While Susan Moller Okin found much to celebrate in Rawls's earlier articulation of his theory of justice, she worried that his later turn to political liberalism evacuated his theory of its feminist potential. Here, I argue that we need not be so pessimistic: some of the strongest arguments for pursuing certain feminist projects can and should be made from within a politically liberal framework. In advancing this claim, I develop Rawls's idea of primary goods—namely those goods that all citizens need (...) qua citizens—as a key conceptual resource for arguing for the elimination of the gendered division of labor using public reason. Drawing on recent empirical literature, I point out that the gendered division of labor continues to distribute to women an unfair allocation of primary goods. I then advocate for a specific public policy, which I call Gender Egalitarian Daddy Quota—a parental leave policy that sets aside time specifically for fathers to encourage men and women to engage in childcare related leave-taking to similar extents—on the grounds that this policy would help secure a fairer distribution of primary goods, and thus is required as a matter of justice. (shrink)

Despite facing significant criticism for assigning human-like characteristics to artificial intelligence, phrases like “trustworthy AI” are still commonly used in official documents and ethical guidelines. It is essential to consider why institutions continue to use these phrases, even though they are controversial. This article critically evaluates various reasons for using these terms, including ontological, legal, communicative, and psychological arguments. All these justifications share the common feature of trying to justify the official use of terms like “trustworthy AI” by appealing to (...) the need to reflect pre-existing facts, be it the ontological status, ways of representing AI or legal categories. The article challenges the justifications for these linguistic practices observed in the field of AI ethics and AI science communication. In particular, it takes aim at two main arguments. The first is the notion that ethical discourse can move forward without the need for philosophical clarification, bypassing existing debates. The second justification argues that it’s acceptable to use anthropomorphic terms because they are consistent with the common concepts of AI held by non-experts—exaggerating this time the existing evidence and ignoring the possibility that folk beliefs about AI are not consistent and come closer to semi-propositional beliefs. The article sounds a strong warning against the use of human-centric language when discussing AI, both in terms of principle and the potential consequences. It argues that the use of such terminology risks shaping public opinion in ways that could have negative outcomes. (shrink)

We present a developmental perspective regarding the difference in perceptions toward privacy between young and old. Here, we introduce the notion of privacy conceptions, that is, the specific ideas that individuals have regarding what privacy actually is. The differences in privacy concerns often found between young and old are postulated as the result of the differences found in their privacy conceptions, which are subsequently linked to their developmental life stages. The data presented have been obtained through a questionnaire distributed among (...) adolescents, young adults, and adults and provide support for this developmental perspective. This study is one of the first to include adolescents when investigating the privacy concerns among young and old. The results show that the privacy conceptions held by adolescents indeed differ from those held by young adults and adults in keeping with the expectations as seen from a developmental perspective. In addition, the areas in which the differences in privacy conceptions are found also reflect the strongest relationship with concerns. As such, these findings present an alternative perspective to the commonly held notion that young people are less concerned about privacy. (shrink)

What if a blind person could 'see' with her ears? Thanks to Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs), blind people now have access to out-of-reach objects, a privilege reserved so far for the sighted. In this paper, we show that the philosophical debates have fundamentally been mislead to think that SSDs should be fitted among the existing senses or that they constitute a new sense. Contrary to the existing assumption that they get integrated at the sensory level, we present a new thesis (...) according to which they are not sensory, and get vertically integrated on the top of existing sensory abilities, from which they should be theoretically distinguished. (shrink)

Informed consent bears significant relevance as a legal basis for the processing of personal data and health data in the current privacy, data protection and confidentiality legislations. The consent requirements find their basis in an ideal of personal autonomy. Yet, with the recent advent of the global pandemic and the increased use of eHealth applications in its wake, a more differentiated perspective with regards to this normative approach might soon gain momentum. This paper discusses the compatibility of a moral duty (...) to share data for the sake of the improvement of healthcare, research, and public health with autonomy in the field of data protection, privacy and medical confidentiality. It explores several ethical-theoretical justifications for a duty of data sharing, and then reflects on how existing privacy, data protection, and confidentiality legislations could obstruct such a duty. Consent, as currently defined in the General Data Protection Regulation – a key legislative framework providing rules on the processing of personal data and data concerning health – and in the recommendation of the Council of Europe on the protection of health-related data – explored here as soft-law – turns out not to be indispensable from various ethical perspectives, while the requirement of consent in the General Data Protection Regulation and the recommendation nonetheless curtails the full potential of a duty to share medical data. Also other legal grounds as possible alternatives for consent seem to constitute an impediment. (shrink)

"Science and Theology in Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy" has two primary goals. The first is to establish Descartes' understanding of the primary purpose of the Meditations . The second is to determine the meaning, status, and purpose of the fundamental Cartesian theological and scientific principles employed in the Meditations. ;Descartes makes two distinct and explicit statements of the primary purpose of the Meditations. The first statement, made in the dedicatory epistle to the Meditations, claims that the primary purpose of (...) the Meditations is to establish the truth of the Christian religion on the basis of demonstrative proofs of the existence of God and of the immortality of the human soul. The second statement, made in the First Meditation, claims that the primary purpose of the Meditations is the establishment of "unshakable" foundations of the sciences. Descartes compels the reader to determine whether the Meditations is primarily a work of Christian theology or a scientific treatise dedicated to establishing the certitude and indubitability of its primary concepts. The dissertation defends the view that only if the Meditations' "theological" purpose is understood to be subordinate to and in the service of advancing its "foundational" purpose is a coherent interpretation of the Meditations possible. ;The second goal of the dissertation is advanced through the study of the fundamental Cartesian theological and scientific principles in relation to "Cartesian doubt." These principles are shown to be advanced and defended by Descartes in order to establish the foundations of a comprehensive science of nature directed toward the unification of the human and the non-human order. The sought for derivation of the human from the non-human order is shown, however, to be in principle impossible on precisely Cartesian grounds. Cartesian "First Philosophy" demonstrates that what is "first for us" and what is "first by nature" are necessarily the same. The foundations of the sciences prove to be the very experiences of pre-scientific consciousness that are regarded as "patently false" by Cartesian doubt. The dissertation concludes with the suggestion that the possibility of philosophy itself is grounded in the unity and difference between pre-scientific "awareness" and scientific "cognition.". (shrink)

In this contribution, we identify and clarifysome distinctions we believe are useful inestablishing the reliability of information onthe Internet. We begin by examining some of thesalient features of information that go intothe determination of reliability. In so doing,we argue that we need to distinguish contentand pedigree criteria of reliability and thatwe need to separate issues of reliability ofinformation from the issues of theaccessibility and the usability of information.We then turn to an analysis of some commonfailures to recognize reliability orunreliability.

Nie war Freundschaft populärer als heute. Sie gilt als entscheidende Zutat für ein gutes und glückliches Leben. Viele haben auch viele Freunde - jedoch will sich das versprochene Glück nicht so recht einstellen. Woran liegt das? Björn Vedder verknüpft in seiner Zeitdiagnose der Freundschaft philosophische Überlegungen mit der Analyse von popkulturellem Material sowie literarischen Klassikern. Er zeigt, was Freundschaft heute bedeutet, wie sie (auch zu uns selbst) gelingen kann und warum Facebook-Freunde echte Freunde sind. Dabei nimmt er die pessimistischen (...) Kulturkritiken der Gegenwart ernst, teilt deren Defätismus aber nicht, sondern zeigt Wege aus den Pathologien der modernen Freundschaft auf. (shrink)

This article discusses some rather formal characteristics of possible obligations to enhance. Obligations to enhance can exist in the absence of good moral reasons. If obligation and duty however are considered as synonyms, the enhancement involved must be morally desirable in some respect. Since enhancers and enhanced can, but need not coincide, advertency is appropriate regarding the question who exactly is addressed by an obligation or a duty to enhance: the person on whom the enhancing treatment is performed, or the (...) controller or the operator of the enhancement. Especially, the position of the operator is easily overlooked. The exact functionality of the specific enhancement, is all-important, not only for the acceptability of a specific form of enhancement, but also for its chances of success for becoming a duty or morally obligatory. Finally and most importantly, however, since obligations can exist without good moral reasons, there can be obligations to enhance that are not morally right, let alone desirable. (shrink)

This rejoinder is a reply to the authors' criticisms of Vedder's original review of Norms of Liberty that seeks to clarify why the difficulties present in their attempt to establish the modern right to liberty on the foundation of Greek nobility and Aristotelian eudaemonism are insuperable.

In this article is presented a reading of Heidegger in relation to the conception of desire, and its relation to various terms he uses frequently. I argue that the genesis of desire lies in the gap between the fullness of possibility and the poverty of actualization; that inauthentic desire aims at presence, possession, actualization (always insufficient); and that authentic desire aims at the conservation of the possibility-character of being. I also pay attention to the temporality of desire; to the analogy (...) between Kant's emphasis on respect for the law one has freely postulated and Heidegger's emphasis on Dasein's subjection to the possibilities it projects; to possibility as original abundance; and, in principle, to the turning in which desire is evoked in the event of granting, rather than simply produced in the act of projection. Special attention is paid on the German word 'Verlangen', which is related etymologically to the English 'long for', which stands for wanting something very much. But the word is also connected to the word 'long' which is important to get a grip on the notion of desire in Heidegger. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a strange sensory blending: synaesthetes report experiences of colours or tastes associated with particular sounds or words. This volume presents new essays by scientists and philosophers exploring what such cases can tell us about the nature of perception and its boundaries with illusion and imagination.

In this paper, we attempt to provide starting points for a discussion on immediate and longer term consequences of COVID-19-induced uses of digital technologies for the distinction of the public an...

A strong claim, often found in the literature, is that it is impossible to categorize perceptual properties unless one possesses the related concepts. The evidence from visual perception reviewed in this paper however questions this claim: Concepts, at least canonically defined, are ill-suited to explain perceptual categorisation, which is a fast, and crucially a largely involuntary and unconscious process, which rests on quickly updated probabilistic calculations. I suggest here that perceptual categorisation rests on non-conceptual sorting principles. This changes the claim (...) that categorisation cannot occur without concepts: It does not preclude that the concepts remain necessary for categorisation, but opens the possibility that they are not and that those sorting principles could be here sufficient. (shrink)

A common sense view is illustrated by Doubting Thomas, and surfaces in many philosophical and psychological writings : Touching is better than seeing. But can we make sense of this privilege? We rule out that it could mean that touch is more informative than vision, more ‘objective’ or more directly in contact with reality. Instead, we propose that touch offers not a perceptual, but a metacognitive advantage: touch is not more objective than vision but rather provides comparatively higher subjective certainty.

The leading question of this article is the way Gadamer interpreted Schleiermacher. Already in Truth and Method Gadamer interpreted Schleiermacher trough the eyes of Dilthey. This resulted in the idea that Schleiermacher was interested in restoring the original meaning of a text. Gadamer never abandoned this psychological interpretation of Schleiermacher. This is a result from the fact that Gadamer did not involve Schleiermacher’s dialectic in his hermeneutics. Because of this Gadamer never mentioned the kinship between Schleiermacher and his own theory (...) of interpretation. In Schleiermacher dialectic and hermeneutics are connected in the same way text constitution and text interpretation are connected. The art of speaking and of understanding are joined together in such a way that they imply each other. They are linked to each other like speaking and hearing . This means that a text is always the result of both. The other, the reader, the interpreter is already there in the constitution of the text. Schleiermacher writes, as a predecessor of Gadamer, in his Dialektik “The more a text is dialogic, the more complete it is” . In this way constitution and interpretation of a text are dependent on each other. By emphasizing the dialogical structure of our knowledge, Schleiermacher opens the way to a broader insight into the world. Through dialogue we can go beyond the limits of our selves and attain a relative universality. We learn to see things from different points of view. We can find traces of this in Gadamer’s hermeneutics, but Gadamer was not able to see that. (shrink)

The last couple of years have seen a rapid growth of interest in the study of crossmodal correspondences – the tendency for our brains to preferentially associate certain features or dimensions of stimuli across the senses. By now, robust empirical evidence supports the existence of numerous crossmodal correspondences, affecting people’s performance across a wide range of psychological tasks – in everything from the redundant target effect paradigm through to studies of the Implicit Association Test, and from speeded discrimination/classification tasks through (...) to unspeeded spatial localisation and temporal order judgment tasks. However, one question that has yet to receive a satisfactory answer is whether crossmodal correspondences automatically affect people’s performance , as opposed to reflecting more of a strategic, or top-down, phenomenon. Here, we review the latest research on the topic of crossmodal correspondences to have addressed this issue. We argue that answering the question will require researchers to be more precise in terms of defining what exactly automaticity entails. Furthermore, one’s answer to the automaticity question may also hinge on the answer to a second question: Namely, whether crossmodal correspondences are all ‘of a kind’, or whether instead there may be several different kinds of crossmodal mapping . Different answers to the automaticity question may then be revealed depending on the type of correspondence under consideration. We make a number of suggestions for future research that might help to determine just how automatic crossmodal correspondences really are. (shrink)

The paper aims at reconsidering the problem of “practical knowledge” at a proper level of generality, and at showing the role that personal abilities play in it. The notion of “practical knowledge” has for long been the focus of debates both in philosophy and related areas in psychology. It has been wholly captured by debates about ‘knowledge’ and has more recently being challenged in its philosophical foundations as targeting a specific attitude of ‘knowing-how’. But what are the basic facts accounted (...) in the “knowing-how” debate? The problem is much more fundamental than knowledge: it addresses the need for an explanation of intelligent or guided behaviour, that could account for some distinctive aspects involved in the performance, but without positing too much beyond the observable actions. This is what I call the problem of “practical mastery” (PM). PM raises three questions: what kind of behaviour require such an explanation? What is distinctive about practical mastery? What does it consist in: a form of knowledge, or something else? I argue here that the notion of ability offers a less restrictive, though no less powerful answer to these three questions. It can offer an independent objective grasp on the subjects of attribution. I conclude that the notion is central both to account for common-sense psychology and to understand what experimental psychology actually measures and tests for. (shrink)

Many policies and ethical guidelines recommend developing “trustworthy AI”. We argue that developing morally trustworthy AI is not only unethical, as it promotes trust in an entity that cannot be trustworthy, but it is also unnecessary for optimal calibration. Instead, we show that reliability, exclusive of moral trust, entails the appropriate normative constraints that enable optimal calibration and mitigate the vulnerability that arises in high-stakes hybrid decision-making environments, without also demanding, as moral trust would, the anthropomorphization of AI and thus (...) epistemically dubious behavior. The normative demands of reliability for inter-agential action are argued to be met by an analogue to procedural metacognitive competence (i.e., the ability to evaluate the quality of one’s own informational states to regulate subsequent action). Drawing on recent empirical findings that suggest providing reliability scores (e.g., F1-scores) to human decision-makers improves calibration in the AI system, we argue that reliability scores provide a good index of competence and enable humans to determine how much they wish to rely on the system. (shrink)

Anerkennung ist ein Schlüsselbegriff unserer Zeit geworden. Gesellschaftliche Konflikte werden von den Beteiligten als Kämpfe um Anerkennung beschrieben. Unterdrückte und benachteiligte gesellschaftliche Gruppen fordern nicht nur materielle Besserstellung, sondern sie ringen auch um soziale Anerkennung. Indem sie das tun, beziehen sie sich zugleich auf eine normative Ordnung, die regelt, wofür in einer Gesellschaft Anerkennung zugewiesen wird oder wofür man mit Missachtung rechnen muss. Im Band wird die zentrale Gegenwartskategorie vor ihrem historischen Hintergrund erschlossen. Die Autoren beleuchten Veränderungen sozialer Anerkennungsbeziehungen in (...) den Feldern Arbeit und Konsum, Recht, Medien und Familie und fragen nach der normativen Legitimation von Anerkennungsansprüchen. Ein Wandel wird sichtbar: Tradierte Anerkennungsformen geraten unter Druck, während um die Anerkennung neuer Ansprüche gerungen wird. (shrink)

Big data and Machine learning Techniques are reshaping the way in which food safety risk assessment is conducted. The ongoing ‘datafication’ of food safety risk assessment activities and the progressive deployment of probabilistic models in their practices requires a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of these advances. In particular, the low level of trust in EU food safety risk assessment framework highlighted in 2019 by an EU-funded survey could be exacerbated by novel methods of analysis. The variety of processed (...) data raises unique questions regarding the interplay of multiple regulatory systems alongside food safety legislation. Provisions aiming to preserve the confidentiality of data and protect personal information are juxtaposed to norms prescribing the public disclosure of scientific information. This research is intended to provide guidance for data governance and data ownership issues that unfold from the ongoing transformation of the technical and legal domains of food safety risk assessment. Following the reconstruction of technological advances in data collection and analysis and the description of recent amendments to food safety legislation, emerging concerns are discussed in light of the individual, collective and social implications of the deployment of cutting-edge Big Data collection and analysis techniques. Then, a set of principle-based recommendations is proposed by adapting high-level principles enshrined in institutional documents about Artificial Intelligence to the realm of food safety risk assessment. The proposed set of recommendations adopts Safety, Accountability, Fairness, Explainability, Transparency as core principles (SAFETY), whereas Privacy and data protection are used as a meta-principle. (shrink)

Humans are poorer at identifying smells and communicating about them, compared to othersensory domains. They also cannot easily organise odour sensations in a general conceptual space like with colours. We challenge the conclusion that there is no olfactory conceptual map at all. Instead we propose a new framework, with local conceptual spaces.

Questions regarding the moral responsibility of Internet accessand service providers relating to information on the Internetcall for a reassessment of the ways in which we think aboutattributing blame, guilt, and duties of reparation andcompensation. They invite us to borrow something similar to theidea of strict liability from the legal sphere and to introduceit in morality and ethical theory. Taking such a category in thedistribution of responsibilities outside the domain of law andintroducing it into ethics, however, is a difficult thing. Doingso (...) seems to conflict with some broadly shared and deeply feltintuitions regarding the individuality of responsibility and therelationship between responsibility and guilt. These convictionscoincide with some basic ideas in Kantian moral theory and theascriptive theory based on these ideas. Nevertheless, theproblems to which the proposed liabilities / responsibilitiesrelate are so serious that they do not seem to leave room foraloofness. At least, they encourage us to reconsider the idea ofstrict liability carefully and to assess its merits. (shrink)