Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in utilitarian ways, trying to cause as little overall damage as possible. These trolley dilemmas have gained renewed attention over the past few years, especially due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles. We conducted a set of experiments in which participants experienced modified trolley dilemmas as drivers in virtual reality environments. Participants had to make decisions between (...) driving in one of two lanes where different obstacles came into view. Eventually, the participants had to decide which of the objects they would crash into. Obstacles included a variety of human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes. Furthermore, the influence of sidewalks as potential safe harbors and a condition implicating self-sacrifice were tested. Results showed that participants, in general, decided in a utilitarian manner, sparing the highest number of avatars possible with a limited influence by the other variables. Derived from these findings, which are in line with the utilitarian approach in moral decision making, it will be argued for an obligatory ethics setting implemented in ADVs. (shrink)

In this article, I critically assess Hélène Landemore's new model of Open Democracy, asking whether it requires of citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of the mini-public. To address this question, I, first, discuss three institutional mechanisms in Open Democracy, all of which can be read to grant citizens democratic control. I argue that neither the capacity to authorize the selection mechanism (random sortition), nor the lottocratic conception of political equality, nor the self-selection mechanisms of Landemore's model deliver the (...) form of control that would insulate Open Democracy from the charge of blind deference. I then discuss the direct democracy mechanisms that Landemore incorporates into her model. Although these devices grant citizens control and, by extension, offer the resources for repudiating the charge of blind deference, they also, I argue, subvert the logic of Landemore's lottocratic model, rendering Open Democracy predictably unstable. Given the deliberative asymmetries between the mini-public and the citizenry, a high frequency of bottom-up challenges is to be expected that would throw the whole system into jeopardy. Thus, the challenge for lottocrats is to show how democratic control can be achieved in a lottocratic system without undermining the benefits of the legislature by lot. (shrink)

Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...) rather than blind, integrating developments from contemporary research on creativity. On that basis, I discuss three compatibility arguments that have been used to answer the critique. These arguments do not deny guided variation but insist that an important analogy exists nonetheless. These compatibility arguments all fail, even though they do so for different reasons: trivialisation, conceptual confusion, and lack of evidence respectively. Revisiting the debate in this manner not only allows us to see where exactly a ‘Darwinian’ account of creative hypothesis formation goes wrong, but also to see that the debate is not about factual issues, but about the interpretation of these factual issues in Darwinian terms. (shrink)

The paper asks under what conditions deductive reasoning transmits justification from its premises to its conclusion. It argues that both standard externalist and standard internalist accounts of this phenomenon fail. The nature of this failure is taken to indicate the way forward: basic forms of deductive reasoning must justify by being instances of 'blind but blameless' reasoning. Finally, the paper explores the suggestion that an inferentialist account of the logical constants can help explain how such reasoning is possible.

Animal ethicists have recently debated the ethical questions raised by disenhancing animals to improve their welfare. Here, we focus on the particular case of breeding hens for commercial egg-laying systems to become blind, in order to benefit their welfare. Many people find breeding blind hens intuitively repellent, yet ‘welfare-only’ positions appear to be committed to endorsing this possibility if it produces welfare gains. We call this the ‘Blind Hens’ Challenge’. In this paper, we argue that there are both empirical and (...) theoretical reasons why even those adopting ‘welfare-only’ views should be concerned about breeding blind hens. But we also argue that alternative views, which (for example) claim that it is important to respect the telos or rights of an animal, do not offer a more convincing solution to questions raised by the possibility of disenhancing animals for their own benefit. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall (...) of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, governments have turned their attention to digital contact tracing. In many countries, public debate has focused on the risks this technology poses to privacy, with advocates and experts sounding alarm bells about surveillance and mission creep reminiscent of the post 9/11 era. Yet, when Apple and Google launched their contact tracing API in April 2020, some of the world’s leading privacy experts applauded this initiative for its privacy-preserving technical specifications. In an interesting twist, the tech (...) giants came to be portrayed as greater champions of privacy than some democratic governments. This article proposes to view the Apple/Google API in terms of a broader phenomenon whereby tech corporations are encroaching into ever new spheres of social life. From this perspective, the advantage these actors have accrued in the sphere of the production of digital goods provides them with access to the spheres of health and medicine, and more worrisome, to the sphere of politics. These sphere transgressions raise numerous risks that are not captured by the focus on privacy harms. Namely, a crowding out of essential spherical expertise, new dependencies on corporate actors for the delivery of essential, public goods, the shaping of public policy by non-representative, private actors and ultimately, the accumulation of decision-making power across multiple spheres. While privacy is certainly an important value, its centrality in the debate on digital contact tracing may blind us to these broader societal harms and unwittingly pave the way for ever more sphere transgressions. (shrink)

[Paul Boghossian] The paper asks under what conditions deductive reasoning transmits justification from its premises to its conclusion. It argues that both standard externalist and standard internalist accounts of this phenomenon fail. The nature of this failure is taken to indicate the way forward: basic forms of deductive reasoning must justify by being instances of ’blind but blameless’ reasoning. Finally, the paper explores the suggestion that an inferentialist account of the logical constants can help explain how such reasoning is possible. (...) /// [Timothy Williamson] The paper challenges the inferentialist account of concept possession that Paul Boghossian takes as a premise in his account of the transmission of justification by deductive reasoning in his paper ’Blind Reasoning’. Unorthodox speakers who reject the inferences in an alleged possession condition can still have the concept by understanding a word for it. In that sense, the inferences are not analytic. Inferentialist accounts of logical constants, theoretical terms (using the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis method) and pejorative expressions such as ’Boche’ are examined and rejected. It is suggested that epistemological questions cannot be reduced to questions in the theory of thought and meaning. (shrink)

In this article we explore and contrast the uses and gratifications (sought and obtained) of the internet for blind/visually impaired and deaf/hearing impaired individuals. The uses and gratifications approach integrates the different issues that surround disabled persons’ internet use into one rich and coherent framework which allows a better understanding of the relationship between benefits obtained from internet use, underlying needs and the barriers that create gaps between gratifications sought and obtained. Based on 21 in-depth interviews, our study shows that (...) both visually and hearing impaired individuals use the internet mostly for gathering information and for communicating with friends and family; meeting new people online was not a priority need. To a great extent these internet uses are driven by the underlying need for independence and active agency. Although our visually and hearing impaired informants share this need, the two groups differ in the gratifications obtained from the internet due to different barriers that hinder their use. (shrink)

An argument for the inclusion of the human perspective within science and how it makes science possible.

Do newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happiness or anger? If they do, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body link are the topics of age-old scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, (...) that newborn babies don't know the difference between right and wrong-such knowledge, they insist, can only be learned. For emotions, they presume the opposite-that our capacity to feel fear, for example, is both inborn and embodied. These beliefs are stories we tell ourselves about what we know and who we are. They reflect and influence our understanding of ourselves and others and they guide every aspect of our lives. In a twist that could have come out of a Greek tragedy, Berent proposes that our errors are our fate. These mistakes emanate from the very principles that make our minds tick: our blindness to human nature is rooted in human nature itself. An intellectual journey that draws on philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science, and Berent's own cutting-edge research, The Blind Storyteller grapples with a host of provocative questions, from why we are so infatuated with our brains to what happens when we die. The end result is a startling new perspective on our humanity. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

The Elephant and the Blind is a book about why we need a new culture of consciousness, and how to get it. A culture of consciousness (or Bewusstseinskultur) is a culture that values and cultivates the mental states of its members in an ethical and evidence-based way.

The growing prevalence of misleading information (i.e., bullshit) in society carries with it an increased need to understand the processes underlying many people’s susceptibility to falling for it. Here we report two studies (N = 412) examining the associations between one’s ability to detect pseudo-profound bullshit, confidence in one’s bullshit detection abilities, and the metacognitive experience of evaluating potentially misleading information. We find that people with the lowest (highest) bullshit detection performance overestimate (underestimate) their detection abilities and overplace (underplace) those (...) abilities when compared to others. Additionally, people reported using both intuitive and reflective thinking processes when evaluating misleading information. Taken together, these results show that both highly bullshit-receptive and highly bullshit-resistant people are largely unaware of the extent to which they can detect bullshit and that traditional miserly processing explanations of receptivity to misleading information may be insufficient to fully account for these effects. (shrink)

These lectures on logic, more specifically proof theory, are basically intended for postgraduate students and researchers in logic. The question at stake is the nature of mathematical knowledge and the difference between a question and an answer, i.e., the implicit and the explicit. The problem is delicate mathematically and philosophically as well: the relation between a question and its answer is a sort of equality where one side is ``more equal than the other'': one thus discovers essentialist blind spots. Starting (...) with Godel's paradox --so to speak, the incompleteness of answers with respect to questions--the book proceeds with paradigms inherited from Gentzen's cut-elimination. Various settings are studied: sequent calculus, natural deduction, lambda calculi, category-theoretic composition, up to geometry of interaction, all devoted to explicitation, which eventually amounts to inverting an operator in a von Neumann algebra. Mathematical language is usually described as referring to a preexisting reality. Logical operations can be given an alternative procedural meaning: typically, the operators involved in GoI are invertible, not because they are constructed according to the book, but because logical rules are those ensuring invertibility. Similarly, the durability of truth should not be taken for granted: one should distinguish between imperfect and perfect modes. The procedural explanation of the infinite thus identifies it with the unfinished, i.e., the perennial. But is perenniality perennial? This questioning yields a possible logical explanation for algorithmic complexity. This highly original course on logic by one of the world's leading proof theorists challenges mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and philosophers to rethink their views and concepts on the nature of mathematical knowledge in an exceptionally profound way. (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of belief define beliefs in terms of specific sets of dispositions. In this article, I provide a blind-spot argument against these accounts. The core idea of the argument is that beliefs having the form [p and it is not manifestly believed that p] cannot be manifestly believed. This means that one cannot manifest such beliefs in one’s assertions, conscious thoughts, actions, behaviours, or any other type of activity. However, if beliefs are sets of dispositions, they must be manifestable (...) in some way. Therefore, according to my argument, beliefs are not sets of dispositions. The argument is defended against some possible objections. (shrink)

The ancient maxim that justice must be "blind" expresses a commitment to procedural equality foundational to liberal political and legal philosophy. This paper argues that the blindfold metaphor reveals a deep tension at the heart of liberal theories of justice. Procedural blindness requires that morally relevant features of persons be systematically excluded from evaluative consideration. Yet genuine moral assessment, as practiced in functioning communities, is inherently character-sensitive rather than action-focused. Drawing on virtue ethics, relational egalitarianism, and phenomenological accounts of moral (...) community, I argue that character-based evaluation constitutes the proper form of justice, not merely a permissible deviation from procedural ideals. The paper proceeds in four stages. First, I examine the philosophical foundations of procedural blindness and identify their origins in institutional rather than moral imperatives. Second, I develop an account of character-integrated evaluation as it operates within what I term "organic communities" bound by direct interpersonal relations. Third, I argue that procedural equality, far from securing fairness, systematically disadvantages those whose circumstances or character depart from institutional norms. Fourth, I show how character-sensitive justice can be rendered consistent with appropriate forms of equality by reconceiving equality relationally rather than distributively. The implications extend beyond criminal justice to democratic theory, where the demand for character-blindness in political evaluation impoverishes public deliberation. (shrink)

High percentages of submitted papers are rejected at editorial levels without offering a second chance to authors by sending their papers for further peer-reviews. In most cases, the rejections are typical quick answers without helpful argumentations related to the content of the rejected material. More surprisingly, some journals vaunt their high rejection rates as a “mark of prestige”!However, journals that reject high percentages of submitted papers have built their prominent positions based on a flawed measure, the impact factor, and from (...) a long and favorable historical context. Their shareholders may think that they are allowed to have a large margin of rejection rates without affecting their sponsorship or funding sources thanks to an extended anchorage since tens, or in some cases hundreds, of years compared to unknown or new journals that struggle to pave a way in the scientific publication world. Historical anchorage of some journals also makes it unfair to compare old and new .. (shrink)

Amidst the surge in AI-oriented commercial ventures, music is a site of intensive efforts to innovate. A number of companies are seeking to apply AI to music production and consumption, and amongst them several are seeking to reinvent the music listening experience as adaptive, interactive, functional and infinitely generative. These are bold objectives, having no clear roadmap for what designs, technologies and use cases, if any, will be successful. Thus each company relies on speculative product visions. Through four case studies (...) of such companies, I consider how product visions must carefully provide a clear plan for developers and investors, whilst also remaining open to agile user-centred product development strategies, which I discuss in terms of the ‘blind search’ nature of innovation. I suggest that innovation in this area needs to be understood in terms of technological emergence, which is neither technologically determinist nor driven entirely by the visions of founders, but through a complex of interacting forces. I also consider, through these cases, how, through the accumulation of residual value, all such start-up work risks being exapted for more familiar extractive capitalist agendas under the general process that Doctorow calls “enshittification”. Lastly, I consider a number of other more specific ways in which these projects, if their growth is achieved, could influence music culture more broadly. (shrink)

Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence how semantic elements are organized in gesture, but only when those gestures are produced with speech, not without speech. We ask whether the cross-linguistic similarity in silent gesture is driven by the visuospatial structure of the event. We compared 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English or Turkish to 80 sighted adult speakers as they described three-dimensional (...) motion scenes. We found an effect of language on co-speech gesture, not on silent gesture—blind speakers of both languages organized their silent gestures as sighted speakers do. Humans may have a natural semantic organization that they impose on events when conveying them in gesture without language—an organization that relies on neither visuospatial cues nor language structure. (shrink)

Normativists about belief hold that belief formation is essentially rule- or norm-guided. On this view, certain norms are constitutive of or essential to belief in such a way that no mental state not guided by those norms counts as a belief, properly construed. In recent influential work, Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss develop novel arguments against normativism. According to their regress of motivations argument, not all belief formation can be rule- or norm-guided, on pain of a vicious infinite regress. I (...) argue that the regress of motivations argument is unsuccessful: an appeal to the notion of blind rule-following, drawn from a plausible interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following, stops the regress of motivations in its tracks. (shrink)

Many scholars have rejected cultural evolutionary theory on the grounds that cultural variation is directed and intentionally created, rather than incremental and blind with respect to function, as is the case for novel genetic variation in genetic evolution. Meanwhile, some cultural evolution researchers insist that cultural variation is blind and undirected, and the only directional force is selection of randomly-generated variants. Here I argue that neither of these positions are tenable. Cultural variation is directed in various ways. While this does (...) not invalidate cultural evolution, more attention should be paid to the different sources of non-randomness in culturally evolving systems. (shrink)

Willful blindness is not an appropriate substitute for knowledge in crimes that require a mens rea of knowledge because an actor who contrives his own ignorance is only sometimes as culpable as a knowing actor. This paper begins with the assumption that the classic willfully blind actor—the drug courier—is culpable. If so, any plausible account of willful blindness must provide criteria that find this actor culpable. This paper then offers two limiting cases: a criminal defense lawyer defending a client he (...) suspects of perjury and a pain doctor who suspects his patient may be lying about her pain. The paper argues that each of these actors is justified in cultivating ignorance about his client’s or patient’s truthfulness. If this is right, then a good theory of willful blindness must distinguish these cases. The article argues that neither Husak & Callender’s motivation-based account of willful blindness nor the recklessness account is able to do so. The paper proposes the following alternative: contrived ignorance constitutes culpable blindness when the decision to remain blind or to cultivate blindness is not itself justified. This Justification approach meshes with our intuitions about willfully blind drug couriers as well as willfully blind lawyers and doctors. (shrink)

MODERNIST JOURNALS EXPERT (MJE): You have published in poetry and you have published in philosophy in unranked journals and you have been rejected in philosophy by ranked ones. What have you learnt? ME: Learnt? Am I one who learns? Or one who learns before two world wars. I must not be that talented then. MJE: What have you learnt? ME: After I was released from hospital in November 2023, I decided to focus on publishing poetry. I submitted a number of (...) poems to poetry journals, by my standards. (By the way, I had tried to publish poetry in 2021 as well.) I submitted poems of mine I liked and I came to this conclusion after a year: if a journal does not publish poems that you the poet likes, then they are not going to publish you (assuming you submit poems that you like yourself). MJE: Anything else? ME: I looked up lists of poetry journals, especially for short poetry. But I found that you can also discover poetry journals (or magazines) like this: you think up a name for a poetry magazine, or part of one, and just put it into a search engine and a poetry journal comes up. I tried some of these. I put in Moon poetry into Google and I found Waxing & Waning. MJE: That's interesting. What about blind review or not? ME: I have not found any poetry journals with blind review. MJE: Is the poetry journal system less fair? ME: Well, I got published with minimal background in poetry. In the University of Manchester, we have anonymous marking (like blind review), but when I was there you could look up who the student was from the number on the script. MJE: Do you think that happened when you got rejected by Analysis? The reviewer looked up who the author is. ME: No idea. I'm not paranoid. In my paper, "The rationality of Martha Nussbaum's University" I point out that certain lecturers are in a precarious position and maybe blind review helps them slightly. BUT it does not produce the kind of results I would expect. When I was an editor for the journal Philosophical Pathways, I did not have blind review and I published what I liked, and there were people from all over the world. Who are these people? I don't know. But that journal shut down. MJE: Yes. How many journals have you shut down already? We have seen tastes LIKE yours before. They are in short-lived modernist literary journals. These journals are good and you can read them today, but you end up publishing people who hate your modernist project, such as Richard Aldington in The Egoist. Also they are very stressful to run. How many hours did you sleep yesterday? ME: I sleep when I want. MJE: How many hours? What time do you call this? ME: I slept in the afternoon and then a long sleep in the night and morning. MJE: You need to sleep less and write a lot more. ME: What if I go mad? MJE: Laura Riding, whom you know something about, jumped out of a window and damaged her spine. Virginia Woolf, who knew high level philosophers and whose father was a literary history expert, nevertheless worked till she hallucinated: the best network was not enough. And look: her essay on cinema is billions of times better than your essay on her yesterday. Maria Tsvetaeva was forced to suicide. These people are of course out of your league, but there are countless minor cases and you stand a chance against them. But you sleep all day. ME: What should I do? MJE: Do whatever I tell you or you will fail. ME: And what do you tell me? MJE: Write more and stop writing on Rawls. If Martha Nussbaum gave up, there has to be a major problem. This person does not give up on a largely sound system. ME But I want to say more things about Rawls and everyone says he is the best. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify several interpretive problems posed by the final part ofDAII.11 (423b27–424 a10), where Aristotle intertwines the thesis that a sense is like a ‘mean’ and an explanation for the existence of a ‘blind spot’ related to the sense of touch, adding the further contention that we are capable of discriminating because the mean ‘becomes the other opposite’ in relation to the perceptible property being perceived. To solve those problems, the paper explores a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) claims, arguing that they describe a homeostatic physiological reaction by which the sensory apparatus responds to perceptible stimuli. According to the proposed interpretation, such homeostatic reaction constitutes a necessary condition for perceiving what Aristotle refers to as ‘proper’ perceptible features, which include properties like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as well as colors and sounds. (shrink)

In this brilliant essay, Jacques Derrida explores issues of vision, blindness, self-representation, and their relation to drawing, while offering detailed readings of an extraordinary collection of images. Selected by Derrida from the prints and drawings department of the Louvre, the works depict blindness—fictional, historical, and biblical. From Old and New Testament scenes to the myth of Perseus and the Gorgon and the blinding of Polyphemus, Derrida uncovers in these images rich, provocative layers of interpretation. For Derrida drawing is itself blind; (...) as an act rooted in memory and anticipation, drawing necessarily replaces one kind of seeing (direct) with another (mediated). Ultimately, he explains, the very lines which compose any drawing are themselves never fully visible to the viewer since they exist only in a tenuous state of multiple identities: as marks on a page, as indicators of a contour. Lacking a "pure" identity, the lines of a drawing summon the supplement of the word, of verbal discourse, and, in doing so, obscure the visual experience. Consequently, Derrida demonstrates, the very act of depicting a blind person undertakes multiple enactments and statements of blindness and sight. _Memoirs of the Blind_ is both a sophisticated philosophical argument and a series of detailed readings. Derrida provides compelling insights into famous and lesser known works, interweaving analyses of texts—including Diderot's _Lettres sur les aveugles_, the notion of mnemonic art in Baudelaire's _The Painter of Modern _ _Life_, and Merleau-Ponty's _The Visible and the _ _Invisible_. Along with engaging meditations on the history and philosophy of art, Derrida reveals the ways viewers approach philosophical ideas through art, and the ways art enriches philosophical reflection. An exploration of sight, representation, and art, _Memoirs of the Blind_ extends and deepens the meditation on vision and painting presented in _Truth and _ _Painting_. Readers of Derrida, both new and familiar, will profit from this powerful contribution to the study of the visual arts. (shrink)

Three errors of "The Blind Watchmaker" theory are examined with Aristotelian thought.

The professor of zoology at Oxford University makes the case that evolution by natural selection is a theory generous enough to account for the all-consuming question of why man exists.

In this report, the phenomenology of two blind users of a sensory substitution device – “The vOICe” – that converts visual images to auditory signals is described. The users both report detailed visual phenomenology that developed within months of immersive use and has continued to evolve over a period of years. This visual phenomenology, although triggered through use of The vOICe, is likely to depend not only on online visualization of the auditory signal but also on the users’ previous (albeit (...) distant) experience of veridical vision (e.g. knowledge of shapes and visual perspective). Once established, the sensory substitution mapping between the auditory and visual domains is not confined to when the device is worn and, thus, may constitute an example of acquired synaesthesia. (shrink)

The introduction of new medical treatments based on invasive technologies has often been surrounded by both hopes and fears. Hope, since a new intervention can create new opportunities either in terms of providing a cure for the disease or impairment at hand; or as alleviation of symptoms. Fear, since an invasive treatment involving implanting a medical device can result in unknown complications such as hardware failure and undesirable medical consequences. However, hopes and fears may also arise due to the cultural (...) embeddedness of technology, where a therapy due to ethical, social, political and religious concerns could be perceived as either a blessing or a threat. While Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for treatment resistant depression (TRD) is still in its cradle, it is important to be proactive and try to scrutinize both surfacing hopes and fears. Patients will not benefit if a promising treatment is banned or avoided due to unfounded fears, nor will they benefit if DBS is used without scrutinizing the arguments which call for caution. Hence blind optimism is equally troublesome. We suggest that specificity, both in terms of a detailed account of relevant scientific concerns as well as ethical considerations, could be a way to analyse expressed concerns regarding DBS for TRD. This approach is particularly fruitful when applied to hopes and fears evoked by DBS for TRD, since it can reveal if our comprehension of DBS for TRD suffer from various biases which may remain unnoticed at first glance. We suggest that such biases exist, albeit a further analysis is needed to explore this issue in full. (shrink)

One curious phenomenon of several social groups is that they are ‘redundant’ in the sense that they contain more cooperators than strictly needed to complete certain group tasks, such as foraging. Redundancy is puzzling because redundant groups are particularly susceptible to invasion by defectors. Yet, redundancy can be found in groups formed by a wide range of organisms, including insects and microbes. Birch has recently argued that coercive behaviours might account for redundancy using insect colonies as a case study. However, (...) microbial examples suggest redundancy can evolve without coercive behaviours. This paper formulates an explanation for redundancy that does not require targeted punishment of defectors; instead, it proposes that redundancy might be due to ignorance. Specifically, it is suggested that redundancy evolves as a by-product of selection when group members have to opt whether to cooperate or not while being blind to the strategies of others. Accordingly, possessing information about the strategies of the group members might undermine rather than facilitate cooperation within groups. 1The Evolution of Redundancy 2Explaining Redundancy via Coercion 3Explaining Redundancy via Ignorance 3.1Cooperation behind the Darwinian veil of ignorance 3.2Modelling group tasks with a public goods game 3.3Group tasks under harsh environments 4Conclusion. (shrink)

The literary legacy of Abū al-‘Alāʾ al-Ma‘arrī, one of the most unique and controversial poets of the 10th and 11th centuries, is examined in this article, with a particular focus on the theme of “vision” in relation to his blindness. The fact that the poet, despite being blind, frequently addresses the theme of “vision” in his works makes this topic especially intriguing. The inclusion of elements related to vision by someone who is physically devoid of the ability to see confronts (...) the reader with a profound reflection and paradox. The poet’s blindness transforms into a metaphor for inner vision or sensory awareness, a transformation that is clearly visible in Ma‘arrī’s poetry. In ancient times, blindness was often interpreted in con-nection with supernatural powers, whereas in the Middle Ages, it was frequently used as a form of punishment. During the Renaissance, blind-ness gained a dual significance as both a form of punishment and a symbol of spiritual insight. Despite losing his sight at a young age, Ma‘arrī defied the conventional poetic understanding of his time with his philosophical depth and critical approach, drawing attention for his skeptical thoughts. This article examines how words related to vision in the poet’s divan are conceptualized and how his personal experiences and philosophical inquiries are reflected in his poetry. Moreover, through the metaphor of “vision,” it delves into the poet’s profound exploration of existential ques-tions and the meaning of life, analyzing how this theme shapes Ma‘arrī’s literary persona and intellectual world. The study proves that Ma‘arrî transformed his blindness into a literary and philosophical strength, pre-senting a universal argument on how physical limitations can nurture ar-tistic creativity. (shrink)

One curious phenomenon of several social groups is that they are ‘redundant’ in the sense that they contain more cooperators than strictly needed to complete certain group tasks, such as foraging. Redundancy is puzzling because redundant groups are particularly susceptible to invasion by defectors. Yet, redundancy can be found in groups formed by a wide range of organisms, including insects and microbes. Birch ([2012]) has recently argued that coercive behaviours might account for redundancy using insect colonies as a case study. (...) However, microbial examples suggest redundancy can evolve without coercive behaviours. This paper formulates an explanation for redundancy that does not require targeted punishment of defectors; instead, it proposes that redundancy might be due to ignorance. Specifically, it is suggested that redundancy evolves as a by-product of selection when group members have to opt whether to cooperate or not while being blind to the strategies of others. Accordingly, possessing information about the strategies of the group members might undermine rather than facilitate cooperation within groups. (shrink)

Though Socrates can easily look like a cosmopolitan in moral and political theory, a closer reading of the relevant texts shows that, in the most important sense of the term as we now use it, he turns out – disappointingly, perhaps – not to be. The reasons why not are instructive and important, both for readers of Plato and for political theorists; they have to do with the phenomenon that I shall call ethical blind-spots.

The challenge of AI alignment is not just a technological issue but fundamentally an epistemic one. AI safety research predominantly relies on empirical validation, often detecting failures only after they manifest. However, certain risks—such as deceptive alignment and goal misspecification—may not be empirically testable until it is too late, necessitating a shift toward leading-indicator logical reasoning. This paper explores how mainstream AI research systematically filters out deep epistemic insight, hindering progress in AI safety. We assess the rarity of such insights, (...) conduct an experiment testing large language models for epistemic blind spots, and propose structural reforms, including contrarian epistemic screening, decentralized collective intelligence mechanisms, and epistemic challenge platforms. Our findings suggest that while AGI may emerge through incremental engineering, ensuring its safe alignment likely requires an epistemic paradigm shift. (shrink)

In their descriptions of the life dynamics of tendencies as “blind but oriented,” both Scheler and Husserl outline an alternative model of intentionality to Brentano’s conception of mental reference to determinate objects or meanings. In my reading, their phenomenological consideration of tendential structures will reveal tendency as an essential moment of intentionality. A horizon of indeterminacy turns out to be constitutive of every intentional act as a tendency toward or away from something. This paper develops as follows: First, I will (...) present Max Scheler’s nuanced differentiation of tendential life and the systematic horizon of his model of blind but oriented tendency, which seeks to offer an alternative to the mechanism/teleology dichotomy. Second, I will present Jocelyn Benoist’s framing of the same question in the opposition between blind drives and consciousness. Benoist’s radical critique of the interpretation of intentionality as a tendency condenses in his clear assertion that drives cannot be intentional because they are constitutively blind. Benoist accuses Edmund Husserl of nothing less than murdering intentionality through phenomenological vivisection, i.e., by extinguishing in reflection the tension inherent in conative intention and watering down the concept of intentionality to such an extent that it also includes cognitive acts. I will therefore turn my attention to the alleged culprit. I will show that Husserl’s broad concept of intentionality is not only negatively justified by the possibility of transforming tendencies into a consciousness of their implicit object, but rather positively justified by the directed dynamics of both passive and active forms of intentionality. In the conclusion I will show how Husserl’s constitutive analyses move along lines akin to Scheler’s insights and call for a revision of overly static interpretations of the phenomenological concepts of intentionality and teleology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Blind Spots and Avenues for Transformation within the Utopian Canon: Toward A Terrestrial EcotopianismHeather Alberro (bio)Limitations and Exclusions of the (Western) Utopian CanonUtopianism in all of its manifestations often powerfully (re)surfaces during times of significant socio-ecological upheaval as a response to oppressive and exploitative realities. As such it is a fervent refusal against a given status quo and its purported inevitability. Utopianism and hope are rendered possible by, and (...) draw their transformative potential from, the boundless terrain of potentiality surrounding any given reality.1 Indeed, without such conditions of radical uncertainty, hope and utopianism would not be possible. Often and understandably, the seminal works of Plato, Thomas More, William Morris, H. G. Wells and others come to mind when we think of utopian studies. Hence Kumar’s parochial observation that there is no discernible utopian tradition beyond the West because other cultures lack the foundational myth of the Golden Age—that is, the Garden of Eden, Atlantis, and Arcadia—that has been so formative to the development of utopia in the West.2 These traditional or “transcendental” utopian modalities often feature a dichotomous opposition to their present reality, depicting time and historical movement [End Page 528] as linear successions of stages proceeding from an archaic past and toward a future wherein the utopian ideal is seen as occupying a “fixed space outside time and history.”3 Such temporally “transcendent” utopias marked the dawn of the modern phase of utopian thought, originating in the seventeenth century alongside new theories of social evolution that coalesced into modern Enlightenment notions of linear historical progress.4Prioritizing Pluralism: Critical Heterotopias of the “Here and Now”What kind of life? We are still confronted with the demand to state the “concrete alternative.” The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of the specific institutions and relationships which would be those of the new society: they cannot be determined a priori; they will develop, in trial and error, as the new society develops.5Tom Moylan’s notion of “critical utopianism,” which emerged during the “historic block” of political opposition of the 1960s and 1970s, marks one important step within the utopian canon toward praxis and the essential “Nowness” of critique and imaginative projection.6 This “critical” strand of utopianism is fueled by a fervent opposition to the exploitation and domination of people and the natural world that is increasingly characteristic of Western-capitalist societies.7 This opposition is coupled with a utopian desire for mutual aid, ecological resilience, liberation, and peaceful living—in effect, a longing for community.8 The “critical” in Moylan’s formulation has a bivalency: first, in the sense of critique through the debunking and deconstruction of the utopian genre itself, which was “colonized” by capitalism toward the 1970s and infused with technocratic dreams of material abundance through boundless economic expansion; and second, in the sense of the critical mass required to effect fundamental societal transformations.9 If the better is the enemy of the good, then perfection serves as “a stick with which to beat the possible.”10 Utopias do not offer rigid blueprints of a fixed or perfect ideal world but rather head toward “the ideal” by offering “a rich blending of creative fantasy, critical thinking, and oppositional activism” predicated on a demand for radically new relations between social and natural systems.11 Ever critically self-reflective, critical utopias continually remind us of the limitations of the utopian impulse, particularly the dangers of pursuing rigid and transcendental visions of “the better.” Nevertheless, these are desperate times that demand some orientation toward a better; utopianism’s [End Page 529] denunciative function is not enough. Thus, in his impassioned recent work Becoming Utopian, Moylan denotes the need for an intersectional, democratically unified leadership structure that can help sustain a political movement for counteracting the “global/neoliberal superpower order while reaching for a utopian horizon.”12 With a focus more on process than a fixed ideal, the critical utopia explores and articulates vibrant post-capitalist futures that are simultaneously open-ended, and far more socio-ecologically resilient than the “now” of late capitalism.Akin in function and style to critical utopias are the grounded and transgressive... (shrink)

In two highly powered studies (total N = 1617), we showed that individuals estimated that they would stop earlier than others in a Milgram-like biomedical task leading to the death of an animal, confirming the relevance of the Better than Average Effect (BTAE) in a new research setting. However, this effect was not magnified among participants displaying high self-esteem. We also showed that participants who already knew obedience studies expected that others would be more obedient and would administer more damaging (...) treatment to the target. However, knowledge of Milgram’s studies was unrelated to a higher estimate of their own behavior (study 1), and was even linked to the prediction that they would stop earlier (study 2, preregistered). Despite the wide educational use of Milgram’s studies to increase people’s awareness of the risks inherent to blind obedience, it may be that this knowledge only serves to evaluate other’s behaviors, and not oneself. (shrink)

This article examines the thought of two prominent political theorists: John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Both Rawls and Habermas take deliberation to be central to the theory of justice. In their view, deliberation provides a necessary alternative to paternalistic models of power and authority. The deliberative turn has been celebrated as one of the great frontiers of political theory. But what are its limitations? What are its blind spots? This article argues that the deliberative turn has reinforced the anthropocentrism of (...) modern political theory by categorically excluding the moral claims of animals from the sphere of justice. The article then proposes an evolutionary conception of justice as a way out of our anthropocentric social imaginary. (shrink)

This article proposes the concept of blind visuality as a response to the injunction to look differently at both visual images, and vision itself, posed by Bruce Horak’s exhibition Through a Tired Eye. The brightly colored impressionistic paintings suggest an artist who revels in the domain of the visual, yet he describes his practice as a representation of blindness. This accessible exposition of blind visuality speaks to the broad question of what critical disability arts contribute to discourses about vision, visuality (...) and spectatorship in the arts. I analyze Horak’s paintings as examples of blind epistemology and haptic visuality, showing that this work evokes a way of seeing that blurs the boundaries between vision and embodied feeling. I argue that by expanding understandings of vision and multi-sensory knowledge, deconstructing the separation between vision and haptic perception, and challenging western ocularcentricism, blind visuality poses an alternative economy of looking that reflects disability aesthetics, shifts from individualism to relationality, and challenges understandings of perception/knowledge as a form of mastery. (shrink)

In today's unpredictable and chaotic world, we look to science to provide certainty and answers--and often blame it when things go wrong. The Blind Spot reveals why our faith in scientific certainty is a dangerous illusion, and how only by embracing science's inherent ambiguities and paradoxes can we truly appreciate its beauty and harness its potential. Crackling with insights into our most perplexing contemporary dilemmas, from climate change to the global financial meltdown, this book challenges our most sacredly held beliefs (...) about science, technology, and progress. At the same time, it shows how the secret to better science can be found where we least expect it--in the uncertain, the ambiguous, and the inevitably unpredictable. William Byers explains why the subjective element in scientific inquiry is in fact what makes it so dynamic, and deftly balances the need for certainty and rigor in science with the equally important need for creativity, freedom, and downright wonder. Drawing on an array of fascinating examples--from Wall Street's overreliance on algorithms to provide certainty in uncertain markets, to undecidable problems in mathematics and computer science, to Georg Cantor's paradoxical but true assertion about infinity--Byers demonstrates how we can and must learn from the existence of blind spots in our scientific and mathematical understanding. The Blind Spot offers an entirely new way of thinking about science, one that highlights its strengths and limitations, its unrealized promise, and, above all, its unavoidable ambiguity. It also points to a more sophisticated approach to the most intractable problems of our time. (shrink)

Why absolute certainty is impossible in science In today's unpredictable and chaotic world, we look to science to provide certainty and answers—and often blame it when things go wrong. The Blind Spot reveals why our faith in scientific certainty is a dangerous illusion, and how only by embracing science's inherent ambiguities and paradoxes can we truly appreciate its beauty and harness its potential. Crackling with insights into our most perplexing contemporary dilemmas, from climate change to the global financial meltdown, this (...) book challenges our most sacredly held beliefs about science, technology, and progress. At the same time, it shows how the secret to better science can be found where we least expect it—in the uncertain, the ambiguous, and the inevitably unpredictable. William Byers explains why the subjective element in scientific inquiry is in fact what makes it so dynamic, and deftly balances the need for certainty and rigor in science with the equally important need for creativity, freedom, and downright wonder. Drawing on an array of fascinating examples—from Wall Street's overreliance on algorithms to provide certainty in uncertain markets, to undecidable problems in mathematics and computer science, to Georg Cantor's paradoxical but true assertion about infinity—Byers demonstrates how we can and must learn from the existence of blind spots in our scientific and mathematical understanding. The Blind Spot offers an entirely new way of thinking about science, one that highlights its strengths and limitations, its unrealized promise, and, above all, its unavoidable ambiguity. It also points to a more sophisticated approach to the most intractable problems of our time. (shrink)

Images of animals are all around us. Yet the visibility offered by wildlife photography can't help but contribute to an image of the animal as fundamentally separate from the human. But how can we get closer to animals without making them aware of us or changing their relationship to their environment? The Blind might be the answer. Developed for naturalists by the Institute of Critical Zoologists, the Blind is a camouflage cloak that works on the principle that an object vanishes (...) from sight if light rays striking it are not reflected, but are instead forced to flow around as if it were not there. In fifty stunning color photographs, this volumeshows the cloak tested in nature reserves, grasslands, and urban environments. By taking the human out of the picture,The Blind offers an opportunity to explore how we see animals in photography. (shrink)