This article examines how emerging technologies – particularly artificial intelligence – disrupt the moral and institutional foundations of contemporary military practice. While strategic documents from the United States, NATO, and other major actors anticipate profound institutional transformation driven by AI, their treatment of ethics largely confines itself to legal compliance and technical safeguards, leaving the ethical role of military leadership in managing disruptive change underexamined. Drawing on Seumas Miller’s distinction between social institutions that are merely instrumental to collective goods and (...) those whose defining ends are constitutive of such goods, the article argues that the military belongs to the latter category. Because the military’s core function – defending the sovereignty of a polity – is itself morally significant, technological disruption of its organizational structures simultaneously constitutes ethical disruption. The article thus reconceives change management during periods of technological transition as calling for a specific kind of military prudence, a practical wisdom exercised within and through the institution’s role-mediated ethical practices. By analyzing three concrete modes of techno-moral disruption, the article shows how AI may reshape ethical standards, redistribute professional knowledge, and alter organizational ethos, and why navigating these transformations responsibly is a central task of military virtue. (shrink)

Linguists have realised for some time that predicates of the 'know' and 'wonder' classes behave differently in semantic terms with respect to their interrogative complements, but have not so far fully understood how or why. This book seeks to explore and to provide solutions to this and to related problems in explaining the meaning and grammar of embedded interrogatives and the predicates that take interrogative complements (indirect questions and how their answers contribute to the meaning of expressions containing them).

This book uncovers Kant s hidden theory of cosmopolitan education within the framework of his overall practical philosophy. The Kant brought out here turns out to be very different from current mainstream appropriations, which erroneously consider him one of the founding fathers of the new cosmopolitanism. Kant s Embedded Cosmopolitanism is a valuable source for students of political philosophy, cosmopolitanism, and Kant s ethics.".

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’: scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific (...) predictions regarding the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions. (shrink)

1 INTIMACY Among Descartes's most and consequential achievements has been his of the mental as an independent ontological domain. By taking the mind as a substance, with cognitions as its modes, he accorded them a status as self-standing and determinate on their own, without essential regard to other entities. Only with this metaphysical conception in place, could the idea of solipsism-the idea of an intact ego existing with nothing else in the universe-so much as make sense. And behind that engine (...) have trailed the sorry boxcars of hyperbolic doubt. the mind-body problem, the problem of the external world, the problem of other minds, and so on. -/- Although the assumptions have been under fire, off and on. at least since Hegel-including with renewed intensity in recent years … the Cartesian separation that is still so pervasive as to be almost invisible. In particular, inter-relationist accounts retain a principled distinction between the mental and the corporeal-a distinction that is reflected in contrasts like semantics versus syntax, the space of reasons versus the space of causes, or the intentional versus the physical. (Notice that each of these contrasts can be heard either as higher versus lower’ level" or as inner versus outer 'sphere‘.) The contrary of this separation-or battery of separations-is not inter-relationist holism but something that I would like to call the intimacy of the mind's embodiment and embeddedness in the world. The term 'intimacy' is meant to suggest more than just necessary interrelation or interdependence but a kind of commingling or integralness of mind, body,and world-that is, to undermine their very distinctness. The challenge is as much to spell out what this could mean as to make a case for it. Indeed, no sooner does such a possibility seem intelligible at all, than ways bring out its plausibility and significance turn up everywhere. -/- There is little original in what follows. The strategy will be to bring some well known principles of systems analysis to bear on the mind- body-world 'system' in a way that refocuses questions of division and unity, and then to canvas a selection of investigations and proposals - some fairly recent, others not-in the light of this new focus. The hope is that these superficially disparate ideas, none of them new, will seem to converge around the theme of intimacy in a way that illuminates and supports them all. Sorting and and aligning issues in this manner has sometimes been discussed under titles like 'embedded computation’ and 'situated cognition'. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for an embodied, embedded approach to predictive processing and thus align the framework with situated cognition. The recent popularity of theories conceiving of the brain as a predictive organ has given rise to two broad camps in the literature that I callfree energy enactivismandcognitivist predictive processing. The two approaches vary in scope and methodology. The scope ofcognitivist predictive processingis narrow and restricts cognition to brain processes and structures; it does not consider the body-beyond-brain and (...) the environment as constituents of cognitive processes.Free energy enactivism, on the other hand, includes all self-organizing systems that minimize free energy (including non-living systems) and thus does not offer any unique explanations for more complex cognitive phenomena that are unique to human cognition. Furthermore, because of its strong commitment to the mind-life continuity thesis, it does not provide an explanation of what distinguishes more sophisticated cognitive systems from simple systems. The account that I develop in this paper rejects both of these radical extremes. Instead, I propose a compromise that highlights the necessary components of predictive processing by making use of a mechanistic methodology of explanation. The starting point of the argument in this paper is that despite the interchangeable use of the terms, prediction error minimization and the free energy principle are not identical. But this distinction does not need to disrupt thestatus quoof the literature if we consider an alternative approach: Embodied, Embedded Predictive Processing (EEPP). EEPP accommodates the free energy principle, as argued for by free energy enactivism, but it also allows for mental representations in its explanation of cognition. Furthermore, EEPP explains how prediction error minimization is realized but, unlike cognitivist PP, it allocates a constitutive role to the body in cognition. Despite highlighting concerns regarding cognitivist PP, I do not wish to discredit the role of the neural domain or representations as free energy enactivism does. Neural structures and processes undeniably contribute to the minimization of prediction error but the role of the body is equally important. On my account, prediction error minimization and free energy minimization are deeply dependent on the body of an agent, such that the body-beyond-brain plays aconstitutiverole in cognitive processing. I suggest that the body plays three constitutive roles in prediction error minimization: The bodyregulatescognitive activity, ensuring that cognition and action are intricately linked. The body acts asdistributorin the sense that it carries some of the cognitive load by fulfilling the function of minimizing prediction error. Finally, the body serves toconstrainthe information that is processed by an agent. In fulfilling these three roles, the agent and environment enter into a bidirectional relation through influencing and modeling the structure of the other. This connects EEPP to the free energy principle because the whole embodied agent minimizes free energy in virtue of being a model of its econiche. This grants the body a constitutive role as part of the collection of mechanisms that minimize prediction error and free energy. The body can only fulfill its role when embedded in an environment, of which it is a model. In this sense, EEPP offers the most promising alternative to cognitivist predictive processing and free energy enactivism. (shrink)

This paper examines Hegel’s concept of experience and points out its relevance for current debates in philosophy of mind. Although Hegel does not deny that individuals have some privileged access to their experiences and draws heavily on the first person-perspective of consciousness, his conception emphasizes the social constitution of experience.

Sentences with disjunction in the scope of a universal quantifier, Every A is P or Q, tend to give rise to distributive inferences that each of the disjuncts holds of at least one individual in the domain of the quantifier, Some A is P & Some A is Q. These inferences are standardly derived as an entailment of the meaning of the sentence together with the scalar implicature that it is not the case that either disjunct holds of every individual (...) in the domain of the quantifier, \Every A is P &\Every A is Q. As we show, this derivation faces a challenge in that distributive inferences may obtain in the absence of plain negated inferences. We address this challenge by showing that on particular assumptions about alternatives, a derivation of distributive inferences as scalar implicatures can be maintained without in fact necessitating plain negated inferences. These assumptions accord naturally with the grammatical approach to scalar implicatures. We also present experimental data that suggest that plain negated inferences are not only unnecessary for deriving distributive inferences, but might in fact be unavailable. (shrink)

The ability to process center‐embedded structures has been claimed to represent a core function of the language faculty. Recently, several studies have investigated the learning of center‐embedded dependencies in artificial grammar settings. Yet some of the results seem to question the learnability of these structures in artificial grammar tasks. Here, we tested under which exposure conditions learning of center‐embedded structures in an artificial grammar is possible. We used naturally spoken syllable sequences and varied the presence of prosodic (...) cues. The results suggest that mere distributional information does not suffice for successful learning. Prosodic cues marking the boundaries of the major relevant units, however, can lead to learning success. Thus, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that center‐embedded syntactic structures can be learned in artificial grammar tasks if language‐like acoustic cues are provided. (shrink)

This paper describes the unique values of, challenges within, and opportunities presented by embedded ELSI ethnography. Drawing from our six‐year embedded ELSI study of the WISDOM (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk) trial, we present three examples of the variable ways we engaged with the WISDOM trial's scientific team. WISDOM is a preference‐sensitive, pragmatic, randomized controlled trial of risk‐based breast cancer screening informed by genomics. Our embedded ELSI approach included multiple modes of engagement: (a) (...) Trial investigators sought bioethics expertise; for example, we were asked to consult on traditional bioethics topics such as consent as well as more complex questions about whether to implement a specific risk‐assessment approach on only one race‐defined group of trial participants. (b) As the ELSI investigators, we identified ethical concerns in issues that surfaced via ethnography and considered them in the Bioethics Working Group; for example, there were concerns about the implementation processes that the WISDOM team viewed as logistical challenges. (c) Our presence in WISDOM working group conversations and our expertise on classic social science topics, including race and gender, offered opportunities to engage on the spot with topics such as how to include transgender participants in a trial initially focused on “women's health”; through such engagement, the value of social science became clear to the trial investigators. The paper elaborates on the dynamic relationship between our ethnographic observations, the Bioethics Working Group discussions, and the contributions of each to our real‐time ELSI interventions in these examples. The methods and experiences we describe here suggest modes of engagement that, in combination, have the potential to expand the role of ELSI to offer real‐time intervention on issues related to equity, inclusion, and justice in genetic and genomic research. (shrink)

A recent qualitative study published in Neuroethics by Schembs and colleagues explores how functional neurodiagnostics of consciousness inform surrogate decision making in cases of disorders of consciousness. In this commentary, we argue that the chosen methodology significantly limits the scope of the potential conclusions and suggest an embedded ethnographic approach of co-presence as an alternative.

In this paper we consider the concept of a self-aware agent. In cognitive science agents are seen as embodied and interactively situated in worlds. We analyse the meanings attached to these terms in cognitive science and robotics, proposing a set of conditions for situatedness and embodiment, and examine the claim that internal representational schemas are largely unnecessary for intelligent behaviour in animats. We maintain that current situated and embodied animats cannot be ascribed even minimal self-awareness, and offer a six point (...) definition of embeddedness, constituting minimal conditions for the evolution of a sense of self. This leads to further analysis of the nature of embodiment and situatedness, and a consideration of whether virtual animats in virtual worlds could count as situated and embodied. We propose that self-aware agents must possess complex structures of self-directed goals; multi-modal sensory systems and a rich repertoire of interactions with their worlds. Finally, we argue that embedded agents will possess or evolve local co-ordinate systems, or points of view, relative to their current positions in space and time, and have a capacity to develop an egocentric space. None of these capabilities are possible without powerful internal representational capacities. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Cassinadri (2022) raised substantial criticism about the possibility of using moral reasons to endorse the hypothesis of extended cognition (EXT) over its most popular alternative, the embedded view (EMB). In particular, Cassinadri criticized 4 of the arguments we formulated to defend EXT and argued that our claim that EXT might be preferable to EMB (on the grounds of its progressiveness and inclusiveness) does not stand close scrutiny. In this short reply, we point out—contra Cassinadri—why we (...) still believe that there are moral reasons to prefer EXT over EMB, hence why we think that the former is more inclusive and more progressive than the latter. (shrink)

The complementary properties and functions of cognitive artifacts and other external resources are integrated into the human cognitive system to varying degrees. The goal of this paper is to develop some of the tools to conceptualize this complementary integration between agents and artifacts. It does so by proposing a multidimensional framework, including the dimensions of information flow, reliability, durability, trust, procedural transparency, informational transparency, individualization, and transformation. The proposed dimensions are all matters of degree and jointly they constitute a multidimensional (...) space in which situated cognitive systems can be located and have certain dimensional configurations. These dimensions provide a new perspective on the conditions for cognitive extension. They are, however, not meant to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but to provide a toolbox for investigating the degree and nature of the integration of agent and artifact into “new systemic wholes”. The higher a situated system scores on the proposed dimensions, the more functional integration occurs, and the more tightly coupled the system is. (shrink)

The expansion of extractive corporations’ overseas business operations has led to serious concerns regarding human rights–related impacts. As theseapprehensions grow, we see a countervailing rise in calls for government intervention and in levels of socially conscious shareholder advocacy. I focus on the latter as manifested in recent use of the shareholder proposal mechanism found in corporate law. Shareholder proposals, while under-theorized, provide a valuable lens through which to consider the argument that economic behaviour is embedded within social relations. In (...) doing so, I situate my analysis within Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship. Elsewhere, I have supported the use of corporate law tools in advancing the international human rights enterprise and argued that investment activism can be an essential component of this advancement. This paper represents a reflexive pause. Using the case study of a recent proposal submitted to Goldcorp Inc., I seek to problematize the shareholder proposal as a human rights advocacy tool and to examine it as a site of contestation. (shrink)

In recent years, political theorists have come to recognize the central role of affect in social and political life. A host of scholars, coming from a number of distinct traditions, have variously drawn our attention to the importance of the emotions to the tradition of the history of political thought, as well as to normative political theory. This attentiveness to affect is often cast as a break with earlier, Enlightenment-inspired liberal approaches towards politics, approaches that marginalized the emotions, dismissing the (...) passions as potentially dangerous, or neglected them altogether. According to the conventional liberal view, emotions are said to have no place in the public sphere, while proceduralist institutions abstract away from citizens’ affective attachments, now cast as private preferences of individuals qua citizens. In this paper we challenge this prevalent view. We argue that no less a liberal theorist than John Rawls is deeply attentive to the place of emotions in his account of liberalism. This may seem counterintuitive given that Rawls' work has been frequently criticized for epitomizing some of the deepest problems of contemporary liberal theory, as a result of the emphasis on rationalism and reasonableness in his account of liberal justice. However, against this prevalent reading, we demonstrate that Rawls is in fact highly concerned with the role of affect and presents us with an account of the embedded liberal subject. By drawing out these dimensions of Rawls' thought, we hope to contribute to upending the conventional view of liberalism as affect-blind in order to encourage a more nuanced reading of the liberal tradition. (shrink)

What does it mean to know oneself, and what is the self that one hopes to know? This article outlines the implications of an embodied understanding of persons and some aspects of the “self” that are generally ignored when thinking about our selves. The Cartesian model of body–soul dualism reinforces the idea that there is within us a soul, or self, or mind that is our hidden, inner, and real self. Thus, the path to self-knowledge is introspection. The alternative view (...) is that persons are embodied, embedded, and at times extended. This article emphasizes the bodily, active, contextual, relational, often simulated, and sometimes extended nature of the selves that we are, and that we hope to know. (shrink)

Recently, many comparativists and democratic theorists have argued that democracy is in imminent peril, even in countries that are thought to be its strongholds. But theorists like Andrew Gamble, Wolfgang Streeck, and David Runciman suggest that some democracies are too embedded to collapse. Instead, they argue these democracies are experiencing long-term structural crises. This article explains how this alternative kind of crisis works. It conceives of legitimacy crises as ‘chronic crises’ in which democratic procedures are contested even as the (...) democratic political system is affirmed. In these crises, democracies are threatened by distortion and deadlock rather than death. The article gives a precise account of chronic legitimacy crises. It treats legitimacy as a scalar concept, going beyond binary views where legitimacy is something a state either has or lacks. It distinguishes periods of chronic crisis from stable periods and from acute crises. It shows how chronic crises are distinctively about legitimacy. It carves out conceptual space for a different kind of legitimacy crisis, and it assists comparativists in thinking about how younger democracies differ from older ones. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to show that Cornelius Castoriadis offers a particularly innovative response to the question of the socialised individual’s capacity to create newness. I first identify the conceptual apparatus that informs Castoriadis’s thinking, focusing on the notions of the radical imaginary, social imaginary, and radical imagination. I then describe how Castoriadis conceives of the subject in terms of a unified, albeit fluctuating, psychic monad that must be turned into a differentiated individual through a process of socialisation. (...) Rather than annihilate the psychic monad, this process sublimates the psychic monad within the socialised individual, with the consequence that (1) it is necessary to find ways within each social imaginary for the psychic monad to express its radical autonomy, and (2) the individual is always able to “use” its chaotic psychic monadism originally and creatively. It is precisely because the sublimated primal unconscious continues to subtend the socialised psyche that the individual is always able to affect a fundamental rupture from its social imaginary/social unconscious with this rupturing permitting the creation of genuine newness and, indeed, being its condition; that is, it is only because of this rupture that something can be considered to be genuinely creative and new. (shrink)

This paper investigates the genesis and development of G. W. Leibniz’s theory of perception based on two central problems: the attribution of souls to animals and the attribution of substantiality to the body. It examines how the departure from early Cartesian mechanicism towards dynamism culminates in the monadological thesis that perception is the essential activity of simple substance. The study aims to show that, through the analogy between the physical notion of force and the soul’s perceptive activity, Leibniz reconciles two (...) seemingly opposing tendencies, phenomenalism and realism. By integrating the idea of force as the foundation of bodily reality into the soul itself, he successfully avoids yielding to either strict materialism or strict idealism. (shrink)

Non-cognitivists about metaphor deny that metaphors like “No man is an island” are meaningful apart from their literal content. Cognitivists argue that metaphors do have additional meaning. One argument for this is evidence from cases where metaphors seem to interact with compositional semantics, such as being embedded under propositional attitudes. Recently, Ernie Lepore and Matt Stone have given a response to this argument in the form of non-cognitivist truth conditions for such cases. I argue that their response fails to (...) account for the variety of ways we use metaphors to report people’s thoughts. (shrink)

Nurse researchers engaged in qualitative interviews with patients and spouses in healthcare may often experience being in unforeseen ethical dilemmas. Researchers are guided by the bioethical principles of justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for human rights and respect for autonomy through the entire research process. However, these principles are not sufficient to prepare researchers for unanticipated ethical dilemmas related to qualitative research interviews. We describe and discuss ethically challenging and difficult moments embedded in two cases from our own phenomenological interview (...) studies. We argue that qualitative interviews involve navigation between being guided by bioethics as a researcher, being a therapist/nurse and being a fellow human being or even a friend. The researchers’ premises to react to unexpected situations and act in a sound ethical manner must be enhanced, and there is a need for an increased focus on the researchers’ ethical preparation and to continually address and discuss cases from their own interviews. (shrink)

We find that agency problems are embedded in firm's excess and abnormal equity investments that are mainly dictated by controlling shareholder's motives and ethical choices manifested in ownership and board structure. The excess equity investment is gauged with respect to industry average. The abnormal equity investment is specifically referred to the number of nominal investment companies that are fully controlled by the controlling owners while subject to little governance. Our empirical evidences of 345 Taiwanese non-financial listed firms show that (...) firm's excess and abnormal equity investments are negatively correlated with controlling shareholder's cash flow rights while are positively correlated with the control-cash flow deviation, and board affiliation. The results are supportive of the positive incentive hypothesis and the negative entrenchment hypothesis put forth by La Porta et al. and Claessen et al.. The negative relation between equity investment and firm's value further supports the agency postulation that corporate excess and abnormal equity investments represent a leeway for controlling shareholder to exploit wealth of minority shareholders. This study potentially contributes to the literature of business ethics by portraying an empirically testable linkage from controlling owner's ethical choices to his actions and therefore firm's value. (shrink)

The emergence of ethical concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has led to an explosion of high-level ethical principles being published by a wide range of public and private organizations. However, there is a need to consider how AI developers can be practically assisted to anticipate, identify and address ethical issues regarding AI technologies. This is particularly important in the development of AI intended for healthcare settings, where applications will often interact directly with patients in various states of vulnerability. In this (...) paper, we propose that an ‘embedded ethics’ approach, in which ethicists and developers together address ethical issues via an iterative and continuous process from the outset of development, could be an effective means of integrating robust ethical considerations into the practical development of medical AI. (shrink)

I argue for the usefulness of the distinction between knowledge that is, and knowledge that is not, acquired in such a way as necessarily to be acquired along with other knowledge so acquired. Knowledge gained in the latter ways—e.g. by testimony, by linguistic stipulation—has proved philosophically puzzling. But this is because philosophers have used traditional epistemological vocabulary to try to describe what’s distinctive about it. Using the solitary/embedded distinction, we can frame descriptions that are both true, and not stipulative-seeming, (...) of what is distinctive of knowledge gained in these ways. I illustrate these points by discussing Saul Kripke’s claim that one can gain non-linguistic knowledge by linguistic stipulation. (shrink)

I show that wish, an attitude verb presupposing the counterfactuality of its complement, raises a problem for grammatical theories of scalar implicatures when a scalar item is embedded in its complement.

ABSTRACT This essay explores the ways in which theories and entities are culturally and intellectually embedded in historical and disciplinary contexts by looking at the development of a set of related theories of perception that emerged in response to contemporary Sceptical criticisms of the very possibility of doing empirical science. At the same time, it attempts to bring into focus a puzzle about precisely how (and how deeply) seeing itself is conditioned.

This paper presents an artifactual approach to models that also addresses their fictional features. It discusses first the imaginary accounts of models and fiction that set model descriptions apart from imagined-objects, concentrating on the latter :251–268, 2010; Frigg and Nguyen in The Monist 99:225–242, 2016; Godfrey-Smith in Biol Philos 21:725–740, 2006; Philos Stud 143:101–116, 2009). While the imaginary approaches accommodate surrogative reasoning as an important characteristic of scientific modeling, they simultaneously raise difficult questions concerning how the imagined entities are related (...) to actual representational tools, and coordinated among different scientists, and with real-world phenomena. The artifactual account focuses, in contrast, on the culturally established external representational tools that enable, embody, and extend scientific imagination and reasoning. While there are commonalities between models and fictions, it is argued that the focus should be on the fictional uses of models rather than considering models as fictions. (shrink)

Sunaisthesis is a generally overlooked or misconstrued concept central to Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship, and therefore to his entire ethical and politicalproject. As opposed to Stoic uses that presuppose ethical self-relation, in Aristotle’s coinage, sunaisthesis indicates the genesis of a self-relation mediated through the friend. Both the “merged selves” and the “mirrored selves” approaches to Aristotelian friendship distort this peculiar mediation. Through a close reading of relevant texts, I show that sunaisthesis provides the missing link between the De Anima’s non-reflexive (...) perceiving self and Aristotle’s requirement of a robustly reflexive yet socially inculcated ethical self. Sunaisthesis accounts for ethical responsibility while reinforcing rather than denying our embodied and socially embedded nature. (shrink)

Over the past twenty-five years, or so, considerable advances have been made in understanding how learning occurs in the brain, though much of this research is still to make its way into education. One contribution it should be making is to furnish the philosophical critique of past and current theory with supporting empirical evidence. For example, motivation theory and its cognate expectancy-value theory continue to be taught in teacher education, even though their rational cognitivist foundations are philosophically shaky, and their (...) shared representational notion of the mind is incompatible with what is now known about the learning brain. Furthermore, the central claim of motivation theory that children need to be motivated in order to learn is educationally problematic, not least because it incorporates a deficit model of the child as learner. This paper provides a philosophical and educational critique of motivation and expectancy-value theories and begins to sketch out an alternative dynamic systems approach, which argues that value is deeply embedded in the learning process, not only in the value students may or may not attach to their learning, but also neurobiologically. In opposition to motivation and its notion of the learner this paper argues that every student is equipped with a brain that is value-orientated towards learning and will learn, when nested in suitably affordant learning environments. In place of expectancy-value, we argue for value-embedded learning, which provides a non-reductive and biologically plausible account of how value and emotional salience are dynamically interwoven in the learning process. (shrink)

This commentry focuses on the one major ecumenical theme propounded in Andy Clark's Being There that I find difficult to accept; this is Clark’s advocacy, especially in the third and final part of the book, of the extended nature of the embedded, embodied mind.

Die zunehmende Durchdringung der menschlichen Lebenspraxis durch KI-basierte Surveillance-Technologien wirft grundlegende ethische Fragen auf. Im Folgenden wird der Blick exemplarisch auf Embedded AI Technologien gelenkt. Hierbei wird das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen care and control herangezogen, um die Perspektive darauf zu lenken, dass diese Technologien (allzu leicht) im Gewand der Fürsorge auftreten. Hand in Hand damit etablieren sich jedoch – schleichend und oftmals unbemerkt – Kontrollmechanismen, die den ethischen Grundwert der Privatheit bedrohen, ja tendenziell sogar unterminieren. Im Beitrag wird hierzu auf (...) die (scheinbare) Selbstverständlichkeit mittlerweile alltäglich gewordener technischer Überwachungspraktiken geblickt, und zwar im Kontext der Reflexion eines ethischen Wertekonfliktes – bedingt durch die technische Transformation der Lebenspraxis. (shrink)

The marketization of interest rate is an inevitable requirement for China’s financial reform and joining the WTO to connect with the international financial market. It is also an important link to improve the marketization degree of China’s financial system. The marketization of interest rate in China is gradually advancing according to its preset mode. In the process of interest rate marketization, an unavoidable problem is that while the interest rate marketization gives the commercial banks the autonomy of capital pricing, the (...) fluctuation of interest rate is more and more frequent. However, due to the fluctuation of interest rate, the loan as the main assets of commercial banks will be prepayed by borrowers, and the time deposit as the main liabilities of commercial banks will be withdrawn by depositors in advance; that is, embedded options are implied in asset liability items, which makes it difficult for commercial banks to accurately calculate the actual interest margin of deposits and loans and manage the interest rate risk. Therefore, it is of great significance to identify and price such embedded option value. On the basis of identifying and decomposing the embedded options in deposit and loan of commercial banks, according to the change characteristics of deposit and loan interest rate of Chinese commercial banks, this paper chooses jump-diffusion interest rate model to describe the change of benchmark interest rate of deposit and loan in China and demonstrates the advantages of this model compared with other models. Based on Monte Carlo simulation technology, the embedded options of five-year fixed deposit and ten-year prepayable loan in China are priced. On this basis, it points out that the real interest margin of commercial bank’s deposit and loan should be the nominal interest margin minus the value of deposit and loan’s embedded options. In the process of interest rate risk management, we should pay attention to the existence of embedded options and carry out effective management. (shrink)

It is not clear whether breast cancer screening is a public health intervention or an individual clinical service. The question is important because the concepts best suited for ethical reasoning in public health might be different to the concepts commonly employed in biomedical ethics. We consider it likely that breast screening has elements of a public health intervention and used an empirical ethics approach to explore this further. If breast screening has public health characteristics, it is probable that policy and (...) practice experts will employ socially embedded concepts when reasoning about it. We gathered data on whether and how these concepts existed in the discussion and reasoning of Australian breast screening experts. We found that experts employed these concepts when talking about the purpose and practices of breast screening, and the behaviour of breast screening professionals and consumers. Experts gave varied judgements about breast screening based on reasoning with these concepts, considering it to be more or less successful in contributing to the public interest and in incorporating socially embedded concepts into its operational agenda. Our findings are compatible with breast screening having public health characteristics. We advocate for the incorporation of socially embedded concepts in breast screening policy and practice. (shrink)

In “The Mind Incarnate” Shapiro argues that research in the area of embodied, embedded mind and cognition undermines a functionalist program. In contrast Clark, in “Pressing the Flesh”, argues that embodied, embedded approaches can be viewed as extended functionalistic approaches. In the light of these arguments my thesis is devoted to elucidating the logical relation between functionalism and embodied, embedded approaches. I argue that the functionalist programme is not undermined by embodied and embedded approaches. Shapiro argues (...) that research of embodied, embedded cognition and mind shows that characteristics of embodiment determine characteristics of mind. I label this view the body-detail model. The consequence of this model is that the very same kind of mind cannot exist in bodies with different characteristics. Thus, having a humanlike mind requires a humanlike body. This conflicts with abstract versions of functionalism that endorse multiple realization: the idea that the same mind can exist in different kinds of bodies. I argue against the body-detail model, demonstrating that for each of the research projects presented by Shapiro the strong reading that one has to have a humanlike body to have a human mind is not justified. This paves the way for an alternative reading, represented by Clark, under which the body is recognized as being part of a larger system which overall operating profile determines mind. Arguments for this position involve argumentative extensions of functionalism. On this basis I conclude that functionalism is not undermined by embodied, embedded approaches. (shrink)

Howe et al. suggest that most talents can be explained in terms of practice and other environmental effects, and only exceptionally by innate factors. This commentary provides an illustration of one such exception: performance on the Embedded Figures Test by people with autism and their relatives.

Certain recurring themes have emerged from research on intelligent behavior from literatures as diverse as developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, human reasoning and problem solving, and primatology. These themes include the importance of sensitivity to goal structure rather than action sequences in intelligent learning, the capacity to construct and manipulate hierarchically embedded mental representations, and a troubling domain specificity in the manifestation of each.

Philosophy is here viewed broadly as a label or name that transcends the quarrels of diverse philosophical schools which attempt to exclude one another from this label. It is argued that philosophy emerges from one’s culture as it does not exist in a vacuum; it emerges from the people’s experiences of joy and pain, doubt and certainty, and so on. It is manifested in a person’s reflections of the time, locally or globally, or in the people’s language, songs, myths, riddles, (...) and the like. Though embedded in one’s culture, it can be disembedded from that culture by an ethnophilosopher or by a historian/scholar of philosophy. Once disembedded, philosophy may turn around and try to critique that culture in order to refine it. (shrink)

To study the development trend of embedded platforms in home appliances Internet of Things, an application of embedded Linux in the design of IoT gateway is designed. ARM microprocessor S3C2410, EM310 radio frequency module, and Ethernet DM9000A module are used to realize the home network information-processing platform. The platform utilizes existing network facilities, RF modules, and network interface modules to realize the interconnection of the home perception network through wireless or wired links. For experimental analysis, Ping the central (...) server from the IoT node B is set to twice: The first time ttl = 255 time = 1.9 ms, the second time: ttl = 255 time = 2.4 ms. After application verification, the system has the characteristics of low cost, small size, low power consumption, and vital ease of use. It can not only integrate the home Internet and the IoT gateway but also directly run application-layer communication protocols such as HTTP/mqtt between IoT nodes and Internet terminals. The design supports multi-hop communication and significantly increases the deployment range of IoT nodes without signal relay equipment, hence reducing the cost of IoT networking and the complexity of the network architecture. (shrink)

Emotion theories in present philosophical discussion propose different models of relationship between feeling and appraisal. The multicomponent model considers appraisal as separate component and distinguishes it from feeling and physiological body changes thus presupposing what may be called 'disembodied' and 'disembedded' appraisal as representational. The recently emerged concept of enactment, in contrast, argues that appraisal is closely linked to feeling and physiological body changes presupposing what can be called 'embodied' and 'embedded' appraisal as relational. The aim of the paper (...) is to investigate which concept of appraisal, the 'disembedded' or the 'embedded' one, is better compatible with current neuroimaging data on emotion processing and thus neurophilosophically more tenable. The 'disembodied' and 'disembedded' concept implies distinct and independent brain regions underlying feeling and appraisal whereas 'embodied' and 'embedded' appraisal implies overlapping and dependent brain regions. Recent neuroimaging studies demonstrate that medial and lateral prefrontal cortical regions are involved in both feeling and appraisal and that there seems to be reciprocal modulation between these regions. Though preliminary, these data suggest that feeling and appraisal are associated with different patterns of neural activity across overlapping and interdependent brain regions. I therefore conclude that current neuroscientific evidence is rather in favor of the 'embodied' and 'embedded' concept of appraisal as relational than the one of 'disembodied' and 'disembedded' appraisal as representational that is presupposed in current multicomponent theories of emotions. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show how both the presentation and limitation of visual choices in massively multiplayer online role‐playing games (MMORPG) avatar creation interfaces tends to exclude or favor different real life social groups.Design/methodology/approachA novel method combining both quantitative and critical analysis of the syntagmatic‐paradigmatic structure of MMORPG avatar creation interfaces is used to inform the findings of this study.FindingsThis study concludes that as cultural interfaces, current fantasy themed MMORPGs remediate socially exclusive values both from fantasy literature (...) and from their own game lore. The socially exclusive values deal largely with extreme and immutable racial and sexual dimorphism.Research limitations/implicationsInterfaces which present users with color palettes and/or smooth slider‐based body modifiers do not lend themselves well to this method of analysis. In addition to this, only a handful of the popular MMORPGs are analyzed within the body of this work.Practical implicationsThis paper demonstrates that MMORPG players and designers need to be more aware about how they are constructing and embedding social values in their worlds. Avatars are critical conduits for online social dynamics and embedding socially exclusive values may transfer negative ideologies from old media to new.Originality/valueThis paper offers one of the earliest critiques of embedded values in avatar creation interfaces of MMORPGs. The paper aims to begin discussion on an overlooked area of now popular media that has not received any critical attention regarding its embedded messages of social inclusiveness or exclusiveness. (shrink)

This volume presents studies on pronouns in embedded contexts, and offers fundamental insights into this central area of research. Much of the recent research on pronouns has shown that embedded environments, such as clausal complements of attitude predicates, provide a window into the nature of pronouns. Pronouns in such environments not only exhibit familiar distinctions such as that between bound and referential pronouns; if they refer to the attitude holder, they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, (...) e.g., distinguishing between a de se reading and a de re reading. Topics covered include: the semantics of attitude reports that contain pronominal elements, the semantics of pronominal features and their connection to indexicality, new insights in the connection of pronominal typology and logophoricity or anti-logophoricity, and finally, the localization of embedded pronouns within a bigger picture involving the nature of perspective and the analysis of quasi-pronominal phenomena such as sequence of tense. (shrink)

Growing interest in embedded research approaches—where research is incorporated into clinical care—has spurred numerous studies to generate knowledge relevant to the real-world needs of patients and other stakeholders. However, it also has presented ethical challenges. An emerging challenge is how to understand the nature and extent of investigators’ obligations to patient-subjects. Prior scholarship on investigator duties has generally been grounded upon the premise that research and clinical care are distinct activities, bearing distinct duties. Yet this premise—and its corresponding implications—are (...) challenged when research and clinical care are deliberately integrated. After presenting three case studies from recent pragmatic clinical trials, we identify six differences between explanatory trials and embedded research that limit the application of existing scholarship for ascertaining investigator duties. We suggest that these limitations indicate a need to account for the implications of usual care and to move beyond a narrow focus on the investigator-subject dyad, one that better reflects the team- and institution-based nature of contemporary health systems. (shrink)

I present experimental and computational research, inspired by the perspective of Embodied Embedded Cognition, concerning various aspects of language as supporting Everett’s interactionist view of language. Based on earlier and ongo- ing work, I briefly illustrate the contribution of the environment to the syste- maticity displayed in linguistic performance, the importance of joint attention for the development of a shared vocabulary, the role of (limited) traveling for language diversification, the function of perspective taking in social communica- tion, and the (...) bodily nature of understanding of meaning. (shrink)

The Axiomatic Opacity Constraint (AOC) states that no agent embedded in a causally closed system operating under linear temporal ordering can achieve infallible epistemic access to its own future states while retaining the capacity for causal intervention. Previously established as a corollary of the Fixed-Point Paradox Theorem, the AOC merits independent examination. We prove that the AOC is axiomatic in the strict sense: derivable from temporal linearity, informational closure, and non-contradiction alone, prior to any empirical commitments. We establish formal (...) connections with Gödel incompleteness, Turing undecidability, and Lawvere's categorical fixed-point theorem, situating the AOC as a fourth member of the self-reference family. We derive the Probability Corollary: no contingent future event can receive credence one for any embedded agent retaining causal agency. We prove the Optimal Epistemic Position Theorem: deliberative efficiency DE = ρ·Ω (reason-responsiveness times residual epistemic uncertainty) is maximized at an interior noise level σ* = γσ_R, with maximum efficiency DE* = (1−φ²)/4. Neither certainty nor randomness is optimal; the wisest agent operates at the equipartition point. We extend the AOC to multi-agent systems, derive structural consequences for communication and moral assessment, and establish that the first-person perspectival asymmetry is a formally necessary feature of any agent retaining causal agency rather than a contingent limitation. The epistemology of perspective is not incidental to agency but constitutive of it. (shrink)

The article will be divided into three parts: 1. Explain the literary origins of the nesting pattern and its relationship to cinema narrative, and analyse the nesting tactics commonly used in films under Hollywood’s classical narrative. 2. Describe the variations in nested structures in films made in the 1990s, focusing on self-reflexive nesting, which emerged as a new model beyond conventional nesting during this period. 3. Distinguish the literary style of embedded narratives from the visual recognition mode and provide (...) an example of how the latter is used in films to create impossible puzzles. (shrink)

Do you know who you are? If the question seems unclear, it might owe to the notion of ‘knowing-wh’ (knowing-who, knowing-what, knowing-when, etc.). Such knowledge contrasts with ‘knowing-that’, the more familiar topic of epistemologists. But these days, knowing-wh is receiving more attention than ever, and here we will survey three current debates on the nature of knowing-wh. These debates concern, respectively, (1) whether all knowing-wh is reducible to knowing-that (‘generalized intellectualism’), (2) whether all knowing-wh is relativized to a contrast proposition (...) (‘contrastivism about knowing-wh’), and (3) whether the context-sensitivity of knowing-wh is a semantic or purely pragmatic phenomenon (‘contextualism vs. invariantism about knowing-wh’). (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to encourage participants in the debate about the locus of cognition (e.g., extended mind vs embedded mind) to turn their attention to noteworthy anthropological and sociological considerations typically (but not uniquely) arising from transhumanist and posthumanist research. Such considerations, we claim, promise to potentially give us a way out of the stalemate in which such a debate has fallen. A secondary goal of this paper is to impress trans and post-humanistically inclined readers to (...) embrace (or at least seriously reflect on) the extended mind thesis as a potential gamechanger to the state of play in their own debates. We start off (Sect. 1) by reviewing two crucial ideas (homo faber and plasticity of the body schema) that are instrumental in setting up the dispute between extended and embedded. We then summarise (Sect. 2), the stalemate between these two competing accounts of cognition, and review some of the dialectics underlying it. In Sect. 3, to get out of the stalemate, we propose to focus on a series of important anthropological and sociological considerations derived from and related to trans and posthumanist research. In doing so, we claim (Sect. 4) that an extended approach to cognition becomes anthropologically preferable and morally as well as socially more desirable than an embedded one. (shrink)

We begin by introducing our readers to the Extended Mind Thesis and briefly discuss a series of arguments in its favour. We continue by showing of such a theory can be resisted and go on to demonstrate that a more conservative account of cognition can be developed. We acknowledge a stalemate between these two different accounts of cognition and notice a couple of issues that we argue have prevented further progress in the field. To overcome the stalemate, we propose to (...) focus on the ethical implications of these theories. We link work conducted on the Extended Mind Thesis with contemporary transhumanist research and claim that extended may be ethically preferred over embedded because it is a more progressive and inclusive theory. (shrink)