Relevant Sense Research Articles

A PUZZLE ABOUT VAGUENESS, REASONS, AND JUDICIAL DISCRETION

ABSTRACTThe following two theses seem both plausible and consistent: in cases where it is indeterminate whether the relevant legal language applies to the relevant set of facts, officials are not bound to decide the case one way rather than the other, but may reason either way; all reasons for action are—in some relevant sense—knowable. In this paper, I point out what I take to be a robust but unacknowledged tension between these two claims. The tension requires some careful teasing out, but the basic idea is that given certain further plausible assumptions concerning law, language, and normativity, the two claims turn out to be inconsistent. In addition to examining the sources of the tension in some detail, I also address several possible objections to my argument and discuss which of the many theses should be rejected.

Augmenting Community Engagement in City 4.0: Considerations for Digital Agency in Urban Public Space

An engaged community that reflects a diverse set of experiences is key to an equitable and livable city. However, maximizing engagement activities is often difficult when competing with residents’ busy schedules and hectic daily lives. To explore new opportunities in this space, we developed four augmented reality experiences to learn more about the potential for this technology to transform community engagement practices in the context of City 4.0. City 4.0 utilizes digital technologies to transform public services and the local economy. Its goal is to produce more sustainable urban and societal outcomes. Our findings suggest that augmented reality is least successful when used to recreate existing engagement practices, such as surveys or questionnaires, and more successful when it empowers a sense of agency and ownership over the process in its users. The way augmented reality situates information can aid in making public space feel personal to the individual. In this way, augmented reality’s affordances are less about overlaying digital information in physical space and more about how this can enable individuals to reclaim a sense of control and relevance in the relationship between citizens and councils. We aim to contribute: (a) novel interaction paradigms and an evaluation of their effectiveness and limitation, and (b) new insights into how to support citizens’ sense of agency in public discourse with augmented reality. This paper highlights the value of augmented reality’s affordances to bring to light new interactions between community engagement stakeholders.

Ophthalmological Metabolic Diseases and Stem Cells

Ocular pathologies are, without a doubt, one of the most complicated at the time of regulating medical therapy. Being one of the most relevant sense organs (if not the most important) the use of stem cells in the treatment of metabolic diseases that were previously considered to be slow-progressing, significant improvement can now be achieved.

The rise of colligations

Abstract This article examines the lexically parallel English and German constructions can’t stand somebody/something and jemanden/etwas nicht ausstehen können “not tolerate (someone or something)”, from synchronic, diachronic, and quantitative perspectives. Syntactic and semantic restrictions suggest that the usage of stand and ausstehen in the relevant sense is older than other semantically similar verbs (e.g. English tolerate, German leiden), while quantitative evidence from corpora shows that the can’t stand and nicht ausstehen können constructions are both colligationally stronger than lexical competitors. Evidence from the history of stand indicates that the lexeme stand in the Germanic and other Indo-European languages has a long history of being employed in the relevant sense. The restrictions on usage and the colligational strength of the respective English and German constructions are thus argued to result from the antiquity of the construction and functional competition from other lexemes.

Game Semantics, Quantifiers and Logical Omniscience

Logical omniscience states that the knowledge set of ordinary rational agents is closed for its logical consequences. Although epistemic logicians in general judge this principle unrealistic, there is no consensus on how it should be restrained. The challenge is conceptual: we must find adequate criteria for separating obvious logical consequences (consequences for which epistemic closure certainly holds) from non-obvious ones. Non-classical game-theoretic semantics has been employed in this discussion with relative success. On the one hand, with urn semantics [15], an expressive fragment of classical game semantics that weakens the dependence relations between quantifiers occurring in a formula, we can formalize, for a broad array of examples, epistemic scenarios in which an individual ignores the validity of some first-order sentence. On the other hand, urn semantics offers a disproportionate restriction of logical omniscience. Therefore, an improvement of this system is needed to obtain a better solution of the problem. In this paper, I argue that our linguistic competence in using quantifiers requires a sort of basic hypothetical logical knowledge that can be formulated as follows: when inquiring after the truth-value of ∀xφ, an individual might be unaware of all substitutional instances this sentence accepts, but at least she must know that, if an element a is given, then ∀xφ holds only if φ(x/a) is true. This thesis accepts game-theoretic formalization in terms of a refinement of urn semantics. I maintain that the system so obtained (US+) affords an improved solution of the logical omniscience problem. To do this, I characterize first-order theoremhood in US+. As a consequence of this result, we will see that the ideal reasoner depicted by US+ only knows the validity of first-order formulas whose Herbrand witnesses can be trivially found, a fact that provides strong evidence that our refinement of urn semantics captures a relevant sense of logical obviousness.

Panpsychism vs. the Zombie Argument

The zombie argument against physicalism (Chalmers, 1996; 2010), if successful, shows that one of two things must be true: either zombies are possible (and therefore physicalism is false) or some form of panpsychism is true. Moreover, this is generally understood as an exclusive 'or': the truth of panpsychism at the actual world would be incompatible with the possibility of zombies in the relevant sense. But is the mere possibility of panpsychism incompatible with the possibility of zombies? Giberman (2015) argues that it is, and uses this claim to further argue that zombies are not really possible. My aim in this paper is to show that Giberman's anti-zombie argument fails. I argue that, in terms of 2D semantics, the zombie argument needs to show that zombies are 2-possible. However, while the 2-possibility of zombies is incompatible with the 2-possibility of panpsychism, it is perfectly compatible with panpsychism's 1-possibility. And, since Giberman's argument shows at most that panpsychism is 1-possible, it fails to show that zombies are not possible in the relevant sense.

Creation of Safe Space in COVID-19 Pandemic – A Case Study of Republic of Croatia

COVID-19 changed our cotemporary world, the way we work and the way we travel. The latter is a major challenge for countries that are heavily dependent on tourism, and Croatia is one of those countries with the largest tourism share of the total gross domestic product (GDP) in Europe - 25% in pre-pandemic times (2019 data). In the last two years, travel for tourism has decreased - both due to restrictions and due to people’s fear of coronavirus infection. Therefore, under the influence of the health crisis posed by pandemic, there is an increasingly relevant sense of health safety that can be considered as a prerequisite for the success of tourism destination. This paper aims to research and analyze the concept of “safe space” and its creation in pandemic conditions where the application of health and security protocols is expected, and on the example of the Republic of Croatia to evaluate the efforts and possible effect of undertaken measures. The research design is based on quantitative-qualitative desktop analysis of pandemic-related processes and key data which evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism sector from several stakeholders’ perspectives - consumer and service provider. The result of this research shows that the perception of a safe space has a positive impact on the tourist interest in the COVID-19 pandemic, which confirms the need for the tourism sector to adapt to the new security risks posed by the pandemic.

The limits of olfactory perception in black vultures: a field experiment

New World vultures have been considerably studied regarding their sense of smell. Cathartes species present a remarkable development of their olfactory apparatus, and experiments conducted with the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) demonstrated that they can locate carrion exclusively by smell at considerable distances. Black vultures (Coragyps atratus), because of their less developed olfactory apparatus, have been compared with the turkey vulture as a phylogenetically related species lacking the sense of smell. However, little evidence from behavioural studies supports the lack of olfaction of black vultures. We conducted a field experiment where we presented urban black vultures a binary choice of decaying fish and sand (serving as control) inside plastic bags. Birds chose the fish bait in 81% of the times they approached the plastic bags. The probability of reaction decreased significantly with the distance between the birds and the fish bait, being virtually null at 40–50 m away. Furthermore, birds clearly reacted more when the fish presented higher decaying time (7 compared to 2 days). These results show that olfaction is not only used by black vultures but is probably the most relevant sense when they search for food hidden in plastic bags and in piles of unsorted waste, which is the most common foraging environment for this species in urban areas where they are very abundant.

Technostress and Telecommuting in the Context of Covid-19: Evidence from Cambodia’s Higher Education Institutes

Closures of educational establishments owing to the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted individuals globally. Educational organizations of all levels have been compelled to use online instruction because comprehensive safety precautions have been taken to minimize the spread of disease during the COVID-19 contagion, which has increased technostress. Both public and private organizations utilized these strategies, allowing the individual to work virtually. Purpose- This work examines the association between the perceived technostress attributes and instructors in Cambodian academic institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/Methodology- It used a quantitative method and constructed a research instrument to examine (340 participants) of public and private instructors service during the outbreak. Additionally, the data was collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings- The study revealed that technostress had a substantial effect on the gender, age, and working experience of educators. Hence, given the rapid evolution of ICT trends, it is appropriate to design practical training and wellness programs to alleviate technostress and foster a sense of technological competence and personal relevance.

Moral and Political Foundations: From Political Psychology to Political Realism

Abstract The political psychologists Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith accuse orthodox moral foundations theory of predicting what is already intrinsic to the theory, namely that moral beliefs influence political decision-making. The authors argue that, first, political psychology must start from a position which treats political and moral beliefs as equals so as to avoid self-justificatory theorising, and second, that such an analysis provides stronger evidence for political attitudes predicting moral attitudes than vice versa. I take this empirical result as a starting point to intervene in a debate in contemporary normative political theory which has, to my mind, become largely unwieldy: the political realism controversy. I advise the realists to ‘downplay’ the (thus far) inconclusive debate over realism’s metanormative standing in favour of a non-metanormative inquiry. Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith’s study makes for an excellent backdrop. It affirms the realist hypothesis that politics is in some relevant sense – a causal, psychological sense – prior to morality.

Rationality environmentalised (with and beyond Michael Bonnett)

Michael Bonnett’s highly regarded Environmental Consciousness (2021) is an admirable extension of the phenomenology of nature inaugurated in his previous work Retrieving Nature (2004). To fully capture the essentials of his environmental thinking, I locate the set of ideas he has developed in his phenomenology of nature (such as ‘environmental consciousness’ itself) within a wider context, by situating Environmental Consciousness as a sequel not just to Retrieving Nature but also to Children’s Thinking (1994). While broadly sympathetic with how his thinking has evolved into the environmental philosophy of education articulated in his new book, I argue that the notion of rationality has been alienated from his environmentalising project. Given the alliance Bonnett acknowledges with John McDowell’s re-conceptualisation of nature, I contend that the latter’s view that human experience is pervaded by conceptual rationality in a relevant sense can make room to integrate rationality with Bonnett’s on-going project; put differently, I wager that rationality should be ‘environmentalised’.

Behavioural utilitarianism and distributive justice

What are the distributive implications of utilitarianism? Is it compatible with a concern for equality, as many utilitarians have argued? We analyse these questions in the context of a pure allocation problem. We consider an infinitely-lived economy and, drawing on the behavioural literature, assume that individuals have reference-dependent preferences: agents’ utility is a function of current consumption and a reference point which captures consumption habits, or the agents’ upbringing. Assuming a history of inequalities in consumption, we show that the utilitarian allocation is equalising: starting from an unequal distribution, inequalities decrease over time at the utilitarian optimum. However, even though agents are in a relevant sense identical, equality does not obtain at any finite time.

‘The way we were razed’: pubic hair and permissiveness in 1970s Britain

ABSTRACT This article considers how pornographers negotiated the ‘permissive moment’ in Britain in the 1970s. It examines, as a case study, the publication Sexpertise: Shaved Pubes Special to discuss how editors grappled with changing definitions of obscenity and sexual liberation through the content of their magazines. Sexpertise’s focus on the fetishisation of female pubic hair removal was a way for the magazine’s editors to locate themselves at the forefront of sexual radicalism and innovation at a time when pubic hair was seen as becoming increasingly respectable. I argue that the magazine’s embrace of pubic hairlessness was not only a way for it to appear cutting edge but also reveals anxieties about the changing sexual landscape in Britain and the effects of this on the pornography market. Attempts to sustain a sense of relevance manifested in Sexpertise’s engagement with the historical ‘roots’ of hairlessness and the erotic. This article concludes by examining more broadly the function of nostalgia within pornographic texts and considers how historians might utilise pornographic discourses as texts and archives which recycle ideas about the sexual past in order to make sense of the present.

Some dilemmas for an account of neural representation: A reply to Poldrack

“The physics of representation” (Poldrack, 2020) aims to (1) define the word “representation” as used in the neurosciences, (2) argue that such representations as described in neuroscience are related to and usefully illuminated by the representations generated by modern neural networks, and (3) establish that these entities are “representations in good standing”. We suggest that Poldrack succeeds in (1), exposes some tensions between the broad use of the term in neuroscience and the narrower class of entities that he identifies in the end, and between the meaning of “representation” in neuroscience and in psychology in (2), and fails in (3). This results in some hard choices: give up on the broad scope of the term in neuroscience (and thereby potentially opening a gap between psychology and neuroscience) or continue to embrace the broad, psychologically inflected sense of the term, and deny the entities generated by neural nets (and the brain) are representations in the relevant sense.

Security that Matters: General Knowledge and Correlations in the Context of Applied Satellite Navigation, Specific Interference-Events and the Use of the GNSS-Technology

Abstract Navigation through global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) has become an indispensable part of modern life with threats such as GNSS interference, making it necessary to uncover relevant psychological aspects in the context of the GNSS construct, diverse interference events, and the use of related technologies. A total of n = 122 subjects participated in an online survey, which included scales and specifically constructed items on GNSS usage, acceptance, dependence, and self-assessed sense of direction and relevance of basic psychological needs. In addition, frequently emphasized factors influencing acceptance and use of diverse technologies were recorded according to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT; Venkatesh et al., 2003). Correlation analyses showed that the frequency of GNSS use was associated with both effort expectation of appropriate technologies, hedonistic motivation, habits of using GNSS-enabled devices, and specific aspects of mobility. In terms of reported GNSS dependency, negative correlations were found with self-assessed orientation ability. It was also possible to identify voluntariness in the use of related technologies, the age of the users, and the relevance of self-determination as essential variables in the context of GNSS use. The results underline the need for further investigation of psychological aspects and contribute to existing discussions in the context of various threat scenarios.

The struggle for recognition in the age of facial recognition technology

Facial recognition is a promising emerging technology, but it sometimes fails to recognize people adequately. Facial recognition applications have been found to regularly misidentify certain demographics, misinterpret traits like gender, age, beliefs, or emotions, and categorize individuals in ways that do not resonate with their own sense of identity. In this paper, I argue that in each of these cases, the person who has their face analyzed is not merely misidentified or misunderstood, but misrecognized in an ethically relevant sense. Following Charles Taylor’s The Politics of Recognition (1992) and Axel Honneth’s The Struggle for Recognition (1996), I describe how those subjected to facial recognition systems on the one hand struggle to obtain adequate recognition on a universal level, as being equally important to others, and lack recognition for their individual uniqueness, on the other hand. These forms of misrecognition are of ethical concern, because they can harm a person’s identity formation. So, ironically, facial recognition technology can give rise to a struggle for recognition.

Mary Anne Warren and the Boundaries of the Moral Community.

In her important and well-known discussion "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," Mary Anne Warren regrets that "it is not possible to produce a satisfactory defense of a woman's right to obtain an abortion without showing that the fetus is not a human being, in the morally relevant sense." Unlike some more cautious philosophers, Warren thinks that we can definitively demonstrate that the fetus is not a person. In this paper, Warren's argument is critically examined with a focus especially on the question of the foundation and the boundaries of the moral community. The fundamental thesis of the paper is that Warren's approach is flawed for at least four reasons: (1) that being a person is not as obviously central to having full moral rights as Warren assumes, (2) that her exclusivism regarding moral status has dubious moral consequences independent of the abortion issue, (3) that it is not clear that a fetus is not a person, even on Warren's own criteria, and (4) her criteria for personhood are themselves suspect.

The Influence of Syncretism on the Ethnic Denominations of African Religion in the Benue Valley of Nigeria: The Tiv in Perspective

In a competitive world where everyone and every system is trying to outdo one another to create a sense of relevance, the tendency of not being satisfied with a particular way in which something has been done over the years is often to copy or emulate what the other is doing. Religion is not free from this tendency; and this creates a situation where some elements or a reasonable chunk of ideas are copied and fussed into a religious tradition from one or more opposing or distinct religious groups. The idea of fusion in religious circles is known as religious syncretism. The paper is motivated by the seemingly fusion of Christian and Islamic patterns of beliefs in the Ethnic Denominations of African Religion in the Benue Valley of Nigeria. The paper adopts the Phenomenological and Analytic Methods. In the area of data collection, two main methods: the primary and secondary methods of data collection have been employed. In the primary source of data collection, observation and oral interview methods were used. On the other hand, the secondary sources of data collection employed the use of textbooks, journal articles, newspaper/magazine articles and e-sources. The paper discovered that syncretism has been a reoccurring decimal in religious circles. Thus, a particular religion copies and infuses into its system some distinct ideas from a different religious tradition. The Ethnic Denominations of African Religion in the Benue Valley particularly Tiv Religion has been greatly influenced by syncretism. Tiv Religion has adopted and fused certain beliefs from Christianity and Islam in such areas as prayers, use of prayer beads, holy water and worship patterns. It is the view of this paper that if this trend goes unchecked, the Ethnic Denominations of African Religion in the Benue Valley especially Tiv Religion would wholly syncretize itself in the garb of foreign religious traditions. The paper suggests that the adherents of Tiv Religion should continue with their unique way of prayer and worship as prescribed in Tiv Religion instead of syncretizing different religious practices with the prospects of losing their entire culture to foreign ones. The uniqueness of Tiv Religion and culture must be protected from going extinct. The practitioners of the Ethnic Denominations of African Religion in the Benue Valley must note the fact that God listens to those who worship him through different cultural platforms. Therefore, one does not need to adopt foreign ideas to be relevant or heard by God. This is what makes God, God.

Dream, Bliss, and the Shaping of Emotional Meaning in Beowulf

<i>Dream</i>, <i>Bliss</i>, and the Shaping of Emotional Meaning in <i>Beowulf</i>

Moral status of artificial intelligence

My main goal in this paper is to conduct a detailed analysis of the moral status of artificial intelligence. I will start by clarifying the notion of moral status, as well as the dichotomy between moral agent and moral patient, which plays a significant role in a vast number of perplexing dilemmas in applied ethics. This clarification is necessary to get a clearer view of the key issues that I intend to answer in the paper; more specifically, to the question (a) whether we can cause harm, in a morally relevant sense, to an intelligent artificial system, and (b) whether an intelligent artificial system can itself act in a way that can be assessed in moral terms.