Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

Uno de los principios éticos mencionados más frecuentemente en los lineamientos para el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial (IA) es la transparencia algorítmica. Sin embargo, no existe una definición estándar de qué es un algoritmo transparente ni tampoco es evidente por qué la opacidad algorítmica representa un reto para el desarrollo ético de la IA. También se afirma a menudo que la transparencia algorítmica fomenta la confianza en la IA, pero esta aseveración es más una suposición a priori que una (...) tesis basada en evidencia empírica. Tampoco se discute mucho hasta qué punto es técnicamente posible volver transparente la caja negra de la IA a través de los métodos de explicabilidad. En este capítulo haré un análisis de la interrelación entre los conceptos de transparencia, explicabilidad y confianza. Inicialmente, analizaré los diferentes tipos de opacidad algorítmica para entender mejor cuál es el problema al que nos enfrentamos. En las secciones subsiguientes trazaré la relación entre explicabilidad y transparencia, y presentaré los límites de los métodos actuales de explicabilidad. En la sección final, examinaré la evidencia empírica acerca de la relación entre transparencia y confianza en las decisiones automatizadas basadas en sistemas de IA. (shrink)

This explanatory sequential inquiry determined the contribution of graduate education to the development of skills, the satisfaction with the delivery of the graduate school program and services, and the practice of graduate attributes of the graduates of education graduate programs of the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos Graduate School. Likewise, it explored deeper insights on the quantitative data to generate a broader perspective on the graduates’ experiences on the contributions of the graduate school to the development of their skills, satisfaction with (...) the delivery of programs and services, and graduate attribute practice. The participants were the graduates of education graduate programs during 2018-2022 and determined using purposive sampling. In data gathering, survey questionnaire and semi-structured in-depth interview were employed. In analyzing the data, mean and standard deviation were utilized in the quantitative analysis while Lichtman’s (2013) 3C’s were used in the qualitative data. The data revealed a very great extent of the contribution of graduate studies, extremely satisfied with the delivery, and a very great extent of graduate attribute practice. Meanwhile, the qualitative data presented salient findings. The graduate education experiences provide the development of their competencies, knowledge, skills, and attributes, which leads to better opportunities in their profession. Also, their satisfaction develops their attributes of humility, Christian values, integrity, love, and the quest for excellence, thus forming values essential to the practice of profession and life in general. Moreover, this study validated that tracer studies could assist the graduate school in complying with the accreditation and quality assurance measure requirements for a quality management system. Furthermore, the satisfaction of graduates encourages continual improvement towards engaging the alumni in open, mutually beneficial ways and spreading knowledge to uplift others and positively use their influence to impact the community, the country, and the world. (shrink)

El objetivo de este pequeño trabajo es ayudar a comprender la necesidad de la composición real en el ser participado. Lo hacemos sirviéndonos de una parte de la magnífica obra del p. Fabro, La noción metafísica de participación. En la primera parte de nuestro trabajo nos serviremos de algunos de los textos de Santo Tomás que reportaba el p. Fabro, los que más nos ayuden a comprender la demostración. En la segunda, y al mismo efecto, estudiaremos el silogismo del p. (...) Fabro, con el cual dicho autor trataba de condensar la demostración de la composición real en todo ser participado. (shrink)

Given the importance of the principle of causality for the demonstration of God’s existence, this paper attempts to justify the evidence and necessity of the principle of causality, by following Fr. Fabro’s Thomistic defense—based on the notion of participation—but adding a particular emphasis on the notion of “being which is not per se,” this latter as an explanatory notion of the notion of “being which is by participation.” The introductory remarks touch upon two misunderstandings regarding the notion of participation employed (...) as a subject of the principle of causality: the first, considering “participated being” as a synonym of “received being,” and the second, the confusion, regarding the notion of being by participation, between its notional dependence on the notion of being as a whole and its real dependence on the real intensive Being. Then, in the first point, the defense of the principle of causality is distinguished from other related problems, like the particular applications of this principle. In the second and main point, we try to justify the necessity of being caused in the being which is experienced as being by participation, as follows: 1) that which is something by participation is not this something per se; 2) now, that which is not per se, either is not or is per aliud, 3) Therefore, that which is something by participation is per aliud. In the third and last point, we endeavor to justify the Thomism of our defense and of our emphasis on this notion of “being which is not per se” by considering two texts of St. Thomas. (shrink)

These thirteen paragraphs portray epistemology as the study, not directly of knowing as a human action (which could be considered the object also of anthropology) but as the study of the mode of being of the object in the subject and, in this sense, of intentional being. Moreover, intentional being is not understood as the being of the cognitional species or representation, which is real and subjective, but as the being of the known, as the presence of the known to (...) the knower (obviously, through the species but a being not reduced to the subjective being of the species): this kind of being is the proper object of epistemology. Other considerations regarding the distinction between metaphysics and epistemology take place as well. As regards the method, this essay attempts to apply Aquinas’ four steps of scientific reasoning to epistemology, in the following fashion and order: 1- Solution of the problem of the universals by recourse to the theory of the agent intellect (resolutio secundum rem); 2- Definition of knowledge as intentional possession of being (res. sec. rationem); 3- Judgment of value regarding the different instances of human knowledge or critique of knowledge (compositio secundum rem) and 4- Reinterpretation (in the light of the previous path) of common notions of epistemology, such as truth, certainty, evidence, and error (comp. sec. rationem). (shrink)

In a recent paper, Erasmus et al. (2021) defend the idea that the ambiguity of the term “explanation” in explainable AI (XAI) can be solved by adopting any of four different extant accounts of explanation in the philosophy of science: the Deductive Nomological, Inductive Statistical, Causal Mechanical, and New Mechanist models. In this chapter, I show that the authors’ claim that these accounts can be applied to deep neural networks as they would to any natural phenomenon is mistaken. I also (...) provide a more general argument as to why the notion of explainability as it is currently used in the XAI literature bears little resemblance to the traditional concept of scientific explanation. It would be more fruitful to use the label “understandable AI” to avoid the confusion that surrounds the goal and purposes of XAI. In the second half of the chapter, I argue for a pragmatic conception of understanding that is better suited to play the central role attributed to explanation in XAI. Following De Regt (2017) and Kuorikoski and Ylikoski (2015), the conditions of satisfaction for understanding an ML system are fleshed out in terms of an agent’s success in using the system. (shrink)

Cada día es más evidente que existen muchas formas sutiles de exclusión y parcialidad que afectan el correcto funcionamiento de los sistemas jurídicos. El concepto de injusticia epistémica, introducido por la filósofa Miranda Fricker, ofrece una herramienta conceptual útil para comprender estas formas de exclusión y parcialidad judicial que a menudo pasan desapercibidas. En este artículo presentamos la teoría original de Fricker y algunas de las aplicaciones del concepto de injusticia epistémica en los procesos jurídicos. En particular, queremos demostrar que (...) la semilla sembrada por Fricker ha generado un floreciente campo de estudio en el cual el concepto se utiliza para analizar muchos fenómenos diferentes en el ámbito jurídico, no siempre siguiendo la caracterización original proporcionada por ella. Esto ha llevado a una distinción entre lo que llamaremos la versión estrecha del concepto, que se acerca a la descripción original de Fricker, y la versión más amplia de injusticia epistémica, que es una noción más controvertida porque existe el riesgo de que se confunda con otros conceptos más conocidos como el sexismo, la discriminación racial, la opresión, el silenciamiento y el gaslighting. Mostraremos que el valor de la versión estrecha es principalmente teórico y que para utilizar el concepto de injusticia epistémica se debe adoptar una comprensión más liberal del mismo. (shrink)

There is a growing awareness that there are many subtle forms of exclusion and partiality that affect the correct workings of a judicial system. The concept of epistemic injustice, introduced by the philosopher Miranda Fricker, is a useful conceptual tool to understand forms of judicial partiality that often go undetected. In this paper, we present Fricker’s original theory and some of the applications of the concept of epistemic injustice in legal processes. In particular, we want to show that the seed (...) planted by Fricker has flourished into a rich field of study in which the concept is used to analyze many different phenomena in law, not always following the original characterization provided by her. This has led to a distinction between what we will call the narrow version of the concept, which is closer to Fricker’s original account, and the wider version of epistemic injustice, which is a more controversial notion because it is always on the verge of morphing into other well-known concepts like sexism, racial discrimination, oppression, silencing, and gaslighting. We will show that the value of the narrow version is mostly theoretical, and that in order to use the concept of epistemic injustice one must adopt a more liberal understanding of it. (shrink)

Philosophy can be regarded as a type of conceptual research subjected to the usual standards of rationality. However, there seems to be no objective and accepted criteria for evaluating and comparing philosophical theories. From a heuristic- and erotetic-based approach, philosophy is here considered a set of second-order reflections that are presupposed by more specific theories; and evaluated by their informativeness, adequateness, cogency, generality, novelty, and presuppositional nature. As a practice, one can proceed upwards (from problems to presuppositions) or downwards (from (...) presuppositions as meaning conditions for assertions under question). But as a product, a philosophical theory is to be assessed as how it helps foster knowledge and assists in learning, posing, and solving new queries. (shrink)

Los sesgos cognitivos afectan negativamente la toma de decisiones en todas las esferas de la vida, incluyendo las decisiones de los jueces. La imposibilidad de eliminarlos por completo de la práctica del derecho, o incluso de controlar sus efectos, contrasta con el anhelo de que las decisiones judiciales sean el resultado exclusivo de un razonamiento lógico-jurídico correcto. Frente el efecto sistemático, recalcitrante y porfiado de los sesgos cognitivos, una posible estrategia para disminuir su efecto es enfocarse, no en modificar el (...) comportamiento de los agentes judiciales, sino en moldear su entorno para que los sesgos tengan menos oportunidades de aparecer. En particular, es más provechoso concentrar los esfuerzos en identificar aquellas reglas procesales que faciliten o limiten el efecto de los sesgos. En este ensayo propongo un diálogo fructífero entre el derecho y la psicología que puede llevar a mejorar la calidad de los sistemas judiciales. La propuesta está basada en la creación de guías de práctica judicial que puedan servir de base para la creación de protocolos procesales que limiten en la medida de lo razonable sus efectos negativos y conduzcan a mejores decisiones judiciales. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to try to elucidate Wittgenstein’s ex-travagant thesis that each and every mathematical advancement involves some “semantical mutation”, i.e., some alteration of the very meanings of the terms involved. To do that we will argue in favor of the idea of a “modal incompati-bility” between the concepts involved, as they were prior to the advancement, and what they become after the new result was obtained. We will also argue that the adoption of this thesis profoundly (...) alters the traditional way of con-struing the idea of “progress” in mathematics. (shrink)

The following is an interpretation of Aquinas’ agent intellect focusing on Summa Theologiae I, qq. 75-89, and proposing that the agent intellect is a metaphysical rather than a formal a priori of human understanding. A formal a priori is responsible for the intelligibility as content of the object of human understanding and is related to Kant’s epistemological views; whereas a metaphysical a priori is responsible for intelligibility as mode of being of this same object. We can find in Aquinas’ text (...) many indications that the agent intellect is not productive of the universal as content but is, rather, productive of the abstracted or intelligible mode of being of the universal nature. This is because for Aquinas the universal nature, which is the object of human understanding, is present in the things themselves but with a different mode of being. Chapter 1 is intended to establish the fact which requires for Aquinas an agent intellect, and provides two very important principles: one is that the object of human understanding (the universal nature) is present in the things themselves and, the other, that it is not in the things themselves with a mode of being which makes it available to the intellectual eye. These two principles lead us to the main point of Chapter 2, namely the distinction between the intelligible object and its intelligible mode of being. Now, because knowing is receptive of the intelligible object (Chapter 3), which is present in the things themselves (Chapter 1), the agent intellect is productive not of the object’s intelligible content, but of its abstracted or intelligible mode of being (Chapter 4). (shrink)

The use of machine learning algorithms has become ubiquitous in hiring decisions. Recent studies have shown that many of these algorithms generate unlawful discriminatory effects in every step of the process. The training phase of the machine learning models used in these decisions has been identified as the main source of bias. For a long time, discrimination cases have been analyzed under the banner of disparate treatment and disparate impact, but these concepts have been shown to be ineffective in the (...) context of AI. This paper examines the possibility of studying algorithmic discrimination from the perspective of negligence law. Negligent selection and validation of datasets and classifiers is a salient cause of improper training in machine learning. It is a breach of an employer’s duty to protect others, a failure of its exercise of due care in the manner of choosing employees. Adopting negligence to algorithmic discrimination requires a reformulation of what is foreseeable and reasonable within the context of black box algorithms, and a shift in the burden of proof to the employer, who must present evidence of its efforts to avoid bias. (shrink)

Rules 405(a) and 608(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence allow the use of testimony about a witness’s reputation to support or undermine his or her credibility in trial. This paper analyzes the evidential weight of such testimony from the point of view of social epistemology and the theory of social networks. Together they provide the necessary elements to analyze how reputation is understood in this case, and to assess the epistemic foundation of a reputational attribution. The result of the (...) analysis will be that reputational testimony is extremely weak from an epistemological point of view, and that in many cases there are more reliable substitutes that achieve a similar purpose. The obvious fix, in my view, is to eliminate the use of reputation testimony to support or undermine the credibility, honesty, chastity or peacefulness of a witness. (shrink)

In the discourse on International Justice, traditional frameworks are deeply rooted in 'embodied metaphysics'—a perspective embedded in the tangible experiences of human existence. By contrasting the physical with the digital realms, I suggest that our current global justice systems are ill-equipped to address the complexities of the digital age. Utilizing the metaphor of water to highlight the often-unseen environment shaping justice theories and practices, I argue that International Justice, as conventionally understood, reflects the constraints akin to fish oblivious to the (...) water surrounding them. In digital spaces, individuals are no longer bound by principles of singularity and locality, and instead operate by principles of multiplicity and nonlocality. These metaphysical differences disrupt many theories of global justice assuming singularity and nonlocality. My aim is to encourage scholars and practitioners to 'see water'—to acknowledge and critically reassess the foundational assumptions underlying their theories and practices in an era of digital transformation. (shrink)

In a world of more than 7 billion people, 80% live on less than $10 per day. Five (5) percent of global income is generated by the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population; while the wealthiest 20% of the population generates 75 percent of world income. Economics attempts to define or describe behavior and it ventures into the realm of predicting. Economics should therefore accept responsibility for controlling/directing realities. If we can understand, define and predict behavior, we should accept (...) the responsibility for changing behavior, and as economists, bring that to bear on material upliftment of the greater majority of the earth’s populace. . Since 1847, numerous role-players have debated and worked tirelessly to promote the welfare of those who are marginalised from mainstream society. To what avail? Exactly one hundred and fifty eight years later, one of the iconic statesmen of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela, stated: “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our time – times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accommodation – that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils” (as quoted in Green 2009:2).Clearly, significant progress in addressing the issue has not been made. A concerted drive by the United Nations led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000, and was endorsed by 189 world leaders. Some progress has been made during the past decade, but it is apparent that many countries are not going to be able to reach their goals. Hence, in order to address poverty at its root, attention is increasingly focused on the contribution of the informal sector and small, medium and micro enterprises. This paper explores such and offers alternatives to combat the spectres of structural unemployment and poverty. (shrink)

Trata-se de capítulo de um livro sobre a noção de "substância" na história da filosofia e contém uma discussão sobre a noção ordinária de "corpo" do ponto de vista da filosofia analítica.

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

In this research I present a study on the origin of alienism in the 19th century in the work of Phillipe Pinel in context. The purpose of the paper is to show how the French physician proposes alienism inspired by the anthropological ideas of his time. After the introduction, a brief historical overview of the anthropology of modernity is given to place Pinel's work in context. This is followed by a survey of Pinel's anthropological ideas, which are in a sense (...) coincident with his period. Finally, it is presented how Pinel proposes his famous alienism, situated between the understanding and the affected life, as well as the way of curing his patients as a consequence of his anthropological approach. (shrink)

(Tesis de Licencia en Filosofía. Moderador Alessandro Salucci, OP. Angelicum, Roma, Febrero 2006) -/- El problema causal está íntimamente ligado y nos lleva necesariamente al problema del ser, finito e infinito. Por tanto, no es un problema más en la filosofía. En la larga discusión que se planteó en el último período escolástico (fines del s. XIX y primera mitad del s. XX) las líneas de solución más originales las ha dado el p. Cornelio Fabro -/- Por lo tanto, nos (...) proponemos investigar su propuesta de solución. El p. Fabro defendía la necesidad de la dependencia causal a través de la noción de participación. Nuestro objetivo es por tanto hacer un análisis crítico de la postura del p. Fabro acerca de la dependencia causal como exigencia del ser participado, a través del estudio de algunas de sus obras más importantes al respecto. Buscamos respondernos por qué para el p. Fabro el ser participado exige una causa, y valorar sus argumentos. -/- Como hemos dicho, para nuestro trabajo nos valdremos ante todo del estudio de algunas de las obras más importantes del p. Cornelio Fabro con respecto a la causalidad. Nos referimos en concreto a tres de ellas: la primera, el artículo La difesa critica del principio di causa, donde el autor expone de un modo preciso la noción de participación como el fundamento de la justificación crítica del principio de causalidad. Las otras dos obras son La Nozione Metafisica di Partecipazione secondo San Tommaso d’Aquino, donde la noción de participación es puesta al centro de la metafísica tomista, como clave de bóveda de las tesis más características de la doctrina del Angélico; y Partecipazione e Causalità, obra en la cual el autor rescata el esse tomista original como fundamento de una metafísica de la causalidad. -/- Este estudio nos ha llevado a destacar la importancia de la noción de “ser que no es por sí” como noción esencialmente relacionada a la noción de participación y por otro lado cuasi necesaria para hacer el pasaje a la causa. (shrink)

Did we get Aquinas’ Epistemology right? St. Thomas is often interpreted according to Kantian principles, particularly in Transcendental Thomism. When this happens, it can appear as though Aquinas, too—along with Kant—had made the “turn to the subject”; as if Aquinas were no longer the Aristotelian “believer” who thinks nature is what it is but, instead, the Kantian “thinker” who holds that nature is what we think of it; as if St. Thomas, like Kant, had concluded that nature is intelligible not (...) only when we think of it, but because we think of it. After much struggle with this problem, the challenge seemed obvious to me: to show the radical difference between Aquinas and Kant. Kant had reasons to make his turn, his Copernican revolution. Could I explain those reasons, could I pinpoint the problem leading Kant to think in those terms? Could I show Aquinas facing the same problem and clearly taking a different direction in his proposed solution? That is what I have tried to do in this book. This book provides an interpretation of Aquinas’ agent intellect focusing on Summa Theologiae I, qq. 75-89, and proposing that the agent intellect is a metaphysical rather than a formal a priori of human understanding. A formal a priori is responsible for the intelligibility as content of the object of human understanding and is related to Kant’s epistemological views, whereas a metaphysical a priori is responsible for intelligibility as mode of being of this same object. We can find in Aquinas’ text many indications that the agent intellect is not productive of the intelligible object but is, rather, productive of the abstracted or intelligible mode of being of this object. This is because for Aquinas the universal as nature, which is the object of human understanding, is present in the things themselves but with a different mode of being. In this four-chapter book, Chapter 1 is intended to establish the fact which requires for Aquinas an agent intellect, and provides two very important principles: one is that the object of human understanding (the universal as nature) is present in the things themselves and, the other, that it is not in the things themselves with a mode of being which makes it available to the intellectual eye. These two principles lead us to the main point of Chapter 2, namely the distinction between the intelligible object and its intelligible mode of being. Now, because knowing is receptive of the intelligible object (Chapter 3), which is present in the things themselves (Chapter 1), the agent intellect is productive not of the object’s intelligible content, but of its abstracted or intelligible mode of being (Chapter 4). (shrink)

El uso de sistemas de machine learning en los procesos de selección laboral ha sido de gran utilidad para agilizarlos y volverlos más eficientes, pero al mismo tiempo ha generado problemas en términos de equidad, confiabilidad y transparencia. En este artículo comenzamos explicando los diferentes usos de la Inteligencia Artificial en los procesos de selección laboral en Estados Unidos. Presentamos los sesgos sexuales y raciales que han sido detectados en algunos de ellos y explicamos los obstáculos jurídicos y prácticos para (...) su detección y análisis. Un posible remedio jurídico a la discriminación algorítmica es el régimen de impacto diferencial sistémico utilizado en Estados Unidos. Usamos algunas características de este régimen para señalar los vacíos jurídicos frente a la discriminación en el acceso al empleo en el ámbito del derecho laboral colombiano, y ofrecemos algunas características generales que podría tener un régimen de esa naturaleza. (shrink)

El artículo expone el papel del otro y de lo otro en la hermenéutica de Gadamer a la luz de la idea de diálogo. Para comprender se requiere reconocer lo otro en su carácter de tú, asumir que no se tiene distancia frente a él y estar abierto a acoger lo dicho por él como una posible verdad. La compresión posee una estructura dialéctica que implica la cancelación de las propias expectativas y el acceso a un saber más abarcante. Aunque (...) la comprensión es histórica, en ella se muestra cada vez un aspecto de la cosa misma, que resulta de la interacción del yo y el tú en el curso de la conversación hermenéutica y que constituye una verdad común con caracteres análogos a los del saber de tipo práctico. [The paper exposes the role of the other in Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the light of the idea of dialogue. Understanding requires the recognition of the other as a thou, the acceptance of the lack of distance from him and the openness to embrace what is said by him as a possible truth. Understanding has a dialectical structure which implies the cancellation of one’s own expectations and the access to a more comprehensive knowledge. Even though every understanding is historical, it discloses an aspect of the thing itself, which results from the interaction of the I and the thou during the process of hermeneutical conversation and constitutes a common truth with analogous characteristics to practical reason.] . (shrink)

Margaret Urban Walker argues that hospital ethics committees should think of their task as "keeping moral space open." I develop her suggestion with analogies: Enlarge the windows (i.e., expand what counts as an ethical issue); add rooms and doors (i.e., choose particular issues to engage). Examples include confidentiality defined as information flow, and moral distress in the healthcare workplace.

Esta breve introducción a la filosofía de la ciencia parte del hecho de que tanto la investigación científica como el razonamiento probatorio judicial tienen un carácter inductivo. En esa medida, comparten características esenciales que permiten que el derecho se nutra de muchas de las reflexiones de la filosofía de la ciencia. El capítulo se concentra en cuatro temas principales: los criterios de demarcación entre el conocimiento científico y la pseudociencia; el carácter derrotable de las conclusiones de la ciencia y el (...) derecho; la estructura corroborativa de la relación entre la evidencia y las hipótesis científicas y judiciales; y las teorías de la explicación tanto en el ámbito científico como en el judicial. (shrink)

The stream of human consciousness appears to be interruptible, in that we can experience a sensation of ‘returning to ourselves after an absence of content’ (e.g. sleep, anaesthesia, full-absorption meditation). Prima facie, such evidence poses a challenge to simple applications of theories of consciousness based on electromagnetic or neural activity in the brain, because some of this activity persists during periods of interruption. This paper elaborates one of several possible responses to the challenge. We build on a previous theory in (...) which EM field topology delineates complex macrophenomenal experience. We first apply an analytic lens to identify different ways in which field topologies might generate sensations of ‘absence of content’. We then test the feasibility of a particular phenomenological approach for assessing those field topologies, powered by the unusual lucidity about cessation pathways induced via certain meditation practices and psychedelic dosages. We build computational simulations of these cessation pathways and test them on eight interviewees with various levels of experience in cessation states. We conclude that this approach can generate usable insight, but requires further formalisation to fulfil its potential. The findings tentatively support our claims but the theory remains speculative at this stage. We set out empirical tests with 11 specific predictions, both for further phenomenological research and for brain manipulation research. Although they align neatly, our ontological and cessation theories can also be separated. The paper describes how our theories can be consistent with other perspectives on consciousness, such as variants of predictive processing or global network theory. (shrink)

This paper raises three questions regarding the attribution of beliefs, desires, and intentions to robots. The first one is whether humans in fact engage in robot mindreading. If they do, this raises a second question: does robot mindreading foster trust towards robots? Both of these questions are empirical, and I show that the available evidence is insufficient to answer them. Now, if we assume that the answer to both questions is affirmative, a third and more important question arises: should developers (...) and engineers promote robot mindreading in view of their stated goal of enhancing transparency? My worry here is that by attempting to make robots more mind-readable, they are abandoning the project of understanding automatic decision processes. Features that enhance mind-readability are prone to make the factors that determine automatic decisions even more opaque than they already are. And current strategies to eliminate opacity do not enhance mind-readability. The last part of the paper discusses different ways to analyze this apparent trade-off and suggests that a possible solution must adopt tolerable degrees of opacity that depend on pragmatic factors connected to the level of trust required for the intended uses of the robot. (shrink)

Varios teóricos del derecho han propuesto el uso de umbrales o estándares de prueba más flexibles y más finamente discriminados. En la medicina es común utilizar estándares que poseen estas características en los procedimientos diagnósticos y en los exámenes médicos. Esta ponencia ofrece un marco probabilístico para establecer estándares de prueba múltiples en cualquier disciplina. La tesis principal es que la evidencia es un concepto umbral con respecto a la probabilidad. Múltiples umbrales pueden ser establecidos en un marco de intervalos (...) de probabilidad para la hipótesis que está siendo puesta a prueba, los cuales reflejan los diferentes grados de apoyo que la evidencia le provee a la hipótesis. Examinando los mecanismos utilizados para establecer los umbrales en medicina, sugiero una manera para establecer umbrales múltiples de prueba en derecho de una manera no arbitraria. (shrink)

The third part of the Timaeus, where the account is focused on the cooperation of reason and necessity, has received far less attention than the opening two sections. Particularly, the description of irrigation, digestion and respiration constitutes a challenging passage that has been conspicuously overlooked by scholarly research. Virtually the only modern explanation for the passage was devised by Cornford, and despite several inaccuracies it has been unanimously accepted by all commentators. This paper will challenge Cornford’s interpretation, and use some (...) modern biological concepts to provide an alternative approach to the passage more compatible with an actual human body. (shrink)

Durante los últimos años, el problema de cómo justificar aquellas creencias que se originan en testimonios ha ocupado un lugar central en la epistemología. Sin embargo, muy pocas de esas reflexiones son conocidas en el derecho probatorio. En el presente ensayo analizo la prueba testimonial a la luz de estas reflexiones con el fin de poner de manifiesto los supuestos epistemológicos de algunos principios procesales. En concreto, analizo la legislación colombiana y la estadounidense en el marco de la disputa entre (...) el reduccionismo y el antirreduccionismo en la filosofía del testimonio. Al final sugiero una nueva aproximación epistemológica que replantea los términos de la disputa y que tiene implicaciones importantes para la valoración de la prueba testimonial en los procesos judiciales. (shrink)

El desarrollo de las artes visuales durante el siglo XX desdibujó la frontera entre aquellos objetos y artefactos que llamamos obras de arte, y aquéllos que no son merecedores de ese título. Arthur Danto ha propuesto una teoría estética a la luz de la cual sería posible volver a definir los límites del arte. En este ensayo examino dos de los aspectos más problemáticos de la teoría: la importancia excesiva que Danto le otorga al concepto de mímesis y su concepción (...) teleológica de la historia del arte. Si atenuamos el papel de estos dos elementos, la teoría pierde gran parte de su poder explicativo. En las últimas dos secciones del ensayo arguyo que el mundo del arte al que Danto atribuye un papel central en el problema de la demarcación debe él mismo ser considerado un subproducto de las condiciones que determinan la naturaleza del arte en general. (shrink)

El testimonio es nuestra mayor fuente de creencias. La gran mayoría de nuestras creencias han sido adquiridas a partir de las palabras de otros y no a través de la observación directa del mundo. Una de las peculiaridades de la mayor parte de las creencias testimoniales es que son aceptadas sin ninguna deliberación consciente. Mientras el testimonio sea consistente con nuestras creencias y la fuente sea confiable, la reacción más corriente es la aceptación automática de la información (Thagard 2004, 2005). (...) Nuestra confianza en el testimonio de los demás es un requisito no sólo para la construcción colectiva del conocimiento (Hardwig 1985, 1991), sino también para la interacción social en general. Sin embargo existen contextos en los que la aceptación apresurada de un testimonio falso puede tener consecuencias nefastas. En contextos científicos, legales, políticos y financieros, entre otros, se toman decisiones importantes y se implementan políticas cruciales a partir de las afirmaciones de otros. En estos contextos la aceptación de un testimonio debe ser el resultado de un proceso de decisión basado en criterios objetivos de justificación. Sin embargo, existen dos objeciones al intento de justificar la aceptación de un testimonio (Coady 1973, 1992). La primera es que cualquier justificación será irremediablemente circular puesto que la inmensa mayoría de testimonios obtienen su justificación, al menos en parte, de evidencia de tipo testimonial. La segunda es que nuestras inferencias acerca de la confiabilidad de ciertos tipos de testimonio nunca tendrán un apoyo inductivo lo suficientemente fuerte debido a que los casos en los que un tipo de testimonio puede ser verificado directamente en la experiencia nunca serán lo suficientemente numerosos. En este ensayo presento una solución al problema de cómo decidir racionalmente si un testimonio puede ser aceptado como evidencia probatoria en una investigación. Mi propuesta, que está basada en la teoría de revisión de creencias desarrollada por Levi (1984, 1991), muestra que la aceptación justificada de un testimonio está basada en exactamente los mismos mecanismos de adquisición de creencias que operan en el caso de evidencias no testimoniales; al mismo tiempo, la propuesta da cuenta de las particularidades que se presentan en el proceso de evaluación de una evidencia testimonial. Mi tesis es que la decisión de aceptar un testimonio es un proceso que se cumple en dos etapas. En la primera se busca una justificación pare el testimonio buscando todos los hechos que aumenten la probabilidad de que el testimonio sea verdadero, es decir, de que el testigo o declarante esté reportando verídicamente un hecho. La aceptación de estos hechos y de su relación probabilística positiva con respecto al testimonio está basada en la búsqueda de un equilibrio entre su credibilidad y su valor informativo. En la segunda etapa, se determina si la justificación obtenida en la primera es suficiente para la aceptación del testimonio, de nuevo buscando encontrar un equilibrio entre su credibilidad y la utilidad de la información que contiene en promover los intereses y metas cognitivas del investigador. (shrink)

El ensayo presenta el esbozo de una teoría de la explicación basada en el modelo duda-creencia de investigación propuesto por Peirce y desarrollado por Isaac Levi. Inicialmente se caracteriza una noción de explicación que hace referencia a las creencias y fines epistémicos de los miembros de una comunidad científica. Posteriormente se demuestra que la inclusión de los aspectos pragmáticos de la explicación en la teoría no sólo no conduce al relativismo, sino que es necesaria para poder dar cuenta de la (...) relación entre las nociones de explicación y comprensión. (shrink)

This paper deals with the recent Swedish proposals of a Intuitionistic notion of Truth, by Dag Prawitz and Per Martin-Löf.

This paper presents a new reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s famous (and controversial) rule-following arguments. Two are the novel features offered by our reconstruction. In the first place, we propose a shift of the central focus of the discussion, from the general semantics and the philosophy of mind to the philosophy of mathematics and the rejection of the notion of a function. The second new feature is positive: we argue that Wittgenstein offers us a new alternative notion of a rule (to replace (...) the rejected functions), a notion reminiscent of Category Theory’s notion of a morphism. (shrink)

The essay discusses the interpretation of Aristotle's natural right teaching by Leo Strauss. This interpretation ought to be seen as the result of an investigation into the history of philosophy and of an attempt to philosophically address political problems. By virtue of this twofold origin, the Straussian commentary is unorthodox: it deviates from traditional Aristotelianism (Aquinas and Averroes) and it seems alien to the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. Strauss's criticism of medieval variants results from their incapacity—shared by contemporary political (...) thought—to address a perplexing issue: political exception. He sees in Aristotle's political teaching a way to escape from this failure: the unification, in natural right, of the requirements of statesmanship and ethics. The discovery of this way allowed Strauss to produce an interpretation of natural right that articulates important points pertaining to Aristotelian political science. (shrink)

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...) argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

Exposed in 1948, within his masterpiece on the scope and limits of human knowledge, the epistemological tenets that Bertrand Russell regarded as fundamental elements in the construction of scientific knowledge, are still worthy of a detailed discussion today. Given the excellence of the author, it will not be surprising to see that Russell's gnoseologic postulates, even for the present scientific view, address some of the most controversial questions still to be solved in the theory of knowledge.

In the natural and social sciences, it is common to use toy models—extremely simple and highly idealized representations—to understand complex phenomena. Some of the simple surrogate models used to understand opaque machine learning (ML) models, such as rule lists and sparse decision trees, bear some resemblance to scientific toy models. They allow non-experts to understand how an opaque ML model works globally via a much simpler model that highlights the most relevant features of the input space and their effect on (...) the output. The obvious difference is that the common target of a toy and a full-scale model in the sciences is some phenomenon in the world, while the target of a surrogate model is another model. This essential difference makes toy surrogate models (TSMs) a new object of study for theories of understanding, one that is not easily accommodated under current analyses. This paper provides an account of what it means to understand an opaque ML model globally with the aid of such simple models. (shrink)