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The goal of this article is to analyze the role of convention in interpreting physical theories—in particular, how the distinction between the conventional and the nonconventional interacts with judgments of equivalence. We will begin with a discussion of what, if anything, distinguishes those statements of a theory that might be dubbed "conventions." This will lead us to consider the conventions that are not themselves part of a theory's content but are rather applied to the theory in interpreting it. Finally, we will consider the idea that what conventions to adopt might, itself, be regarded as a matter of convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are well-known problems associated with the idea of (local) gravitational energy in general relativity. We offer a new perspective on those problems by comparison with Newtonian gravitation, and particularly geometrized Newtonian gravitation (i.e., Newton–Cartan theory). We show that there is a natural candidate for the energy density of a Newtonian gravitational field. But we observe that this quantity is gauge dependent, and that it cannot be defined in the geometrized (gauge-free) theory without introducing further structure. We then address a potential response by showing that there is an analogue to the Weyl tensor in geometrized Newtonian gravitation.

This article establishes and addresses opportunities for ethics integration into Machine-learning (ML) courses. Following a survey of the history of computing ethics and the current need for ethical consideration within ML, we consider the current state of ML ethics education via an exploratory analysis of course syllabi in computing programs. The results reveal that though ethics is part of the overall educational landscape in these programs, it is not frequently a part of core technical ML courses. To help address this gap, we offer a preliminary framework, developed via a systematic literature review, of relevant ethics questions that should be addressed within an ML project. A pilot study with 85 students confirms that this framework helped them identify and articulate key ethical considerations within their ML projects. Building from this work, we also provide three example ML course modules that bring ethical thinking directly into learning core ML content. Collectively, this research demonstrates: (1) the need for ethics to be taught as integrated within ML coursework, (2) a structured set of questions useful for identifying and addressing potential issues within an ML project, and (3) novel course models that provide examples for how to practically teach ML ethics without sacrificing core course content. An additional by-product of this research is the collection and integration of recent publications in the emerging field of ML ethics education.

How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If categorical equivalence is a good criterion of theoretical equivalence, then it would seem that if some class of mathematical structures is represented as a category, then any other class of structures categorically equivalent to it will have the same representational capacities. Hudetz (2019 a) has presented an apparent counterexample to this claim; in this note, I argue that the counterexample fails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an essay about general covariance, and what it says (or doesn't say) about spacetime structure. After outlining a version of the dynamical approach to spacetime theories, and how it struggles to deal with generally covariant theories, I argue that we should think about the symmetry structure of spacetime rather differently in generally-covariant theories compared to non-generally-covariant theories: namely, as a form of internal rather than external symmetry structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]