Shepherd appears to endorse something like the following biconditonal regarding qualities and objects. □(An object, O, exists ↔ Some bundle of qualities, Q1, Q2, … Qn exists). There is a growing consensus in the secondary literature that she also takes the right side of this biconditional to ground the left side. I.e. Shepherd is a bundle theorist who takes an object to be nothing but a mass of qualities, or causal powers. I argue here that despite appearances, this interpretation reverses (...) Shepherd's actual view. I.e. I argue that for Shepherd qualities, or causal powers, are grounded in the intrinsic constitutions of objects. In the case of "external objects", these intrinsic constitutions are unknowable to us; in the case of "internal objects", we have direct knowledge of them. (shrink)

Lady Mary Shepherd holds that the relation of cause and effect consists of the combination of two objects to create a third object. She also holds that this account implies that causes are synchronous with their effects. There is a single instant in which the objects that are causes combine to create the object which is their effect. Hume argues that cause and effect cannot be synchronous because if they were then the entire chain of successive causes and effects would (...) all collapse into a single moment, and succession would not be possible. I argue that Shepherd has a ready, although implicit response, to Hume’s argument. Since causation is combination on Shepherd’s view, she is free to hold that there are times in between those instants in which combinations occur, during which times other, non-combinatory changes occur, which changes account for succession. (shrink)

For Shepherd, how many things exist? On the one hand, it looks like the answer is going to be many. It is a central tent of Shepherd's philosophical system that causation is a relation whereby two or more objects combine to create a third. Since there are many instances of this causal relation, there must be many objects in the world. On the other hand, there are several moments throughout her writing where Shepherd indicates that the distinction between causes and (...) effects is in some sense unreal, and that while the world appears to us to consist of many distinct objects interacting causally, really there is just one thing and its merely nominally distinct parts. I argue that Shepherd is an ontological pluralist, and the texts that appear to express a commitment to ontological monism are best understood as expressing ontological holism instead. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present an interpretation of Shepherd’s account of our most fundamental cognitive powers, most especially the faculty that Shepherd calls perception, which she claims is a unity of contributions from the understanding and the senses. I find that Shepherd is what we would nowadays call a meaning holist: she holds that the meaning of any natural-kind term is constituted by its place in a system of definitions, which system specifies the causal roles of the (...) objects its terms name. Such an account of meaning raises questions about the contact that such a system of definitions, or conceptual scheme, makes with the world. The natural place to seek answers to these questions is in Shepherd’s account of perception, which I argue Shepherd takes to be our most fundamental cognitive faculty. Our cognitive lives begin with perceptions, representations of objects as the cause of those very perceptions of them. With this interpretation in hand, I draw a contrast between it and Boyle’s and Lolordo’s recent work on Shepherd’s theory of meaning. I argue that for Shepherd truths about the causal powers of objects are analytic, and that the relevant empirical questions answered by science concern whether our conceptual scheme accurately represents the world. Finally, I provide additional support for this interpretation by showing that it comports with Shepherd’s criticism of her philosophical opponents, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid. (shrink)

Shepherd’s argument against Hume’s thesis that an object can begin its existence uncaused has received short shrift in the secondary literature. I argue that the key to understanding that argument’s success is understanding its dialectical context. Shepherd sees the dialectical situation as follows. Hume presents an argument against Locke and Clarke the conclusion of which is that an object can come into existence uncaused. An essential premise of that argument is Hume’s theory of mental representation. Hume’s theory of mental representation, (...) however, is itself implausible and unsupported. Therefore, one need not accept this premise or this conclusion. Thus, Shepherd proceeds to her discussion of the relation of cause and effect free to help herself to the thesis that every beginning of existence must have a cause. Additionally, she elsewhere pays down the debt she incurs in that argument by presenting her own alternative theory of mental representation, which is both plausible in its own right, and can account for the error that she takes Hume to make. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in Shepherd’s accounts of space and time. Firstly, Shepherd explicitly claims that we know that the space and time of the unperceived world exist because they cause our phenomenal experience of them. Secondly, Shepherd emphasizes that empty space and time do not have the power to effect any change in the world. My proposal is that for Shepherd time has exactly one causal power: to provide for the continued existence of self-same or changing objects. Because (...) Shepherd takes causation to be a relation whereby two objects combine to form a third, their effect, whenever we perceive a continually existing object, since time is a proper part of such objects, our perception of time is caused by time itself. Likewise, space’s causal power is to provide for the possibility of the motion or rest of objects, and so when we perceive objects with space as a proper part, we come into causal contact with space. (shrink)

Scholars working on Kant’s Anticipations of Perception generally attribute to him an argument that invalidly infers that objects have degrees of intensive magnitude from the premise that sensations do. I argue that this rests on an incorrect disambiguation of Kant’s use of Empfindung as referring to the mental states that are our sensings, rather than the objects that are thereby sensed. Kant’s real argument runs as follows. The difference between a representation of an empty region of space and/or time and (...) a representation of that same region as occupied by an object entails that, in addition to their extensive magnitude, objects must be represented as having a matter variable in intensive magnitude. Since it is the presence of sensation in a cognition that marks the difference between representing only the extensive magnitude of the object and the object as a whole, it is sensation that represents its intensive magnitude. (shrink)

Scholars have rejected Wilfrid Sellars’ argument for an ontology of absolute processes on the grounds that it relies on a dubious and dogmatic appeal to the homogeneity of color. Borrowing from Rosenthal’s recent defense, but ultimate rejection of homogeneity, I defend this claim of on Sellarsian/Kantian transcendental grounds, and reconstruct the remainder of his argument. I argue that Sellars has good reason to suppose that homogeneity is a necessary condition of any possible experience, including indirect experience of theoretical-explanatory posits, and (...) therefore good reason to hold that Reductive Materialism, as he conceives it, is an untenable account of color. The remainder of his argument aims to answer the question of what the metaphysical relation is between the state of an experiencing subject that we take color to be and the colorless microphysical particles that we take to constitute that subject. After rejecting Substance Dualism, Epiphenomenalism, and Wholistic or Emergent Materialism as explanatorily inadequate, Sellars proposes that both color-states and micro-physical particles should be understood as manifestations of an underlying ontology on absolute processes. (shrink)

Kant’s argument in the First Analogy for the permanence of substance has been cast as consisting of a simple quantifierscope mistake. Kant is portrayed as illicitly moving from a premise such as (1) at all times, there must exist some substance, to a conclusion such as (2) some particular substance must exist at all times. Examples meant to show that Kant makes this mistake feature substances coming into and out of existence, but doing so at overlapping times. I argue that (...) Kant offers an argument against this kind of example in the following passage. Kant’s claim is that, were substances to be created and destroyed as in the example, the appearances would then be related to two different times, in which existence flowed side by side, which is absurd. For there is only one time, in which all different times must not be placed simultaneously but only one after another (A188–9/B231–32). (shrink)

In Kant, Science, and Human Nature, Robert Hanna argues against a version of scientific realism founded on the Kripke/Putnam theory of reference, and defends a Kant-inspired manifest realism in its place. I reject Kriple/Putnam for different reasons than Hanna does, and argue that what should replace it is not manifest realism, but Kant‘s own scientific realism, which rests on a radically different theory of reference. Kant holds that we picture manifest objects by uniting manifolds of sensation using concepts-qua-inferential-rules. When these (...) rules are demonstrated to be invalid, we replace the picture of the macroscopic world with a picture of the microscopic entities of theoretical science that unites the very same manifolds using different rules of inference. Thus, we refer to "unobservable" theoretical entities in the same way that we do manifest ones: by specifying both their determinate location in space and time and the concepts by which they are understood. (shrink)

Why study notations, diagrams, or more broadly the variety of nonverbal “representations” or “signs” that are used in mathematical practice? This chapter maps out recent work on the topic by distinguishing three main philosophical motivations for doing so. First, some work (like that on diagrammatic reasoning) studies signs to recover norms of informal or historical mathematical practices that would get lost if the particular signs that these practices rely on were translated away; work in this vein has the potential to (...) broaden our view of the specific normativity of mathematics beyond logical proof. Second, some work focuses on signs to highlight the open-ended and “nonrigorous” aspects of mathematical practice, and the role of these aspects in the historical development of mathematics. The third motivation is based on the following observation: the reason differences in signs matter in mathematics is that humans are finite agents, with cognitive and computational limitations. Accordingly, studying signs can be a way to study how human computational constraints shape the mathematics that we do, and to tackle the topic of mathematical understanding. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

David Heyd's study will stimulate philosophers to recognise the importance of the rather neglected topic of the distinctiveness of supererogation and the ...

Extant theoretical work on the political resource curse implies that dependence on resource revenues should decrease autocracies’ likelihood of democratizing but not necessarily affect democracies’ chances of survival. Yet most previous empirical studies estimate models that are ill-suited to address this claim. We improve upon earlier studies, estimating a dynamic logit model that interacts a continuous measure of resource dependence with an indicator of regime type using data from 166 countries, covering the period from 1816-2006. We find that an increase (...) in resource dependence at time t - 1 increases the likelihood of autocratic persistence at t, but has no appreciable effect on democratic survival. We go beyond existing empirical studies to show that increases in resource dependence have persistent and substantial cumulative effects on autocracies' likelihood of becoming democratic over the long-term, showing that the total effect of resource dependence on regime type is much larger than the short-term (one period) effect indicates. (shrink)

According to dispositionalism about modality, a proposition <p> is possible just in case something has, or some things have, a power or disposition for its truth; and <p> is necessary just in case nothing has a power for its falsity. But are there enough powers to go around? In Yates (2015) I argued that in the case of mathematical truths such as <2+2=4>, nothing has the power to bring about their falsity or their truth, which means they come out both (...) necessary and not possible. Combining this with axiom (T), it is easy to derive a contradiction. I suggested that dispositionalists ought to retreat a little and say that <p> is possible just in case either p, or there is a power to bring it about that p, grounding the possibility of mathematical propositions in their truth rather than in powers. Vetter’s (2015) has the resources to provide a response to my argument, and in her (2018) she explicitly addresses it by arguing for a plenitude of powers, based on the idea that dispositions come in degrees, with necessary properties a limiting case of dispositionality. On this view there is a power for <2+2=4>, without there being a power to bring about its truth. In this paper I argue that Vetter’s case for plenitude does not work. However, I suggest, if we are prepared to accept metaphysical causation, a case can be made that there is indeed a power for <2+2=4>. (shrink)

Chapter 20 David Kovacs’ “Essence, Grounding, and Explanation” sets out four different ways in which essence might be taken to relate to the notion of grounding or metaphysical explanation, i.e., the type of connection that is often expressed by means of non-causal “in virtue of” or “because”-claims: (i) Unity: essence and grounding belong to a unified set of explanatory concepts; (ii) Supplementation: essence and grounding both contribute in their own way to a distinctive type of explanation; (iii) Independence: essence (...) is a sui generis notion with no straightforward conceptual links to grounding; and (iv) Irrelevance: essence is not an explanatory notion at all and therefore should not be viewed as connected to explanatory notions like grounding. As Kovacs brings out in the chapter, a wide variety of attitudes are represented in the literature even among philosophers who are sympathetic to the recent “hyperintensional” turn in metaphysics when it comes to the question of how the notions of essence and grounding interact with one another. (shrink)

Fichte-Studien, volume 49 (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi Publishers, 8 April 2021), edited by David W. Wood, 471pp. -/- Presenting new critical perspectives on J.G. Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, this volume of articles in English by an international group of scholars addresses the topic of first principles in Fichte’s writings. Especially discussed are the central text of his Jena period, the 1794/95 Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, as well as later versions like the Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (1796-99) and the presentations of 1804 and 1805. Also (...) included are new studies on the first principles of the particular sub-disciplines of Fichte’s system, such as the doctrines of aesthetics, nature, right, ethics, and history. The volume also contains a number of miscellaneous essays on Fichte research, as well as several book reviews. (shrink)

L'ingegneria concettuale è una branca della filosofia caratterizzata da un approccio normativo nei confronti della rappresentazione. Assunzione fondamentale è che i nostri dispositivi rappresentazionali possano essere difettosi. Si configura dunque come l'attività che consiste nell'identificare i difetti in tali dispositivi e mettere in atto strategie di miglioramento. Verranno illustrate le questioni fondamentali a cui una teoria di ingegneria concettuale deve rispondere: in cosa consiste esattamente questa attività? Come possiamo attuarla? Quali meccanismi regolano la formazione dei dispositivi rappresentazionali? Possiamo influire su (...) tali meccanismi? Verrà inoltre presentata un'obiezione all'ingegneria concettuale e varie risposte. -/- Conceptual engineering is a branch of philosophy characterised by a normative approach towards representation. The fundamental assumption of it is that our representational devices can be defective. Conceptual engineering is then the activity consisting of identifying the defects of such devices and putting in place ameliorative strategies. This paper illustrates the fundamental issues for a theory of conceptual engineering: what does this activity consist of? How can we implement it? What mechanisms regulate the formation of representational devices? Can we have an influence over those mechanisms? Moreover, it will be presented an objection to conceptual engineering and various responses to it. (shrink)

This essay provides a novel account of iterated epistemic states. The essay argues that states of epistemic determinacy might be secured by countenancing iterated epistemic states on the model of fixed points in the modal $\mu$-calculus. Despite the epistemic indeterminacy witnessed by the invalidation of modal axiom 4 in the sorites paradox -- i.e. the KK principle: $\square$$\phi$ $\rightarrow$ $\square$$\square$$\phi$ -- a hyperintensional epistemic $\mu$-automaton permits fixed points to entrain a principled means by which to iterate epistemic states and account (...) thereby for necessary conditions on self-knowledge. The hyperintensional epistemic $\mu$-calculus is applied to the iteration of the epistemic states of a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents, and is thus a novel contribution to the literature. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

In this paper, we present three necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research that we believe people on both sides of this debate can accept. Specifically, we argue that, even if human beings have higher moral status than nonhuman animals, animal research is morally permissible only if it satisfies (a) an expectation of sufficient net benefit, (b) a worthwhile-life condition, and (c) a no unnecessary-harm/qualified-basic-needs condition. We then claim that, whether or not these necessary conditions are jointly sufficient conditions of (...) justified animal research, they are relatively demanding with the consequence that many animal experiments may fail to satisfy them. (shrink)

Truthmaker theory promises to do some useful philosophical work: equipping us to argue against phenomenalism and Rylean behaviourism, for instance, and helping us decide what exists (Lewis 1999, 207; Armstrong 1997, 113-119). But it has proved hard to formulate a truthmaker theory that is both useful and believable. I want to suggest that a neglected approach to truthmakers – that of Ian McFetridge – can surmount some of the problems that make other theories of truthmaking unattractive. To begin with, I’ll (...) outline some of the most prominent accounts of truthmaking in the current literature. Then the second part of the paper will explain McFetridge’s theory and argue for its superiority over these accounts. (shrink)

Conciliationism holds that disagreement of apparent epistemic peers often substantially undermines rational confidence in our opinions. Uniqueness principles say that there is at most one maximally rational doxastic response to any given batch of total evidence. The two views are often thought to be tightly connected. This paper distinguishes two ways of motivating conciliationism, and two ways that conciliationism may be undermined by permissive accounts of rationality. It shows how conciliationism can flourish under certain strongly permissive accounts of rationality. This (...) occurs when the motivation for conciliationism does not come from taking disagreement as evidence of one's own rational failings. However, divorcing the motive for conciliating from worries about rationality does not remove a feature of conciliationism that some find troubling: that conciliationism can lead to cases of “rational toxicity,” in which the most rational response to one's evidence involves violating some rational ideal. (shrink)

Recent methodological debates regarding the place of feasibility considerations in normative political theory are hindered for want of a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier. To address this shortfall, I present an analysis of feasibility that generalizes the economic concept of a production possibility frontier and then develop a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier using the familiar possible worlds technology. I then show that this model has significant methodological implications for political philosophy. On the Target View, a political ideal (...) presents a long-term goal for morally progressive reform efforts and, thus, serves as an important reference point for our specification of normative political principles. I use the model to show that we can- not reasonably expect that adopting political ideals as long-term reform objectives will guide us toward the realization of morally optimal feasible states of affairs. I conclude by proposing that political philosophers turn their attention to the analysis of actual social failures rather than political ideals. (shrink)

Some infamous memoirs have turned out to be chock-full of fibs. Should we care? Why not say—as many have—that all autobiography is fiction, that accurate memory is impossible, that we start lying as soon as we start narrating, and that it doesn’t matter anyway, since made-up stories are just as good as true ones? Because, well, every part of that is misleading. First, we don’t misremember absolutely everything; second, we have other sources to draw on; third, story form affects only (...) significance, not facts; fourth, fiction and nonfiction offer different affordances, benefits, and delights. And since we need both kinds of writing, we have to insist on honesty in memoir; we have to stop saying that everything is invention and that fibs don’t matter. If memoirs could never be trusted, who would still read them? In a world without truth, what exactly would we speak to power? (shrink)

Longtermism is the thesis that in a large class of decision situations, the best thing we can do is what is best for the long-term future. The scope question for longtermism asks: how large is the class of decision situations for which this is true? In this paper, I suggest that the scope of longtermism may be narrower than many longtermists suppose. I identify a restricted version of longtermism: swamping axiological strong longtermism (swamping ASL). I identify three scope-limiting factors - (...) probabilistic and decision-theoretic phenomena which, when present, tend to reduce the prospects for swamping ASL. I argue that these scope-limiting factors are often present in human decision problems, then use two case studies from recent discussions of longtermism to show how the scope-limiting factors lead to a restricted, if perhaps nonempty, scope for swamping ASL. (shrink)

Each of us is not just a set of actions, experiences, and plans but also a set of traits, capacities, and attitudes; we are as much our character as our life. And while story form can help unify a messy life, when it comes to a messy character, we may need something like the form of a poem. Could we model our self-conception, then, on a work like Sonnet 35? In finding deep-going unity—and even bittersweet beauty—beneath surface-level ambivalence, Sonnet 35 (...) arguably offers a perfect formal model, pointing the way to a transfiguration, through art, of intractable internal conflict. (shrink)

This essay argues that literature is neither an intrinsic good (like oxygen) nor a constructed good (like a teddy-bear) but instead a conditional good, like a blueprint. It has immense potential value, but that potential can be actualized only if readers do a certain kind of work; and readers are likely to do that work only if, as a culture, we retain an understanding of what novels and poems both need from us and can give us. This means we need (...) to be wary of theories that are excessively deflationary (all literature is mere entertainment), cynical (all literature is a vehicle for state ideology), or over-optimistic (all literature makes us more altruistic) and instead embrace a pluralism of effect. Some fictions, like The Wire, invite us to reflect on our own beliefs; some, like Plato’s dialogues, help us fine-tune our mental capacities; some, like Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, offer us a choice of genres; some help us feel our feelings; some offer formal models for the shape of a life. Literature can continue to matter in all of these ways—but only as long as we allow it to. (shrink)

Many believe that a suitably programmed computer could act for its own goals and experience feelings. I challenge this view and argue that agency, mental causation and qualia are all founded in the unique, homeostatic nature of living matter. The theory was formulated for coherence with the concept of an agent, neuroscientific data and laws of physics. By this method, I infer that a successful action is homeostatic for its agent and can be caused by a feeling - which does (...) not motivate as a force, but as a control signal. From brain research and the locality principle of physics, I surmise that qualia are a fundamental, biological form of energy generated in specialized neurons. Subjectivity is explained as thermodynamically necessary on the supposition that, by converting action potentials to feelings, the neural cells avert damage from the electrochemical pulses. In exchange for this entropic benefit, phenomenal energy is spent as and where it is produced - which precludes the objective observation of qualia. (shrink)

We are living in an age that is narratively obsessed: both in the academy and in popular culture, temporally articulated phenomena currently exert a vice-like grip over the collective imagination. Under such conditions, how may non-narrative sources of aesthetic power be made available once again to human observers? Charlie Kaufman’s response, in Adaptation, takes the form not of statements but of actions, of “philosophical therapy” for our insatiable narrative hunger. It leaves us, in the end, with two phenomena that have (...) (in the full sense of the word) no history at all: the beauty of flowers and the intricacy of a human soul. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Prudence or Oneiromancy? A Parody of Didacticism Preaching to the Converted The Asymmetry of “Imaginative Resistance” Virtue Ethics and Gossip Qualifications Positive Views.

What is so appealing about the figure of the master criminal? The answer lies in the kind of solution he provides to the problem of suffering. Rather than just accounting for affliction—as, for example, does Leibniz’s theodicy—such a figure enchants it, transforming mundane objects into actual or potential clues, everyday incidents into moves in a cosmic conflict, random misery into a purposeful pattern. The master criminal (the shadowy villain of _The Usual Suspects_, say) thus constitutes a secular replacement for the (...) Devil, making possible a negative reenchantment of the world. (shrink)

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

Edgar A. Singer Jr. is largely forgotten. Yet in the early twentieth century he was one of the most persistent proponents for a theory of "mind as behavior." This essay explores Singer's theory of mind as a form of experimentally-definable behavior. This interpretation of mind is derived from Singer's "philosophy of experiment," which delimits the forms of questions that can have meaningful answers. Valid questions, according to Singer's theory, must appeal to phenomena that are public in some sense and which (...) have verifiable effects on our "mechanical images" of nature (which is not to say that such phenomena are themselves solely mechanical). From this perspective, Singer is able to give behavioral criteria for attributing "mind" to organisms and for such "mental faculties" as purpose, sensation, consciousness, and thought. It might be wondered how Singer's experimental concept of mind compares with B. F. Skinner's better-known concept of private events. Although there are difficulties involved in the interpretation of each, it would seem that Singer and Skinner are largely in agreement, although they emphasize different factors in the behavioral interpretation of mind. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

The question of how people change artworks is important for the metaphysics of art. It’s relatively easy for anyone to change a painting or sculpture, but who may change a literary or musical work is restricted and varies with context. Authors of novels and composers of symphonies often have a special power to change their artworks. Mary Shelley revised Frankenstein, and Tchaikovsky revised his Second Symphony. I cannot change these artworks. In other cases, such as those involving jazz standards and (...) folk songs, performers and ordinary folks have more power to change artworks. My preferred explanation of these facts is the created-abstract-simples view, according to which literary and musical works, unlike paintings and sculptures, are created abstract objects that have no parts. On this view, the way to change a literary or musical work is for an individual, empowered by social practices, to change rules about how a literary work should be published or a musical work should be performed. A. R. J. Fisher and Caterina Moruzzi object that the created-abstract-simples view doesn’t allow for literary and musical works to genuinely change, and Nemesio Garcia-Carríl Puy objects that the view doesn’t allow for these artworks to be repeatable. This paper clarifies the created-abstract-simples view and defends the view against these objections. -/- . (shrink)

Several different quantum gravity research programmes suggest, for various reasons, that spacetime is not part of the fundamental ontology of physics. This gives rise to the problem of empirical coherence: if fundamental physical entities do not occupy spacetime or instantiate spatiotemporal properties, how can fundamental theories concerning those entities be justified by observation of spatiotemporally located things like meters, pointers and dials? I frame the problem of empirical coherence in terms of entailment: how could a non-spatiotemporal fundamental theory entail spatiotemporal (...) evidence propositions? Solutions to this puzzle can be classified as realist or antirealist, depending on whether or not they posit a non-fundamental spacetime structure grounded in or caused by the fundamental structure. These approaches place different constraints on our everyday concepts of space and time. Applying lessons from the philosophy of mind, I argue that only realism is both conceptually plausible and suitable for addressing the problem at hand. I suggest a role functionalist version of realism, which is consistent with both grounding and causation, and according to which our everyday concepts reveal something of the true nature of emergent spacetime. (shrink)

Hylomorphists hold that substances are, in some sense, composites of matter and form. The form of a substance is typically taken to play a fundamental role in determining the unity or identity of the whole. Staunch hylomorphists think that this role is of a kind that precludes the ontological reduction of form to the physical and thus take their position to be inconsistent with physicalism. Forms, according to staunch hylomorphism, play a fundamental role in grounding their bearers’ proper parts and (...) that, it seems, rules out the physical grounding of form itself. I shall develop a physicalist version of hylomorphism that treats form as geometric structure and which, I shall argue, entails many of the central theses endorsed by staunch hylomorphists. Based on Shoemaker’s notion of conditional powers, I shall argue that the geometric structures of complex wholes are the conditions on at least some of the conditional powers of their bearers’ proper parts, transforming those powers into powers simpliciter. Thus, forms play a fundamental role in the dynamical evolution of the physical world, but without bestowing causal powers themselves and hence without violating the causal closure of the physical domain. If a substance’s proper parts are taken to be individuated by their powers simpliciter, then they derive their identities from their places in the substantial whole, which thus determines the identities of its proper parts without changing their intrinsic natures. (shrink)

The paper argues that it is the rise of Artificial Intelligence as a concrete possibility (the idea of a thinking machine) that favoured the growth of interest in Cognitive Science within the academic community. This puts the history and the definition of AI in a different light, as it can be seen and understood as "a continuation of Philosophy by other means" (Landi, 2020) and not merely as a technology or a sum of technologies.

Philosophy of Mind is usualy seen as the theoretical field in which theories about the functioning of the mind are elaborated, to be afterwards empirically tested through Artificial Intelligence. But this empirical approach does not fit the human mind which is not simply a machine. It is therefore possible to see Philosophy of Mind as a necessary creation to empty AI of its philosophical charge.

This chapter presents Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy as modern fictions with ancient-skeptical ambitions. Whether in the affective domain (Flaubert) or in the cognitive (Beckett), the aim is to help the reader achieve a position of studied neutrality—ataraxia, époché—thanks not to an a priori decision but to the mutual cancellation of opposing tendencies. Understanding Flaubert and Beckett in this way allows us, first, to enrich our sense of what “catharsis” may involve; second, to see why the apparently (...) odious Charles, in Madame Bovary, suddenly becomes a deeply touching figure; and third, to recognize the severe limitations of empathy-based moralist theories of fiction. (shrink)

The causal closure of the physical poses a familiar causal exclusion problem for the special sciences that stems from the idea that if closure is true, then fundamental physical properties do all the causal work involved in bringing about physical effects. In this paper I aim to show that the strongest causal closure principle that is not ruled out by some simple physics in fact allows for a certain kind of downward causation, which in turn makes room for robust special (...) science autonomy. I focus on the case of vector composition, arguing that it involves irreducibly multilevel causation. To give a complete causal explanation of what goes on in cases that involve the effects of multiple forces, we need to appeal not only to the fundamental properties that generate those forces, but also to geometric properties that determine how multiple vectors compose. However, if all the causal work involved in such cases were due to fundamental physical properties, there would be a one-level explanation available. Hence, I argue, it cannot be the case that fundamental physical properties do all the causal work. The extra causal work, I suggest, comes from the fact that the causal powers bestowed by fundamental physical properties have irreducibly geometric manifestation conditions. I defend the resulting form of downward causation as a solution to the problem of special science autonomy, and discuss two potential accounts of its source, in terms of the debate between kinematic and dynamic theories of the origins of spacetime symmetries. (shrink)

The discussion and debates around Ethical AI cannot simply ignore the fact that ethics is not a self-standing discipline by is part of Philosophy and can only be approached as such.

Two hundred and sixty-three subjects each gave examples for one of five geographic categories: geographic features, geographic objects, geographic concepts, something geographic, and something that could be portrayed on a map. The frequencies of various responses were significantly different, indicating that the basic ontological terms feature, object, etc., are not interchangeable but carry different meanings when combined with adjectives indicating geographic or mappable. For all of the test phrases involving geographic, responses were predominantly natural features such as mountain, river, lake, (...) ocean, hill. Artificial geographic features such as town and city were listed hardly at all for geographic categories, an outcome that contrasts sharply with the disciplinary self-understanding of academic geography. However, geographic artifacts and fiat objects, such as roads, cities, boundaries, countries, and states, were frequently listed by the subjects responding to the phrase something that could be portrayed on a map. In this paper, we present the results of these experiments in visual form, and provide interpretations and implications for further research. (shrink)

Some philosophical considerations over Yann LeCun’s position paper “A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligence”.

What is the epistemological status of Big Data? Is there really place for them in a scientific search for new empirical laws?

This paper aims to provide hyperintensional foundations for mathematical platonism. I examine Hale and Wright's (2009) objections to the merits and need, in the defense of mathematical platonism and its epistemology, of the thesis of Necessitism. In response to Hale and Wright's objections to the role of epistemic and metaphysical modalities in providing justification for both the truth of abstraction principles and the success of mathematical predicate reference, I examine the Necessitist commitments of the abundant conception of properties endorsed by (...) Hale and Wright and examined in Hale (2013), and demonstrate how a two-dimensional approach to the epistemology of mathematics is consistent with Hale and Wright's notion of there being non-evidential epistemic entitlement rationally to trust that abstraction principles are true. A choice point that I flag is that between availing of intensional or hyperintensional semantics. The hyperintensional semantic approach that I advance is a topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make abstraction principles recursively enumerable. Epistemic and metaphysical states and possibilities may thus be shown to play a constitutive role in vindicating the reality of mathematical objects and truth, and in providing a conceivability-based route to the truth of abstraction principles as well as other axioms and propositions in mathematics. (shrink)