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Old Dominion University

2020

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Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes Dec 2020

Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems shift to interact with new domains and populations, so does AI ethics: a relatively nascent subdiscipline that frequently concerns itself with questions of “fairness” and “accountability.” This fairness-centred approach has been criticized for (amongst other things) lacking the ability to address discursive, rather than distributional, injustices. In this paper I simultaneously validate these concerns, and work to correct the relative silence of both conventional and critical AI ethicists around disability, by exploring the narratives deployed by AI researchers in discussing and designing systems around autism. Demonstrating that these narratives frequently perpetuate a dangerously dehumanizing model …


“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder Nov 2020

“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological …


Autonomous Vehicles And The Ethical Tension Between Occupant And Non-Occupant Safety, Jason Borenstein, Joseph Herkert, Keith Miller Nov 2020

Autonomous Vehicles And The Ethical Tension Between Occupant And Non-Occupant Safety, Jason Borenstein, Joseph Herkert, Keith Miller

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Given that the creation and deployment of autonomous vehicles is likely to continue, it is important to explore the ethical responsibilities of designers, manufacturers, operators, and regulators of the technology. We specifically focus on the ethical responsibilities surrounding autonomous vehicles that these stakeholders have to protect the safety of non-occupants, meaning individuals who are around the vehicles while they are operating. The term “non-occupants” includes, but is not limited to, pedestrians and cyclists. We are particularly interested in how to assign moral responsibility for the safety of non-occupants when autonomous vehicles are deployed in a complex, land-based transportation system.


Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada Jul 2020

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of ethics and public policy. Posthumanism is the historical situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on animal studies, critical posthumanism, and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the appeal to human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis identifies a specific risk posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, namely the classification of …


Short Circuits In The Information Cycle: Addressing Information Breakdowns Using The Information Literacy Framework, Lucinda Rush Wittkower, D.E. Wittkower Jun 2020

Short Circuits In The Information Cycle: Addressing Information Breakdowns Using The Information Literacy Framework, Lucinda Rush Wittkower, D.E. Wittkower

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

We argue that information literacy instruction that aims at developing students’ critical thinking habits should address how safeguards in the information cycle fail. We argue that such “short circuits” in the information cycle can be best engaged with at a “middle distance”—not so distant from students’ lived experience that they seem irrelevant, but not so close that students can’t gain a critical distance—and illustrate this framework with three such cases that concern moral panics about new technologies. We hold that instruction using this framework will help learners critically assess sources while retaining a strong but realistic appreciation for procedural supports …


Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger May 2020

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.


From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin May 2020

From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action, a …


Minding Morality: Ethical Artificial Societies For Public Policy Modeling, Saikou Y. Diallo, F. Leron Shults, Wesley J. Wildman Jan 2020

Minding Morality: Ethical Artificial Societies For Public Policy Modeling, Saikou Y. Diallo, F. Leron Shults, Wesley J. Wildman

VMASC Publications

Public policies are designed to have an impact on particular societies, yet policy-oriented computer models and simulations often focus more on articulating the policies to be applied than on realistically rendering the cultural dynamics of the target society. This approach can lead to policy assessments that ignore crucial social contextual factors. For example, by leaving out distinctive moral and normative dimensions of cultural contexts in artificial societies, estimations of downstream policy effectiveness fail to account for dynamics that are fundamental in human life and central to many public policy challenges. In this paper, we supply evidence that incorporating morally salient …


Pluralistic Perspectives On Logic: An Introduction, Colin R. Caret, Teresa Kouri Kissel Jan 2020

Pluralistic Perspectives On Logic: An Introduction, Colin R. Caret, Teresa Kouri Kissel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Logical pluralism is the view that there are distinct, but equally good logics. Recent years have witnessed a sharp upswing of interest in this view, resulting in an impressive literature. We only expect this trend to continue in the future. More than one commentator has, however, expressed exasperation at the view: what can it mean to be a pluralist about logic of all things? [see, e.g., Eklund (2017); Goddu (2002); Keefe (2014)]. In this introduction, we aim to set out the basic pluralist position, identify some issues over which pluralists disagree amongst themselves, and highlight the topics at …


Symposium On Justin Remhof's Nietzsche's Constructivism: A Metaphysics Of Material Objects (Routledge, 2018), Justin Remhof Jan 2020

Symposium On Justin Remhof's Nietzsche's Constructivism: A Metaphysics Of Material Objects (Routledge, 2018), Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Like Kant, the German Idealists, and many neo-Kantian philosophers before him, Nietzsche was persistently concerned with metaphysical questions about the nature of objects. His texts often address questions concerning the existence and non-existence of objects, the relation of objects to human minds, and how different views of objects impact commitments in many areas of philosophy―not just metaphysics, but also language, epistemology, science, logic and mathematics, and even ethics. In this book, Remhof presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis of Nietzsche’s material object metaphysics. He argues that Nietzsche embraces the controversial constructivist view that all concrete objects are socially constructed. Reading …


Ethical Decision Making Behind The Wheel – A Driving Simulator Study, Siby Samuel, Sarah Yahoodik, Yusuke Yamani, Krishna Valluru, Donald L. Fisher Jan 2020

Ethical Decision Making Behind The Wheel – A Driving Simulator Study, Siby Samuel, Sarah Yahoodik, Yusuke Yamani, Krishna Valluru, Donald L. Fisher

Psychology Faculty Publications

Over the past several years, there has been considerable debate surrounding ethical decision making in situations resulting in inevitable casualties. Given enough time and all other things being equal, studies show that drivers will typically decide to strike the fewest number of pedestrians in scenarios where there is a choice between striking several versus one or no pedestrians. However, it is unclear whether drivers behave similarly under situations of time pressure. In our experiment in a driving simulator, 32 drivers were given up to 2 s to decide which group of pedestrians to avoid among groups of larger (5) or …


The World Was His Garden, Anne-Taylor Cahill Jan 2020

The World Was His Garden, Anne-Taylor Cahill

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The article focuses on botanist, David Fairchild and museum, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens located in Coral Gables, Florida.


Reconceptualizing College Impact Studies Through A Fractal Assemblage Theory, Laura Elizabeth Smithers Jan 2020

Reconceptualizing College Impact Studies Through A Fractal Assemblage Theory, Laura Elizabeth Smithers

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

College impact studies have formed the common sense of understanding institutional relationships to student growth and change for decades. In this time, they have become entangled with the production of the neoliberal university. This paper1 presents an alternative theorization of student change on campus, a fractal assemblage theory. Assemblage theory is discussed through a single common language of major assemblage theory concepts across four authors. After exploring these concepts in depth, this paper returns to the stakes of assemblage theory: higher education research not to channel student to predetermined outcomes, but to create student futures in excess of our …