Jan Bier
aeon.com
Originally posted February 14, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
That Google memo is an extreme example of an imbalance in how different ways of knowing are valued. Silicon Valley tech companies draw on innovative technical theory but have yet to really incorporate advances in social theory. The inattention to such knowledge becomes all too apparent when algorithms fail in their real-life applications – from automated soap-dispensers that fail to turn on when a user has dark brown skin, to the new iPhone X’s inability to distinguish among different Asian women.
Social theorists in fields such as sociology, geography, and science and technology studies have shown how race, gender and class biases inform technical design. So there’s irony in the fact that employees hold sexist and racist attitudes, yet ‘we are supposed to believe that these same employees are developing “neutral” or “objective” decision-making tools’, as the communications scholar Safiya Umoja Noble at the University of Southern California argues in her book Algorithms of Oppression (2018).
In many cases, what’s eroding the value of social knowledge is unintentional bias – on display when prominent advocates for equality in science and tech undervalue research in the social sciences. The physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, for example, has downplayed the link between sexism and under-representation in science. Apparently, he’s happy to ignore extensive research pointing out that the natural sciences’ male-dominated institutional cultures are a major cause of the attrition of female scientists at all stages of their careers.
The article is here.
Showing posts with label Subjective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Subjective. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2018
Monday, December 28, 2015
The role of emotion in ethics and bioethics: dealing with repugnance and disgust
Mark Sheehan
J Med Ethics 2016;42:1-2
doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-103294
Here is an excerpt:
But what generally are we to say about the role of emotions in ethics and in ethical judgement? We tend to sharply distinguish ‘mere’ emotions or emotional responses from reasoned or rational argument. Clearly, it would seem, if we are to make claims about rightness or wrongness they should be on the basis of reasons and rational argument. Emotions look to be outside of this paradigm concerned as they are with our responses to the world rather than the world itself and the clear articulation of inferential relationships within it. Most importantly emotions are felt subjectively and so cannot lay any generalised claim on others (particularly others who do not feel as the arguer does). The subjectivity of emotions means that they cannot function in arguments because, unless they are universal, they cannot form the basis of a claim on another person. The reason they cannot form this basis is because that other person may not have that emotion: relying on it means the argument can only apply to those who do. An argument that relies on feeling particular emotions, particularly emotions that we don't all feel in the same way, is weak to that extent and certainly weaker than one that does not.
In the case at hand, repugnance or disgust only have persuasive power to those who feel these emotions in response to human reproductive cloning. If all people felt one or the other, then claims based on an appeal to repugnance or disgust would have persuasive power over all of us. But even if these were generally or commonly felt emotions here, such persuasive power would be distinct from an argument's having persuasive power over us because of the reasons it provides for us independently of contingently felt emotions. An argument then that is based on an appeal to emotion apparently as Kass' and Kekes' apparently are, can, at best, be only as strong as the generalisability of the empirical claim about the relevant emotion.
The article is here.
J Med Ethics 2016;42:1-2
doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-103294
Here is an excerpt:
But what generally are we to say about the role of emotions in ethics and in ethical judgement? We tend to sharply distinguish ‘mere’ emotions or emotional responses from reasoned or rational argument. Clearly, it would seem, if we are to make claims about rightness or wrongness they should be on the basis of reasons and rational argument. Emotions look to be outside of this paradigm concerned as they are with our responses to the world rather than the world itself and the clear articulation of inferential relationships within it. Most importantly emotions are felt subjectively and so cannot lay any generalised claim on others (particularly others who do not feel as the arguer does). The subjectivity of emotions means that they cannot function in arguments because, unless they are universal, they cannot form the basis of a claim on another person. The reason they cannot form this basis is because that other person may not have that emotion: relying on it means the argument can only apply to those who do. An argument that relies on feeling particular emotions, particularly emotions that we don't all feel in the same way, is weak to that extent and certainly weaker than one that does not.
In the case at hand, repugnance or disgust only have persuasive power to those who feel these emotions in response to human reproductive cloning. If all people felt one or the other, then claims based on an appeal to repugnance or disgust would have persuasive power over all of us. But even if these were generally or commonly felt emotions here, such persuasive power would be distinct from an argument's having persuasive power over us because of the reasons it provides for us independently of contingently felt emotions. An argument then that is based on an appeal to emotion apparently as Kass' and Kekes' apparently are, can, at best, be only as strong as the generalisability of the empirical claim about the relevant emotion.
The article is here.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
What Is Consciousness? 4 Challenges
By Jonathan Erhardt
Crucial Considerations Blog
Originally posted February 26, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Explaining the subjective character of consciousness on the other hand seems much harder. It is not clear at all that the methodology we use to solve the easy problems works to explain consciousness. After all, this inner movie is at least not obviously a function which we can describe in functional terms, the way e.g. digestion can be described in functional terms as the breaking down of food into smaller components that can more easily be absorbed and assimilated by the body. Therefore, it is not clear how we could start the inquiry to find the mechanisms which satisfy these functions. This is why Chalmers has labeled it the hard problem of consciousness.
Various explanatory strategies have been suggested, and they can be classified into several distinct groups. Here we mention only two (the others can be found in Chalmer 2012, p. 111 ff.). One type of strategy centers around the view that once we’ve explained all the functions of the brain in terms of mechanisms, we have explained everything there is to explain. Some adherents of this view deny that consciousness exists, they claim that consciousness is just an especially stubborn illusion. Others accept that consciousness exists but think it can be wholly described in terms of functional concepts, namely those describing the various brain functions, such that we can pursue the usual explanatory strategy of finding (neural) mechanisms. Another type of strategy wants to explain consciousness not by reducing it to something else, but by positing it as fundamental, alongside certain physical quantities such as perhaps mass or charge (or whatever our ultimate physical theory will posit as fundamental). On this view, a theory of consciousness posits it as fundamental and then elucidates and describes its character and how it is related to other fundamental properties.
The entire blog post is here.
Crucial Considerations Blog
Originally posted February 26, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Explaining the subjective character of consciousness on the other hand seems much harder. It is not clear at all that the methodology we use to solve the easy problems works to explain consciousness. After all, this inner movie is at least not obviously a function which we can describe in functional terms, the way e.g. digestion can be described in functional terms as the breaking down of food into smaller components that can more easily be absorbed and assimilated by the body. Therefore, it is not clear how we could start the inquiry to find the mechanisms which satisfy these functions. This is why Chalmers has labeled it the hard problem of consciousness.
Various explanatory strategies have been suggested, and they can be classified into several distinct groups. Here we mention only two (the others can be found in Chalmer 2012, p. 111 ff.). One type of strategy centers around the view that once we’ve explained all the functions of the brain in terms of mechanisms, we have explained everything there is to explain. Some adherents of this view deny that consciousness exists, they claim that consciousness is just an especially stubborn illusion. Others accept that consciousness exists but think it can be wholly described in terms of functional concepts, namely those describing the various brain functions, such that we can pursue the usual explanatory strategy of finding (neural) mechanisms. Another type of strategy wants to explain consciousness not by reducing it to something else, but by positing it as fundamental, alongside certain physical quantities such as perhaps mass or charge (or whatever our ultimate physical theory will posit as fundamental). On this view, a theory of consciousness posits it as fundamental and then elucidates and describes its character and how it is related to other fundamental properties.
The entire blog post is here.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity: The Case for Subjective Physicalism
Robert J. Howell, Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity: The Case for Subjective Physicalism, Oxford University Press, 2013, 190pp., $55.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199654666.
Reviewed by Richard Brown, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
What happens when we take consciousness seriously? Howell argues that doing so requires giving up on objectivity but not on physicalism. The resulting view, which he calls 'subjective physicalism', is one on which consciousness is wholly physical but cannot be truly understood from an objective point of view. It can only be known from the inside, via acquaintance, and so there is a sense in which any objective picture of the physical world will be incomplete.
Howell's book is short, and there are places where things move a bit too quickly and others where one wishes more had been said. Still, overall he presents a clear account of how consciousness could be physical even if we can't fully know it from an objective standpoint. Howell shows that there is still much to be discussed in what might look like well-worn territory, and his book is deserving of attention.
The entire book review is here.
Reviewed by Richard Brown, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
What happens when we take consciousness seriously? Howell argues that doing so requires giving up on objectivity but not on physicalism. The resulting view, which he calls 'subjective physicalism', is one on which consciousness is wholly physical but cannot be truly understood from an objective point of view. It can only be known from the inside, via acquaintance, and so there is a sense in which any objective picture of the physical world will be incomplete.
Howell's book is short, and there are places where things move a bit too quickly and others where one wishes more had been said. Still, overall he presents a clear account of how consciousness could be physical even if we can't fully know it from an objective standpoint. Howell shows that there is still much to be discussed in what might look like well-worn territory, and his book is deserving of attention.
The entire book review is here.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The Closing of the Scientific Mind
By David Gelernter
Commentary
Originally published January 1, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
Many scientists are proud of having booted man off his throne at the center of the universe and reduced him to just one more creature—an especially annoying one—in the great intergalactic zoo. That is their right. But when scientists use this locker-room braggadocio to belittle the human viewpoint, to belittle human life and values and virtues and civilization and moral, spiritual, and religious discoveries, which is all we human beings possess or ever will, they have outrun their own empiricism. They are abusing their cultural standing. Science has become an international bully.
Nowhere is its bullying more outrageous than in its assault on the phenomenon known as subjectivity.
Your subjective, conscious experience is just as real as the tree outside your window or the photons striking your retina—even though you alone feel it. Many philosophers and scientists today tend to dismiss the subjective and focus wholly on an objective, third-person reality—a reality that would be just the same if men had no minds. They treat subjective reality as a footnote, or they ignore it, or they announce that, actually, it doesn’t even exist.
The entire article is here.
Commentary
Originally published January 1, 2014
Here is an excerpt:
Many scientists are proud of having booted man off his throne at the center of the universe and reduced him to just one more creature—an especially annoying one—in the great intergalactic zoo. That is their right. But when scientists use this locker-room braggadocio to belittle the human viewpoint, to belittle human life and values and virtues and civilization and moral, spiritual, and religious discoveries, which is all we human beings possess or ever will, they have outrun their own empiricism. They are abusing their cultural standing. Science has become an international bully.
Nowhere is its bullying more outrageous than in its assault on the phenomenon known as subjectivity.
Your subjective, conscious experience is just as real as the tree outside your window or the photons striking your retina—even though you alone feel it. Many philosophers and scientists today tend to dismiss the subjective and focus wholly on an objective, third-person reality—a reality that would be just the same if men had no minds. They treat subjective reality as a footnote, or they ignore it, or they announce that, actually, it doesn’t even exist.
The entire article is here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)