Bias Beyond English: Counterfactual Tests for Bias in Sentiment Analysis in Four Languages

Sentiment analysis (SA) systems are used in many products and hundreds of languages. Gender and racial biases are well-studied in English SA systems, but understudied in other languages, with few resources for such studies. To remedy this, we build a counterfactual evaluation corpus for gender and racial/migrant bias in four languages. We demonstrate its usefulness by answering a simple but important question that an engineer might need to answer when deploying a system: What biases do systems import from pre-trained models when compared to a baseline with no pre-training? Our evaluation corpus, by virtue of being counterfactual, not only reveals which models have less bias, but also pinpoints changes in model bias behaviour, which enables more targeted mitigation strategies. We release our code and evaluation corpora to facilitate future research

Leibniz and the Fardella Memo

A number of recent studies have called into question the traditional interpretation of Leibniz as an idealist beginning, at the latest, with the composition of the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686). In particular, in a recent book Daniel Garber affirms that between the late 1670s and late 1690s Leibniz maintains a realist doctrine according to which the created world is populated with extended corporeal substances. In trying to prove his thesis, Garber appeals to a document written in 1690 where Leibniz, addressing an objection by Michelangelo Fardella, denies that bodies are composed of souls, declares that souls are substantial forms, and affirms that bodies are composed instead of substances. According to Garber, this shows that Leibniz then believed that bodies were composed, not of simple substances, but of extended substances possessing souls. Here I try to show that, to the contrary, the mentioned document (along with two others closely associated with it) support the traditional interpretation of Leibniz as an idealist in 1690

Drawing, Handwriting Processing Analysis: New Advances and Challenges

International audienceDrawing and handwriting are communicational skills that are fundamental in geopolitical, ideological and technological evolutions of all time. drawingand handwriting are still useful in defining innovative applications in numerous fields. In this regard, researchers have to solve new problems like those related to the manner in which drawing and handwriting become an efficient way to command various connected objects; or to validate graphomotor skills as evident and objective sources of data useful in the study of human beings, their capabilities and their limits from birth to decline

Cross-lingual Transfer Can Worsen Bias in Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis (SA) systems are widely deployed in many of the world's languages, and there is well-documented evidence of demographic bias in these systems. In languages beyond English, scarcer training data is often supplemented with transfer learning using pre-trained models, including multilingual models trained on other languages. In some cases, even supervision data comes from other languages. Does cross-lingual transfer also import new biases? To answer this question, we use counterfactual evaluation to test whether gender or racial biases are imported when using cross-lingual transfer, compared to a monolingual transfer setting. Across five languages, we find that systems using cross-lingual transfer usually become more biased than their monolingual counterparts. We also find racial biases to be much more prevalent than gender biases. To spur further research on this topic, we release the sentiment models we used for this study, and the intermediate checkpoints throughout training, yielding 1,525 distinct models; we also release our evaluation code

The Exhaustive Particle =ok in Hill Mari and Beyond

The paper examines the semantics and distribution of the polyfunctional Hill Mari focus particle =ok. We describe two interpretations of =ok ­possible on a wide range of hosts: the exhaustive use and the counteradditive use; besides, we consider several uses that are only possible with a lexically or semantically conditioned set of entities. We argue that =ok falls into a class of devices with not-at-issue exhaustive inferences, along with the English it-cleft and some other cross-linguistic counterparts. We discuss the implications that the Hill Mari data have for the typology of this class of constructions: Hill Mari =ok suggests that discourse givenness of the denotation of the focus constituent is an important dimension along which such elements vary across languages. Besides, in this paper we draw an areal comparison of the Hill Mari =ok with its counterparts in the Volga-Kama languages: Meadow Mari, Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, and Udmurt. Although the origin and the general set of readings are the same, the ­syntactic behavior of =okâs counterparts varies significantly

Aristotle and Augustine on voluntary action and freedom and weakness of the will

Aristotle's remarks on free will suggest, not so much an argument for the existence of free will, as an account of its nature. This account depends on his making no hard distinction between what we call 'free action' and 'voluntary action'. For him, these would be interchangeable terms. The Aristotelian can, then, point out that, if we give up our belief in free will, we must give up many other natural beliefs too. In particular, we must stop believing in voluntary action.There are, in Aristotelian terms, three conditions (not two, as Aristotle himself evidently supposed), which any behaviour must satisfy to count as free/ voluntary action. The behaviour (i) must not be compelled, but must be performed by the agent's own power and desire; (ii) must not be done in ignorance, but must be action on relevant knowledge; and (iii) must not be irrational, but must result from the combination of the agent's own power and desire with the agent's relevant knowledge. (i) leads me to discuss Aristotle's account of what he calls kineseis; (ii) leads me into epistemology; (iii) into an account of Aristotle's theory of proairesis and practical reasoning as the cause of voluntary action.by akrasia, deliberate choice of what I sincerely believe I should not choose. This seems to be voluntary action which is not caused as Aristotle says voluntary action should be. But the three conditions of voluntary action which I say Aristotle should be committed to can be used to show that the existing forms of akrasia make no counter example to Aristotle's theory, but rather an interesting adjunct to it.My study of Augustine's theory of freedom begins with a survey of a crucial text, the de Libero Arbitrio (Ch.5). I then apply an analogous schema to that found in Aristotle. Augustine too depends on the idea that to analyse free action is to analyse voluntary action; he also equates these two types with responsible action. He too believes (i) that ignorance usually makes for involuntariness, and (ii) that there can be no voluntary action which is compelled or which the agent could not have done otherwise. In his later works, these doctrines are often obscured by his interest in original sin and predestination (neither of which topics, be it noted, are focuses of this thesis). But they remain his doctrines. Does Augustine have (iii) any doctrine that voluntary action must be rational? While he does not develop any theory of practical reasoning like Aristotle's, he does develop a theory of practical wisdom. It is an essential feature of all human desire, and hence of all voluntary action, that it aims at happiness, which properly understood is identical with possession of The Good, i.e. of God. From this Augustine draws the conclusion that, to explain any behaviour as a voluntary action or choice, it is necessary and sufficient to specify some good at which it is to be understood as aiming.This sets up for Augustine a problem analogous to Aristotle's problem about akrasia. How is a voluntary choice of evil explicable? Augustine's reply is that human desires have been disordered by the Fall, and so we often choose, not evils per se, but lesser goods than we ought. But this prompts the question: How is a first voluntary choice of evil explicable? Augustine's reply is simply that it is not. Since a voluntary action or choice must be explained by reference to some good at which it aims, a voluntary choice of evil per se cannot be explained at all. This does not mean that there was no voluntary choice of evil; but it does mean that, in principle, that choice is inexplicable- a mystery. Thus Augustine, unlike Aristotle, in this one exceptional case (but in no others) affirms that there can be genuinely voluntary action which is not, in the relevant sense, rational

Panentheism and Panpsychism

Panpsychism has become a highly attractive position in the philosophy of mind. On panpsychism, both the physical and the mental are inseparable and fundamental features of reality. Panentheism has also become immensely popular in the philosophy of religion. Panentheism strives for a higher reconciliation of an atheistic pantheism, on which the universe itself is causa sui, and the ontological dualism of necessarily existing, eternal creator and contingent, finite creation. Historically and systematically, panpsychism and panentheism often went together as essential parts of an allembracing metaphysical theory of Being. The present collection of essays analyses the relation between panpsychism and panentheism and provides critical reflections on the significance of panpsychistic and panentheistic thinking for recent debates in philosophy and theology

The Renewal of Medieval Metaphysics

This is the first volume exclusively devoted to the Expositio by Berthold of Moosburg (c.1295-c.1361) on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. The breadth of its vision surpasses every other known commentary on the Elements of Theology, for it seeks to present a coherent account of the Platonic tradition as such (unified through the concord of Proclus and Dionysius) and at the same time to consolidate and transform a legacy of metaphysics developed in the German-speaking lands by Peripatetic authors (like Albert the Great, Ulrich of Strassburg, and Dietrich of Freiberg). This volume aims to provide a basis for further research and discussion of this unduly overlooked commentary, whose historical-philosophical importance as an attempt to refound Western metaphysics is beginning to be recognized.. Readership: Scholars and students interested in the history of metaphysics, the Platonic tradition, and the intellectual milieu of the German Dominicans from Albert the Great to the mid-14th century

The Unity of Science in Early-Modern Philosophy: Subalternation, Metaphysics and the Geometrical Manner in Scholasticism, Galileo and Descartes

The project of constructing a complete system of knowledge---a system capable of integrating all that is and could possibly be known---was common to many early-modern philosophers and was championed with particular alacrity by René Descartes. The inspiration for this project often came from mathematics in general and from geometry in particular: Just as propositions were ordered in a geometrical demonstration, the argument went, so should propositions be ordered in an overall system of knowledge. Science, it was thought, had to proceed `more geometrico'. I offer a new interpretation of `science emph{more geometrico}' based on an analysis of the explanatory forms used in certain branches of geometry. These branches were optics, astronomy, and mechanics; the so-called subalternate, subordinate, or mixed-mathematical sciences. In Part I, I investigate the nature of the mixed-mathematical sciences according to Aristotle and some `liberal Jesuit' scholastic-Aristotelians. In Part II, the heart of the work, I analyze the metaphysics and physics of Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy" (1644, 1647) in light of the findings of Part I and an example from Galileo. I conclude by arguing that we must broaden our understanding of the early-modern conception of `science more geometrico' to include concepts taken from the mixed-mathematical sciences. These render the geometrical manner more flexible than previously thought