As the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence, in particular machine learning, has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the theory of (...) AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work, we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible or too strict. This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service.’. (shrink)

By mid-2019 there were more than 80 AI ethics guides available in the public domain. Despite this, 2020 saw numerous news stories break related to ethically questionable uses of AI. In part, this is because AI ethics theory remains highly abstract, and of limited practical applicability to those actually responsible for designing algorithms and AI systems. Our previous research sought to start closing this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the creation of a searchable typology (...) of tools and methods designed to translate between the five most common AI ethics principles and implementable design practices. Whilst a useful starting point, that research rested on the assumption that _all_ AI practitioners are aware of the ethical implications of AI, understand their importance, and are actively seeking to respond to them. In reality, it is unclear whether this is the case. It is this limitation that we seek to overcome here by conducting a mixed-methods qualitative analysis to answer the following four questions: what do AI practitioners understand about the need to translate ethical principles into practice? What motivates AI practitioners to embed ethical principles into design practices? What barriers do AI practitioners face when attempting to translate ethical principles into practice? And finally, what assistance do AI practitioners want and need when translating ethical principles into practice? (shrink)

The debate about the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence dates from the 1960s :741–742, 1960; Wiener in Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine, MIT Press, New York, 1961). However, in recent years symbolic AI has been complemented and sometimes replaced by Neural Networks and Machine Learning techniques. This has vastly increased its potential utility and impact on society, with the consequence that the ethical debate has gone mainstream. Such a debate has primarily focused on principles—the (...) ‘what’ of AI ethics —rather than on practices, the ‘how.’ Awareness of the potential issues is increasing at a fast rate, but the AI community’s ability to take action to mitigate the associated risks is still at its infancy. Our intention in presenting this research is to contribute to closing the gap between principles and practices by constructing a typology that may help practically-minded developers apply ethics at each stage of the Machine Learning development pipeline, and to signal to researchers where further work is needed. The focus is exclusively on Machine Learning, but it is hoped that the results of this research may be easily applicable to other branches of AI. The article outlines the research method for creating this typology, the initial findings, and provides a summary of future research needs. (shrink)

This essay defends two theses regarding the explanation, or ground, of modality in the early modern period. First, for philosophers in the period, essences ground a range of important modal facts. Second, as the period progresses, we witness increased skepticism about certain modal facts, due to a growing skepticism about the scope or existence of essences. These theses are supported by examination of three case studies: Descartes’ treatment of substance and mode (which forms the core of his ontology); Malebranche’s treatment (...) of causation (which bears on his defense of occasionalism); and Locke’s treatment of necessary connections among properties (which is related to his accounts of individuals and kinds). It is shown that in each case, claims about necessity and possibility take center stage, and that in each case, the status of these claims hinges on the status of claims about essences. (shrink)

In Language and the Learning Curve, a leading researcher in the field offers a radical new view of language development, unusual in its combination of Chomskian linguistics and learning theory. Stimulating and accessible, it is an important new work that challenges many of our usual assumptions about syntactic development.

Descartes notoriously characterizes substance in two ways: first, as an ultimate subject of properties ; second, as an independent entity. The characterizations have appeared to many to diverge on the definition as well as the scope of the notion of substance. For it is often thought that the ultimate subject of properties need not—and, in some cases, cannot—be independent. Drawing on a suite of historical, textual, and philosophical considerations, this essay argues for an interpretation that reconciles Descartes's two characterizations. It (...) proposes that both characterizations invoke a type of independence that obtains just in case there is no relation to another entity that holds by the nature of the entity in question. Even though the ultimate subject of properties is sometimes not independent in other respects, it satisfies this independence-by-nature condition. (shrink)

(Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein will be read by philosophers investigating Wittgenstein and by scholars, interpreters, students, and specialists, in both analytic and continental philosophy. It will intrigue readers interested in issues of interpretation and cultural studies. This book tells the story - as yet untold - of Wittgenstein interpretation during the past eighty years. It provides different interpretations, chronologies, developments, and controversies. It aims to discover the (socio-cultural rather than psychological) motives and motivations behind the philosophical community's project of interpreting Wittgenstein. As (...) a cultural history of ideas, it traces the parallelism between Wittgenstein interpretation and the move from metaphysics, to language, to postmodernism effected in the twentieth century. (shrink)

There is a familiar story about Spinoza on which his substance monism arises straightforwardly from Descartes’ own conception of substance, which the latter combines—not entirely consistently—with substance pluralism. I argue that this story is mistaken: substance pluralism is fully consistent with Descartes’ conception of substance; it is also consistent with his claim that the term ‘substance’ is non-univocal. In defense of these claims, I argue that Descartes denies, whereas Spinoza accepts, that causation precludes the kind of independence that is characteristic (...) of substance; further, I show how Descartes’ denial is based on his view that causal relations do not belong to the natures of their relata, whereas Spinoza’s acceptance follows from his commitment to an intimate link between causation and conception, which Descartes also rejects. (shrink)

Many historical and philosophical studies treat infinity as an exclusively quantitative notion, whose proper domain of application is mathematics and physics. The main aim of this paper is to disentangle, by critically examining, three notions of infinity in the early modern period, and to argue that one—but only one—of them is quantitative. One of these non-quantitative notions concerns being or reality, while the other concerns a particular iterative property of an aggregate. These three notions will emerge through examination of three (...) central figures in the period: Locke, Descartes, and Leibniz. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to survey some of the most important developments in thinking about essence in the early modern period, highlighting ways in which thinkers in the period gradually depart from the medieval Aristotelian tradition. In this tradition, essence is thought of as selective, explanatory, and kind-determining. Whereas in the beginning of the early modern period some figures (such as René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, and Anne Conway) still adhere to this traditional view, later figures (including (...) Benedict de Spinoza, G.W. Leibniz, and John Locke) reject it. (shrink)

AbstractWe propose an emerging conceptualization of “intervention hesitancy” to address a broad spectrum of hesitancy to disease prevention interventions among healthcare personnel (HCP) beyond vaccine hesitancy. To demonstrate this concept and its analytical benefits, we used a qualitative case-study methodology, identifying a “spectrum” of disease prevention interventions based on (1) the intervention’s effectiveness, (2) how the intervention is regulated among HCP in the Israeli healthcare system, and (3) uptake among HCP in the Israeli healthcare system. Our cases ultimately contribute to (...) a more nuanced conceptualization of hesitancy that HCP express towards disease prevention interventions. Our case interventions included the seasonal influenza vaccine, the Mantoux test, and the hepatitis B (HBV) vaccine. Influenza and HBV are vaccine-preventable diseases, though their respective vaccines vary significantly in effectiveness and uptake among HCP. The Mantoux test is a tuberculin skin test which provides a prevention benchmark for tuberculosis (TB), a non-vaccine preventable disease. We conducted semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders and analyzed them within Israeli and international policy context between 2016 and 2019, a period just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose the conceptualization of “intervention hesitancy”—beyond “vaccine hesitancy”—as “hesitancy towards a wide range of public health interventions, including but not limited to vaccines”. Results suggested that intervention hesitancy among HCP is rooted in weak trust in their employer, poor employment conditions, as well as mixed institutional guidelines and culture. Conceptualizing intervention hesitancy expands the ability of healthcare systems to understand the root of hesitancy and foster a supportive institutional culture and trust, cognizant of diverse disease prevention interventions beyond vaccination. (shrink)

the meditations on first philosophy presents us with an alleged proof for the existence of God that proceeds from the existence of an idea of an infinite being in the human mind—an idea of God—to the existence of God himself. Insofar as we have an idea of an infinite being, an idea with “infinite objective reality,” we can legitimately ask whence it came to us. The only possible cause of this idea, claims Descartes, is an infinite being, namely, God. The (...) occurrence of just this idea in the proof is essential. In fact, Descartes maintains that any such causal proof for God’s existence crucially relies on this idea: “it seems to me that all these proofs based on his effects are reducible to a single one; and also .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.1 (2000) 59-73 [Access article in PDF] Thomas Hobbes: Telling the Story of the Science of Politics Anat Biletzki Science and storytelling First, the traditional commonplaces: Science does not tell stories. Disciplines purporting to be sciences eschew their storytelling aspects in favor of axiomatic, deductive, demonstrative, or whatnot essentials of science. Those deeming the story itself essential give up (happily or less willingly) the label (...) of science and locate themselves under other institutionalized labels such as Humanities. 1 Then there are the disciplines that wobble on the fence, desiring, for various reasons that are more readily analyzed by historical sociologists, the epithet of Science, yet not always achieving such recognition. Chief players in this game are history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political science. And if my rendition of this conflict between pretensions and performance seem blatantly pejorative, let me rephrase it: their own practitioners--historians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists--believe the issue of their scientific status a problem of no small import. It is, indeed, the question "Are we a science?" that figures in the most fundamental debates concerning the purpose, essence, and methodology of these disciplines.By use of a case study, I will try to support a seemingly conciliatory thesis: social sciences are, by definition and therefore of necessity, on the fence. On one side of the fence lies Science, the monolithic framework that enslaves its method to a grand purpose--knowledge of reality. On the other lies Humanism, a far less easily defined area about which I would hesitate to use the word framework, but through which one meets a no-less-grandiose focus--knowledge of the human. Why then does it seem natural to foster storytelling on the humanistic side of the fence? Or, alternatively, one can ask about the "why not" of narrative in the sciences.Narrative is storytelling; and stories are about heroes; and heroes conduct their actions in a place through a time. So these three building blocks-- [End Page 59] hero, time, and place--point to a pattern of knowledge that, it seems obvious, cannot, and definitely should not, belong to science in its idealized form. There is, of course, a stronger thesis deriving from the intricacies in (post?)modern discussions: that even the exact and natural sciences use narrative while still remaining sciences. This idea--that science does countenance narrative and, indeed, may even use it beneficially--thereby becomes forceful, since science, with its universalistic airs, pretends to ignore heroes in specific times and places.What of the social sciences? Their claim to science is based on that same universalistic end coupled with an attempt to develop a methodology to fit that end. The rub lies in the subject matter of the social sciences, the human being and society. A strictly positivistic view of such subject matter, or even a generally scientific one, must abstract from any and all "humanistic" traits of the human being and society and objectively treat them on a par with any other "neutral" (some might say, even material) object of research. My weak thesis merely claims that such abstraction is inherently impossible and, furthermore, that an attempt at such abstraction waylays the ultimate end of these "sciences." 2 Yet, such a thesis must contribute more than it eliminates. If the social sciences cannot live up to the original scientific ideal of one side of the fence, and if their product can be valued as more than (or at least different from) a mere story on the other side, a more fruitful characterization than just "sitting on the fence" is called for. It is here that narrative makes its essential contribution: narrative is that pattern of knowledge which can encompass the social sciences, given their necessary turn to the human being. Looked at from the receiving end, the social sciences have no option but to turn to narrative in order to buttress their scientific ideal of explanation. The phenomena they claim to explain are human and social phenomena and, as such, cannot be distanced from narrative. 3I shall try to illustrate my... (shrink)

This book tells the story of Wittgenstein interpretation during the past eighty years. It provides different interpretations, chronologies, developments, and controversies. It aims to discover the motives and motivations behind the philosophical community's project of interpreting Wittgenstein. It will prove valuable to philosophers, scholars, interpreters, students, and specialists, in both analytic and continental philosophy.

"There is no God, but ...' : the disavowed presence of the divine -- 'Resolve the religious world into its secular basis' : sense and sensibility -- 'I only have eyes for you' : ethics as meta-politics -- Conclusion: 'Back to the rough ground!'.

This volume, in memory of Ruth Manor, consists of articles presented at her memorial conference at Tel Aviv University. The articles, by colleagues and students, friends and family represent the wide range of interest and expertise that Manor brought to her teaching and research - from formal logic to pragmatics, and from rhetoric to ethics. The collection includes articles by Jaakko Hintikka, Arnon Avron, Oron Shagrir, Eli Dresner, Eran Guter, Amnon Wolman, Anat Matar, and Anat Biletzki. Emblematic of (...) Manor's hugh panoply of philosophical themes, the diversity and variety of subjects covered also portray her analytical profundity and logical proficiency at always seeing connections'. (shrink)

Descartes’s metaphysics posits a sharp distinction between two types of non-finitude, or unlimitedness: whereas God alone is infinite, numbers, space, and time are indefinite. The distinction has proven difficult to interpret in a way that abides by the textual evidence and conserves the theoretical roles that the distinction plays in Descartes’s philosophy—in particular, the important role it plays in the causal proof for God’s existence in the Meditations. After formulating the interpretive task, I criticize extant interpretations of the distinction. I (...) then propose an alternative at whose core is the idea that whereas the indefinite is a structural, iterative notion, designating the absence of an upper bound, the infinite is an ontic notion, signifying being in general, or what is, without qualification. (shrink)

In the last half-century Ludwig Wittgenstein's relevance beyond analytic philosophy, to continental philosophy, to cultural studies, and to the arts has been widely acknowledged. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published in 1922 - the annus mirabilis of modernism - alongside Joyce's Ulysses, Eliot's The Waste Land, Mansfield's The Garden Party and Woolf's Jacob's Room. Bertolt Brecht's first play to be produced, Drums in the Night, was first staged in 1922, as was Jean Cocteau's Antigone, with settings by Pablo Picasso and music (...) by Arthur Honegger. In different ways, all these modernist landmarks dealt with the crisis of representation and the demise of eternal metaphysical and ethical truths. Wittgenstein's Tractatus can be read as defining, expressing and reacting to this crisis. In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein adopted a novel philosophical attitude, sensitive to the ordinary uses of language as well as to the unnoticed dogmas they may betray. If the gist of modernism is self-reflection and attention to the way form expresses content, then Wittgenstein's later ideas - in their fragmented form as well as their “ear-opening” contents - deliver it most precisely. Understanding Wittgenstein, Understanding Modernism shows Wittgenstein's work, both early and late, to be closely linked to the modernist Geist that prevailed during his lifetime. Yet it would be wrong to argue that Wittgenstein was a modernist tout court. For Wittgenstein, as well as for modernist art, understanding is not gained by such straightforward statements. It needs time, hesitation, a variety of articulations, the refusal of tempting solutions, and perhaps even a sense of defeat. It is such a vision of the linkage between Wittgenstein and modernism that guides the present volume. (shrink)

This unique collection looks at analytic philosophy in its historical context. Prominent philosophers discuss key figures, including Russell and Wittgenstein, methods and results in analytic philosophy to present its story. This volume assesses the challenge posed by changing cultural and philosophical trends and movements.

This study examined the representation of women in the world press, through the coverage of two very different events during 1995: The 50th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, and the 4th Conference on Women in Beijing. Using the first level of the agenda-setting approach as well as the second level we analyzed the content of more than 10,000 stories which appeared in the news around the world. The findings show that women's (...) presence is still not felt in the world's press, that is, they are not there in great frequency or quantity, regardless of the event, and even when they are present, they are associated more with the private than with the public sphere. Second level agenda-setting research would suggest that this might simply reinforce existing stereotypes. (shrink)

During the last 20 years, philosophers from different quarters and with very different approaches have begun to theorize human rights in an outpouring of authored and edited books and journal articles. In addition, among policy makers and in the legal arena—the so called workings fields of human rights—there have been noteworthy investigations of human rights that tackle philosophical issues. In this book, Anat Biletzki brings a systematic approach to the multitudinous philosophical analyses of human rights, offering a cohesive overview (...) and analysis of this diverse but now very active field. She explores both the conceptual and historical treatments of human rights and the roots of its practice and examines its derivation from classical theories of rights all the way to existing uses. The book is "contemporary" in two senses: it investigates the most current human rights issues and it addresses emerging criticism of human rights, now arising in various sectors. A long introduction provides background information on the history of human rights, a synopsis of modern-day documents, and an articulation of basic questions. This is followed by a section on the philosophical groundings of human rights, proceeding from a philosophy of rights, to specific theories of human rights, to the questions of universalism vs. relativism. The third sections focuses on specific philosophical issues in human rights, including cultural relativity, economic rights, women’s rights, group, indigenous, and minority rights, security, and sovereignty and humanitarian intervention. And a final section on critiques of human rights has separate chapters on postmodernism, anti-foundationalism, and human rights discourse and practice. (shrink)

Introduction: Dummett's Key Traits Following what has been suggested in the preface, in order to understand Dummett's perspective as fully as possible ...