and the practical wisdom of Aristotle. The collection uniquely features replies by Wiggins to each of the papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today. Throughout, the book invites (...) the reader to engage the sources and to develop an answer to the volume's basic question. (shrink)

This collection of papers investigates the most recent debates about individualism and holism in the philosophy of social science. The debates revolve mainly around two issues: firstly, whether social phenomena exist sui generis and how they relate to individuals. This is the focus of discussions between ontological individualists and ontological holists. Secondly, to what extent social scientific explanations may and should, focus on individuals and social phenomena respectively. This issue is debated amongst methodological holists and methodological individualists. -/- In social (...) science and philosophy, both issues have been intensively discussed and new versions of the dispute have appeared just as new arguments have been advanced. At present, the individualism/holism debate is extremely lively and this book reflects the major positions and perspectives within the debate. This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate. -/- This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s. -/- . (shrink)

According to dispositionalism about modality, a proposition <p> is possible just in case something has, or some things have, a power or disposition for its truth; and <p> is necessary just in case nothing has a power for its falsity. But are there enough powers to go around? In Yates (2015) I argued that in the case of mathematical truths such as <2+2=4>, nothing has the power to bring about their falsity or their truth, which means they come out both (...) necessary and not possible. Combining this with axiom (T), it is easy to derive a contradiction. I suggested that dispositionalists ought to retreat a little and say that <p> is possible just in case either p, or there is a power to bring it about that p, grounding the possibility of mathematical propositions in their truth rather than in powers. Vetter’s (2015) has the resources to provide a response to my argument, and in her (2018) she explicitly addresses it by arguing for a plenitude of powers, based on the idea that dispositions come in degrees, with necessary properties a limiting case of dispositionality. On this view there is a power for <2+2=4>, without there being a power to bring about its truth. In this paper I argue that Vetter’s case for plenitude does not work. However, I suggest, if we are prepared to accept metaphysical causation, a case can be made that there is indeed a power for <2+2=4>. (shrink)

What sense, if any, does it make to speak of God? This question, of such vital importance to religious commitment, occupies an important place in discussion among Anglo-American philosophers of religion whose orientation is logical analysis. ‘Metatheological scepticism’ is the view that denies the intelligibility of religious discourse, derived from a theory of meaning which holds that a sentence has cognitive significance only if it makes a statement that is conclusively verifiable on empirical grounds. Dr Heimbeck’s argument for the cognitive (...) nature of religious discourse is twofold. First, he shows that such discourse can qualify as cognitively significant without having to satisfy the verification requirement. Secondly, he shows that it does in fact satisfy such a requirement because it is firmly rooted in the empirical realm. Originally published in 1969, this book, for teachers and students of philosophy of religion, is both easily comprehensible and highly readable, although the discussion of philosophical and theological points is conducted at an advanced level. (shrink)

A 2017 Nature report was widely touted as hailing the arrival of the artificial womb. But the scientists involved claim their technology is merely an improvement in neonatal care. This raises an under-considered question: what differentiates neonatal incubation from artificial womb technology? Considering the nature of gestation—or metaphysics of pregnancy—(a) identifies more profound differences between fetuses and neonates/babies than their location (in or outside the maternal body) alone: fetuses and neonates have different physiological and physical characteristics; (b) characterizes birth as (...) a physiological, mereological and topological transformation as well as a (morally relevant) change of location; and (c) delivers a clear distinction between neonatal incubation and ectogestation: the former supports neonatal physiology; the latter preserves fetal physiology. This allows a detailed conceptual classification of ectogenetive and ectogestative technologies according to which the 2017 system is not just improved neonatal incubation, but genuine ectogestation. But it is not an artificial womb, which is a term that is better put to rest. The analysis reveals that any ethical discussion involving ectogestation must always involve considerations of possible risks to the mother as well as her autonomy and rights. It also adds a third and potentially important dimension to debates in reproductive ethics: the physiological transition from fetus/gestateling to baby/neonate. (shrink)

Social reality is currently a hotly debated topic not only in social science, but also in philosophy and the other humanities. Finn Collin, in this concise guide, asks if social reality is created by the way social agents conceive of it? Is there a difference between the kind of existence attributed to social and to physical facts - do physical facts enjoy a more independent existence? To what extent is social reality a matter of social convention. Finn Collin (...) considers a number of traditional doctrines which support the constructivist position that social reality is generated by our 'interpretation' of it. He also examines the way social facts are contingent upon the meaning invested in them by social agents; the nature of social convention; the status of social facts as symbolic; the ways in which socially shared language is claimed to generate the reality described, as well as the limitations of some of the over-ambitious popular arguments for social constructivism. (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)

While there are many legal textbooks on the laws of armed conflict and academic works on ethical issues in international relations, this is the first text on the relevance of legal and normative issues in military practice. It covers the entire spectrum of military operations and is written with military deicision-makers particularly in mind.

Extant theoretical work on the political resource curse implies that dependence on resource revenues should decrease autocracies’ likelihood of democratizing but not necessarily affect democracies’ chances of survival. Yet most previous empirical studies estimate models that are ill-suited to address this claim. We improve upon earlier studies, estimating a dynamic logit model that interacts a continuous measure of resource dependence with an indicator of regime type using data from 166 countries, covering the period from 1816-2006. We find that an increase (...) in resource dependence at time t - 1 increases the likelihood of autocratic persistence at t, but has no appreciable effect on democratic survival. We go beyond existing empirical studies to show that increases in resource dependence have persistent and substantial cumulative effects on autocracies' likelihood of becoming democratic over the long-term, showing that the total effect of resource dependence on regime type is much larger than the short-term (one period) effect indicates. (shrink)

Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science argues that Eurocentric blindness is a scientific failing, not a moral one. In a way true of no other political system, Japan's greatness has the potential to enliven and reform almost all the main branches of Western Political Science. David Williams criticizes Western social science, Anglo-American Philosophy and French Theory and explains why mainstream economists, historians of political thought and postculturalists have ignored Japan's modern achievements. Williams demonstrates why the renewal of (...) social science and the nurturing of a "a philosophy of the Pacific Century" requires a sustained act of intellectual demolition. (shrink)

This is an in-depth study of J.G. Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics and theory of geometry. It investigates both the external formal and internal cognitive parallels between the axioms, intuitions and constructions of geometry and the scientific methodology of the Fichtean system of philosophy. In contrast to “ordinary” Euclidean geometry, in his Erlanger Logik of 1805 Fichte posits a model of an “ursprüngliche” or original geometry – that is to say, a synthetic and constructivistic conception grounded in ideal archetypal elements that (...) are grasped through geometrical or intelligible intuition. -/- Accordingly, this study classifies Fichte’s philosophy of mathematics as a whole as a species of mathematical Platonism or neo-Platonism, and concludes that the Wissenschaftslehre itself may be read as an attempt at a new philosophical mathesis, or “mathesis of the mind.” -/- “This work testifies to the author's exact and extensive knowledge of the Fichtean texts, as well as of the philosophical, scientific and historical contexts. Wood has opened up completely new paths for Fichte research, and examines with clarity and precision a domain that up to now has hardly been researched.” Professor Dr. Marco Ivaldo -/- “This study, written in a language distinguished by its limpidity and precision, and constantly supported by a close reading of the Fichtean texts and secondary literature, furnishes highly detailed and convincing demonstrations. In directly confronting the difficult historical relationship between the Wissenschaftslehre and mathematics, the author has broken new ground that is at once stimulating, decidedly innovative, and elegantly audacious.” Professor Dr. Emmanuel Cattin. (shrink)

In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. _Fate, Time, and Language_ presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's (...) thesis reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

A comprehensive look at photography's most dynamic era, this book surveys the rich variety of innovation that characterised the 1930s, exploring the aesthetic and cultural achievements of leading photographers and mapping the impact on the ...

The paintings, murals, and graphics of Ben Shahn have made him one of the most heralded American artists of the 20th century, but during the 1930s he was among the America's premier photographers. This book presents 100 photographs from his most ambitious FSA project, a study of small-town life in the Depression.

Incomplete information is a commonly cited barrier to the adoption of new innovations. We present a decision-making experiment, conducted with farmers in the field, that explores the extent to which information which reduces ambiguity may be provided as a public good. In the experiment, participants make a series of decisions between a risky gamble and an ambiguous gamble. An initial private decision is followed by second choice in which participants know that their chosen gambles and outcomes will be publicly but (...) anonymously revealed. Selection of the ambiguous option in this decision thus provide public good information which can be used to update beliefs about the ambiguous gamble. After the public revelation, participants make one final choice between the two options which we use to assess learning. We also test communication as a mechanism to increase provision of the public good. We find evidence that people with preference to avoid ambiguity contribute to public good information while risk averse people free ride. Communication does not affect the overall public good provision, either in a positive or negative direction. Finally, we find that people draw appropriate inference from the information that the public good provides. We relate our findings to the issue of new technology adoption in agriculture which is of particular importance for our participants. (shrink)