It is argued that “human-centredness” will be an important characteristic of systems that learn tasks from human users, as the difficulties in inductive inference rule out learning without human assistance. The aim of “programming by example” is to create systems that learn how to perform tasks from their human users by being shown examples of what is to be done. Just as the user creates a learning environment for the system, so the system provides a teaching opportunity for the user, (...) and emphasis is placed as much on facilitating successful teaching as on incorporating techniques of machine learning. If systems can “learn” repetitive tasks, their users will have the power to decide for themselves which parts of their jobs should be automated, and teach the system how to do them — reducing their dependence on intermediaries such as system designers and programmers.This paper presents principles for programming by example derived from experience in creating four prototype learners: for technical drawing, text editing, office tasks, and robot assembly. A teaching metaphor (a) enables the user to demonstrate a task by performing it manually, (b) helps to explain the learner's limited capabilities in terms of a persona, and (c) allows users to attribute intentionality. Tasks are represented procedurally, and augmented with constraints. Suitable mechanisms for attention focusing are necessary in order to control inductive search. Hidden features of a task should be made explicit so that the learner need not embark on the huge search entailed by hypothesizing missing steps. (shrink)

Wikipedia is a goldmine of information; not just for its many readers, but also for the growing community of researchers who recognize it as a resource of exceptional scale and utility. It represents a vast investment of manual effort and judgment: a huge, constantly evolving tapestry of concepts and relations that is being applied to a host of tasks. This article provides a comprehensive description of this work. It focuses on research that extracts and makes use of the concepts, relations, (...) facts and descriptions found in Wikipedia, and organizes the work into four broad categories: applying Wikipedia to natural language processing; using it to facilitate information retrieval and information extraction; and as a resource for ontology building. The article addresses how Wikipedia is being used as is, how it is being improved and adapted, and how it is being combined with other structures to create entirely new resources. We identify the research groups and individuals involved, and how their work has developed in the last few years. We provide a comprehensive list of the open-source software they have produced. (shrink)

This is a work of normative political philosophy that seeks to identify the legitimate goals of public education policy in liberal democratic states and the implications of those goals for arguments about public funding and regulation of religious schools. ;The thesis of the first section is that the inferiority of certain types of religious school as instruments of civic education in a pluralist state would not suffice to justify liberal states in a general refusal to fund such schools. States with (...) no position on the value of autonomy for the good life would have to balance civic concerns against the preferences of religious parents who want to send their children to narrowly religious schools to shield them from exposure to ethical diversity. But, I argue, the principles of liberal democracy actually presuppose the value of autonomy. ;In the second section, I develop a conception of ethical autonomy and argue for its adoption as a public value. Autonomy, understood to entail distinctively rational reflection that must nonetheless inevitably be situated within an unchosen cultural context, can be publicly justified as having instrumental value to all persons in their quest to live a good life. And I defend the legitimacy of adopting autonomy as a goal of public education policy against a series of objections, most notably those grounded in claims about parental rights and fairness to traditional cultures. ;In the third section, I explore the implications of the autonomy goal for religious schools. After defending secular public schools from several prominent criticisms, I consider the argument that religious secondary schools are unsuitable to deliver education for autonomy because they provide children with inadequate exposure to and rational engagement with ethical diversity: I conclude that states cannot justify prohibiting or even presumptively denying public funding to all religious secondary schools, but that there is need for extensive public regulation. Finally, I argue that religious primary schools should be treated differently because of the particular developmental needs and capacities of pre-adolescents. Religious primary schools whose pedagogy is non-authoritarian are specially suitable to lay the foundations for autonomy in young children from religious families. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical issues raised by the pricing of priceless goods. Priceless goods are defined as ones that are widely held to have some special non-market value that makes them unsuited for buying and selling. One subset of priceless goods isprescription drugs—particularly life-saving and life-enhancing ones. Drug makers are under pressure to price their medicines responsibly, which means to restrain their prices (and profits). However, this article argues that it is precisely because life-saving and life-enhancing medicines are priceless (...) that it is especially urgent to leave companies free to charge market prices for them. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers and social scientists have turned their attention to the epistemological shifts provoked in established sciences by their incorporation of big data techniques. There has been less focus on the forms of epistemology proper to the investigation of algorithms themselves, understood as scientific objects in their own right. This article, based upon 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Russian data scientists, addresses this lack through an investigation of the specific forms of epistemic attention paid to algorithms by data scientists. (...) On the one hand, algorithms are unlike other mathematical objects in that they are not subject to disputation through deductive proof. On the other hand, unlike concrete things in the world such as particles or organisms, algorithms cannot be installed as the objects of experimental systems directly. They can only be evaluated in their functioning as components of extended computational assemblages; on their own, they are inert. As a consequence, the epistemological coding proper to this evaluation does not turn on truth and falsehood but rather on the efficiency of a given algorithmic assemblage. This article suggests that understanding the forms of algorithmic rationality employed in such inquiry is crucial for charting the place of data science within the contemporary academy and knowledge economy more generally. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

This discussion paper continues the debate over risk‐related standards of mental competence which appears in Bioethics 5. Dan Brock there defends an approach to mental competence in patients which defines it as being relative to differing standards, more or less rigorous depending on the degree of risk involved in proposed treatments. But Mark Wicclair raises a problem for this approach: if significantly different levels of risk attach, respectively, to accepting and refusing the same treatment, then it is possible, on this (...) account, for a patient to be considered competent to accept, but not refuse, the treatment, or vice versa. I argue that this puzzle does not constitute a genuine problem for a risk‐related standard. To this end I focus on the situation where, of two mutually exclusive options, one is riskier, but offering more pronounced benefit, while the other is safer, but offering less benefit. I argue for this proposition: it can take far less insight to know that the safe option is good than to know that the risky option is better. Now say one is actually informed enough to know that the safe option is good, but not enough to know whether the risky option is better; in such a case one is competent to say yes to that first option (the safe one), but not to say yes to the other. (I argue in passing that Pascal's Wager can be interpreted as having precisely this deliberative structure.) I thus conclude that cases do indeed exist where one can be competent to say yes but not no, or vice versa; and that it is thus not an anomaly in the risk‐related standard that it entails the existence of such cases. (shrink)

In the canonical view of the corporation, management is the agent of the owners of the corporation-the stockholders-and, as such, has a fiduciary duty to manage the corporation in their best interests. Most business ethicists condemn this arrangement as morally indefensible because it fails to respect the right of other corporate constituencies or “stakeholders” to self-deterrnination. By contrast, the modern agency theory of the firm provides a defense of this arrangement on the grounds that it is the result of stakeholders’ (...) right to self-determination. This paper uses the exarnple of managers’ fiduciary duty to stockholders to argue that different normative judgrnents often mask empirical disagreements. (shrink)

Moralists tend to have a low opinion of self-interest. It is seen as force that has to be controlled or transcended. This essay tries to get beyond the bifurcation of human motivations into self-interest (which is seen as vicious or non-moral) and concern for others (which is virtuous). It argues that there are some surprising affinities between self-interest and morality. Notably the principal force that checks self-interest is self-interest itself. Consequently, self-interest often coincides with and reinforces the commands of morality (...) and promotes civility and consideration for others. Therefore it provides us with resources for constructing a more humane and civil society. (shrink)

An intro. to Didaktic (the heart of thinking about teaching/teacher educ in Germany) for English-speaking readers, drawing on a range of writings assoc. w/ this tradition. Throws light on assumptions, characteristics, & weaknesses of curriculum thought.

This volume brings scholarly attention to the Midwest and to how broader concerns of environmental ethics manifest. Consisting of eight essays, a wide range of topics is covered, such as agrarian ethics and Stoicism, the Dakota access pipeline and Indigenous women's activism, philosophy of law and species classification, environmental justice and the Flint water crisis, hog farming and anti-microbial drug resistance, science education standards and climate change education, virtue ethics and ecological restoration, and environmental pragmatism and the Clear Water Act; (...) and more. Each accessibly written chapter brings multidisciplinary complexity to bear on this complex region. The authors include philosophers working in environmental ethics and other subfields of philosophy, and together with scholars in fields such as environmental sociology, American Indian studies, and environmental studies, they provide a fresh and necessary perspective on the American Midwest. (shrink)

he design-based approach is a methodology for investigating mechanisms capable of generating mental phenomena, whether introspectively or externally observed, and whether they occur in humans, other animals or robots. The study of designs satisfying requirements for autonomous agency can provide new deep theoretical insights at the information processing level of description of mental mechanisms. Designs for working systems (whether on paper or implemented on computers) can systematically explicate old explanatory concepts and generate new concepts that allow new and richer interpretations (...) of human phenomena. To illustrate this, some aspects of human grief are analysed in terms of a particular information processing architecture being explored in our research group. We do not claim that this architecture is part of the causal structure of the human mind; rather, it represents an early stage in the iterative search for a deeper and more general architecture, capable of explaining more phenomena. However even the current early design provides an interpretative ground for some familiar phenomena, including characteristic features of certain emotional episodes, particularly the phenomenon of perturbance (a partial or total loss of control of attention). The paper attempts to expound and illustrate the design-based approach to cognitive science and philosophy, to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the approach in generating interpretative possibilities, and to provide first steps towards an information processing account of `perturbant', emotional episodes. (shrink)

Reading W.K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” in evidentialist terms is standard. However, evidentialist accounts face several longstanding interpretive issues over the Shipowner Story and Clifford’s Motto. This article defends an evidentialist reading. But what distinguishes it from others is that it interprets “The Ethics of Belief” according to Clifford’s “first principle of natural ethics”, a principle he articulates in prior writings, and which comes down to social trust. I reorient Clifford’s evidentialism by returning to his core moral principle and (...) argue that doing so can establish coherence across Clifford’s writings on ethics and can help resolve the relevant interpretive issues. (shrink)

An article explicating Wittgenstein's logical atomism and surveying the relevant secondary literature.

Within the limited, but growing, literature on small business ethics almost no attention has been paid to the issue of social responsibility within ethnic minority businesses. Using a social capital perspective, this paper reports on an exploratory and qualitative investigation into the attitudinal and behavioural manifestations of CSR within small and medium-sized Asian owned or managed firms in the U.K., with particular reference to the distinctive factors motivating organisational responses. It offers alternative explanations of entrepreneurial behaviour and suggests areas for (...) further research. (shrink)

This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence.

The paper argues that Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frege and Russell's assertion sign are, a bottom, criticisms of a common flaw in these philosophers' early conceptions of the proposition. Each philosopher offers an account of the proposition that *seems* to suggest that a sentence cannot get so far as to say something without the addition of the assertion sign. This leads to the mistaken idea that there is a coherent notion of "logical assertion.".

The relationship between mind and necessity is one of the major points of difficulty for the interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. At times Timaeus seems to say the demiurge is omnipotent in his creation, and at other times seems to say he is limited by pre-existing matter. Most interpretations take one of the two sides, but this paper proposes a novel approach to interpreting this issue which resolves the difficulty. This paper suggests that in his speech Timaeus presents two hypothetical models (...) of creation, one with an omnipotent demiurge and one where he is limited by matter, so as to investigate their theoretical and empirical validity. Further, he shows that each model is ultimately an inadequate explanation of the first principles of the cosmos. Timaeus’ speech is therefore properly understood to be aporetic: it leaves its listeners aware of the difficulties inherent in the two models of creation, but without a more viable alternative. (shrink)

This historical study investigates Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of logic and language, as it is presented in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . The study makes a case for the Tractatus as an insightful critique of the philosophies of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege-the Founding Fathers of analytic philosophy.

Introduction -- The pre-text : the dialectical origins of Anselm's argument -- The text -- Proslogion -- Pro insipiente -- Responsio -- Commentary on the Proslogion -- Anselm's defence and the Unum argumentum -- The medieval reception -- The modern reception -- Anselm's argument today -- Conclusion: The significance of Anselm's argument.

This book examines the goals of civic education in liberal democracy, and demonstrates how we can recognize the value of the kinds of character formation that civic education has traditionally involved without losing the portion of the truth that can be found in the orthodox view which favors critical autonomy.

What is at stake philosophically for Russell in espousing logicism? I argue that Russell's aims are chiefly epistemological and mathematical in nature. Russell develops logicism in order to give an account of the nature of mathematics and of mathematical knowledge that is compatible with what he takes to be the uncontroversial status of this science as true, certain and exact. I argue for this view against the view of Peter Hylton, according to which Russell uses logicism to defend the unconditional (...) truth of mathematics against various Idealist positions that treat mathematics as true only partially or only relative to a particular point of view. (shrink)

Introduction -- Leibniz, historicism, and the plague of Islam -- Kant, Islam, and the preservation of boundaries -- Herder's Arab fantasies -- Keeping the Turks out of islam : Goethe's Ottoman plan -- Friedrich Schlegel and the emptying of Islam -- Hegel and the disappearance of Islam -- Marx the Moor -- Nietzsche's peace with Islam.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Rather than follow along the lines of many scholarly interpretations of Patañjali's "Yoga-Sūtra," which views Yoga as a radical separation or isolation of "spirit" or pure consciousness (puruṣa) from "matter" (prakṛti), this essay suggests that the "Yoga-Sūtra" seeks to "unite" or integrate these two principles by correcting a basic misalignment between them. Yoga thus does not advocate the abandonment or condemnation of the world, but supports a stance that enables one to live more fully in the world without being enslaved (...) by worldly identification. (shrink)

This paper concerns the attempt to formulate an empirical version of the problem of evil, and the attempt to counter this version by what is known as ‘sceptical theism’. My concern is to assess what is actually achieved in these attempts. To this end I consider the debate between them against the backdrop of William Rowe's distinction between expanded standard theism and restricted standard theism (which I label E and R respectively). My claim is that the empirical version significantly fails (...) to challenge E in the way that a workable logical version would; and that sceptical theism significantly fails to defend R in the way that a workable theodicy would. My conclusion is that sceptical theism and the empirical argument play a significantly more limited role in the debate over evil than the arguments they are supposed to replace. (Published Online August 11 2004). (shrink)

Descartes convinced himself that the safest way was to ‘begin’ by doubting everything… Genuine doubt does not talk of beginning with doubting. The pragmatist knows that doubt is an art which has to be acquired with difficulty; and his genuine doubts will go much further than those of any Cartesian.In 1906, while ruminating on the reality of God, Peirce considers again Descartes’ attempt to doubt everything. Such a task is the preliminary to Descartes’ project of first philosophy, and that project (...) aims to discover metaphysical truths or the first causes of things. In response to Descartes, Peirce returns to a claim that he had been defending since... (shrink)

This book examines a series of common metaphors in the works of Derrida and the Sufism of Muhyddin Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be of the most influential figures in Islamic thought. The author addresses the significant absence of attention on the relationship between Islam and Derrida and also provides a deconstructive perspective on Ibn 'Arabi.

Summary For Thomas Edison, experiencing a failure did not mean that he had failed. Through an examination of the process that led to his invention of the carbon microphone, I argue that his positive approach to failure contributed both to his success as an inventor and to the functional success of his inventions. Edison's laboratory notebooks and legal testimony reveal that his seemingly erratic approach and reliance on trial and error methods in fact had a consistent direction and a rational (...) basis, well suited to the under-determined problems he faced. The outcome of this process, the carbon microphone, contributed significantly to the commercial success of the telephone and remains in use today. Thomas Hughes has observed that nineteenth century inventors made use of the unexpected behaviour of their inventions as sources of novel phenomena to exploit in new inventions. This paper identifies other ways in which Edison made use of failure and proposes that, paradoxically, the success of technological artefacts can be determined by the thoroughness with which failure is pursued in their creation. It also notes a parallel between Edison's instrumentalizing of failure and the way in which recent philosophers of science have proposed that scientists should make use of error. (shrink)

As a young bachelor of theology William of Ockham found himself under attack for—among other things—views he had expressed regarding the Aristotelian accident of quantity and the related question of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. This essay focuses on Ockham’s conception of academic freedom as it was articulated in defense of his own position. Against fellow schoolmen who mistake their own magisterial opinions for settled Catholic dogma, Ockham insists on the latitude that is afforded scholars in matters that have not (...) yet been definitively determined by the Roman Church. Hence when it comes to the precise alignment of the eucharistic accidents, until such time as the Roman Pontiff hands down an official determination, Ockham contends that he is under no obligation to yield to the pressures of envious academics. The younger Ockham, who pointedly refrains from accusing his opponents of heresy, simply asks that they would exhibit the same restraint. (shrink)

I argue that religious elementary schools whose pedagogical methods satisfy the principle of rational authority have distinctive advantages over secular elementary schools for the purpose of laying the foundations for ethical autonomy in the children of religious parents. Insights from developmental psychology bolster the argument from conceptual analysis. Before children have the cognitive capacities to engage in authentically autonomous reflection, their long-run interest in developing autonomy is best served by developing their understanding of and provisional identity within their primary culture (...) and by encouraging a limited form of ethical reasoning within the framework provided by that secure cultural identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In his influential study, The Harvest of Medieval Theology, Heiko Oberman had drawn two broad categories by which to classify the late medieval conception of Holy Scripture and the Catholic Tradition. The first, Tradition I, held Scripture to be the sole source of Catholic doctrine such that Tradition was equated with the exegetical contribution of the holy doctors. What Oberman deemed Tradition II maintained that Holy Scripture is not (...) sufficient for the determination of Catholic doctrine such that it needed to be supplemented by a separate extra-scriptural source of revelation. And it is within Tradition II that Oberman placed William of Ockham. That is to say Ockham was deemed a proponent of a so-called ‘two-sources’ principle of divine revelation. In fact, Oberman went on to say that, “we may conclude that Occam is not just playing with the two-sources theory but that he indeed believes in the solidity of the argument in its totality.”1 Influential as Oberman’s theory has been over the past forty years, however, the strict categorization of ‘one source’ over and against ‘two-sources’ may indeed be detrimental to an assessment of Ockham’s views on the authoritative determination of Catholic doctrine.This essay will focus primarily on Ockham’s conception of biblical authority relative to that of extra-scriptural sources, most notably papal authority. We will also look at two other fourteenth-century Franciscans, his predecessor John Duns Scotus and his successor William Woodford. This will provide us with an opportunity to assess the ways in which different Franciscan theologians handled the nuances of doctrinal authority in light of the specific concerns they faced. In the case of Scotus such questions were less polemically charged than they were for Ockham and Woodford. They usually came up within the confines of his Ordinatio and pertained to doctrines that Scotus willingly embraced even as he tried to make sense of their formulation. Ockham and Woodford, on the other hand, faced flesh and blood opponents in fierce debates: Ockham against the papacy and Woodford against the English Wycliffites. In an era when the precise relationship between authoritative sources was not very well defined, we will see these latter two Franciscans take different tacks as they addressed the exigencies of the moment, thereby highlighting the flexibility of Franciscan views of scriptural and extra-scriptural authority in the fourteenth century.First, though, we can offer some perspective on Oberman’s one source/two sources dichotomy. Oberman was one among many scholars—Protestant and Catholic—charting a grand history of Scripture and Tradition in the run-up to the Second Vatican Council. Much scholarly interest was specifically focused on what the Council of Trent had meant in its formal statement of April 8, 1546 when referring to “the truth and discipline [of the Gospel] contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions.”2 In an effort to draw out the full intention of this statement scholars turned to an earlier draft to see if it could further illuminate what the Tridentine fathers meant. The earlier draft spoke of the truth and discipline of the Gospel being contained partly in the written books and partly in the unwritten traditions. In light of this fact scholars asked whether the final edition’s use of ‘and’ meant that all Catholic doctrine comes down fully in Scripture and fully in the traditions of the Church, such that either form of transmission sufficiently communicates this doctrine; or does the ‘and’ carry the weight of the earlier ‘partly’ such that Scripture contains only a portion of the truth and thus must be supplemented by unwritten traditions?Did the change from ‘partly … partly’ to ‘and’ signify a change in meaning? Not according to Oberman who was sure that the Council intended to affirm that Scripture does not contain all doctrinal truths.3 Whereas George Tavard concluded just the.. (shrink)

Introduction to Critical Legal Theory provides an accessible introduction to the study of law and legal theory. It covers all the seminal movements in classical, modern and postmodern legal thought, engaging the reader with the ideas of jurists as diverse as Aristotle, Hobbes and Kant, Marx, Foucault and Dworkin. At the same time, it impresses the interdisciplinary nature of critical legal thought, introducing the reader to the philosophy, the economics and the politics of law. This new edition focuses even more (...) intently upon the narrative aspect of critical legal thinking and the re-emergence of a distinctive legal humanism, as well as the various related challenges posed by our 'new' world order. Introduction to Critical Theory is a comprehensive text for both students and teachers of legal theory, jurisprudence and related subjects. (shrink)

Many have wondered about the similarity in name of American critical realism and the movement of the same name begun by Roy Bhaskar. The figure of Maurice Mandelbaum complicates the relationship, not only due to his career bridging the two movements but also Mandelbaum's concern not only with traditional concerns of American critical realism (epistemology and philosophy of science) but the nature of society, the nature of social explanation, and naturalism. This volume reflects both on Mandelbaum's own career and the (...) relation of his thought to Bhaskar's critical realism. By examining Mandelbaum's commitments to phenomenology within critical realism, as well as his goal to enlighten social scientific and above all historiographical categories, it is possible to see how Mandelbaum went beyond the scientific realism of his predecessors. At the same time, a fruitful comparison with Bhaskar's and others' thought is undertaken by examining mandelbaum's solutions to the problems of the ontology of sociology and social laws, the dynamics of cultural change and the overriding master narratives that govern late capitalism. By explaining Mandelbaum's scrupulous attempt to address the horrors of the twentieth century, it is possible to appreciate his significance for the twenty-first. A timely and important book, Maurice Mandelbaum and American Critical Realism is essential reading for all serious students of critical realism and twentieth century philosophy. (shrink)

The topic of fundraising ethics has received remarkably little scholarly attention. In this paper, we review the circumstances that precipitated a major review of fundraising regulation in the UK in 2015 and describe the ethical codes that now underpin the advice and guidance available to fundraisers to guide them in their work. We focus particularly on the Code of Fundraising Practice. We then explore the purpose and rationale of similar codes and the process through which such codes are typically constructed. (...) We highlight potential weaknesses with the current approach adopted in fundraising and conclude by offering a series of normative perspectives on fundraising ethics that could be used to review and revise the current code and potentially improve the quality of future fundraising decision making. (shrink)

_The Companion to John Wyclif_ contains eight substantial essays which cover all the major areas of Wyclif's life and thought. Each essay provides timely research that is thoroughly grounded in the primary texts while making use of the most recent secondary literature. Essays include: life and career; logic and metaphysics; Trinity and Christology; ecclesiology and politics; the Christian life; sacraments; the Bible; his opponents. There is no comparable book available today.

Ian James Kidd ABSTRACT: This paper presents two challenges faced by many initiatives that try to diversify undergraduate philosophy curricula, both intellectually and demographically. Trade-offs involve making difficult decisions to prioritise some values over others. Backfires involve unintended consequences contrary to the aims and values of diversity initiatives, including ….