Ethics is recognised as an important concern in the development and operation of software systems... more Ethics is recognised as an important concern in the development and operation of software systems. While there are codes of ethics and sets of ethical principles available to software professionals, there is a lack of tool and process support for systematic ethical deliberation at most stages of the software lifecycle. To create and deploy ethical software, it is vital that ethical concerns of software systems are reflected in their artefacts, such as requirements, software architecture, code and test suites, and that software professionals are supported in considering the ethical as well as technical consequences of their decisions. This paper reports on some early work in identifying the challenges of ethical decision making and opportunities for addressing these challenges in the context of software engineering.
To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic v... more To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic value? One might approach this question using traditional philosophical methods, but one can also approach it using empirical methods; that is, by doing experimental philosophical aesthetics. This paper provides an example of the latter approach. We report two empirical studies that examine the significance of three sorts of extrinsic factors for judgements of artistic value: the causal-historical factor of contagion, the ontological factor of uniqueness, and the contextual factor of appreciative environment. We explore the context of appreciation by performing studies in a museum as well as the lab. We found that contagion made a difference in both settings. However, uniqueness only made a difference in the lab setting, but not in the museum. This suggests that the context of appreciation may make a difference to judgements of artistic value. Of broader significance, these studies show the value of experimental philosophical aesthetics and the value of doing in situ empirical research on art. In this paper, we report two empirical studies that examine three extrinsic factors which might be thought relevant to judgements of artistic value but are underexplored in the philosophical and empirical literature on artistic value: the causal-historical factor of contagion, the ontological factor of uniqueness, and the contextual factor of the appreciative environment. Of particular interest is that one of the studies was done not in the lab, but in the museum: we
To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic v... more To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic value? One might approach this question using traditional philosophical methods, but one can also approach it using empirical methods; that is, by doing experimental philosophical aesthetics. This paper provides an example of the latter approach. We report two empirical studies that examine the significance of three sorts of extrinsic factors for judgements of artistic value: the causal-historical factor of contagion, the ontological factor of uniqueness, and the contextual factor of appreciative environment. We explore the context of appreciation by performing studies in a museum as well as the lab. We found that contagion made a difference in both settings. However, uniqueness only made a difference in the lab setting, but not in the museum. This suggests that the context of appreciation may make a difference to judgements of artistic value. Of broader significance, these studies show t...
In this paper I want to adjudicate the dispute between those philosophers who do and those who do... more In this paper I want to adjudicate the dispute between those philosophers who do and those who do not think that the philosophy of language can illuminate metaphysical questions. To this end, I take the debate between Devitt and Putnam as a case study and diagnose what I take to be illuminating about their disagreement over metaphysical realism. I argue that both Putnam and Devitt are incorrect in their assessment of the significance of the model theoretic argument for realism. That, whilst Devitt is entitled to claim that truth does not have anything to do with realism, Putnam’s challenge can still gain traction and seriously call into question our ability to engage in realist metaphysics. I argue that even if a completely semantically neutral conception of realism can be successfully articulated, doing so has the potential to bankrupt the methodology of metaphysical realism. Having taken this debate as a case study, I then offer some brief remarks on how to understand the philosop...
We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from p... more We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from primary sources, comprehensive and unprecedented (in toto). Our guiding precepts are to distinguish semantics from metaphysics, while respecting the interrelations between them, and to discern whatever may be special, semantically or metaphysically, about the modal case. Following detailed presentation (Sect. 2), we amplify and advocate our interpretation by providing a conforming genealogy of Lewis's theory of modality (Sect. 3) and applying it to construct a detailed and newly illuminating version of the Lewisian theory of modality de re (Sect. 4).
Ethics is recognised as an important concern in the development and operation of software systems... more Ethics is recognised as an important concern in the development and operation of software systems. While there are codes of ethics and sets of ethical principles available to software professionals, there is a lack of tool and process support for systematic ethical deliberation at most stages of the software lifecycle. To create and deploy ethical software, it is vital that ethical concerns of software systems are reflected in their artefacts, such as requirements, software architecture, code and test suites, and that software professionals are supported in considering the ethical as well as technical consequences of their decisions. This paper reports on some early work in identifying the challenges of ethical decision making and opportunities for addressing these challenges in the context of software engineering.
To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic v... more To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic value? One might approach this question using traditional philosophical methods, but one can also approach it using empirical methods; that is, by doing experimental philosophical aesthetics. This paper provides an example of the latter approach. We report two empirical studies that examine the significance of three sorts of extrinsic factors for judgements of artistic value: the causal-historical factor of contagion, the ontological factor of uniqueness, and the contextual factor of appreciative environment. We explore the context of appreciation by performing studies in a museum as well as the lab. We found that contagion made a difference in both settings. However, uniqueness only made a difference in the lab setting, but not in the museum. This suggests that the context of appreciation may make a difference to judgements of artistic value. Of broader significance, these studies show the value of experimental philosophical aesthetics and the value of doing in situ empirical research on art. In this paper, we report two empirical studies that examine three extrinsic factors which might be thought relevant to judgements of artistic value but are underexplored in the philosophical and empirical literature on artistic value: the causal-historical factor of contagion, the ontological factor of uniqueness, and the contextual factor of the appreciative environment. Of particular interest is that one of the studies was done not in the lab, but in the museum: we
To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic v... more To what extent are factors that are extrinsic to the artwork relevant to judgements of artistic value? One might approach this question using traditional philosophical methods, but one can also approach it using empirical methods; that is, by doing experimental philosophical aesthetics. This paper provides an example of the latter approach. We report two empirical studies that examine the significance of three sorts of extrinsic factors for judgements of artistic value: the causal-historical factor of contagion, the ontological factor of uniqueness, and the contextual factor of appreciative environment. We explore the context of appreciation by performing studies in a museum as well as the lab. We found that contagion made a difference in both settings. However, uniqueness only made a difference in the lab setting, but not in the museum. This suggests that the context of appreciation may make a difference to judgements of artistic value. Of broader significance, these studies show t...
In this paper I want to adjudicate the dispute between those philosophers who do and those who do... more In this paper I want to adjudicate the dispute between those philosophers who do and those who do not think that the philosophy of language can illuminate metaphysical questions. To this end, I take the debate between Devitt and Putnam as a case study and diagnose what I take to be illuminating about their disagreement over metaphysical realism. I argue that both Putnam and Devitt are incorrect in their assessment of the significance of the model theoretic argument for realism. That, whilst Devitt is entitled to claim that truth does not have anything to do with realism, Putnam’s challenge can still gain traction and seriously call into question our ability to engage in realist metaphysics. I argue that even if a completely semantically neutral conception of realism can be successfully articulated, doing so has the potential to bankrupt the methodology of metaphysical realism. Having taken this debate as a case study, I then offer some brief remarks on how to understand the philosop...
We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from p... more We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from primary sources, comprehensive and unprecedented (in toto). Our guiding precepts are to distinguish semantics from metaphysics, while respecting the interrelations between them, and to discern whatever may be special, semantically or metaphysically, about the modal case. Following detailed presentation (Sect. 2), we amplify and advocate our interpretation by providing a conforming genealogy of Lewis's theory of modality (Sect. 3) and applying it to construct a detailed and newly illuminating version of the Lewisian theory of modality de re (Sect. 4).
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Papers by Jade Fletcher