This doctoral thesis examines the phenomenon of Filipinization, specifically understood as the ideological construction of a “Filipino identity” or ‘Filipino subject-consciousness” within the highly determinate context provided by the Filipino ilustrado nationalists such as José Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar and their fellow propagandists inasmuch as it leads to the nineteenth (19th) century construction of the modern Philippine nation. Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, this study undertakes a genealogical critique engaged on the concrete historical examination of what is meant by (...) the term “Filipino” across a select historical timeline (1864-1898) and the various notions of Filipino identity implied by the different contexts within which the term “Filipino” has been employed. More specifically, it undertakes a selective philosophical excavation of three seminal texts in the history of Filipinization, viz.: 1) the Manifiesto of Padre Jose Burgos; 2) the writings of the Filipino ilustrados in La Solidaridad; and 3) Jose Rizal’s Annotations on Dr. Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. -/- The philosophical claim of this work is the idea that Filipinization, taken as the differential construction of Filipino identity, is the effective translation of the colonial epistemic violence of Eurocentric racism and its consequent “horror of absolutism” into the homo-hegemony of Filipino nationalisms. By fetishizing the notion of a carefully constructed and essential “Filipino-identity,” Filipinization and the current nationalist discourses that utilize them, unwittingly, stands complicit with the same colonial violence and hegemony that they wish to combat. This happens precisely when the very structures of colonial oppression, on the ideological and practical levels, are transmogrified into nationalist ideals that assume legal and political power unto themselves in a self-referential and self-legitimating fashion. -/- Three processes will demonstrate the above thesis: first, by examining historical texts and setting itself against established nationalist historiographies, a genealogical analysis of the term “Filipino” reveals it as a pliable signifier whose semantics have evolved through time. From its originary referent in the Spanish criollo (creole), it has come to refer to people who would have been otherwise entirely alien to this class, viz., the mestizos (both Spanish and Chinese), the principalia (native elite), and eventually, the lowland Catholicized natives themselves. The historical hermeneutic of this identity-discourse in Padre José Burgos’ Manifiesto yields the fact that what gives the term “Filipino” its semantic consistency as a class concept is its essential constitution as a Hispanic and Catholic identity. -/- Second, from this semantic identification of the term “Filipino” as a Hispano-Catholic identity, we proceed to clarify the meaning of Filipinization in terms of the nationalist propaganda carried out by the Filipino ilustrados in the fortnightly periodical La Solidaridad. Here, the specific ilustrado construction of Filipino identity as a Spanish citizen (ciudadano Español) is revealed precisely as a political and legal construct that served as the basis for their own politics of social inclusion/exclusion. Filipinization can only be applied to those who have been hispanized and Christianized and never to those tribes who have resisted and remained outside Spanish colonial authority. Filipinization is thus revealed as a process of Hispanization and Christianization whereby the recipients of Spanish colonial hegemony are transformed into the religiously docile bodies of the Spanish Empire. -/- From this highly determinate context, the study proceeds to examine Rizal’s ontological grounding of collective Filipino-ness in the mythological construction of the pre-hispanic past as the source of a unique Filipino ancestrality. In his work on de Morga’s Sucesos, what is revealed is a mythologization that grounds a native, essential Filipino identity within a past unscathed by the Spanish colonial experience. Such mythologization, however, can only be possible through an anachronistic nationalist interpretation of historical data. Here, Filipinization is revealed as an exclusive prerogative, a nationalist program by which Rizal and the ilustrado class can combat the evils and excesses of the Spanish colonial enterprise. Ironically, though, this same struggle for emancipation also became an instrument by which the ilustrado class can retain their unjustified position of power over those who belonged to the colonial underside, thus, securing the possibility of perpetuating their own ilustrado bourgeois class interests. -/- Such discursive complicity is the essence of the myth of Filipinization: it presents nationalist identity discourse as an anti-colonial enterprise while being underlined by an economy of motives designed to cater primarily to the exclusive interests of the elite and ilustrado class. Thus, instead of securing the genuine, inclusive emancipation of all colonial subjects and a more humane existence for the poor and suffering majority, ilustrado nationalism has, ironically, merely reinforced those operative structures of colonial discrimination and oppression when the ilustrados: 1) grounded their racial theory upon the very same discourse of Eurocentric superiority that they are precisely supposed to question and 2) claimed a patrimony over Filipinas as their exclusive sovereign inheritance. These two factors illustrate how the manifest transfer of power from the Spanish Empire to the Philippine sovereign nation (and later as a nation-state) illustrate how Filipinization merely has transmogrified the face of Spanish colonialism into its new, subtle, and worse form in Filipino nationalism. -/- In this vein, the existence of the 19th century modern Philippine nation merely masked and deferred the crisis that was supposed to transfer power from the Spanish Empire to the multitude of the poor and suffering native indio majority. This crisis became all the more difficult to address be-cause of the duplicitous character of the discourse of Filipinization itself. It has not only effectively transferred power into the hands of the nationalist elite but also captured authentic emancipatory discourse within the identity-trap against which it can only hope to get out. This study concludes with the claim about the impossibility of ever escaping and overcoming the epistemic and practical violence necessarily contained within the historical discourse of colonialism. Or simply, we have no language or discourse that would enable us to overcome the complicity of Filipinization with the very (epistemic) violence against which it has set itself. (shrink)

Proceedings of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Revisiting Turing and his Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World" at the 2012 AISB and IACAP Symposium that was held in the Turing year 2012, 2–6 July at the University of Birmingham, UK. Ten papers. - http://www.pt-ai.org/turing-test --- Daniel Devatman Hromada: From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents - Michael Zillich: My Robot is Smarter than Your Robot: On the Need for (...) a Total Turing Test for Robots - Adam Linson, Chris Dobbyn and Robin Laney: Interactive Intelligence: Behaviour-based AI, Musical HCI and the Turing Test - Javier Insa, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Sergio España - David Dowe and M.Victoria Hernandez-Lloreda: The anYnt Project Intelligence Test (Demo) - Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Javier Insa, David Dowe and Bill Hibbard: Turing Machines and Recursive Turing Tests — Francesco Bianchini and Domenica Bruni: What Language for Turing Test in the Age of Qualia? - Paul Schweizer: Could there be a Turing Test for Qualia? - Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti: Jazz and Machine Consciousness: Towards a New Turing Test - William York and Jerry Swan: Taking Turing Seriously (But Not Literally) - Hajo Greif: Laws of Form and the Force of Function: Variations on the Turing Test. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a preliminary account of weakness of political will (political akrasia). My aim is to use theories from the weakness of will literature as a guide to develop a model of the same phenomenon as it occurs in collective agents. Though the account will parallel the traditional view of weakness of will in individuals, weakness of political will is a distinctly political concept that will apply to group agents such as governments, institutional actors, and other political (...) collectives. I further argue that blaming inaction by collective political agents on a “lack of political will” should be understood as blaming a kind of akratic break within the deliberative process, leading to an inability of the collective agent to capitalize on existing group attitudes in order to translate them into policy or legislation. My primary example throughout will be U.S. political inaction with respect to the climate crisis. (shrink)

Una de las razones por las que los argumentos escépticos constituyen un problema es que generan una paradoja de intuiciones a favor de las premisas y en contra de la conclusión. Este conflicto de intuiciones es problemático porque se suscita ante un argumento deductivamente válido, de manera que hace falta explicar por qué parece que la consecuencia lógica de unas premisas verdaderas es falsa. Resolver el problema de los argumentos escépticos implica al menos dos retos: explicar la paradoja de intuiciones (...) que estos argumentos generan y defender la idea de que las prácticas ordinarias de atribución de conocimiento son generalmente correctas. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their (...) marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo tiene como principal objetivo el de lograr una comprensión de la la filosofía en cuanto fundamento insoslayable para la teología. Sostiene, en primer lugar, la necesidad de desarrollar una teología más autocosciente en el sentido racional del σὺν λόγω, es decir, desde el programa plenamente actual de la fides quarens intellectum. Defiende, en segundo lugar, que la filosofía solo puede entenderse partiendo de la pretensión que la ha animado desde el comienzo de su andadura: la búsqueda de (...) la verdad de las cosas (veritas rerum). Y para este fin tendrá necesariamente que dotarse de densidad metafísica suficiente y apostar por las tesis de un sano realismo cognoscitivo. Este estudio concluye con una reflexión, en tercer lugar, sobre el uso teológico de la filosofía. La tesis que se defiende es que sin el fundamento filosófico, la fe y la teología pierden lo más nuclear de su misión, la posibilidad misma de presentarse todavía con algún rastro de significatividad para el hombre de hoy. Palabras clave Filosofía, Teología, Universidad, Facultad Eclesiástica, Fe, Razón Summary: This work has as principal objective the achievement of an understanding of philosophy in such as it forms an inescapable foundation for theology. It sustains, in the first place, the need to develop a more self-aware theology in the rational sense of the σὺν λόγω, that is to say, from the fully current program of the fides quarens intellectum. It defends, in the second place, that philosophy can only be understood parting from the pretension that has animated it from its outset: a search for the truth of things (veritas rerum). And to this end, it must necessarily equip itself with the sufficient metaphysical density and wager upon the thesis . (shrink)

El propósito de Levinas coincide con el intento moderno de recuperación de la verdad y del sentido aunque en una dirección y contenidos distintos. Si en Hegel la Aufhebung tendía a la Totalidad y lo Mismo , para Husserl será esencial la apertura de Mundo que tiene lugar ya en la experiencia de conciencia del ego trascendental, mientras que Heidegger, por su parte, primará la pregunta por el Ser. El intento de Levinas, en cambio, no será recomponer la relación entre (...) el yo, por un lado, y el mundo, lo absoluto, las cosas o el ser, por el otro, sino la recuperación de la relación entre yo-y-otro. No es un simple cambio en la dirección o en el contenido del sentido de la reflexión filosófica, sino un intento serio de encontrar una nueva significación, «otra manera que ser» que no termine siendo otro proyecto más de integración y síntesis. Lo que propone Levinas es una auténtica salida para la que traza el itinerario que va del ser al otro, recurriendo sencillamente a la experiencia que cotidianamente se nos impone a cada uno de nosotros con un peso incontestable, a saber: la presencia de las diferencias, de lo asimétrico, en definitiva, la manifestación del otro en tanto que otro. Es esta experiencia heterónoma ordinaria, esta vivencia diaria de la alteridad como dato primordial del fenómeno de la intersubjetividad el ámbito que ha intentado explorar nuestro autor. ¿Acaso es esta responsabilidad así sentida conjugable con una experiencia filosófica universal? ¿La responsabilidad puede llevarse hasta el límite de la substitución por el otro, hasta la de-posición del Yo sin identidad? ¿Qué tipo de relación puede darse con algo absolutamente asimétrico, exterior, previo e irreductible? ¿De dónde viene esa asignación apremiante de responsabilidad que llega hasta arrojarme en la obsesión y el asedio? ¿Cómo puede ser éticamente plausible un mandato tan traumatizante y violento que termina por convertir al sujeto en rehén, sustituido ya por los otros? ¿Es posible conciliar la libertad y la autónoma decisión del sujeto con una consideración de la subjetividad como «heme aquí», absoluta pasividad expuesta a los otros y vulnerabilidad de una piel que se ofrece al ultraje y la herida?. En definitiva: ¿es la subjetividad algo de lo que partimos o a lo que llegamos? (shrink)

Recently, the concept of "gender identity" has enjoyed a great deal of attention in gender metaphysics. This seems to be motivated by the goal of creating trans-inclusive theory, by explaining trans people's genders. In this paper, we aim to unmotivate this project. Notions of "gender identity" serve important pragmatic purposes for trans people, such as satisfying the curiosity of non-trans people, and, relatedly, securing our access to important goods like legal rights and medical care. However, we argue that this does (...) not mean that "gender identity" is a metaphysically substantial thing that deserves extensive theoretical attention. There are reasons to be skeptical of such a concept. We trace the history of "gender identity," primarily to identify its roots in trans-antagonistic medical theory and its connections to the problematic "wrong-body" model--a legacy that has pathologized and flattened trans experience. Moreover, we argue that trans people primarily use "gender identity" to explain ourselves to non-trans people, rather than to discuss ourselves among ourselves. Thus, we urge theorists to resist the urge to substantiate gender identity. Instead, we encourage the development of new and better concepts, ones that attend to the lived realities of trans community and the flourishing gender terms and practices that are constructed there. If these lived realities are taken seriously, there is no need to “explain” trans people’s genders; we can simply see them as they are. (shrink)

Book Description (Blurb): Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds explains the crucial role that human cognition research plays in the design and realization of artificial intelligence systems, illustrating the steps necessary for the design of artificial models of cognition. It bridges the gap between the theoretical, experimental and technological issues addressed in the context of AI of cognitive inspiration and computational cognitive science. -/- Beginning with an overview of the historical, methodological and technical issues in the field of Cognitively-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, (...) Lieto illustrates how the cognitive design approach has an important role to play in the development of intelligent AI technologies and plausible computational models of cognition. Introducing a unique perspective that draws upon Cybernetics and early AI principles, Lieto emphasizes the need for an equivalence between cognitive processes and implemented AI procedures, in order to realise biologically and cognitively inspired artificial minds. He also introduces the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a pragmatic method to rank the different degrees of biologically and cognitive accuracy of artificial systems in order project and predict their explanatory power with respect to the natural systems taken as source of inspiration. -/- Providing a comprehensive overview of cognitive design principles in constructing artificial minds, this text will be essential reading for students and researchers of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

In this paper, I will explore a concept of person in Kant based on two features: the unity of consciousness and the consciousness of the numerical identity of one’s body in time. The reason for choosing these features is that I take as my starting point the notion of personhood from rational psychology that appears in the major premise of the third paralogism (A361). I will focus on the second feature in order to show that since Kant it is possible (...) to think of the body not merely as an object, but as a subject, i.e., that bodily awareness is self-awareness. I will explain this on the basis of what I will denominate the thesis of corporeality. To develop this thesis, I will draw on passages from Kant’s work and contemporary considerations of bodily awareness, specifically the immunity to error through misidentification. (shrink)

An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this ontology fares when it comes to general relativistic physics. Using a Humean strategy, we regard the gravitational field as a means to represent the overall change in the distance relations among point particles in a way that achieves the best combination of being simple (...) and being informative. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is twofold. First, it provides a quick look at the foundations of modern relational mechanics by tracing its development from Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti's original ideas until present-day's pure shape dynamics. Secondly, it discusses the most appropriate metaphysics for pure shape dynamics, showing that relationalism is more of a nuanced thesis rather than an elusive one. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of the prospects of pure shape dynamics in light of quantum physics.

El artículo tiene como objetivo describir las competencias informacionales a desarrollar durante la formación profesional. Se presenta los referentes teóricos a partir del empleo de un enfoque de sistema que supone el análisis y la síntesis, la inducción y la deducción como métodos de investigación, con el propósito de dar conocer los hitos en las universidades y organizaciones internacionales relacionadas. La modelación fue empleada para la construcción de un nuevo proyecto de desarrollo de competencias informacionales desde la perspectiva de la (...) formación profesional universitaria ajustada a las necesidades de la educación superior en Cuba. El nuevo proyecto se configura en tres unidades básicas (acceso, procesamiento y comunicación), con sus respectivos elementos de competencia, saberes esenciales e indicadores para la evaluación del desempeño. El artículo fundamenta la tesis de que el desarrollo de competencias informacionales debe ser sistemáticamente estructurado, planificado y ejecutado como parte integral de la formación curricular en interacción con los contenidos de las disciplinas docentes, bajo la dirección del profesor y la participación protagónica de los profesionales en formación. -/- ABSTRACT -/- The article aims at describing the competence to be developed during professional training. It presents the theoretical referents by means of an approach system that includes synthesis and analysis, induction and deduction as research methods in order to reveal the milestones of information skills development in universities and related international organizations. Modeling was used for the construction of a new skills development project from the perspective of university professional training according to the needs of Higher Education in Cuba. The new project is composed of three basic units (access, processing and communication), with their respective competence elements, essential knowledge and indicators for the evaluation of the performance. The article supports the theory that information development skills must be systematically structured, planned and implemented as an integral part of the curricular training in interaction with the contents of subjects, under the teacher´s guidance and the active participation of profesionals in training. -/- . (shrink)

The paper discusses from a metaphysical standpoint the nature of the dependence relation underpinning the talk of mutual action between material and spatiotemporal structures in general relativity. It is shown that the standard analyses of dependence in terms of causation or grounding are ill-suited for the general relativistic context. Instead, a non-standard analytical framework in terms of structural equation modeling is exploited, which leads to the conclusion that the kind of dependence encoded in the Einstein field equations is a novel (...) one. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis maintains that the functional contributions of tools and artefacts can become so essential for our cognition that they can be constitutive parts of our minds. In other words, our tools can be on a par with our brains: our minds and cognitive processes can literally ‘extend’ into the tools. Several extended mind theorists have argued that this ‘extended’ view of the mind offers unique insights into how we understand, assess, and treat certain cognitive conditions. In this (...) chapter we suggest that using AI extenders, i.e., tightly coupled cognitive extenders that are imbued with machine learning and other ‘artificially intelligent’ tools, presents both new ethical challenges and opportunities for mental health. We focus on several mental health conditions that can develop differently by the use of AI extenders for people with cognitive disorders and then discuss some of the related opportunities and challenges. (shrink)

In actuarial parlance, the price of an insurance policy is considered fair if customers bearing the same risk are charged the same price. The estimate of this fair amount hinges on the expected value obtained by weighting the different claims by their probability. We argue that, historically, this concept of actuarial fairness originates in an Aristotelian principle of justice in exchange (equality in risk). We will examine how this principle was formalized in the 16th century and shaped in life insurance (...) during the following two hundred years, in two different interpretations. The Domatian account of actuarial fairness relied on subjective uncertainty: An agreement on risk was fair if both parties were equally ignorant about the chances of an uncertain event. The objectivist version grounded any agreement on an objective risk estimate drawn from a mortality table. We will show how the objectivist approach collapsed in the market for life annuities during the 18th century, leaving open the question of why we still speak of actuarial fairness as if it were an objective expected value. (shrink)

We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure, that is, a set of fundamental physical elements whose individuation and behavior are described in purely relational terms, without any need for a background spacetime. Although the specification of the fundamental elements of the ontology depends on the particular physical domain considered---and is thus susceptible to scientific progress---, the empirically successful structural features of the (...) framework are preserved through theory change. The kinematics and dynamics of these self-subsisting structures are technically implemented using the theoretical framework of Pure Shape Dynamics, which provides a completely relational physical description of a system in terms of the intrinsic geometry of a suitably defined space called shape space. (shrink)

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build arti cial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the (...) comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the fi nal part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations (...) instead of committing us to additional elements of the ontology. The alternative theory strategy seeks to combine the relationalist ontology with a relationalist physical theory that reproduces the predictions of the standard theory in the domain where these are empirically tested. We show that, as things stand, this strategy cannot be accomplished without compromising a minimalist relationalist ontology. (shrink)

El desarrollo de las ciencias sociales enfrenta retos complejos que incluyen elegir la metodología y desarrollo teórico adecuados para abordar sus objetos de estudio. Para contribuir a enfrentar estos retos, se toma como punto de partida el amplio reconocimiento de que un criterio para la aceptación o rechazo de teorías consiste en tomar en cuenta su capacidad para dar cuenta de los fenómenos sociales. Este trabajo se propone mostrar que el desarrollo de teorías que nos permitan comprender los fenómenos sociales (...) requiere de la incorporación de métodos deductivos. La incorporación de tales métodos permitirá fortalecer las teorías en las ciencias sociales y aportará herramientas para resolver algunos de sus problemas más apremiantes. Para ello, se muestra cómo incorporar derivaciones deductivas puede contribuir a solventar la crisis de la falta de desarrollo teórico en ciencias sociales. A continuación, se presentan argumentos desde la filosofía de la ciencia que muestran cómo la incorporación de métodos y relaciones deductivas en las teorías contribuye a su fortalecimiento. Reconociendo la necesidad de complementar estos métodos con enfoques epistemológicos pluralistas, se responde a varias críticas dirigidas al uso de métodos deductivos en las ciencias empíricas en general y en las ciencias sociales en particular. (shrink)

With increased visibility of trans people comes increased philosophical interest in gendered language. This chapter aims to look at the research on gendered language in analytic philosophy of language so far, which has focused on two concerns: (1) determining how to define gender terms like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ such that they are trans inclusive and (2) if, or to what extent, we should use gendered language at all. We argue that the literature has focused too heavily on how gendered language (...) can harm trans people, and has not considered how trans people use gendered language to create meaning and joy for ourselves. Pulling from the literature in sociolinguistics, we look at examples of how trans people use language to make their lives better by gaining recognition, playing with gendered language, finding joy in gendered language, and taking control of definitional power, concluding that debates about gendered language need to consider not only how such language harms trans people but also how trans people use it for our own liberation. (shrink)

We defend, from a contractarian perspective, that the fair price of an insurance policy is the amount that the contracting parties agree when they are both equally uncertain about the insured event. Drawing on the approach developed by R. Sugden in _The Community of Advantage_, we answer two standard objections raised against contractarianism in the actuarial sciences: (1) people are not wise enough to assess their actuarial risks; (2) they are not rational enough to decide which insurance policy suits them (...) better. We show under which circumstances people can make fair actuarial agreements, without presupposing any objective risk or rationality benchmarks. (shrink)

In this article we present an advanced version of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system aimed at extending the capabilities of artificial systems in conceptual categorization tasks. It combines different sorts of common-sense categorization (prototypical and exemplars-based categorization) with standard monotonic categorization procedures. These different types of inferential procedures are reconciled according to the tenets coming from the dual process theory of reasoning. On the other hand, from a representational perspective, the system relies on the hypothesis of conceptual (...) structures represented as heterogeneous proxytypes. Dual-PECCS has been experimentally assessed in a task of conceptual categorization where a target concept illustrated by a simple common-sense linguistic description had to be identified by resorting to a mix of categorization strategies, and its output has been compared to human responses. The obtained results suggest that our approach can be beneficial to improve the representational and reasoning conceptual capabilities of standard cognitive artificial systems, and –in addition– that it may be plausibly applied to different general computational models of cognition. The current version of the system, in fact, extends our previous work, in that Dual-PECCS is now integrated and tested into two cognitive architectures, ACT-R and CLARION, implementing different assumptions on the underlying invariant structures governing human cognition. Such integration allowed us to extend our previous evaluation. (shrink)

The paper presents an extension of the metaphysics of self-subsisting structures set out in a companion paper to the realm of non-relativistic quantum physics. The discussion is centered around a Pure Shape Dynamics model representing a relational implementation of a de Broglie-Bohm N-body system. An interpretation of this model in terms of self-subsisting structures is proposed and assessed against the background of the debate on the metaphysics of quantum physics, with a particular emphasis on the nature of the wave function. (...) The analysis shows that elaborating an appropriate Leibnizian/Machian metaphysics of the quantum world requires a substantial revision of the notion of world-building relation. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of the combination of prototypical concepts. The proposed logic relies on the logic of typicality ALC + TR, whose semantics is based on the notion of rational closure, as well as on the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics, and is equipped with a cognitive heuristic used by humans for concept composition. We first extend the logic of typicality ALC + TR by typicality inclusions of the (...) form p :: T(C) v D, whose intuitive meaning is that “we believe with degree p about the fact that typical Cs are Ds”. As in the distributed semantics, we define different scenarios containing only some typicality inclusions, each one having a suitable probability. We then exploit such scenarios in order to ascribe typical properties to a concept C obtained as the combination of two prototypical concepts. We also show that reasoning in the proposed Description Logic is EXPTIME-complete as for the underlying standard Description Logic ALC. (shrink)

Accounting for the epistemic contribution of deduction has been a pervasive problem for logicians interested in deduction, such as, among others, Jakko Hintikka. The problem arises because the conclusion validly deduced from a set of premises is said to be “contained” in that set; because of this containment relation, the conclusion would be known from the moment the premises are known. Assuming this, it is problematic to explain how we can gain knowledge by deducing a logical consequence implied by a (...) set of known premises. To address this problem, we offer an alternative account of the epistemic contribution of deduction as the process required to deduce a conclusion or a theorem, understanding such a process not only in terms of the number of steps in the derivation but also, more importantly, in terms of the reason for or justification for every step. That is, we do not know a proposition unless we have a justification or proof of that proposition. With this goal in mind, we develop a justification logic system which exhibits the epistemic contribution of a deductive derivation as the resulting justified formula. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to outline a pragmatist image of science following Rorty’s discussions and critics of epistemology and to develop some consequences of it in the philosophical analysis and its relations to culture. I will deal with some aspects of how scientific practice is construed and understood, and also outline the shift in Philosophy of Science from epistemological to ethical-political concerns that are implied in his proposal. I will contend that this perspective suggests an interesting way of (...) analysing scientific practices, theories, and public policies of it. Furthermore, I will suggest that it successfully connects the most interesting proposals of contemporary scientific views in philosophy. Finally, I will use some examples in physics and biology to illustrate my assertions. (shrink)

El artículo comienza destacando cómo la filosofía y la religión han procurado desbordar la contingencia y la finitud de la vida individual tratando de engullir a la muerte en la noche una y universal de la nada mediante el pensamiento del Todo (Franz Rosenzweig). Hegel simboliza el relevo más sobresaliente en esta dilatada carrera de la filosofía como fuga mortis. Nuestra época se presenta, en cambio, como el período histórico que ha preferido vivir el miedo antes que evanescerse en nada. (...) La idea central que defiende este trabajo es la conexión, aparentemente inconciliable, entre muerte y metafísica. Analizar dicha unidad y sus implicaciones para la realidad sustantiva humana en el núcleo mismo de la filosofía de Zubiri constituye el objetivo principal de este artículo. PALABRAS CLAVE Zubiri, Heidegger, Scheler, Levinas, muerte, metafísica, fenomenología. ABSTRACT The article starts by emphasizing how philosophy and religion have tried to exceed the contingency and the finitud of the individual life trying to devour the death in the night one and universally of nothing ness by means of the thought completely (Franz Rosenzweig). Hegel symbolizes the most brilliant relief in this extensive race of the philosophy as fuga mortis. Our time appears, on the other hand, as the historical period that has preferred living through the fear before dissappearing in to nothing ness. The main idea that defends this work is the connection, seemingly irreconcilably, between death and metaphysics. To analyze this mentioned unit and its implications for the substantival human reality in the core itself of Zubiri's philosophy constitutes the principal aim of this article. KEY WORDS Zubiri, Heidegger, Scheler, Levinas, death, metaphysics, phenomenology. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a computational framework aimed at extending the problem solving capabilities of cognitive artificial agents through the introduction of a novel, goal-directed, dynamic knowledge generation mechanism obtained via a non monotonic reasoning procedure. In particular, the proposed framework relies on the assumption that certain classes of problems cannot be solved by simply learning or injecting new external knowledge in the declarative memory of a cognitive artificial agent but, on the other hand, require a mechanism for the (...) automatic and creative re-framing, or re-formulation, of the available knowledge. We show how such mechanism can be obtained trough a framework of dynamic knowledge generation that is able to tackle the problem of commonsense concept combination. In addition, we show how such a framework can be employed in the field of cognitive architectures in order to overcome situations like the impasse in SOAR by extending the possible options of its subgoaling procedures. (shrink)

In this paper a possible general framework for the representation of concepts in cognitive artificial systems and cognitive architectures is proposed. The framework is inspired by the so called proxytype theory of concepts and combines it with the heterogeneity approach to concept representations, according to which concepts do not constitute a unitary phenomenon. The contribution of the paper is twofold: on one hand, it aims at providing a novel theoretical hypothesis for the debate about concepts in cognitive sciences by providing (...) unexplored connections between different theories; on the other hand it is aimed at sketching a computational characterization of the problem of concept representation in cognitively inspired artificial systems and in cognitive architectures. (shrink)

The paper discusses the possible implications of the relational framework of Pure Shape Dynamics for the metaphysics of time. The starting point of the analysis is an interpretation of shapes in ontic structural realist terms, which gives rise to the notion of self-subsisting structure. The relational version of a Newtonian-particle toy model is introduced and discussed as a concrete example.

We intoduce a novel extension of Description Logics (DLs) of typicality by means of probabilities able to represent and reason about typical properties and defeasible inheritance in DLs.

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of combining prototypical concepts, an open problem in the fields of AI and cognitive modelling. Our logic extends the logic of typicality ALC + TR, based on the notion of rational closure, by inclusions p :: T(C) v D (“we have probability p that typical Cs are Ds”), coming from the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics. Additionally, it embeds a set of cognitive heuristics for concept (...) combination. We show that the complexity of reasoning in our logic is EXPTIME-complete as in ALC. (shrink)

During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [35]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA[ 48]) are based on a purely connectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [59]) adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning are (...) also available [34]. In this paper we propose a reflection on the role that Conceptual Spaces, a framework developed by Peter G¨ardenfors [24] more than fifteen years ago, can play in the current development of the Knowledge Level in Cognitive Systems and Architectures. In particular, we claim that Conceptual Spaces offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and generalize many aspects of the symbolic, sub-symbolic and diagrammatic approaches (by overcoming some of their typical problems) and to integrate them on a common ground. In doing so we extend and detail some of the arguments explored by G¨ardenfors [23] for defending the need of a conceptual, intermediate, representation level between the symbolic and the sub-symbolic one. In particular we focus on the advantages offered by Conceptual Spaces (w.r.t. symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches) in dealing with the problem of compositionality of representations based on typicality traits. Additionally, we argue that Conceptual Spaces could offer a unifying framework for interpreting many kinds of diagrammatic and analogical representations. As a consequence, their adoption could also favor the integration of diagrammatical representation and reasoning in CAs. (shrink)

There are two aims of this paper: (1) to explore the affective dimensions of moral shock and how it relates to normative marginalization of those furthest from dominant society, but also, more specifically; (2) to articulate the trans experience of constantly being under moral attack because the dominant “world” normatively defines you out of existence. Toward these ends, I build on Katie Stockdale’s recent work on moral shock, arguing that moral shock needs to be contextualized to “worlds” of sense to (...) understand how marginalized people affectively experience shocking events. My focus is the trans experience of moral shock due to the way trans people are positioned outside of dominant society, creating the conditions to experience cyclical, chronic shock. These affective conditions point to a collective responsibility to ease the affective stress that the most marginalized experience. (shrink)

The proposal of moral enhancement as a valuable means to face the environmental, technological and social challenges that threaten the future of humanity has been criticized by a number of authors. One of the main criticisms has been that moral enhancement would diminish our freedom. It has been said that moral enhancement would lead enhanced people to lose their ‘freedom to fall’, that is, it would prevent them from being able to decide to carry out some morally bad actions, and (...) the possibility to desire and carry out these bad actions is an essential ingredient of free will, which would thus be limited or destroyed—or so the argument goes. In this paper we offer an answer to this criticism. We contend that a morally enhanced agent could lose the ‘freedom to fall’ without losing her freedom for two reasons. First, because we do not consider that a morally well-educated person, for whom the ‘freedom to fall’ is a remote option, is less free than an evildoer, and there is no reason to suppose that bioenhancement introduces a significant difference here. Second, because richness in the amount of alternative possibilities of action may be restored if the stated loss is compensated with an improvement in sensitivity and lucidity that can lead to seeing new options and nuances in the remaining possible actions. (shrink)

Is attention both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? Call this central question of this treatise, “Q.” We commonly have the experience of consciously paying attention to something, but is it possible to be conscious of something you are not attending to, or to attend to something of which you are not conscious? Where might we find examples of these? This treatise is a quest to find an answer to Q in two parts. Part I reviews the foundations upon which the (...) discourse on Q is built. Different inputs to Q produce different answers. After consideration of the many ways “attention” and “consciousness” have been defined, I settle upon phenomenal consciousness and Executive Attention (defined as a suite of strategies for structuring cognition for further processing implemented by the executive of working memory) as the most interesting inputs to Q, and the ones on which Part II focuses. Attention without consciousness seems relatively easy to establish empirically, but consciousness without attention is much harder. The putative candidates all seem to have major problems, but I build a strong abductive case for the hitherto ignored case of foveal phenomenal overflow. We consciously see far more detail in our foveal fields than we can Executively Attend, although there is a serious obstacle to our ever confirming that empirically—identifying conscious content relies on Executive Attentional report. Triangulating the capacity limitations of attention, consciousness, and working memory strengthens this case for consciousness without attention, and suggests that cognition must work something like my “Witches’ Hat Model,” on which content can become conscious outside of Executive Attention or working memory. I conclude with some reflections on the implications of my arguments for the discourse on Q, and for other discourses such as the ontologies of attention and consciousness, theories of consciousness, some other cognitive concepts, and ethical considerations in humans, animals, and machines. A conclusive answer to Q continues to elude us. It may perhaps be an ultimately insoluble conundrum. But it is the very essence of humanity to seek an answer, and in so doing, to improve our understanding of our own nature: “The proper study of mankind is man.”1. (shrink)

In 2016 Beziau, introduce a more restricted concept of paraconsistency, namely the genuine paraconsistency. He calls genuine paraconsistent logic those logic rejecting φ, ¬φ |- ψ and |- ¬(φ ∧ ¬φ). In that paper the author analyzes, among the three-valued logics, which of these logics satisfy this property. If we consider multiple-conclusion consequence relations, the dual properties of those above mentioned are: |- φ, ¬φ, and ¬(ψ ∨ ¬ψ) |- . We call genuine paracomplete logics those rejecting the mentioned properties. (...) We present here an analysis of the three-valued genuine paracomplete logics. (shrink)

Pure shape dynamics (PSD) is a novel implementation of the relational framework originally proposed by Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti. PSD represents a Leibnizian/Machian approach to physics in that it completely describes the dynamical evolution of a physical system without resorting to any structure external to the system itself. The chapter discusses how PSD effectively describes a de Broglie-Bohm N-body system and the conceptual benefits of such a relational description. The analysis will highlight the new directions in the quest for (...) an understanding of the nature of the wave function that are opened up by a modern relationalist elaboration on de Broglie's and Bohm's original insights. (shrink)

The paper investigates the kind of dependence relation that best portrays Machian frame-dragging in general relativity. The question is tricky because frame-dragging relates local inertial frames to distant distributions of matter in a time-independent way, thus establishing some sort of non-local link between the two. For this reason, a plain causal interpretation of frame-dragging faces huge challenges. The paper will shed light on the issue by using a generalized structural equation model analysis in terms of manipulationist counterfactuals recently applied in (...) the context of metaphysical enquiry by Schaffer (2016) and Wilson (2017). The verdict of the analysis will be that frame-dragging is best understood in terms of a novel type of dependence relation that is half-way between causation and grounding. (shrink)

The term attention has been used to mean so many different things that some have despaired of it being useful at all. This paper is devoted to bringing a modicum of order to the chaos through the time-honored device of categorization. The chief purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive descriptive taxonomy of the nuanced ways the term attention may be employed. It is presented in table form, followed by elucidations and illustrations of each of its items. But (...) first, I offer reasons why a taxonomy of attention is needed and explore some of its possible benefits. After presenting the taxonomy, I sketch by way of example how it might be applied to two interesting questions: is the umbrella term attention still useful?; and, what is it that ties the subdefinitions of attention together yet distinguishes them from other kinds of cognition? (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer a central question in unsupervised learning: what does it mean to “make sense” of a sensory sequence? In our formalization, making sense involves constructing a symbolic causal theory that both explains the sensory sequence and also satisfies a set of unity conditions. The unity conditions insist that the constituents of the causal theory – objects, properties, and laws – must be integrated into a coherent whole. On our account, making sense of sensory input is a (...) type of program synthesis, but it is unsupervised program synthesis. Our second contribution is a computer implementation, the Apperception Engine, that was designed to satisfy the above requirements. Our system is able to produce interpretable human-readable causal theories from very small amounts of data, because of the strong inductive bias provided by the unity conditions. A causal theory produced by our system is able to predict future sensor readings, as well as retrodict earlier readings, and impute (fill in the blanks of) missing sensory readings, in any combination. In fact, it is able to do all three tasks simultaneously. We tested the engine in a diverse variety of domains, including cellular automata, rhythms and simple nursery tunes, multi-modal binding problems, occlusion tasks, and sequence induction intelligence tests. In each domain, we test our engine's ability to predict future sensor values, retrodict earlier sensor values, and impute missing sensory data. The Apperception Engine performs well in all these domains, significantly out-performing neural net baselines. We note in particular that in the sequence induction intelligence tests, our system achieved human-level performance. This is notable because our system is not a bespoke system designed specifically to solve intelligence tests, but a general-purpose system that was designed to make sense of any sensory sequence. (shrink)

The paper investigates the type of realism that best suits the framework of decoherence taken at face value without postulating a plurality of worlds, or additional hidden variables, or non-unitary dynamical mechanisms. It is argued that this reading of decoherence leads to an extremely radical type of perspectival realism, especially when cosmological decoherence is considered.

Exploramos aquí la conexión entre los conceptos de riesgo e igualdad en el argumento del observador imparcial. La concepción de la justicia que elegiría un observador imparcial se justifica por la pureza del procedimiento de elección. Sin embargo, si modelizamos esta decisión utilizando medidas del riesgo habituales en matemática financiera, veremos cómo el criterio de elección del observador bajo el velo de la ignorancia contiene una preferencia implícita por el grado de desigualdad resultante. Esto nos obliga a reconsiderar la pureza (...) procedimental de la elección. (shrink)

The paper introduces an extension of the proposal according to which conceptual representations in cognitive agents should be intended as heterogeneous proxytypes. The main contribution of this paper is in that it details how to reconcile, under a heterogeneous representational perspective, different theories of typicality about conceptual representation and reasoning. In particular, it provides a novel theoretical hypothesis - as well as a novel categorization algorithm called DELTA - showing how to integrate the representational and reasoning assumptions of the theory-theory (...) of concepts with the those ascribed to the prototype and exemplars-based theories. (shrink)

This paper argues that, although Margaret Cavendish’s main philosophical contributions are not in philosophy of religion, she makes a case for a defense of God, in spite of the worst sorts of harms being present in the world. Her arguments about those harms actually presage those of contemporary feminist ethicists, which positions Cavendish’s scholarship in a unique position: it makes a positive theodical contribution, by relying on evils that contemporary atheists think are the best evidence against the existence of God. (...) To demonstrate that Cavendish’s work should be considered as early modern feminist theodicy, this paper will briefly introduce the contemporary feminist worry about theodicy as a project, show that Cavendish shares the contemporary feminist view about situated evil, and argue that her theodicy aims for agreement about how to eradicate great moral evils while preserving free will—and so, carves out a space for future female philosophers of religion who aim to be agents of healing in the face of such evil. (shrink)

There is a curious phenomenon where people from marginalized populations are taken to be arrogant when they show no signs of superiority. In effect, their actions are misconstrued, and their attitudes are rendered unintelligible. Given that arrogance is standardly taken to be a flaw in one’s moral character, understanding such misattributions should give us insight into the affective marginalization many people face. This talk aims to give a thorough exploration of arrogance under oppression. I argue that arrogance is a kind (...) of self-preoccupation that involves projecting one’s values, goals, and concerns onto others as if they were objective values, goals, and concerns. When the affectively marginalized communicate their self-respect through things like protest, people mistake that self-respect as self-preoccupation given how the affectively marginalized are constructed. Furthermore, given how affective marginalization not only inhibits how the marginalized are understood by others, but inhibits their own affective lives, I argue that taking up an arrogant attitude is not always morally vicious, but can be a beautiful form of political resistance but all things considered good. (shrink)

The paper shows how the Bohmian approach to quantum physics can be applied to develop a clear and coherent ontology of non-perturbative quantum gravity. We suggest retaining discrete objects as the primitive ontology also when it comes to a quantum theory of space-time and therefore focus on loop quantum gravity. We conceive atoms of space, represented in terms of nodes linked by edges in a graph, as the primitive ontology of the theory and show how a non-local law in which (...) a universal and stationary wave-function figures can provide an order of configurations of such atoms of space such that the classical space-time of general relativity is approximated. Although there is as yet no fully worked out physical theory of quantum gravity, we regard the Bohmian approach as setting up a standard that proposals for a serious ontology in this field should meet and as opening up a route for fruitful physical and mathematical investigations. (shrink)

Philosophers of race and other writers in the Black and Latinx intellectual traditions have remarked on what it is like to live under “the racial gaze,” to be shaped and limited by the way whites perceive us. However, little work has been spent developing how the racial gaze functions in whites’, and other racially privileged people’s, moral psychology. I argue in this paper that there is a morally objectionable way of perceiving people of color. This claim builds on an insight (...) from Iris Murdoch that our perception can be morally evaluable and extends it to issues of race. I articulate how racial stereotypes and misvaluing distort one’s perception of people of color and that these distortions are organizing around a dominant conception for race that plays an important role in the oppression of people of color. I believe understanding racist perception lays a foundation for understanding the moral dimensions of interpersonal (as opposed to structural) racism. (shrink)

I will relate some social and epistemic aspects involved in the conceptual development of the genetic model in the early Molecular Biology. I will use the link between Biology and Physics as a framework, which supports such assumptions, providing new methodologies, but mainly as a framework that provides a model of objectivity developed within Modern Tradition. Finally, I will interpret this relationship from the pragmatist perspective to embrace Rorty’s thesis on «the ontological priority of the social» which implies understanding biology (...) as a part of a general cultural politics. (shrink)