The American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision published its policy statement and technical report on newborn circumcision in September 2012.1 ,2 Since that time, some individuals and groups have voiced objections to the work of the Task Force, while others have conveyed their support. The AAP task force is pleased that the policy statement and technical reports on circumcision have stimulated debate on this topic and welcomes respectful discussion and dialogue about the scientific and ethical issues that surround (...) neonatal circumcision. We believe this is a complex issue that does not lend itself to simplistic solutions. The Task Force encourages those of all viewpoints to contribute to a vibrant, thoughtful and respectful evidence-based dialogue. We appreciate that the free exchange of competing ideas is a necessary component of scientific discovery. We also recognise that all clinical decisions carry ethical dimensions and that a respectful and thoughtful dialogue about these issues is important. However, the Task Force also feels strongly that this debate and the academic literature are demeaned when those with an ideological agenda disseminate inaccurate information, misapply scientific principles, make accusations that are unsupported, communicate in a vitriolic tone, and attempt to discredit and mischaracterise alternative views and those who hold them. Healthy debate and …. (shrink)

In this article we introduce the concept of implied optical perspective in deep learning computer vision systems. Taking the BBC's experimental television programme “Made by Machine: When AI met the Archive” as a case study, we trace a conceptual and material link between the system used to automatically “watch” the television archive and a specific type of photographic practice. From a computational aesthetics perspective, we show how deep learning machine vision relies on photography, its technical regimes and epistemic advantages, and (...) we propose a novel way to identify the latent camera through which the BBC archive was seen by machine. (shrink)

In 2020, the European Union announced the award of the contract for the biometric part of the new database for border control, the Entry Exit System, to two companies: IDEMIA and Sopra Steria. Both companies had been previously involved in the development of databases for border and migration management. While there has been a growing amount of publicly available documents that show what kind of technologies are being implemented, for how much money, and by whom, there has been limited engagement (...) with digital methods in this field. Moreover, critical border and security scholarship has largely focused on qualitative and ethnographic methods. Building on a data feminist approach, we propose a transdisciplinary methodology that goes beyond binaries of qualitative/quantitative and opacity/transparency, examines power asymmetries and makes the labour of coding visible. Empirically, we build and analyse a dataset of the contracts awarded by two European Union agencies key to its border management policies – the European Agency for Large-Scale Information Systems (eu-LISA) and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). We supplement the digital analysis and visualisation of networks of companies with close reading of tender documents. In so doing, we show how a transdisciplinary methodology can be a device for making datafication ‘intelligible’ at the European Union borders. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmotion differentiation, the ability to describe and label our own emotions in a differentiated and specific manner, has been repeatedly associated with well-being. However, it is unclear exactly what type of differentiation is most strongly related to well-being: the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between emotions that are relatively closely related, the ability to make larger distinctions between very distinct emotions, or the combination of both. To determine which type of differentiation is most predictive of well-being, we performed a comprehensive (...) meta-analysis across six datasets. We examined the correlations between these three types of differentiation and several indicators of well-being. Results showed that individuals differentiated most between very distinct emotions and least between more related emotions, and that an index computed across emotions from both the same and di... (shrink)

The idea of basic action is a fixed point in the contemporary investigation of the nature of action. And while there are arguments aimed at putting the idea in place, it is meant to be closer to a gift of common sense than to a hard-won achievement of philosophical reflection. It first appears at the stage of innocuous description and before the announcement of philosophical positions. And yet, as any decent magician knows, the real work so often gets done in (...) the set-up. I argue that the seemingly innocent idea of basic action is, in fact, bound up with a wide-spread conception of the nature of bodily or physical action (section 3). Its legitimacy is vital to the intelligibility of the causal theory of action, according to which physical action consists of a mere event and a condition of mind joined (in the right way) by the bond of causality. Left unchecked, means-end reason threatens to permeate physical action, and thus threatens the sovereignty of the sphere of material events at the center of the causal theory: such events, including the movements of one’s body when one intentionally moves it, are thought to be constitutively independent of the subject’s rational capacities. Basic action is a necessary countermeasure, a sort of metaphysical containment wall needed to preserve the separate jurisdictions of the mind of the acting subject and what merely happens. I argue that so long as action theory proceeds under the assumption that there must be basic action, it must regard our relation to the progress of our own deeds as not different in principle from Marx’s understanding of the relation of the non-worker (Nichtarbeiter) to the material processes that realize his own ideas, namely the work done on the factory floor. Each is alienated from the progress, or getting done, of his deeds. In each the process of doing something intentionally turns out to be a case of delegating tasks to another power. How the process comes to completion is not willed, and at best watched: the causal work is not the agent’s work, his knowledge not self-knowledge (section 5). We should find this unacceptable. And if this is right, it should be a pressing question whether there must be basic action. I argue that we have no good reason to think so: basic action is not forced on us by argument (sections 2 and 4). It is open to us to consider an alternative, one on which action is not, in the fundamental case, barren of means- end structure, but instead permeated by it: we register as a force in nature not at the limit of the means-end order but precisely in its constitution. [from article introduction]. (shrink)

This paper presents a model for the structure of universal frameworks in logic, mathematics, and physics that are closed to logical conclusion by the mechanism of paradox across a dualism of elements. The prohibition takes different forms defined by the framework of observation inherent to the structure. Forms include either prohibition to conclusion on the logical relationship of internal elements or prohibition to conclusion based on the existence of an element not included in the framework of a first element. The (...) model is applied to logical arguments in philosophy, mathematics, and physics and is initially a geometrical analysis of quantum theory and its application in experiment. Conclusion from the analysis is extended to give insight into the complexity of infinities above the two-dimensional boundary of the model. (shrink)

I read with interest Annas’ and Kummer’s article Preventing the Slide down the Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Euthanasia While Protecting the Rights of People with Disabilities Who Are “No...

We claim that the Universe’s fundamental structure is not discoverable through rationalism. The various frameworks studied are logic, mathematics, their application through theories in physics, and finally, the pivotally separate application of logic to historical evidence in formal religious belief. The basis of the prohibition is that rational structure has a limit for consistency that falls short of completeness in absolute terms. The limit of observability reaches only a framework in which correlated elements are formed paradoxically within a parent structure. (...) Apart from our advanced ability in human reasoning, we have the same fundamental sentience possessed by other living creatures. Beyond that limit of awareness, the Universe in its native form is immaculately nonordered. We examine the dimensional relationship between quantum and classical frameworks to justify the theory. Mathematics requires operational consistency across its elements. In contrast, the Universe incorporates a feature of inconsistency in its native form. The companion paper to this document examines in detail how complexity develops from a null condition across dimensional levels. The argument’s foundation applies a general framework of stationary action and self-organization principles to the theory and experimental data on Hardy’s paradox. The complementary format to the dichotomy of paradoxical elements is its sliding scale of uncertainty between their extremes. The argument extends that the root source of societal biases, conflicts, and bigotries is the fundamental and systemic mechanism of paradox. (shrink)

This is a discussion of different ways of working out the idea that the semantic paradoxes show that natural languages are somehow “inconsistent”. I take the workable form of the idea to be that there are expressions such that a necessary condition of understanding them is that one be inclined to accept inconsistent claims (an conception also suggested by Matti Eklund). I then distinguish “simple” from “complex” forms of such views. On a simple theory, such expressions are meaningless, while on (...) a complex theory they are not. I argue that complex theories are incompatible with truth conditional semantics and that simple theories are only coherent when the inconsistent claims are metalingusitic attributions of meaning. I close with a discussion of the version of the simple metalinguistic theory I have defended in “Understanding the Liar” and other papers. (shrink)

The American philosophical tradition emphasizes the role of experience as part of philosophical discourse and scholarship. Individuals like Henry Bugbee and Henry David Thoreau described their experiences walking, for example, and connected these experiences with philosophical concepts. My overall contention is to remind us of the importance of sport experiences for our scholarly work. In Part One, I outline the nature of experience and why this is crucial for sport philosophers and sport philosophy. In Part Two, I turn to the (...) process of reflecting on experience, exploring how reflection happens and the import of reflection for our lives and writing. Finally, in Part Three, I move to the writing process related to sport experiences. The manner in which we articulate philosophic principles and arguments, even though these points may be written in third-person, may also be informed by and through an experiential lens. (shrink)

In this paper, it is shown (1) that there are two schemes for argument from analogy that seem to be competitors but are not, (2) how one of them is based on a distinctive type of similarity premise, (3) how to analyze the notion of similarity using story schemes illustrated by some cases, (4) how arguments from precedent are based on arguments from analogy, and in many instances arguments from classification, and (5) that when similarity is defined by means of (...) episode schemes, we can get a clearer idea of how it integrates with the use of argument from classification and argument from precedent in case-based reasoning by using a dialogue structure. (shrink)

We assert that audit quality can be improved to the extent that social norms for honesty and responsibility are activated in the auditor. To test this assertion, we use an experimental audit market setting found in the literature and manipulate factors expected to activate honesty and responsibility norms in the auditor. We find that auditor misreporting is reduced when the investor is another participant in the experiment rather than computer simulated, and thus, the interests of third-party investors are salient to (...) the auditor. We also find that auditor misreporting is reduced when the auditor is required to sign-off on the audit report, but only when the investor is another participant in the experiment. Consistent with our underlying theory, we find that pre-experimental measures of sensitivity to honesty and responsibility norms help explain the effects of our manipulated variables. Finally, we find that these measures of social norm sensitivity are associated with the moral judgment that auditor misreporting is unethical. Our study helps explain previous anomalous findings in the literature and answers the call in Blay et al. (J Bus Ethics 2017. doi:10.1007/s10551-016-3286-4) for empirical researchers to use social norm theory to develop stronger tests of moral reasoning in the market for auditing services. (shrink)

InThe Promise of Green PoliticsDouglas Torgerson offers a survey of different schools of ecological thought, discusses their implications for the larger ...

Controversy has arisen of late over the claim that deflationism about truth requires that we explain meaning in terms of something other than truth-conditions. This controversy, it is argued, is due to unclarity as to whether the basic deflationary claim that a sentence and a sentence that attributes truth to it are equivalent in meaning is intended to involve the truth- predicate of the object language for which we develop an account of meaning, or is intended to involve the truth- (...) predicate of the metalanguage in which we develop an account of meaning. The former view is compatible with the truth-conditional theory of meaning for the object language, the latter is incompatible with it. However, the former view is also trivially true; hence we should endorse the claim that any form of deflationism worth being interested in is incompatible with understanding meaning truth-conditionally. (shrink)

In response to Robert Hartford's criticisms of his Spring 2006 Journal of Ayn Rand Studies essay, "Regarding Choice and the Foundations of Morality," Rasmussen argues against "the official" interpretation of Rand's ethics as resting on a basic "choice to live." Drawing from his work with Douglas Den Uyl, Rasmussen argues that Rand's metaethics is best understood in "biocentric," neo-Aristotelian terms: that human choice does not set the context in which it operates and that "man's life qua man" is the (...) natural end of human life. (shrink)