This paper has two aims. The first is to explain a type of wrong that arises when agents obscure responsibility for their actions. Call it “agency laundering.” The second is to use the concept of agency laundering to understand the underlying moral issues in a number of recent cases involving algorithmic decision systems. From the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference, iConference 2019, Washington D.C., March 31-April 3, 2019.

President Clinton, already facing formidable obstacles in reforming the health care system, denies that it will involve any rationing. This is politically understandable, but wrong. Infinite needs are rapidly overtaking finite resources. Most health providers recognize that the genius of modern medicine has outpaced our ability to pay. But the public still has unlimited expectations and a blind faith that everything can be provided to everyone by simply eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse." Rationing is inherent in any health care (...) system. As government undertakes to define what is "medically necessary or appropriate," it will unavoidably undertake a series of rationing decisions. Health care is being transformed from a private good to a public good. Government, when it reforms the health care system, must inevitably ask: How do we buy the most health for the public? Keywords: Clinton Health Plan, public good, rationing CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

For Erasmus, the two fountains streaming milky juice—a new mother’s breasts—represent powerful symbols of love and authority. Erasmus describes the mother’s breasts as fountains oozing love to the sucking child. Elizabeth Clinton extends the image of Mother to represent God, reminding the nursing mother that when she looks on her sucking child, she should remember that she is God’s new born babe, sucking His instruction and His word, even as the babe sucks her breast. Dorothy Leigh extends the image (...) of the nursing mother to an image of Christ himself. Mother’s love, especially a breast-feeding or “lying in” mother’s love, is one of the most authoritatively gendered representations of love. Issues of gender and authority converge often around the image of the breast-feeding mother. Drawing on the image of the nursing mother, Dorothy Leigh and other early modern writers actively engaged in the most contentious and public debates of their day, including the authority of men, preachers and kings. (shrink)

: President Clinton's charge to the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments included the identification of ethical and legal standards for evaluating government-sponsored radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War. In this paper, we review the traditional account of the history of American research ethics, and then highlight and explain the significance of a number of the Committee's historical findings as they relate to this account. These findings include both the national defense establishment's struggles with legal and insurance issues (...) concerning human experiments, and the medical profession's perspective on human experimentation in the years following the Nuremberg Medical Trials. We conclude that the Committee's work both enriches the traditional view of the history of research ethics and opens important new areas for study. (shrink)

This is a study of the nature of time. In it, redeploying an argument first presented by McTaggart, the author argues that although time itself is real, tense is not. He accounts for the appearance of the reality of tense - our sense of the passage of time, and the fact that our experience occurs in the present - by showing how time is indispensable as a condition of action. Time itself is further analysed, and Dr Mellor gives answers to (...) most of the metaphysical questions it provokes, concerning the relation of time to space, the dissection of time, and its relation to change and causation. (shrink)

Cet article propose une analyse du procès Clinton en se penchant sur les différentes étapes de l’affaire, les stratégies des acteurs en jeu et les choix de l’opinion publique américaine. En nous révélant l’image d’une société américaine à la recherche d’un modèle politique s’appuyant tant sur le libéralisme interventionniste que sur le conservatisme, le procès Clinton a mis en lumière la dérive partisane dont il a été l’objet. L’auteur nous montre cependant à quel point l’opinion publique américaine a (...) su rester en dehors du débat politicien et préserver sa confiance au président. (shrink)

Norman's identification of a ventral system embodying a constructivist theory of perception is rejected in favor of an ecological theory of perception and perceptual learning. We summarize research showing that a key motivation for the ventral-constructivist connection, percept-percept coupling, confuses perceptual and post-perceptual processes.

This chapter spells out in detail how Kant’s thinking about logic during the critical period shapes the account of philosophy that he gives in the Critiques. Tolley explores Kant’s motivations behind his formation of the idea of a new “transcendental” logic, drawing out in particular how he means to differentiate it from the traditional “merely formal” approaches to logic, insofar as transcendental logic investigates not just the basic forms of the activity of thinking but also its basic contents. Kant’s understanding (...) of both of these logics directly factor into the first Critique’s more general project of the critique of reason in particular, as not just a capacity for a certain kind of thinking (inferring), but as a possible source of a priori cognition. (shrink)

A growing amount of media is paid for by its consumers through their very consumption of it. Typically, this new media is web-based and paid for by advertising. It includes the services offered by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. We offer an ethical assessment of the attention economy, the market where attention is exchanged for new media. We argue that the assessment has ethical implications for how the attention economy should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics (...) for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market tends to engender extremely harmful outcomes for individuals or society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates not to the outcomes of the market, but rather, to whether it somehow reflects or has its source in weakened agency. We argue that the attention economy animates concerns with respect to both criteria and that new media should be subject to the same sort of regulation as other harmful, addictive products. (shrink)

A number of findings in the field of machine learning have given rise to questions about what it means for automated scoring- or decisionmaking systems to be fair. One center of gravity in this discussion is whether such systems ought to satisfy classification parity (which requires parity in accuracy across groups, defined by protected attributes) or calibration (which requires similar predictions to have similar meanings across groups, defined by protected attributes). Central to this discussion are impossibility results, owed to Kleinberg (...) et al. (2016), Chouldechova (2017), and Corbett-Davies et al. (2017), which show that classification parity and calibration are often incompatible. This paper aims to argue that classification parity, calibration, and a newer, interesting measure called counterfactual fairness are unsatisfactory measures of fairness, offer a general diagnosis of the failure of these measures, and sketch an alternative approach to understanding fairness in machine learning. (shrink)

A literary and historical analysis of the structure and meaning of recurrent symbols, images, and actions employed in Plato’s dialogues. In this book, Clinton DeBevoise Corcoran examines the use of place in Plato’s dialogues. Corcoran argues that spatial representations, such as walls, caves, and roads, as well as the creation of eternal patterns and chaotic images in the particular spaces, times, characterizations, and actions of the dialogues, provide clues to Plato’s philosophic project. Throughout the dialogues, the Good serves as (...) an overarching ordering principle for the construction of place and the proper limit of spaces, whether they be here in the world, deep in the underworld, or in the nonspatial ideal realm of the Forms. The Good, since it escapes the limits of space and time, equips Plato with a powerful mythopoetic tool to create settings, frames, and arguments that superimpose different dimensions of reality, allowing worlds to overlap that would otherwise be incommensurable. The Good also serves as a powerful ethical tool for evaluating the order of different spaces. Corcoran explores how Plato uses wrestling and war as metaphors for the mixing of the nonspatial, eternal forms in the world and history, and how he uses spatial images throughout the dialogues to critique Athens’s tragic overreach in the Peloponnesian War. Far from merely an incidental backdrop in the dialogues, place etches the tragic intersection of the mortal and the immortal, good and evil, and Athens’s past, present, and future. (shrink)

Prediction-based decisions, which are often made by utilizing the tools of machine learning, influence nearly all facets of modern life. Ethical concerns about this widespread practice have given rise to the field of fair machine learning and a number of fairness measures, mathematically precise definitions of fairness that purport to determine whether a given prediction-based decision system is fair. Following Reuben Binns (2017), we take ‘fairness’ in this context to be a placeholder for a variety of normative egalitarian considerations. We (...) explore a few fairness measures to suss out their egalitarian roots and evaluate them, both as formalizations of egalitarian ideas and as assertions of what fairness demands of predictive systems. We pay special attention to a recent and popular fairness measure, counterfactual fairness, which holds that a prediction about an individual is fair if it is the same in the actual world and any counterfactual world where the individual belongs to a different demographic group (cf. Kusner et al. (2018)). (shrink)

Data-driven, decision-making technologies used in the justice system to inform decisions about bail, parole, and prison sentencing are biased against historically marginalized groups (Angwin, Larson, Mattu, & Kirchner 2016). But these technologies’ judgments—which reproduce patterns of wrongful discrimination embedded in the historical datasets that they are trained on—are well-evidenced. This presents a puzzle: how can we account for the wrong these judgments engender without also indicting morally permissible statistical inferences about persons? I motivate this puzzle and attempt an answer.

We offer an ethical assessment of the market for data used to generate what are sometimes called “consumer scores” (i.e., numerical expressions that are used to describe or predict people’s dispositions and behavior), and we argue that the assessment has ethical implications on how the market for consumer scoring data should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market produces serious harms, either for participants (...) in the market, for third parties, or for society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates to whether participants understand the nature and significance of the exchanges they are making, if they can be guaranteed fair representation, or if there is differential need for the market’s good. We argue that consumer scoring data should be subject to the same sort of regulation as the older FICO credit scores. Although the movement in the 1990s that was aimed at regulating the FICO scores was not aimed at restraining a market per se, we argue that the reforms were underwritten by concerns about the same sorts of problems as those outlined by our heuristics. Therefore, consumer data should be subject to the same sort of regulation. (shrink)

Holm (2022) argues that a class of algorithmic fairness measures, that he refers to as the ‘performance parity criteria’, can be understood as applications of John Broome’s Fairness Principle. We argue that the performance parity criteria cannot be read this way. This is because in the relevant context, the Fairness Principle requires the equalization of actual individuals’ individual-level chances of obtaining some good (such as an accurate prediction from a predictive system), but the performance parity criteria do not guarantee any (...) such thing: the measures merely ensure that certain population-level ratios hold. (shrink)

Impermissivists hold that an agent with a given body of evidence has at most one rationally permitted attitude that she should adopt towards any particular proposition. Permissivists deny this, often motivating permissivism by describing scenarios that pump our intuitions that the agent could reasonably take one of several attitudes toward some proposition. We criticize the following impermissivist response: while it seems like any of that range of attitudes is permissible, what is actually required is the single broad attitude that encompasses (...) all of these single attitudes. While this might seem like an easy way to win over permissivists, we argue that this impermissivist response leads to an indefensible epistemology; permissive intuitions are not so easily co-opted. (shrink)

Why is aesthetics important to Wittgenstein? What, according to him, is the function of the aesthetic? My answer consists of three parts: first, I argue that Wittgenstein finds himself in an aporia of normative consciousness – that is to say, a problem with regard to our awareness of the world in terms of its relation to a norm. Second, I argue that the function of Wittgenstein’s aesthetic writings is to deal with this aporia. Third, through a comparison with Friedrich Schlegel’s (...) writings on allegory, I try to show that the way in which Wittgenstein resolves the aporia renders him a Romanticist philosopher. The point of an aesthetic interaction, for Wittgenstein, is that it can render clear what cannot be described without running against the walls of our cage: the absolute. Through aesthetic interactions we are able to (indirectly) access a ground for norms by which we experience ourselves as unconditionally bound. (shrink)

Algorithmic systems and predictive analytics play an increasingly important role in various aspects of modern life. Scholarship on the moral ramifications of such systems is in its early stages, and much of it focuses on bias and harm. This paper argues that in understanding the moral salience of algorithmic systems it is essential to understand the relation between algorithms, autonomy, and agency. We draw on several recent cases in criminal sentencing and K–12 teacher evaluation to outline four key ways in (...) which issues of agency, autonomy, and respect for persons can conflict with algorithmic decision-making. Three of these involve failures to treat individual agents with the respect they deserve. The fourth involves distancing oneself from a morally suspect action by attributing one’s decision to take that action to an algorithm, thereby laundering one’s agency. (shrink)

New media (highly interactive digital technology for creating, sharing, and consuming information) affords users a great deal of control over their informational diets. As a result, many users of new media unwittingly encapsulate themselves in epistemic bubbles (epistemic structures, such as highly personalized news feeds, that leave relevant sources of information out (Nguyen forthcoming)). Epistemically paternalistic alterations to new media technologies could be made to pop at least some epistemic bubbles. We examine one such alteration that Facebook has made in (...) an effort to fight fake news and conclude that it is morally permissible. We further argue that many epistemically paternalistic policies can (and should) be a perennial part of the internet information environment. (shrink)

Curle concludes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, understood in a Bergsonian context, provides us with a way to affirm in the modern context that ...

This paper examines the practice of using predictive systems to lengthen the prison sentences of convicted persons when the systems forecast a higher likelihood of re-offense or re-arrest. There has been much critical discussion of technologies used for sentencing, including questions of bias and opacity. However, there hasn’t been a discussion of whether this use of predictive systems makes sense in the first place. We argue that it does not by showing that there is no plausible theory of punishment that (...) supports it. (shrink)

I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be (...) confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique, and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of forms. (shrink)

Resumen. El presente documento tiene como finalidad plasmar la importancia que tiene el tomar encuenta los deseos y necesidades de los espectadores para el éxito económico de las organizaciones deproducción cinematográfica mexicanas. Se establecen las funciones culturales y económicas quedeben considerar los directores y productores de las organizaciones aquí estudiadas. Por otro lado, seubica los diferentes grados de insatisfacción en los que cae un espectador al que no le agradó lapelícula. Se propone el concepto “Síndrome Lozano-Barragán”* para ubicar a aquellasorganizaciones (...) de producción cinematográfica que culpan a los espectadores que quedaroninsatisfechos, del fracaso en taquilla, además de argumentar que dichos espectadores no supieronentender la película o que no saben de la naturaleza de la misma. Por último, hacemos algunasrecomendaciones que pueden seguir las organizaciones de producción cinematográfica para evitareste síndrome e incrementar la satisfacción de los espectadores.Palabras Claves. Organizaciones de producción cinematográfica, industria cultural, síndrome Lozano-Barragán, espectadores, insatisfacción.. The main purpose of this document is to state the importance of taking into considerationthe desires and needs of the spectators by the Mexican film production organizations has for theireconomical success. It establishes the cultural and economic functions that filmmakers studied onthis document must consider. On the other hand, it locates the different degrees of the dissatisfactionin which a spectator can falls into when he or she doesn´t like the movie. We propose the “Lozano-Barragan syndrome”* concept, to distinguish those film production organizations that blame thedissatisfied spectator, for the box office failure, as well as, they argued that those spectators didn´tunderstand the movies or that they don´t understand the nature of it. Finally, we make somerecommendations that could de followed by the film production organizations to avoid this syndromeand increase the spectator satisfaction.Keywords. Film production organizations, cultural industry, Lozano-Barragan syndrome,spectators, dissatisfaction. (shrink)

There has been considerable recent debate about whether Kant's account of intuitions implies that their content is conceptual. This debate, however, has failed to make significant progress because of the absence of discussion, let alone consensus, as to the meaning of ‘content’ in this context. Here I try to move things forward by focusing on the kind of content associated with Frege's notion of ‘sense ’, understood as a mode of presentation of some object or property. I argue, first, that (...) Kant takes intuitions to have a content in this sense, and, secondly, that Kant clearly takes the content of intuitions, so understood, to be distinct in kind from that possessed by concepts. I then show how my account can respond to the most serious objections to previous non-conceptualist interpretations.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The Non-Conceptuality of the Content of Intuitions: A New ApproachVolume 18, Issue 1Clinton Tolley DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000313Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The Non-Conceptuality of the Content of Intuitions: A New ApproachVolume 18, Issue 1Clinton Tolley DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000313Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The Non-Conceptuality of the Content of Intuitions: A New ApproachVolume 18, Issue 1Clinton Tolley DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000313Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

The Protestant Work Ethic is a powerful force in Western culture with far reaching effects on our values and judgments. While research on PWE as a cultural value is abundant in diverse disciplines, little research has explored how this cultural value facilitates the use of heuristics when evaluating the morality of others. Using both PWE and illusory correlation as foundations, this paper explores whether people attribute positive moral characteristics to others merely based upon a description as hardworking. Three experiments suggest (...) merely being described as hardworking leads to perceptions of greater honesty, a more careful and detailed approach to one’s work, accompanied by a lesser likelihood of engaging in cheating behavior and a greater likelihood of accountability. These results have implications regarding the detection of deviant/fraudulent behavior. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 323-356.