Functional descriptions in the engineering sciences are, however, much richer than individual ascriptions of functions.
The term is used to describe problems with the ascription of individual responsibility in collective settings.
Perhaps the greatest of these fallacies was the one based on a widespread tendency to ignore the potential for collective action problems in groups, and thus to move far too easily "down" from an identification of a group interest to the ascription of an individual interest.
Or, if there is a very tight fit between judgments and attitudes of the group on the one hand, and members on the other for example if ascriptions of attitudes to a group just is a summary of ascriptions to its individual members (Quinton 1975 6)—then there is no cause to think of the group as having a mind of its own.
In the event that there are two or more explanatorily adequate but substantially different systems of intentional ascriptions to an individual, however, Dennett claims there is no fact of the matter about what the individual believes (1987b , 1991.
Agents cannot directly ascribe properties to individuals other than themselves, for all ascription of properties is self-ascription.
An individual's understanding of the causal ascriptions she favors is characterized by four causal dimensions: Causal locus refers to an individual's perception of whether the cause comes from an internal or external source.
Still, the initial assumption remains an ascription of responsibility and each individual case requires close scrutiny: one is responsible and accountable unless there is an adequate reason for being considered otherwise.
The ascription of criminal liability to a specific individual is difficult when confronted with an autonomous, adaptive and learning robot.
But our ascription of these to a single self does not commit us to the existence of such a self at the ontological level, any more than the ascription of redness to a circle commits us to the existence of an individual — the circle — and the redness it instantiates.
Neither of these beliefs is necessary to a particular racial ascription since (not-1) the so-called black race includes individuals of strikingly different colors and (not-2) one's parents may themselves belong to different so-called races.
