Search Results (7)

Since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, prominent social actors and institutions have warned about the threat of misinformation, calling for policy action to address it. However, neither the premises underlying expert claims nor the standards to separate truth from falsehood have been appraised. We conducted a scoping review of the medical and social scientific literature, informed by a critical policy analysis approach, examining what this literature means by misinformation. We searched academic databases and refereed publications, selecting a total of 68 articles for review. Two researchers independently charted the data. Our most salient finding was that verifiability relied largely on the claims of epistemic authorities, albeit only those vetted by the establishment, to the exclusion of independent evidentiary standards or heterodox perspectives. Further, “epistemic authority” did not depend necessarily on subject matter expertise, but largely on a new type of “expertise”: in misinformation itself. Finally, policy solutions to the alleged threat that misinformation poses to democracy and human rights called for suppressing unverified information and debate unmanaged by establishment approved experts, in the name of protecting democracy and rights, contrary to democratic practice and respect for human rights. Notably, we identified no pockets of resistance to these dominant meanings and uses. We assessed the implications of our findings for democratic public policy, and for fundamental rights and freedoms. Full article

Taxonomic studies of dreams that continue to influence the dreamer’s thoughts and feelings after awakening have distinguished three types of impactful dreams: nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams. Of these, existential dreams and transcendent dreams are characterized by recurrent metacognitive appraisal of the epistemic tension between complementary (a) metaphoric (A “is” B) assertions and (b) literal (A “is not” B) assertions. Metacognitive appraisal of such complementary metaphoric and literal assertions is detectable as the felt sense of inexpressible realizations. The poesy of such inexpressible realizations depends upon the juxtaposition of a metaphoric topic and vehicle that are both “semantically dense” but at an abstract level “distant” from each other. The result is “emergence” of attributes of the metaphoric vehicle that are sufficiently abstract to be attributes also of the metaphoric topic. The cumulative effect of successive metaphoric/literal categorical transformations produces a higher-level form of metacognition that is consistent with a neo-Kantian account of sublime feeling. Sublime feeling occurs as either sublime disquietude (existential dreams) or as sublime enthrallment (transcendent dreams). The aftereffects of these two dream types are thematically iterative “living metaphors” that have abstract (but not “totalizing”) ontological import. Full article

Consciousness has been described as acting as a global workspace that integrates perception, imagination, emotion and action programming for adaptive decision making. The mechanisms of this workspace and their relationships to the phenomenology of consciousness need to be further specified. Much research in this area has focused on the neural correlates of consciousness, but, arguably, computational modeling can better be used toward this aim. According to the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM), consciousness is structured as a viewpoint-organized, internal space, relying on 3D projective geometry and governed by the action of the Projective Group as part of a process of active inference. The geometry induces a group-structured subjective perspective on an encoded world model, enabling adaptive perspective taking in agents. Here, we review and discuss the PCM. We emphasize the role of projective mechanisms in perception and the appraisal of affective and epistemic values as tied to the motivation of action, under an optimization process of Free Energy minimization, or more generally stochastic optimal control. We discuss how these mechanisms enable us to model and simulate group-structured drives in the context of social cognition and to understand the mechanisms underpinning empathy, emotion expression and regulation, and approach–avoidance behaviors. We review previous results, drawing on applications in robotics and virtual humans. We briefly discuss future axes of research relating to applications of the model to simulation- and model-based behavioral science, geometrically structured artificial neural networks, the relevance of the approach for explainable AI and human–machine interactions, and the study of the neural correlates of consciousness. Full article

The first phase of the recent intuitionist revival left untouched Ross’s claim that fundamental moral truths are self-evident. In a recent article, Robert Cowan attempts to explain, in a plausible way, how we know moral truths. The result is that, while the broad framework of Ross’s theory appears to remain in place, the self-evidence of moral truths is thrown into doubt. In this paper, I examine Cowan’s Conceptual Intuitionism. I use his own proposal to show how he arrives at a skeptical position on self-evidence. First, he completely ignores the kind of epistemic appraisal intuitionism has always rested on; second, he is committed to the Reasons View of prima facie duty, rather than to Ross’s Properties View; third, he holds that a commitment to self-evidence often comes with a commitment to metaphysically extravagant entities, which he calls Perceptualism; fourth, he scrutinizes only a part of the contemporary theory of self-evidence, overlooking the strengths of the theory when considered as a whole. Revealing these several points supports the conclusion that Cowan has not provided a viable variety of Rossian Intuitionism. Full article

The goal of the current research is to propose the credibility-based fuzzy window data envelopment analysis (CFWDEA) approach as a novel method for the dynamic performance evaluation of hospitals during different periods under data ambiguity and linguistic variables. To reach this goal, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, a window analysis technique, a possibilistic programming approach, credibility theory, and chance-constrained programming (CCP) are employed. In addition, the applicability and efficacy of the proposed CFWDEA approach are illustrated utilizing a real data set to evaluate the performance of hospitals in the USA. It should be explained that three inputs including the number of beds, labor-related expenses, patient care supplies, and other expenses as well as three outputs including the number of outpatient department visits, the number of inpatient department admissions, and overall patient satisfaction level, are considered for the dynamic performance appraisal of hospitals. The experimental results show the usefulness of the CFWDEA method for the evaluation and ranking of hospitals in the presence of fuzzy data, linguistic variables, and epistemic uncertainty. Full article

(1) Background: COVID-19 disruptions offer researchers insight into how pandemics are at once biological and social threats, as communities struggle to construct meaning from novel challenges to their ontological status quo. Multiple epistemes, in which public health imperatives confront and negotiate locally derived knowledge and traditions, vie for legitimacy and agency, resulting in new cultural forms. (2) Methods: To investigate the context and construction of community responses, a systematic review of qualitative literature was conducted with the aim of evaluating those insights provided by empirical, social field research in low- and middle-income countries since the onset of COVID-19. Six scholarly databases were searched for empirical, qualitative, field-based, or participatory research that was published in peer-reviewed journals between December 2019 and August 2021. (3) Results: Twenty-five studies were selected for data extraction, following critical appraisal for methodological rigor by two independent reviewers, and were then analyzed thematically. Faced with unprecedented social ruptures, restrictions in social and physical mobility, and ever-looming uncertainties of infection, financial insecurity, stigma, and loss, communities worldwide reacted in multiple and complex ways. Pervasive misinformation and fear of social rejection resulted in noncompliance with pandemic sanctions, resistance, and increased isolation, allowing the spread of the disease. The meaning of, and understandings about, COVID-19 were constructed using traditional, religious, and biomedical epistemologies, which were occasionally in conflict with each other. Innovations and adaptations, through syntheses of traditional and biomedical discourses and practice, illustrated community resilience and provided models for successful engagement to improve public health outcomes. (4) Conclusion: Local context and community engagement were indispensable considerations when enacting effective public health interventions to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Full article

I submit that epistemic progress in key areas of contemporary academic philosophy has been compromised by politically correct (“PC”) ideology. First, guided by an evolutionary account of ideology, results from social and cognitive psychology and formal philosophical methods, I expose evidence for political bias in contemporary Western academia and sketch a formalization for the contents of beliefs from the PC worldview taken to be of core importance, the theory of social oppression and the thesis of anthropological mental egalitarianism. Then, aided by discussions from contemporary epistemology on epistemic values, I model the problem of epistemic appraisal using the frameworks of multi-objective optimization theory and multi-criteria decision analysis and apply it to politically correct philosophy. I conclude that philosophy guided by politically correct values is bound to produce constructs that are less truth-conducive and that spurious values which are ideologically motivated should be abandoned. Objections to my framework stemming from contextual empiricism, the feminine voice in ethics and political philosophy are considered. I conclude by prescribing the epistemic value of epistemic adequacy, the contextual value of political diversity and the moral virtue of moral courage to reverse unwarranted trends in academic philosophy due to PC ideology. Full article