Lavinia Marin

Public administrations use predictive systems to decide whom to investigate for fraud or for other violations. In this paper, I show that many of these systems distribute the risk of exposure to the state’s coercive powers. These systems are often assessed in terms of familiar notions of algorithmic fairness, and are treated as analogous to systems that simply allocate scarce goods. I argue that this way of looking at these tools is morally misleading, because coercion requires a more demanding justification. The paper uses Scanlonian contractualism and argues that unequal coercive risk is permissible only if it is justified by reasons that can be addressed to the particular person who bears that risk. These reasons are often absent in practice. Population-level correlations or expected gains in accuracy count only insofar as they can be personalized into individualist reasons. However, in the administrative contexts that I discuss in the paper, they will typically be insufficient to justify imposing greater coercive risk on some persons than on others. If there are no stronger admissible reasons to justify differential selection, the default should therefore be an equal-chance lottery. To strengthen the argument, I add two supporting claims. It is not evident that profiling can sustain deterrence better than lotteries, and lotteries are in some respects epistemically superior.

AI technologies are increasingly deployed in medical care and decision-making, and efforts geared toward conceptualizing how human control over AI systems can be meaningful, i.e., sufficient to preserve the relevant human agency and responsibility, are mounting. However, a suitable conceptualization of Meaningful Human Control (MHC) explicitly tailored to AI-mediated clinical practice is still underdeveloped. This paper addresses this research gap in two ways. First, it applies the framework of Meaningful Human Control as reason-responsiveness to the medical field. Second, it shows that considerations of epistemic (in)justice ought to be included in efforts toward securing MHC in medical care. MHC demands that the moral reasons of relevant agents be made available to the socio-technical system in which the AI operates. However, this requirement can be compromised by epistemic injustices, i.e., when patients’ and clinicians’ epistemic offerings to the medical discourse are unduly limited. The paper argues that epistemic justice is an important enabler for MHC, and, when properly understood, MHC is a crucial element in a strategy to promote a more just medical AI. Since epistemic injustice depends on power asymmetries and systemic inequalities, achieving epistemic justice and MHC over medical AI requires addressing power and justice issues in the development and use of (new) medical AI.

Technological challenges have recently created a need to more sharply distinguish ethics from political philosophy of technology. Are there compelling arguments that warrant pursuing a political philosophy of technology as an autonomous endeavor aside from an ethics of technology and what would its content be? The present paper responds to those two questions. Via a critical discussion of three existing views on this relationship, I will argue that the best starting point for a political philosophy of technology originates from the prevalence and intractability of reasonable disagreement. I will extend this general suggestion, forcefully defended by Charles Larmore, with the condition that such reasonable disagreement needs resolution in some situations, due to urgency and the suboptimal outcomes that ensue if no decision is reached. Many current technological challenges have those characteristics. In my conclusions, I will briefly outline how investigations of technological utopias could contribute to discussions about reasonable disagreement, thereby, opening a fruitful avenue for future research in political philosophy of technology.

This article considers the general absence of the theme of maintenance in environmental ethics and philosophy. Despite an environmental orientation at least partially motivating much of the growing literature on repair and maintenance, there is a lack of work that brings environmental topics, sites, applications, or infrastructures under direct consideration. I interrogate why the notion of maintenance is missing from environmental ethics and philosophy, eventually arguing that the way technologies have been conceptualized in the environmental ethics and philosophy literature precludes the possibilities of maintenance in two ways. I suggest that maintenance is a promising and apt lens for thinking through human-environmental relationships, which are ongoing, co-constructive, and laborious.

The volume establishes an ethical framework for the identification, analysis, and resolution of ethical challenges that arise from the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in defence, ranging from intelligence analysis to cyberwarfare and autonomous weapon systems. It does so with the goal of advancing the relevant debate and to inform the ethical governance of AI in defence. Centring on the autonomy and learning capabilities of AI technologies, the work is rooted in AI ethics and Just War Theory. It provides a systemic conceptual analysis of the different uses of AI in defence and their ethical implications, proposes ethical principles and a methodology for their implementation in practice. It then translates this analysis into actionable recommendations for decision-maker and policymakers to foster ethical governance of AI in the defence sector.

This book offers an interdisciplinary introduction to value theory. It reviews how researchers in four academic disciplines – psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy – understand value and value change. It offers an introduction for researchers in these disciplines about how other disciplines define, theorize, and investigate value(s) to foster interdisciplinary communication. The book identifies and summarizes similarities and differences of value theory between the academic disciplines and highlights promising areas where each discipline can learn from the others.

While inequality between children and adults characterizes practically every aspect of contemporary society, school is considered a paradigmatic site of adult domination. Childist critiques tend to point to school as a place where adultism is not only conspicuous but also (re)produced. In this article, however, it is argued that the public school, obviously founded by adults for adult purposes, has an important childist dimension. Although it is based on a clear distinction between adult teachers and child students, school can problematize key adultist norms and promote a more age-equal society. This does not imply that exiting schools are necessarily childist, but rather that a certain understanding of the school, which emphasizes its social-democratic significance, can uncover its childist aspects and build on them when reimagining public education. The conception of the school in which the article focuses is presented in Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons’ 2013 book In Defence of the School: A Public Issue. Although the authors do not refer directly to childism (or child equality), and are clearly writing from an adultist perspective, I argue that the public school they describe does have a childist dimension: it challenges one of the root causes of adultism: considering children the property of their parents. Nevertheless, Masschelein and Simons’ conception of the school raises a problem of its own, which also has a childist aspect: the concern that uniform schooling supervised by the state will be detrimental to minority and indigenous groups, imposing a culture and identity determined by adults. The second part of this article addresses this concern, arguing that genuine school education can be key not only to preserving but also to revitalizing minority cultures and identities by allowing the students to bring their “newness” into the encounter with the cultures and identities of their families.

Recent analytic-philosophical works in the field of situated cognition have proposed to conceptualize the self as deeply entwined with the environment, and even as constituted by it. A common move has been to characterize the self in narrative terms, and then to argue that the narrative self is partly constituted by narratives about the past that are scaffolded (shaped and maintained) by, or distributed over, a variety of objects that can rekindle episodic memories. While we are sympathetic to these approaches, here we propose a different strategy to situate the self—one which can be seen as complementing the narrative one, and which draws from concepts and ideas central to the phenomenological-existentialist tradition. We suggest, first, that the self has a sense of its past not just via narratives and episodic memories, but in virtue of being embodied and thus, importantly, _sedimented_ (in other words, it has, or rather is, a _body memory_). Embodiment and sedimentation, in turn, always necessarily imply an environment or a situation, entailing that the self is also _inherently situated_. Second, we discuss the future-oriented dimension of selfhood, and argue that we understand ourselves as _projected_ into the future, again not necessarily only narratively and reflectively, but also tacitly, in a bodily and inherently situated way.

ABSTRACT This paper scrutinizes the nature and scope of deleterious consequences arising from the pursuit of unattainable pedagogical exemplars on social media. We cash out this phenomenon using exemplarist theory to emphasize the fact that social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) are platforms in which the vast majority of users present idealized and curated versions of themselves. We focus specifically on educational practitioners and show that attempting to emulate unattainable pedagogical exemplars has negative impacts on agents’ emotional well-being: It can cause burnout and self-conflict, decrease motivation, and also inflict detrimental outcomes on agents’ self-esteem. We conclude that attainable, relevant, relatable, and authentic exemplars are key to a successful exemplarist approach and that safeguarding against unattainable pedagogical exemplars is of paramount importance for the wellbeing of pedagogues, and by extension, the success of educational systems.

In this paper, we discuss epistemic and ethical concerns brought about by machine learning (ML) systems implemented in medicine. We begin by fleshing out the logic underlying a common approach in the specialized literature (which we call the _informativeness account_). We maintain that the informativeness account limits its analysis to the impact of epistemological issues on ethical concerns without assessing the bearings that ethical features have on the epistemological evaluation of ML systems. We argue that according to this methodological approach, epistemological issues are _instrumental_ to and _autonomous_ of ethical considerations. This means that the informativeness account considers epistemological evaluation uninfluenced and unregulated by an ethical counterpart. Using an example that does not square well into the _informativeness account_, we argue for ethical assessments that have a substantial influence on the epistemological assessment of ML and that such influence should not be understood as merely informative but rather regulatory. Drawing on the case analyzed, we claim that within the theoretical framework of the informativeness approach, forms of epistemic injustice—especially _epistemic objectification_—remain unaddressed. Our analysis should motivate further research investigating the regulatory role that ethical elements play in the epistemology of ML.

This volume brings together for the first time the diverse threads within the growing field of serendipity research, to reflect both on the origins of this emerging field within different disciplines as well as its increasing influence as its own field with foundational texts and emerging practices. The phenomenon of serendipity has been described in many ways since Horace Walpole initially coined the term in 1754 to categorize those discoveries that happen by “both accidents and sagacity”. This book offers a sampling of perspectives from experts in serendipity research from organizational studies, management theory, information science and library studies, psychology, literature, computer science, social science, ethics, and the history and philosophy of science. Considerations about the importance and role of serendipity are being raised now across science (both empirical and theoretical) as well as practice (from art and innovation to leadership and governance), with ever more eyes looking closer at its significance in human history and the likelihood it will play a key, while unpredictable, role in forming our future. Serendipity Science represents an emerging, and also important and potentially necessary field of study, if we are to deal well as a society with our complex times and uncertain future.

“I myself still find my way of philosophizing new, & it keeps striking me so afresh, & that is why I have to repeat myself so often. […] [R]epetitions […] [f]or me […] are necessary.” (CV 1998: 3e) Wittgenstein's style is well known for its recursive—and according to some interpreters, even obsessive-compulsive—quality, but they are part of a thinking method: “I suggest repetition as a means of surveying the connections.” (AWL 1979: 43) The style also mirrors recurring ideas such as “concepts are not for use on a single occasion” (Z 1981: 568), or the “bustle (Getriebe) of life […] comes about only through constant repetition” (RPP 1980b: 625 – 626). The aim of this essay is to show how the notion of repetition (Wiederholung) plays a significant role in the evolution of Wittgenstein's thought. It is the manifestation of a philosophical praxis, and although the notion of repetition remains in the background, it is a constant presence in his production, often featuring alongside his best-known concepts, like rule following, aspect seeing, and his thoughts on music and mathematics. This article will examine the different ways in which Wittgenstein reflects on the question of repetition in relation to the idea of identity, variation, and diversity, and as a fundamental aspect of human practice that is not the mere manifestation of underlying rules or principles, but a necessary condition for their emergence.

We present a novel model of individual people, online posts, and media platforms to explain the online spread of epistemically toxic content such as fake news and suggest possible responses. We argue that a combination of technical features, such as the algorithmically curated feed structure, and social features, such as the absence of stable social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing in social media, is largely responsible for the unchecked spread of epistemically toxic content online. Sharing constitutes a distinctive communicative act, governed by a dedicated norm and motivated to a large extent by social identity maintenance. But confusion about this norm and its lack of inherent epistemic checks lead readers to misunderstand posts, attribute excess or insufficient credibility to posts, and allow posters to evade epistemic accountability—all contributing to the spread of epistemically toxic content online. This spread can be effectively addressed if people and platforms add significantly more context to shared posts and platforms nudge people to develop and follow recognized epistemic norms of posting and sharing.

„Strategia noastră a fost de a gândi un text util pentru profesori, dar de a-l scrie mai ales pentru studenți. Etica este interesantă cu precădere atunci când pune în joc intuiții morale sau valori diferite și când ne confruntăm cu dileme în care decizia nu este evidentă, iar dezacordul este rezonabil. Prin urmare, am încercat să ne ferim pe cât a fost posibil de verdicte și de simpla enumerare a unor interdicții. Veți observa că, de cele mai multe ori, exercițiile și temele de discuție nu au soluții impuse. Nu pentru că autorii manualului nu ar adera la anumite soluții (poate nu la aceleași!), ci pentru că ni s-a părut mult mai importantă conturarea problemelor. Dilemele și întrebările deschise generează dezbateri și prilejuiesc reflecție. Sentințele, pe de altă parte, tind să ucidă discuția și să prilejuiască mai curând reacții de îmbrățișare sau de respingere vehementă. Dacă vom ajunge, în comunitățile noastre profesionale și în societate, să vorbim mai mult unii cu alții și mai puțin unii la alții, vom fi făcut probabil un pas major în direcția corectă pentru dezvoltarea unei atitudini morale.” (Autorii)