Will there be ideologically based drones in the future? To simplify things a little, will there be Islamist or crusader drones in the future, or even, in a broader sense, fascist, communist, or woke drones? I would like to note in advance that questions concerning philosophical ethics are not unrelated to legal philosophy or computer science. It is a common mistake to confuse these (especially law and ethics). In the following article, I will attempt to explain foreign and technical terms, (...) while sticking to our usage, so that we can see that the field of "AI and ethics" is just as much a part of scientific inquiry as computer science or jurisprudence itself. (shrink)

As a philosopher, legal ethicist, and expert in international criminal law, David Luban was uniquely positioned to challenge the morality and legality of the Bush administration's coercive interrog...

Using the categories of the epistemic and epistemological field of theory the author is trying to show on the basis of Bled presentations of Mihailo Markovic and Milan Kangrga that their conceptions belong to two separated theoretical fields, which are incompatible with each other. Therefore even in that period we could not speak about a common praxis-philosophy nor a common vision of Marxism. Koristeci kategorije epistemickog i epistemoloskog polja teorije autorica na osnovu bledskih referata Mihaila Markovica i Milana Kangrgi (...) pokusava pokazati da njihove koncepcije pripadaju dvema razlicitim filozofskim poljima koje se ne mogu sloziti, tako da ni u to vreme se nije moglo govoriti o nikakvoj zajednickoj praxis-filozofiji ni zajednickoj viziji marksizma. (shrink)

Many tasks in statistical and causal inference can be construed as problems of entailment in a suitable formal language. We ask whether those problems are more difficult, from a computational perspective, for causal probabilistic languages than for pure probabilistic (or “associational”) languages. Despite several senses in which causal reasoning is indeed more complex—both expressively and inferentially—we show that causal entailment (or satisfiability) problems can be systematically and robustly reduced to purely probabilistic problems. Thus there is no jump in computational complexity. (...) Along the way we answer several open problems concerning the complexity of well-known probability logics, in particular demonstrating the ${\exists \mathbb {R}}$ -completeness of a polynomial probability calculus, as well as a seemingly much simpler system, the logic of comparative conditional probability. (shrink)

In the past two decades scholars such as Robert Dodaro, Kathy Eden, and Michael Cameron have called attention to the influence that Augustine’s rhetorical education had on his scriptural hermeneutic. Recently, M. Cameron has argued that Augustine began to incorporate the rhetorical concept of oeconomia into his scriptural hermeneutic during his time in Milan. This article expands on Cameron’s work by establishing that Augustine had in fact incorporated rhetorical oeconomia into his scriptural hermeneutic by 387 / 8 C.E. through (...) a focused reading of two texts from De moribus ecclesiae. This reading demonstrates that the terminology and logic that Augustine employs to argue for the unity of the Christian scriptures in mor. 1.17.30 and 1.28.56 mirror the terminology and logic of the Latin rhetorical tradition, revealing that Augustine uses the phrases mirifica dispositio and admirabilis ordo to represent the same concept that Quintilian had referred to with the phrase oeconomica dispositio. (shrink)

Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a (...) central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore ways in which metaphors contribute to hermeneutical resistance, that is, to practices that overcome and/or ameliorate hermeneutical injustice. I distinguish two aspects of hermeneutical injustice and two corresponding kinds of resistance: exoteric and esoteric hermeneutical injustice/resistance. The former injustice consists in unjust harm due to an inability to make one's experience understood to others. The latter consists in such a harm due to an inability to fully understand one's own experiences. In exoteric hermeneutical resistance, metaphors (...) can overcome resistances in others to understand oppressed agents' contributions because of its automatic processing and anti-deniability. In esoteric hermeneutical resistance, metaphors may highlight common structures in various aspects of marginalised agent's experiences, they can provide means of denoting social properties obscured by hermeneutical injustice and they can exhibit hermeneutical injustice by resisting interpretation. I illustrate these practices through works by Emily Dickinson, Ralph Ellison, Frantz Fanon, Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs. Those examples show the power of metaphors in hermeneutical resistance. (shrink)

This article approaches the paradigm shift of datafication from the perspective of civil society. Looking at how individuals and groups engage with datafication, it complements the notion of “data politics” by exploring what we call the “contentious politics of data”. By contentious politics of data we indicate the bottom-up, transformative initiatives interfering with and/or hijacking dominant processes of datafication, contesting existing power relations or re-appropriating data practices and infrastructure for purposes distinct from the intended. Said contentious politics of data is (...) articulated in an array of practices of data activism taking a critical stance towards datafication. In data activism, data as mediators take a central role, both as part of an action repertoire or as objects of struggle in their own right. Leveraging social movement studies and science and technology studies, this theoretical essay argues that data activism can be mapped along two analytical dimensions: “data as stakes” vs. “data as repertoires”, and “individual practice vs. collective action”. Mapping action repertoires and tactics along these axes allows us to chart the potential emergence of a political data subject at the intersection of these two dimensions. This furthers our understanding of people’s engagement with data in relation to other forms of activism and existing work in social movement studies. It also helps us interpreting potential trajectories of contemporary social movements, as they increasingly interface with data, devices and platforms. (shrink)

“Nach neuen Meeren”: Nietzsche’s seafaring poetry in the context of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Even though the metaphor of seafaring can be traced back to the times of the early Greeks, it was not until the 19th century that one of its variations, the endless journey without arrival, found its place in literature. Nietzsche picks it up and uses it in his writings to illustrate major themes of his philosophy: for instance, the impossible journey of the philosopher towards truth and certainty. (...) The poem Nach neuen Meeren, on which Nietzsche worked repeatedly over the years, alludes to his different uses of the seafaring metaphor in his prose. The paper aims to both put Nietzsche’s poem into the context of his philosophical prose writings and to analyse the philosophical ideas that are connected to Nietzsche’s various uses of the metaphor in his prose. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Confucian Liberalism: Mou Zongsan and Hegelian Liberalism by Roy TsengMilan Matthiesen (bio)Confucian Liberalism: Mou Zongsan and Hegelian Liberalism. By Roy Tseng. Albany: SUNY Press, 2023. Pp. 405. Hardcover $95.00, isbn 978-1-4384-9111-0.With Confucian Liberalism, Roy Tseng sets a new landmark in the contemporary discourse on Confucian political theory. His intricate account of the political philosophy of Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–1995) and other New Confucian philosophers, in conjunction with his (...) study of T.H. Green's (1836–1882) and other British idealists' liberalism, offer a fresh and novel approach to Confucianism and liberalism alike. Throughout the eight chapters of his book, Tseng develops the concept of "Confucian liberalism." This concept stays faithful to civil liberties, but grounds democracy on an ethics of self-realization and a perfectionist ideal of the state, "where the government helps the people to 'attain accomplishment according to the individual's nature' (jiu geti er shuncheng 就個體而順成)" (p. 125). On the one hand, this framework attempts to circumvent the overbearing tendencies of traditional Confucianism, whose moral imperatives had prohibited the development of an independent sphere of politics. On the other hand, it reintroduces the Confucian concept of humaneness (ren 仁) as an answer to the lack of common meaning in modern societies. On the one hand, Tseng therefore dissociates himself from anti-Confucian liberals such as Yin Haiguang 殷海光 (1919–1969) or Zhang Foquan 張佛泉 (1907–1994), who had proclaimed the incompatibility of Confucianism and liberal values. On the other hand, he also differentiates himself from what he calls "antiliberal Confucians." Especially recently, the latter have attracted much attention by proposing a political vision opposed to the perceived foreign and "Western" concept of liberalism. Under labels such as "political Confucianism" (Jiang Qing 蔣慶), "socialist Confucianism" (Chen Lai 陳來), "politics of benevolence" (Kang Xiaoguang 康曉光), "Confucian meritocracy" (Bai Tongdong 白彤東), or "Confucian political perfectionism" (Joseph Chan 陳祖為), they have had a profound impact on the discourse of Confucian political theory. Turning toward the [End Page 1] political works of Mou Zongsan and the British idealists, Tseng neither advocates for the inherent elitism and anti-Western sentiments of antiliberal Confucianism, nor does he fully subscribe to the radically iconoclast ideals of the anti-Confucian liberals who had denied all value of tradition and saw Confucianism as a mere obstacle toward a modernized China. Another aspect of Tseng's study that stands out from the current field of research on Mou Zongsan is his reading of Mou's conceptual framework through the lens of Hegel. While many prominent researchers, e.g. Li Minghui 李明輝, point toward Mou's reliance on Kantian ideas and concepts, Tseng convincingly argues that Mou's appropriation of the idealist framework, as well as many concepts utilized by Mou, are fundamentally Hegelian, therefore warranting a shift in perspective. Confucian Liberalism is subdivided into three parts and eight chapters. Part I, titled "Confucian Ethics," introduces the reader to Mou Zongsan's moral philosophy by providing a comparative analysis of Mou, Kant, Hegel, and the British idealists, primarily represented by T.H. Green and F.H. Bradley (1846–1924). In part II, "Civil Liberalism," Tseng then moves on to elaborate on the New Confucian view of politics. Here, he pays close attention to Mou's revaluation of Confucian politics through the Hegelian framework, the notion of "civility," and the concept of "humane government." Turning again to Mou and Green, the final part, "Perfectionist Liberalism," presents the political vision of a democratic state underpinned by a strong belief that the primary task of the state is to provide an environment for the individual citizens that allows them to fully realize their moral capabilities. The third part further argues that the values upheld by New Confucianism not only do not contradict the liberal values of human dignity, tolerance, and equal respect, but are in fact able to lay a moral foundation for modern democracies that is able to overcome the weaknesses of mainstream liberalism, manifested in atomism, nihilism, and egoism. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the core principles and concepts of Mou Zongsan's moral metaphysics. Following Mou's own approach, Tseng applies a comparative method in this introductory chapter, meticulously delineating the varying philosophical influences that shaped Mou's... (shrink)

Both “optimists” and “sceptics” in regard to extraterrestrial intelligence tend to hold the view that we are entitled to an epistemically clear position: either there will be a signal, in the sufficiently general sense, proving the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, or no such signal is forthcoming. The distinction, I wish to argue here, is not at all so clear-cut. On the contrary, there are arguments, intrinsic to the subject matter, to the effect that the detection of ETI will be a (...) protracted affair characterized by uncertainty at every step. Such view of SETI discovery mandates different policies from those conventionally discussed in the literature. We should not gear our expectations and publicly promote the view that the Contact will be a clear-cut, Archimedean “Eureka!”-style discovery. In contrast, the tempo and mode of the process of discovery might significantly influence societal and political reactions to the discovery. We should be prepared for such a protracted unfolding of events. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to improve availability classifications of components for application in construction systems. Construction production systems belong to project-based systems with serial-parallel structures with or without redundant components, and the availability function has a significant impact on the performance indicators of components and systems. The main indicators of function of the components are the availability, capacity, costs, and project time. A new approach to classification makes it possible to choose the most appropriate methodology for assessing component (...) availability in the bidding phase, and managing company’s machine park. The new classification approach was tested on a practical example. The results obtained confirmed the justification for extending the classical approach to the classification of the availability of components. (shrink)

: In this paper I attempt to rethink the relationship between art and life by formulating it based on the rereading of the Benjaminian mimetic faculty by the anthropologist Michael Taussig. Taking this position within history as non-teleological change and based on human activity, to uphold a distinction between original and representation metaphysically becomes impossible. This is important in so far as any notion of primacy becomes obsolete, while at the same time one can work with the historical existence, both (...) material and ideational, of initially abstract concepts such as art. Art then is something that in itself does not have a materially specific reality, but forms reality through artworks, institutions, pecuniary allocations or human motivation. Taking art as a world-forming force that is nonetheless historically produced in turn opens up new, pluralist ways of using this historical given for possible futures. (shrink)

Mass data surveillance practices have received heightened attention in international law since the Snowden revelations of 2013. In this article, I examine whether that attention has given rise to a “Grotian moment” regarding the regulation of these activities under international law. At the outset, I answer that question in the negative and conclude that no general customary international law rules have emerged. Yet, that is not the end of the story. At a more fundamental and conceptual level, far reaching transformative (...) process are underway in international law within the context of datafication. These concern new forms of power and/or control over data flows, and data surveillance practices are an inherent feature of that power. I contend that although there is no accelerated process of customary international law formation regarding data surveillance activities, it may be that a prolonged, epochal, Grotian moment is taking place. To that end, I argue that data surveillance must be understood as one manifestation of a broader constellation of shifts, through which ‘developments that profoundly impact the logic of territory or/and the “logic of capital” without signalling the arrival of a new international order’ are arguably in the making. (shrink)

It has already become a commonplace to discuss postbiological evolution in various contexts of futures studies, bioethics, cognitive sciences, philosophical anthropology, or even economics and SETI studies. The assumption is that technological/cultural evolution will soon entirely substitute for the biological processes which underlie human existence – and, by analogy, the existence of other independently evolved intelligent beings, if any. Various modes of postbiological evolution of humans have been envisioned in both fictional and discursive contexts. Little thought has been devoted so (...) far to the question whether these postbiological modes are truly final in both logical and conceptual terms. What lies beyond the postbiological realm? Clearly, only a few radical speculations on the topic can be offered. In this paper, it is argued that in a sufficiently broad subset of scenarios for postbiological evolution there will be a kind of reverse trend: the one of reintegration with the biological universe, by that point understood in a much wider and more inclusive sense. The argument for such reintegration could be understood through the metaphor of expanding Klein bottle as a symbolic image of the post-postbiological evolutionary trajectories. This kind of trajectory will lead to the state in which products of culture are indistinguishable from the natural environment, suggesting practical consequences for our SETI efforts. (shrink)

We consider the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) activities from a bioethical standpoint. In particular, we argue that there is a moral duty to search for other intelligent beings in the Universe. Some of them could – and are likely to be – morally enhanced in the sense that they are not only capable of unmistakable moral reasoning but are also capable of consistently acting upon the results of such deliberations. Even if the probability of finding such morally superior beings (...) is small, it is higher than zero in any case; in fact, our astrobiological knowledge suggests that this probability is significant. Hence, there are both deductive and inductive arguments for the proposition that our duty is to search for such morally superior extraterrestrial beings. In other words, there is a duty to undertake and support our SETI efforts. The argument to that effect runs parallel to some of the arguments deployed in current debates on human moral enhancement. (shrink)

Kenneth Kai-chung Yung’s Chinese Émigré Intellectuals and Their Quest for Liberal Values in the Cold War presents the philosophical and political development of Chinese intellectuals who fled the mainland after the Communist takeover in 1949. Focusing on Yin Haiguang 殷海光, Zhang Junmai 張君勱, and Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, the author provides a comparative account and comprehensive overview of the many facets of intellectual discourse among Chinese post-war philosophers and public intellectuals.Yung’s book is structured into five chapters. While the first two chapters (...) introduce the reader to the general trends and historical circumstances of the post-war intellectual sphere, the ensuing chapters... (shrink)

The thesis analyzes the position of Albanian women in the first decade of socialist rule in Montenegro, during which women became full members of society. The efforts of the communist authorities t...

Clearance phase at signalized crosswalks is an important parameter of pedestrians’ safety because it helps them to complete the crossing before the green signal for vehicles. However, there is the issue of pedestrian decision as to whether to cross if they arrive at the crosswalk during the clearance phase, which represents a violation in many countries. Due to the proof that pedestrian violations multiply the risk of traffic accidents, in this study, the tendency of pedestrians to commit violations during the (...) clearance time has been researched. With the aim of proposing the design of the pedestrian traffic lights, which could decrease the frequency of pedestrian violations, the comparison of pedestrians behaviour at crosswalks with and without a countdown timer during the clearance time was made, based on the data collected in the video recording. Chi square independency test showed that there is a statistically significant difference in the behaviour of pedestrians during the clearance time, depending on the existence of the timer, as well as the fact that pedestrians behave in a safer manner if there is no clearance time shown on the timer. The total delay rate on the roadway during the red signal, which was the consequence of starting the crossing during the clearance time or subsequent violations, was 1.3 times higher at the crosswalks with the countdown timer. This research was unique because for the first time, two-phase pedestrian crossings on the roadway with the median refuge island in the sense of clearance time were analysed, in spite of the previous proof that pedestrians are more likely to commit violations during the red signal in that kind of roadway. Another novelty in the research was pedestrians following till the end of crossing, due to the possibility of subsequent violations. With the means of binary logistic regression, different factors which affect pedestrians’ behaviour during the clearance time have been determined and they differ depending on the existence of the timer. At the pedestrian crosswalks with the timer, contributing factors have been determined, such as gender, the number of waiting pedestrians, distractions, arrival time, and age. If there is no timer, the contributing factors are the following: the number of crossing pedestrians, distractions, group, position of pedestrians in relation to the vehicle, the number of traffic lanes, and age. Based on the obtained results, a new design of the pedestrian traffic lights was proposed. (shrink)

The paper reconsiders the Weber Thesis of a linkage between Calvinism and capitalism. It first restates this sociological Thesis in terms of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination as its theological core and premise in virtue of being treated as the crucial religious factor of the spirit of modern capitalism. Consequently, it proposes that the Weber Thesis’ validity and consistency depends on that doctrine, succeeding or failing as a sociological theory with the latter depending on whether or not it is unique (...) in theological terms, as well as economic-social consequences. For that purpose, it reexamines and compares the Calvinist doctrine of predestination with the pre-Calvinist versions and infers that it is basically identical to or compatible with these. It then draws the implications for the Weber Thesis in respect of the degree of its validity or consistence. It concludes that the Weber Thesis likely is fail as a sociological-economic theory with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination to the extent that the latter is its theological ground and revealed not to be unique and new theologically and probably in terms of its societal effects. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to empirically investigate differences in role expectations, among the stakeholders involved, about the devolved personnel management role of front-line managers. In particular, we researched the role expectation differences between FLMs, their middle managers, and Human Resource practitioners. In total, nineteen semi-structured interviews have been conducted involving eleven FLMs, eight middle managers, and two HR practitioners working at the same Dutch hospital. Most discovered role expectation differences were related to how FLMs should execute their HR (...) tasks. FLMs were often uncertain if their role enactment met those of their middle managers and/or HR practitioners, herewith indicating role stress. Our findings underline the importance of paying attention to role expectations’ differences in aligning components of the HRM-performance relationship. Future research could include the role expectations of other important stakeholders, such as: subordinates and top management. The outcomes of this empirical work are translated into four interventions to diminish FLMs’ role stress. (shrink)