Perhaps the most dominant anti‐sceptical proposal in recent literature –advanced by such figures as Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose and David Lewis –is the contextualist response to radical scepticism. Central to the contextualist thesis is the claim that, unlike other non‐contextualist anti‐sceptical theories, contextualism offers a dissolution of the sceptical paradox that respects our common sense epistemological intuitions. Taking DeRose's view as representative of the contextualist position, it is argued that instead of offering us an intuitive response to scepticism, contextualism is (...) actually committed to a revisionist stance as regards our everyday usage of epistemic terms. In particular, it is argued that the thesis fails to present a satisfactory explication of a notion –that of‘epistemic descent’– that is pivotal to the anti‐sceptical import of the account. On the positive side, however, it is claimed that although the contextualist response to scepticism is ultimately unsatisfying, DeRose's theory does contain within it the framework for a completely different ‐ and far more persuasive ‐ account of the‘phenomenology’of scepticism which runs along non‐contextualist lines. (shrink)

Intelligent machines are no longer distant fantasies of the future or solely used for industrial purposes; they are real “living” things that operate similarly to humans with verbal and nonverbal communication capabilities. Humans see in such technology the horrifying dangers and the bliss enabled by the saving power. Entrenched in the emotions of hope and fear concerning intelligent machines, humans’ attitudes toward intelligent machines are not free of expectations, judgments, strategies, and selfish agendas. As the discovery of the New Worlds (...) has led to the development of an understanding of self as distinct from the other, narratives on intelligent robots have taken on similar forms of colonial discourse: contradictory manifestations of ethnocentrism (anthropocentrism) and exoticism. Similar to colonial encounters, the racialized Mechanical _Other_ operates like any other marginalized group. Colonial discourse often regards the mechanical _Other_ as both inferior yet exotic, which usually produces a mixed sense of blessing and curse, ambivalence composed of both desire and aversion. In these representations of machinic _otherness,_ one should not miss the fundamental injustice of creating the “Machinic Other” and imposing humans’ viewpoints. The field must expand the purview of intelligent machines to consider the larger historical and cultural forces shaping our understanding of who we are as reflected in the mirror of intelligent machines. (shrink)