Summary Analogue models are actual physical setups used to model something else. They are especially useful when what we wish to investigate is difficult to observe or experiment upon due to size or distance in space or time: for example, if the thing we wish to investigate is too large, too far away, takes place on a time scale that is too long, does not yet exist or has ceased to exist. The range and variety of analogue models is too (...) extensive to attempt a survey. In this article, I describe and discuss several different analogue model experiments, the results of those model experiments, and the basis for constructing them and interpreting their results. Examples of analogue models for surface waves in lakes, for earthquakes and volcanoes in geophysics, and for black holes in general relativity, are described, with a focus on examining the bases for claims that these analogues are appropriate analogues of what they are used to investigate. A table showing three different kinds of bases for reasoning using analogue models is provided. Finally, it is shown how the examples in this article counter three common misconceptions about the use of analogue models in physics. (shrink)

The concept of similar systems arose in physics, and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth century concept into which it developed. The concept was used in the nineteenth century in various fields of engineering, theoretical physics and theoretical and experimental hydrodynamics. In 1914, it was articulated in terms of ideas developed in the eighteenth century and used in nineteenth century mathematics and (...) mechanics: equations, functions and dimensional analysis. The terminology physically similar systems was proposed for this new characterization of similar systems by the physicist Edgar Buckingham. Related work by Vaschy, Bertrand, and Riabouchinsky had appeared by then. The concept is very powerful in studying physical phenomena both theoretically and experimentally. As it is not currently part of the core curricula of STEM disciplines or philosophy of science, it is not as well known as it ought to be. (shrink)

On a literal reading of `Computing Machinery and Intelligence'', Alan Turing presented not one, but two, practical tests to replace the question `Can machines think?'' He presented them as equivalent. I show here that the first test described in that much-discussed paper is in fact not equivalent to the second one, which has since become known as `the Turing Test''. The two tests can yield different results; it is the first, neglected test that provides the more appropriate indication of intelligence. (...) This is because the features of intelligence upon which it relies are resourcefulness and a critical attitude to one''s habitual responses; thus the test''s applicablity is not restricted to any particular species, nor does it presume any particular capacities. This is more appropriate because the question under consideration is what would count as machine intelligence. The first test realizes a possibility that philosophers have overlooked: a test that uses a human''s linguistic performance in setting an empirical test of intelligence, but does not make behavioral similarity to that performance the criterion of intelligence. Consequently, the first test is immune to many of the philosophical criticisms on the basis of which the (so-called) `Turing Test'' has been dismissed. (shrink)

I address questions about values in model-making in engineering, specifically: Might the role of values be attributable solely to interests involved in specifying and using the model? Selected examples illustrate the surprisingly wide variety of things one must take into account in the model-making itself. The notions of system , and physically similar systems are important and powerful in determining what is relevant to an engineering model. Another example illustrates how an idea to completely re-characterize, or reframe, an engineering problem (...) arose during model-making.I employ a qualitative analogue of the notion of physically similar systems. Historical cases can thus be drawn upon; I illustrate with a comparison between a geoengineering proposal to inject, or spray, sulfate aerosols, and two different historical cases involving the spraying of DDT . The current geoengineering proposal is seen to be like the disastrous and counterproductive case, and unlike the successful case, of the spraying of DDT. I conclude by explaining my view that model-making in science is analogous to moral perception in action, drawing on a view in moral theory that has come to be called moral particularism. (shrink)

This is the text of Dr. Sterrett's replies to an interviewer's questions for simplycharly.com, a website with interviews by academics on various authors, philosophers, and scientists.

Philosophical discussion of Alan Turing’s writings on intelligence has mostly revolved around a single point made in a paper published in the journal Mind in 1950. This is unfortunate, for Turing’s reflections on machine (artificial) intelligence, human intelligence, and the relation between them were more extensive and sophisticated. They are seen to be extremely well-considered and sound in retrospect. Recently, IBM developed a question-answering computer (Watson) that could compete against humans on the game show Jeopardy! There are hopes it can (...) be adapted to other contexts besides that game show, in the role of a collaborator of, rather than a competitor to, humans. Another, different, research project—an artificial intelligence program put into operation in 2010—is the machine learning program NELL (Never Ending Language Learning), which continuously ‘learns’ by ‘reading’ massive amounts of material on millions of web pages. Both of these recent endeavors in artificial intelligence rely to some extent on the integration of human guidance and feedback at various points in the machine’s learning process. In this paper, I examine Turing’s remarks on the development of intelligence used in various kinds of search, in light of the experience gained to date on these projects. (shrink)

Abstract Philosophical discussion of Alan Turing’s writings on intelligence has mostly revolved around a single point made in a paper published in the journal Mind in 1950. This is unfortunate, for Turing’s reflections on machine (artificial) intelligence, human intelligence, and the relation between them were more extensive and sophisticated. They are seen to be extremely well-considered and sound in retrospect. Recently, IBM developed a question-answering computer (Watson) that could compete against humans on the game show Jeopardy! There are hopes it (...) can be adapted to other contexts besides that game show, in the role of a collaborator of, rather than a competitor to, humans. Another, different, research project --- an artificial intelligence program put into operation in 2010 --- is the machine learning program NELL (Never Ending Language Learning), which continuously ‘learns’ by ‘reading’ massive amounts of material on millions of web pages. Both of these recent endeavors in artificial intelligence rely to some extent on the integration of human guidance and feedback at various points in the machine’s learning process. In this paper, I examine Turing’s remarks on the development of intelligence used in various kinds of search, in light of the experience gained to date on these projects. (shrink)

The topic of this Handbook entry is the relationship between similarity and dimensional analysis, and some of the philosophical issues involved in understanding and making use of that relationship. Discusses basics of the relationship between units, dimensions, and quantities. It explains the significance of dimensionless parameters, and explains that similarity of a physical systems is established by showing equality of a certain set of dimensionless parameters that characterizes the system behavior. Similarity is always relative -- to some system behavior. Other (...) topics discussed: generalization of the notion of similarity, the difference between relative similarity and partial similarity; how the notion of similarity in science differs from similarity as it has been discussed in recent philosophy. Philosophers' views discussed: R. Giere, N. Goodman, P. Bridgman, and B. Ellis. (shrink)

The Future of Social Epistemology: A Collective Vision sets an agenda for exploring the future of what we – human beings reimagining our selves and our society – want, need and ought to know. The book examines, concretely, practically and speculatively, key ideas such as the public conduct of philosophy, models for extending and distributing knowledge, the interplay among individuals and groups, risk taking and the welfare state, and envisioning people and societies remade through the breakneck pace of scientific and (...) technological change. An international team of contributors offers a ‘collective vision’, one that speaks to what they see unfolding and how to plan and conduct the dialogue and work leading to a knowable and desirable world. The book describes and advances an intellectual agenda for the future of social epistemology. (shrink)

As the English word “scientism” is currently used, it is a trivial verbal truth that scientism—an inappropriately deferential attitude to science—should be avoided. But it is a substantial question when, and why, deference to the sciences is inappropriate or exaggerated. This paper tries to answer that question by articulating “six signs of scientism”: the honorific use of “science” and its cognates; using scientific trappings purely decoratively; preoccupation with demarcation; preoccupation with “scientific method”; looking to the sciences for answers beyond their (...) scope; denying the legitimacy or worth of non-scientific (e.g., legal or literary) inquiry, or of writing poetry or making art. (shrink)

Though Jana Mohr Lone refers to children’s striving to wonder, to question, to figure out how the world works and where they fit as the “philosophical self,” like its parent discipline, it could be argued that the philosophical self is actually the “parent self,”—the wellspring of all the other aspects of personhood that we traditionally parse out, e.g., the intellectual, moral, social, and emotional selves. If that is the case, then to be blind to “The Philosophical Child,” the latter being (...) the title of Jana Mohr Lone’s book, is, in a sense then, to be blind to the child. Thus, though Mohr Lone says that the subject of her book is to assist parents in supporting the development of children’s philosophical selves, that claim may mask the gift that this lovely book can bring to the parent-child relationship if it is interpreted as helping children to become “smarty pants” in the sense of acquiring esoteric skills to excel in the ivory-tower discipline of academic philosophy. This is not the focus of this book. This is not an invitation to learn about the history of philosophy— about what some wise, usually white, usually men said about the fundamental questions that intrigue all humans. This is not an invitation to memorize and thus to sit in awe of what others think —as is too often the case in university classrooms. This book, rather, is a guide to how to actually philosophize—how to use questions to energetically and courageously make progress toward finding answers that one, through reflection, comes to believe are the best, given the reasons and evidence available. And to the degree that we and our children are successful, we give ourselves and our children the gift of continuously learning to become ever wiser. (shrink)

Though central to metaphysics, and exciting for entertainment, the fact that selves are invisible, has received insufficient attention in the field of P4C, and virtually none in the field of education in general. This may not be surprising as the enthusiasm to enrich “minds” both with essential information as well as with critical, creative, and cooperative inquiry skills, may blind educators to the fact that their initiatives (even those that are dialogical) may not touch how children view themselves, nor how (...) they ought to function in the world as they find it. It will be argued here that, if ethical development, or democratic citizenship, or authenticity, or any other “self-education” initiative is on the educative menu, strategies (detailed here) must be undertaken to ensure that all parties are truly present, in body, mind and self. It will be further argued that since educating selves can be done at the same time as educating minds (e.g., nurturing reasoning skills), and since a Community of Philosophical Inquiry (unlike other educational strategies), in its dialogical structure, has the unique potential to solicit and hence educate selves, and since such “self-education” is an education for “making a life,” rather than the more common educative concern of educating for “making a living,” facilitators who do not activate the unique power of a CPI to enhance personhood are remiss in their responsibility to their charges. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing’s work on incomplete symbols and analysis was instrumental in clarifying, sharpening, and improving the project of logical constructions which was pivotal to early analytic philosophy. She dispelled use-mention confusions by restricting the term ‘incomplete symbol’ to expressions eliminable through analysis, rather than those expressions’ purported referents, and distinguished linguistic analysis from analysis of facts. In this paper I explore Stebbing’s role in analytic philosophy’s development from anti-holism, presupposing that analysis terminates in simples, to the more holist or (...) foundherentist analytic philosophy of the later 20th century. I read Stebbing as a transitional figure who made room for more holist analytic movements, e.g., applications of incomplete symbol theory to Quinean ontological commitment. Stebbing, I argue, is part of a historical narrative which starts with the holism of Bradley, an early influence on her, to which Moore and Russell’s logical analysis was a response. They countered Bradley’s holist reservations about facts with the view that the world is built up out of individually knowable simples. Stebbing, a more subtle and sympathetic reader of the British idealists, defends analysis, but with important refinements and caveats which prepared the way for a return to foundherentism and holism within analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G.E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. (...) Stebbing thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism from ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work. (shrink)

Many academic works as well as many works of art are such that if they had never been produced, no one would be worse off. Yet it is hard to resist the judgment that some such works are good nonetheless. We are rightly grateful that these works were created; we rightly admire them, appreciate them, and take pains to preserve them. And the authors and artists who produced them have reason to be proud. This should lead us to question the (...) view that in order for a thing to be good, in a sense which implies that the thing merits our attention and positive concern, it needs to be good for someone or something whose welfare is enhanced by it. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, many commentators latched on to the accusations Rorty levels at the American Left in Achieving Our Country. Rorty foresaw, they claimed, that the Left's preoccupation with cultural politics and neglect of class politics would lead to the election of a "strongman" who would take advantage of and exploit a rise in populist sentiment. -/- In this paper, I generally agree with these readings of Rorty; he does think that the American Left has made (...) the mistake of putting class on the political backburner. However, I suggest that this position follows from his view that economic security is vital for solidarity. Because economic security is under increasing threat in contemporary America, so too is solidarity. If greater solidarity is a goal of liberal democracy, then class politics, aimed at ending selfishness, ought to be as much a priority for the American Left as is cultural politics, aimed at ending sadism. (shrink)

This book is an invitation to academic administrators, at every level, to engage in reflection on the ethical dimensions of their working lives.

While artificial womb technology is currently being studied for the purpose of improving neonatal care, I contend that this technology ought to be pursued as a means to address the unprecedented rate of unintended pregnancies. But ectogenesis, alongside other emerging reproductive technologies, is problematic insofar as it threatens to disrupt the natural link between procreation and parenthood that is normally thought to generate rights and responsibilities for biological parents. I argue that there remains only one potentially viable account of parenthood: (...) the voluntarist account, which construes parental rights as robust moral obligations that must be voluntarily undertaken. The problem is that this account mistakenly presumes a patriarchal divide between procreation and parenthood. I propose a reframing of procreation and parenthood from a feminist perspective that recognises gestational motherhood as involving robust moral obligations that ought to be voluntarily undertaken. If this were the case, all gestational mothers would be, by definition, willing mothers. To make this happen I argue that ectogenesis technology must be a widely available reproductive option. (shrink)

This paper explores the characteristics of debilitating versus beneficial intersubjective engagements, by discussing the role of sin in the relational constitution of the self in Paul’s letter to the romans. Paul narrates ”sin’ as both a destructive holding environment and an interpersonal agent in a lethal embrace with human beings. The system of self-in-relation-to-sin is transactional, competitive, unidirectional, and domineering, operating implicitly within an economy of lack. Conversely, Paul’s account in romans of the divine action that moves persons into a (...) new identity of self-in-relationship demonstrates genuinely second-personal qualities: it is loving, non-transactional, non- competitive, mutual, and constitutive of personal agency. (shrink)

Let us suppose that we accept that humans can be correctly characterized as agents. Let us further presume that this capacity contrasts with most non-human animals. Thus, since agency is what uniquely constitutes what it is to be human, it must be of supreme importance. If these claims have any merit, it would seem to follow that, if agency can be nurtured through education, then it is an overarching moral imperative that educational initiatives be undertaken to do that. In this (...) paper, it will be argued that agency can indeed be enhanced, and that the worldwide educational initiative called Philosophy for Children, and others like it, are in a unique position to do just that, and, therefore, that P4C deserves our praise and support; while denigrations of such efforts for not being “real philosophy” ought to be thoroughly renounced. (shrink)

There are kinds of dialogue that support social justice and others that do the reverse. The kinds of dialogue that support social justice require that anger be bracketed and that hiding in safe spaces be eschewed. All illegitimate ad hominem/ad feminem attacks are ruled out from the get-go. No dialogical contribution can be down-graded on account of the communicator’s gender, race, or religion. As well, this communicative approach unapologetically privileges reason in full view of theories and strategies that might seek (...) to undermine reasoning as just another illegitimate form of power. On the more positive side, it is argued in this paper that social justice dialogue will be enhanced by a kind of “communicative upgrading,” which amplifies “person perception,” foregrounds the impersonal forces within our common social spaces rather than the “baddies” within, and orients the dialogical trajectory toward the future rather than the past. Finally, it is argued in this paper that educators have a pressing responsibility to guide their students through social justice dialogue so that their speech contributes to the amelioration of injustice, rather than rendering the terrain more treacherous. (shrink)

Misrepresentations can be innocuous or even useful, but Kant’s corollary to the formula of universal law appears to involve a pernicious one: “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature”. Humans obviously cannot make their maxims into laws of nature, and it seems preposterous to claim that we are morally required to pretend that we can. Given that Kant was careful to eradicate pernicious misrepresentations from theoretical metaphysics, the imperative (...) to act as if I have this supernatural power has typically been treated as an embarrassment meriting apology. The wording of the corollary may be vindicated, however, by recognizing that “as if” (als ob) is a technical term both in the Critique of Pure Reason and here. It signals a modal shift from the assertoric to the problematic mode of cognition, one that is necessitated by the attempt to incorporate the natural effects of a free will into a universal moral imperative that is philosophically practical. In this paper I sketch how the modal shift makes sense of the corollary as a subjectively necessary, philosophically practical idealization of the extension of human freedom into nature, one that accurately represents a necessary parameter of moral conduct: moral ambition. (shrink)

In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's ...

During the past decades, our image ofHomo neanderthalensishas changed dramatically. Initially, Neanderthals were seen as primitive brutes. Increasingly, however, Neanderthals are regarded as basically human. New discoveries and technologies have led to an avalanche of data, and as a result of that it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint what the difference between modern humans and Neanderthals really is. And yet, the persistent quest for a minimal difference which separates them from us is still noticeable in Neanderthal research. Neanderthal discourse is (...) a vantage point from which the logic of ‘us’ versus ‘other’ is critically reconsidered. Studying contemporary academic literature and science autobiographies from an oblique perspective, focusing not on Neanderthals as objects, but on the dynamics of interaction between Neanderthal researchers and their finds, basic convictions at work in this type of research are retrieved. What is at issue is not the actual distinction between modern humans and Neanderthals, but rather the dualistic construction of human and nonhuman. Neanderthal understanding is affected by the desire to safeguard human uniqueness. The overall trend is to identify the human mark or spark, which defines us as favoured ‘winners’. The paradoxes emerging in contemporary Neanderthal discourse are symptomatic of the fact that a dualistic style of thinking is no longer tenable. (shrink)

There is a long standing controversy in education as to whether education ought to be teacher- or student- centered. Interestingly, this controversy parallels the parent- vs. child-centered theoretical swings with regard to good parenting. One obvious difference between the two poles is the mode of communication. “Authoritarian” teaching and parenting strategies focus on the need of those who have much to learn to “do as they are told,” i.e. the authority talks, the child listens. “Non-authoritarian” strategies are anchored in the (...) assumption that youngsters ought to be encouraged to develop their natural interests and talents and hence that it is important to allow the children to do the talking and that adults listen. Both strategies seemed flawed due to the absence of the inherent wisdom of its opposing view. This chasm can be overcome. The Community of Inquiry, a pedagogical method used in Philosophy for Children, demands a method of communication which is able to bridge this gap. A Community of Inquiry is neither teacher-centered and controlled nor student-centered and controlled, but centered on and controlled by the demands of truth. Truth is absolutely essential to this method; it is only because of progress toward truth that participants are ultimately convinced of the fruitfulness of the process. Truth, however, is a hard taskmaster; it places severe restrictions on participants and puts exacting demands on the facilitator. These inherent restrictions and demands are too often underplayed, overlooked and sometimes seemingly overtly denied by those who, quite correctly emphasize that ultimately this method depends on maintenance and enhancement of student autonomy. This underrating of the role of the facilitator has led to a severe undervaluing of this otherwise brilliant pedagogical method, but worse, it has left novice teacher/facilitators ill prepared to utilize this method successfully. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the methodology Kant employs in the first two sections of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Groundwork I-II) with particular attention to how the execution of the method of analysis in these sections contributes to the establishment of moral metaphysics as a science. My thesis is that Kant had a detailed strategy for the Groundwork, that this strategy and Kant’s reasons for adopting it can be ascertained from the Critique of Pure Reason (first Critique) and his (...) lectures on logic, and that understanding this strategy gains us interpretive insight into Kant’s moral metaphysics. At the most general level of methodology, Kant says there are four steps for the establishment of any science: 1) make distinct the idea of the natural unity of its material 2) determine the special content of the science 3) articulate the systematic unity of the science 4) critique the science to determine its boundaries The first two of these steps are accomplished by the genetically scholastic method of analysis, paradigmatically the method whereby confused and obscure ideas are made clear and distinct, thereby logically perfecting them and transforming them into possible grounds of cognitive insight that are potentially complete and adequate to philosophical purposes. The analysis of Groundwork I is a paradigmatic analysis that makes distinct what is contained in common understanding, i.e. its Inhalt or intension, making distinct the higher partial concepts that together define the concept of morality. The analysis of Groundwork II is an employment more specifically of the method of logical division, which makes distinct what is contained under the concept, i.e. its Umfang, by which the extension or object of morality is determined. Part I introduces Kant’s conception of moral metaphysical science and why he took it to be in need of establishment, explains the general method for establishing science and the scholastic method of analysis by which its first two steps are to be accomplished, then provides an interpretation of Groundwork I as an execution of this method. Part II details Kant’s determination of the special content of moral science in Groundwork II in relation to the central problem for moral metaphysics – how synthetic a priori practical cognition is possible. (shrink)

The tragedy of the commons is a primary contributing factor in ensuring that humanity makes no serious inroads in averting climate change. As a recent Canadian politician pointed out, we could shut down the Canadian economy tomorrow, and it would make no measurable difference in global greenhouse gas emissions. When coordinated effort is required, it would seem that doing the “right thing” alone is irrational: it will harm oneself with no positive consequences as a result. Such is the tragedy. And (...) that is the challenge that we take up here. Though Garrett Hardin suggests that the solution is a governmental process that rules over all contenders, since a world government seems unlikely before the planet hits the tippy point, we suggest an educational initiative instead: one that holds a mirror up to the behaviour of individuals, rather than to the behaviour of individuals in groups. Such an educational initiative would be focused on priming individuals to keep constant track of what they do as individuals as opposed to focusing on the behaviour of humanity in general. Such an educational initiative would focus on tackling the “problem solvers” rather than just “the problem”. (shrink)

That the world is awash with resentment poses a genuine question for educators. Here, we will suggest that resentment can be better harnessed for good if we stop focusing on people and tribes and, instead, focus on systems: those invisible norms that often produce locked-in structures of social interaction. A “systems lens” is vast, so fixes will have to be an iterative process of reflection, and revision toward a more just system. Nonetheless, resentment toward the status quo may be an (...) important element in keeping that otherwise tedious process going, with the caveat that resentment is only productive when it is combined with reason, and that, therefore, educators, rather than privileging participant reactive attitudes, ought, instead, to promote participant reactive reasoning, as the latter can be a genuine force for both personal and interpersonal growth, while the former might very well do the reverse. (shrink)

There are kinds of dialogue that support social justice and others that do the reverse. The kinds of dialogue that supports social justice requires that anger be bracketed and that hiding in safe spaces be eschewed. All illegitimate ad hominem/ad feminem attacks are ruled out from the get-go. No dialogical contribution can be down-graded on account of the communicator’s gender, race, or religion. As well, this social justice communicative approach unapologetically privileges reason in full view of theories and strategies that (...) might seek to undermine reasoning as just another illegitimate form of power. -/- On the more positive side, we will argue that social justice dialogue will enhanced by a kind of “communicative upgrading” that amplifies “person perception,” foregrounds the impersonal forces within our common social spaces rather than the “baddies” within, and orients the dialogical trajectory toward the future rather than the past. Finally, we will argue that educators have a pressing responsibility to guide their students through social justice dialogue so that their contributions contribute to the amelioration of injustice, rather than rendering the terrain more treacherous. (shrink)

Marshalling a mind-numbing array of data, Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone, shows that on virtually every conceivable measure, civic participation, or what he refers to as “social capital,” is plummeting to levels not seen for almost 100 years. And we should care, Putnam argues, because connectivity is directly related to both individual and social wellbeing on a wide variety of measures. On the other hand, social capital of the “bonding kind” brings with it the (...) ugly side effect of animosity toward outsiders. Given the increasing heterogeneity of our world, the goal therefore must be to enhance connectivity of the “bridging sort,” i.e., connecting across differences. This, in turn, requires that we first clarify what bridging communicative styles looks like. Examining communication as it might transpire in Kant’s kingdom of ends, through the perspective of Habermas’ “communicative action,” and within the scientific community, offers a compelling suggestion that there is a way of communicating such that, if adopted, one would come to view others as if they were persons, i.e., that a bridging communicative style facilitates a kind of bonding that sees through differences toward the commonality of personhood. This paper will briefly explore how communicating toward personhood might be promoted. (shrink)

Philosophy has a dirty little secret and it is this: a whole lot of philosophers have swallowed the mechanistic billiard ball deterministic view of human action—presumably because philosophy assumes that science demands it, and/or because modern attempts to articulate in what free will consists seem incoherent. This below-the-surface-purely-academic commitment to mechanistic determinism is a dirty little secret because an honest public commitment would render virtually all that is taught in philosophy departments incomprehensible. Can “lovers of wisdom” really continue to tolerate (...) such a heavy burden of hypocrisy? For it is maximally hypocritical, is it not, to teach ethics, or existentialism, or political philosophy, or critical thinking, or indeed to teach anything at all if one views the bodies of humans as entities determined by forces that are describable entirely under the auspices of physical/chemical laws. The only option, it would seem, to avoid such hypocrisy is to go out of business. After all, either base metal can be turned into gold, or it cannot. We found out long ago that it cannot, and so alchemy was rightly banished into the dustbin of history. Likewise, either philosophy can enhance the wisdom quotient of its disciples as its name implies, and thus override billiard ball mechanics, or it cannot. And if it cannot, it deserves to follow alchemy to an ignominious end. (shrink)

Dedication: I would like to dedicate this essay to Mort Morehouse, whose intelligence, warmth, and good humour sustains NAACI to this day. I would like, too, to dedicate this essay to Nadia Kennedy who, in her paper “Respecting the Complexity of CI,” suggests that respect for the rich non-reductive emergent memories and understandings that evolve out of participating in the sort of complex communicative interactions that we experienced at the 2012 NAACI conference requires “a turning around and looking back so (...) that we might understand it better.” Thus, though “we cannot grasp the essence of the system in some determinate way, since each description provides a limited view, and portrays some aspect of the system from a specific position inside or outside it, and at a specific point in time,” nonetheless respect requires that we try “to take different ‘snapshots’ of such systems and attempt to make sense of them.” It is as a result of this urging that the following snapshot was attempted. My thanks to Nadia for being such an inspiration, and to all the participants for making this conference such a memorable occasion. (shrink)

There is a clear distinction between genuine and fraudulent reasoning. Being seduced by the latter can result in horrific consequences. This paper explores how we can arm ourselves, and others with the ability to recognize the difference between genuine and pseudo-reasoning, with the motivation to maintain an unbending commitment to follow the “impersonal” “norm-driven” rules of reason even in situations in which “non-reasonable” strategies appear to support short-term bests interests, and with the confidence that genuine reasoning is the best defense (...) against the pseudo-reasoning. It also provides a simple table of “markers” whereby genuine reasoning can be distinguished from the “fake stuff.”. (shrink)

If you cannot, then you ought not. Taking its own precepts seriously, philosophy, in the face of scientific deterministic success, has abandoned its original calling of inspiring munificence and, in doing so, has undercut much of its own relevance. But this need not be the case. If we adopt a more finely grained set of theoretical glasses, we will see that human freedom is simply the icing on a deterministic layer cake that launches entities, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, from the (...) object base, through consciousness, and then through self-consciousness, and finally to the possibility of reasonably based self-legislation. Greasing the wheels of the last step is Philosophy’s calling and responsibility. We can—and we ought because we can—fall inline with the Socratic echo, and agitate for munificence. (shrink)

In the face of disobedience, and in the name of the short-term goal of a smooth-functioning and/or happy household, parents often feel caught between two diametrically opposed parenting strategies; make it happen or let it go. However, either strategy of dictator or friend can seriously jeopardize a child’s long-term best interests. If children, adolescents, young adults, full adults or oldsters are even to hear, let alone reasonably answer, the prudential and ethical “whys” that their intended actions scream, they will need (...) to attend to health of their unique human capacity to reason. They will need to understand deeply that reason is not a capacity to be used solely in academic endeavors and/or for making a living, but rather that reason’s prime function is to assist in making the best of all possible lives. If parents want their children to understand this, then they need to walk the talk and invite reason into their homes. The result will be that authoritarian parents will need to let go, while “parents as friends” will need to belly up to the bar, in order to entrench the first rule of a reasonable household and that is that the best reason always wins. (shrink)

The AGI alignment problem has a bimodal distribution of outcomes with most outcomes clustering around the poles of total success and existential, catastrophic failure. Consequently, attempts to solve AGI alignment should, all else equal, prefer false negatives (ignoring research programs that would have been successful) to false positives (pursuing research programs that will unexpectedly fail). Thus, we propose adopting a policy of responding to points of philosophical and practical uncertainty associated with the alignment problem by limiting and choosing necessary assumptions (...) to reduce the risk of false positives. Herein we explore in detail two relevant points of uncertainty that AGI alignment research hinges on---meta-ethical uncertainty and uncertainty about mental phenomena---and show how to reduce false positives in response to them. (shrink)

So-called “ugly laws” were mostly municipal statutes in the United States that outlawed the appearance in public of people who were, in the words of one of these laws, “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” (Chicago City Code 1881). Although the moniker “ugly laws” was coined to refer collectively to such ordinances only in 1975 (Burgdorf and Burgdorf 1975), it has become the primary way to refer to such laws, (...) which targeted the overlapping categories of the poor, the homeless, vagrants, and those with visible disabilities. Enacted and actively enforced between the American Civil War (1867) and World War I (1918), such laws and their enforcement can tell us much about the very sorts of people who were also, a generation later, subject to explicitly eugenic laws, such as sterilization legislation. And like eugenic laws and policies, such laws continue to affect the lives of people with disabilities to this day (Schweik 2011). (shrink)

In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes what (...) makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

If successful scientific inquiry is to be possible, there must be a world that is independent of how we believe it to be, and in which there are kinds and laws; and we must have the sensory apparatus to perceive particular things and events, and the capacity to represent them, to form generalized explanatory conjectures, and check how these conjectures stand up to further experience. Whether these preconditions are met is not a question the sciences can answer; it is specifically (...) philosophical. This is why the myriad forms of scientistic philosophy in vogue today (neurophilosophy, experimental philosophy, naturalized metaphysics, evangelical-atheist reductionism, etc), are all hollow at the core. Does this mean we must return to the old, a priori analytic model? No! What is needed instead is scientific philosophy in the sense Peirce articulated more than a century ago: philosophy motivated by a genuine desire to discover the truth, and relying not solely on reason but also on experience—only not the special, recherché experience required by the sciences, but close attention to aspects of everyday experience so familiar we hardly notice them. (shrink)

Susan Neiman pointed out to this reviewer the danger that Carl Jung studies pose to contemporary scholars. It is keeping in mind Neiman's cautionary advice that this review establishes Jung's contributions to Romanticism. "[Craig] Stephenson’s analysis of Aurélia has now superseded Arthur Lovejoy’s (1873–1962) and Mario Praz’s (1896–1982) contributions to the definitions of Romanticism.".

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

The Language of Thought program has a suicidal edge. Jerry Fodor, of all people, has argued that although LOT will likely succeed in explaining modular processes, it will fail to explain the central system, a subsystem in the brain in which information from the different sense modalities is integrated, conscious deliberation occurs, and behavior is planned. A fundamental characteristic of the central system is that it is “informationally unencapsulated” -- its operations can draw from information from any cognitive domain. The (...) domain general nature of the central system is key to human reasoning; our ability to connect apparently unrelated concepts enables the creativity and flexibility of human thought, as does our ability to integrate material across sensory divides. The central system is the holy grail of cognitive science: understanding higher cognitive function is crucial to grasping how humans reach their highest intellectual achievements. But according to Fodor, the founding father of the LOT program and the related Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), the holy grail is out of reach: the central system is likely to be non-computational (Fodor 1983, 2000, 2008). Cognitive scientists working on higher cognitive function should abandon their efforts. Research should be limited to the modules, which for Fodor rest at the sensory periphery (2000).1 Cognitive scientists who work in the symbol processing tradition outside of philosophy would reject this pessimism, but ironically, within philosophy itself, this pessimistic streak has been very influential, most likely because it comes from the most well-known proponent of LOT and CTM. Indeed, pessimism about centrality has become assimilated into the mainstream conception of LOT. (Herein, I refer to a LOT that appeals to pessimism about centrality as the “standard LOT”). I imagine this makes the standard LOT unattractive to those philosophers with a more optimistic approach to what cognitive science can achieve.. (shrink)