Terms Of Intuitions Research Articles

An analysis of some ethical argumentation about genetically modified food

We present an analysis of ethical argumentation and rhetorical elements in an article on the debate about growing genetically modified food (GMF), an issue of current interest in environmental ethics. Ethical argumentation is argumentation that a certain action is permissible, forbidden, or obligatory in terms of ethical intuitions, principles, or theories. Based on analysis of argumentation in the article, we propose several argumentation schemes for descriptive modeling of utilitarian arguments as an alternative to using more general schemes such as practical reasoning and argument from consequences. We also show how the article promoted its pro-GMF stance using rhetorical elements such as quotation, argument from expert opinion, and ad hominem attacks. Pedagogical and computational implications of the analysis of argumentation and rhetoric are discussed.

Allocating an indivisible good. A questionnaire-experimental study of intercultural differences

Abstract We present the results of a questionnaire study in Belgium, Burkina Faso and Indonesia focusing on the problem of the just allocation of an indivisible good. The formal axioms proposed in social choice theory offer an attractive framework to structure the response patterns. Interindividual differences can be interpreted in a meaningful way in terms of basic intuitions about desert, efficiency and compensation. Belgian students are most resource-egalitarian, Burkinese students attach a large weight to innate capacities, Indonesian students focus on actual production. The crucial no-envy criterion is supported by a majority of respondents, but this majority becomes small if there is an unavoidable conflict between no-envy and the “responsibility” requirement of the stand-alone upper bound. We discuss the pros and cons of questionnaire-experimental studies as compared to large representative surveys.

A Survey on Malicious Domains Detection through DNS Data Analysis

Malicious domains are one of the major resources required for adversaries to run attacks over the Internet. Due to the important role of the Domain Name System (DNS), extensive research has been conducted to identify malicious domains based on their unique behavior reflected in different phases of the life cycle of DNS queries and responses. Existing approaches differ significantly in terms of intuitions, data analysis methods as well as evaluation methodologies. This warrants a thorough systematization of the approaches and a careful review of the advantages and limitations of every group. In this article, we perform such an analysis. To achieve this goal, we present the necessary background knowledge on DNS and malicious activities leveraging DNS. We describe a general framework of malicious domain detection techniques using DNS data. Applying this framework, we categorize existing approaches using several orthogonal viewpoints, namely (1) sources of DNS data and their enrichment, (2) data analysis methods, and (3) evaluation strategies and metrics. In each aspect, we discuss the important challenges that the research community should address in order to fully realize the power of DNS data analysis to fight against attacks leveraging malicious domains.

Systematization of Knowledge (SoK): A Systematic Review of Software-Based Web Phishing Detection

Phishing is a form of cyber attack that leverages social engineering approaches and other sophisticated techniques to harvest personal information from users of websites. The average annual growth rate of the number of unique phishing websites detected by the Anti Phishing Working Group is 36.29% for the past six years and 97.36% for the past two years. In the wake of this rise, alleviating phishing attacks has received a growing interest from the cyber security community. Extensive research and development have been conducted to detect phishing attempts based on their unique content, network, and URL characteristics. Existing approaches differ significantly in terms of intuitions, data analysis methods, as well as evaluation methodologies. This warrants a careful systematization so that the advantages and limitations of each approach, as well as the applicability in different contexts, could be analyzed and contrasted in a rigorous and principled way. This paper presents a systematic study of phishing detection schemes, especially software based ones. Starting from the phishing detection taxonomy, we study evaluation datasets, detection features, detection techniques, and evaluation metrics. Finally, we provide insights that we believe will help guide the development of more effective and efficient phishing detection schemes.

Violence and Regime Stability: A Conceptual and Experimental Approach

This paper identifies the absence of a clear concept of violence as an obstacle to research on its causes and consequences. Standard practice in the proliferating literatures on political violence is to use damage measured in casualties as a surrogate. But damage can be produced nonviolently and, depending on how it is theorized, violence, per se, might not result in damage. After analyzing the costs of avoiding the conceptual and definitional problems involved in the study of violence, we present a concept of violence that can be directly and unambiguously operationalized as a sudden and drastic increase in the scale of negative values at stake in an encounter. The paper reports the results of computer assisted agent-based modeling experiments designed to evaluate the consistency, transparency, precision, and heuristic power of thinking about violence in this way. The substantive focus of these experiments is the relationship between violence and the integrity of political regimes within whose ambit it occurs. Results of the experiments are reported and analyzed in terms of intuitions and expectations about the relationship between violence and regime stability. These findings are interpreted as corroboration of the plausibility and promise of the paper’s conceptualization of violence.

On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving a Moral Framework for Criminal Intent in an Intent-Free Moral World

The law has long recognized a presumption against criminal strict liability. This Note situates that presumption in terms of moral intuitions about the role of intention and the unique nature of criminal punishment. Two sources — recent laws from state legislatures and recent advances in moral philosophy — pose distinct challenges to the presumption against strict liability crimes. This Note offers a solution to the philosophical problem that informs how courts could address the legislative problem. First, it argues that the purported problem from philosophy stems from a mistaken relationship drawn between criminal law and morality. Second, it outlines a slightly more nuanced moral framework that both accommodates recent thinking in philosophy and preserves the correspondence between moral theory and criminal law that underwrites the presumption against criminal strict liability. Finally, it considers how the contours of this moral frame-work could inform judicial efforts to accommodate and constrain new criminal strict liability laws.

Reflective Equilibrium Without Intuitions?

In moral epistemology, the method of reflective equilibrium is often characterized in terms of intuitions or understood as a method for justifying intuitions. An analysis of reflective equilibrium and current theories of moral intuitions reveals that this picture is problematic. Reflective equilibrium cannot be adequately characterized in terms of intuitions. Although the method presupposes that we have initially credible commitments, it does not presuppose that they are intuitions. Nonetheless, intuitions can enter the process of developing a reflective equilibrium and, if the process is successful, be justified. Since the method of reflective equilibrium does not essentially involve intuitions, it does not constitute a form of intuitionism in any substantial sense. It may be classified as intuitionist only in the minimal sense of not reducing justification to a matter of inference relations alone.

Allocating an Indivisible Good: A Questionnaire-Experimental Study of Intercultural Differences

We present the results of a questionnaire study in Belgium, Burkina Faso and Indonesia focusing on the problem of the just allocation of an indivisible good. The formal axioms proposed in social choice theory are helpful in structuring the response patterns. Interindividual differences can be interpreted in a meaningful way in terms of basic intuitions about desert, efficiency and compensation. Belgian students are most resourceegalitarian, Burkinese students attach a large weight to innate capacities, Indonesian students focus on actual production. The crucial no-envy criterion is supported by a majority of respondents, but this majority becomes small if there is an unavoidable conflict between no-envy and the responsibility requirement of the stand-alone upper bound.

Capabilities of outlier detection schemes in large datasets, framework and methodologies

Outlier detection is concerned with discovering exceptional behaviors of objects. Its theoretical principle and practical implementation lay a foundation for some important applications such as credit card fraud detection, discovering criminal behaviors in e-commerce, discovering computer intrusion, etc. In this paper, we first present a unified model for several existing outlier detection schemes, and propose a compatibility theory, which establishes a framework for describing the capabilities for various outlier formulation schemes in terms of matching users'intuitions. Under this framework, we show that the density-based scheme is more powerful than the distance-based scheme when a dataset contains patterns with diverse characteristics. The density-based scheme, however, is less effective when the patterns are of comparable densities with the outliers. We then introduce a connectivity-based scheme that improves the effectiveness of the density-based scheme when a pattern itself is of similar density as an outlier. We compare density-based and connectivity-based schemes in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, and demonstrate applications with different features where each of them is more effective than the other. Finally, connectivity-based and density-based schemes are comparatively evaluated on both real-life and synthetic datasets in terms of recall, precision, rank power and implementation-free metrics.

Functions, Graphs, and Graphing: Tasks, Learning, and Teaching

This review of the introductory instructional substance of functions and graphs analyzes research on the interpretation and construction tasks associated with functions and some of their representations: algebraic, tabular, and graphical. The review also analyzes the nature of learning in terms of intuitions and misconceptions, and the plausible approaches to teaching through sequences, explanations, and examples. The topic is significant because of (a) the increased recognition of the organizing power of the concept of functions from middle school mathematics through more advanced topics in high school and college, and (b) the symbolic connections that represent potentials for increased understanding between graphical and algebraic worlds. This is a review of a specific part of the mathematics subject mailer and how it is learned and may be taught; this specificity reflects the issues raised by recent theoretical research concerning how specific context and content contribute to learning and meaning.

COMMENTARY SOFT DATA—HARD DATA: THE PAINFUL ART OF FENCE‐SITTING

Quantitative methodology and qualitative methodology are not mutually exclusive. Yet much of consumer research is undertaken from the point of view that an object or state should either be counted, weighed, and measured or be described in terms of human feelings and intuitions. By development of a long‐run orientation and a pluralistic approach to research designs, soft data and hard data can be combined in complementary ways. This commentary suggests a practical combination of research methods and uses a recent case example to illustrate.

Man on his Nature

SIR CHARLES SHERRINGTON in his Gifford Lectures takes the task of natural theology to be a survey of the nature of man and his place in the universe from the point of view of the natural sciences, but with the addition of an evaluation of the conclusions in terms of man's moral intuitions: intuitions that lie outside the scope of natural science. The interest of the survey is greatly increased by his comparing his own with one made in the sixteenth century by Jean Pernel, the greatest physician of his day, and mathematician and philosopher besides. Medical science for Fernel was still about where Galen had left it, though Fernel himself was a man of independent judgment and a good observer not prepared to follow blindly after Galen or any other authority. But of course he was still confined to what he could see with the naked eye. Since physics and chemistry were as yet non-existent, not only was there no basis for physiology but the concept of matter was vague. The principle of life, that which distinguishes the living from the lifeless, was conceived as a kind of fire and might be corporeal or incorporeal or something intermediate. To-day it is possible to speak more definitely. The most fundamental category of the physical world seems to be energy, and the structure of things to be ‘granular’, as though made up in separate but similar packets; the quantum of action, the electron, the atom, the molecule. At the level of living organisms there is a similar ‘granularity’ in cell structure and the nervous impulse. There does not appear to be anything incorporeal about living organisms as such. The kind of physical and chemical process they exhibit is complex and peculiar, but still physical and chemical. There is no basic difference in the stuff they are made of, only in certain special arrangements of that stuff. Man on his Nature By Sir Charles Sherrington. (The Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh 1937–8.) Pp. ix + 413 + 7 plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1940.) 21s. net.