Results for 'Asbj��rn Steglich-Petersen'

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  1. The Epistemology of the Precautionary Principle: Two Puzzles Resolved.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (5):1013-1021.
    In a recent paper in this journal, Carter and Peterson raise two distinctly epistemological puzzles that arise for anyone aspiring to defend the precautionary principle. The first puzzle trades on an application of epistemic contextualism to the precautionary principle; the second puzzle concerns the compatibility of the precautionary principle with the de minimis rule. In this note, I argue that neither puzzle should worry defenders of the precautionary principle. The first puzzle can be shown to be an instance of the (...)
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  2. Philosophical thought experiments as heuristics for theory discovery.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Sara Kier Praëm - 2015 - Synthese 192 (9):2827-2842.
    The growing literature on philosophical thought experiments has so far focused almost exclusively on the role of thought experiments in confirming or refuting philosophical hypotheses or theories. In this paper we draw attention to an additional and largely ignored role that thought experiments frequently play in our philosophical practice: some thought experiments do not merely serve as means for testing various philosophical hypotheses or theories, but also serve as facilitators for conceiving and articulating new ones. As we will put it, (...)
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  3. An Instrumentalist Unification of Zetetic and Epistemic Reasons.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the (...)
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  4. Epistemic instrumentalism, permissibility, and reasons for belief.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2018 - In Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical. Oxford University Press. pp. 260-280.
    Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...)
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  5. How to be a teleologist about epistemic reasons.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2011 - In Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen & Andrew Reisner (eds.), Reasons for Belief. Cambridge University Press. pp. 13--33.
    In this paper I propose a teleological account of epistemic reasons. In recent years, the main challenge for any such account has been to explicate a sense in which epistemic reasons depend on the value of epistemic properties. I argue that while epistemic reasons do not directly depend on the value of epistemic properties, they depend on a different class of reasons which are value based in a direct sense, namely reasons to form beliefs about certain propositions or subject matters. (...)
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  6. Truth as the aim of epistemic justification.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2013 - In Timothy Chan (ed.), The Aim of Belief. Oxford University Press.
    A popular account of epistemic justification holds that justification, in essence, aims at truth. An influential objection against this account points out that it is committed to holding that only true beliefs could be justified, which most epistemologists regard as sufficient reason to reject the account. In this paper I defend the view that epistemic justification aims at truth, not by denying that it is committed to epistemic justification being factive, but by showing that, when we focus on the relevant (...)
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  7. Instrumental reasons for belief: elliptical talk and elusive properties.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Mattias Skipper - 2020 - In Sebastian Schmidt & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), The Ethics of Belief and Beyond. Understanding Mental Normativity. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 109-125.
    Epistemic instrumentalists think that epistemic normativity is just a special kind of instrumental normativity. According to them, you have epistemic reason to believe a proposition insofar as doing so is conducive to certain epistemic goals or aims—say, to believe what is true and avoid believing what is false. Perhaps the most prominent challenge for instrumentalists in recent years has been to explain, or explain away, why one’s epistemic reasons often do not seem to depend on one’s aims. This challenge can (...)
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  8. Higher-Order Defeat and Doxastic Resilience.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2019 - In Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Higher-Order Evidence: New Essays. Oxford University Press.
    It seems obvious that when higher-order evidence makes it rational for one to doubt that one’s own belief on some matter is rational, this can undermine the rationality of that belief. This is known as higher-order defeat. However, despite its intuitive plausibility, it has proved puzzling how higher-order defeat works, exactly. To highlight two prominent sources of puzzlement, higher-order defeat seems to defy being understood in terms of conditionalization; and higher-order defeat can sometimes place agents in what seem like epistemic (...)
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  9. On the roles of false belief and recalcitrant fear in anorexia nervosa.Somogy Varga & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - forthcoming - Mind and Language.
    The DSM-5 highlights two essential psychological features of anorexia nervosa (AN): recalcitrant fear of gaining weight and body image disturbance. Prominent accounts grant false beliefs about body weight and shape a central role in the explanation of AN behavior. In this article, we propose a stronger emphasis on recalcitrant fear. We show that such fear can explain AN behavior without the intermediary of a false belief, and thus without the associated explanatory burdens and conceptual difficulties. We illustrate how shifting the (...)
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  10. Does luck exclude knowledge or certainty?Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2020 - Synthese 197 (6):2387-2397.
    A popular account of luck, with a firm basis in common sense, holds that a necessary condition for an event to be lucky, is that it was suitably improbable. It has recently been proposed that this improbability condition is best understood in epistemic terms. Two different versions of this proposal have been advanced. According to my own proposal :361–377, 2010), whether an event is lucky for some agent depends on whether the agent was in a position to know that the (...)
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  11. Transparency, Doxastic Norms, and the Aim of Belief.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2013 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 32 (3):59-74.
    Many philosophers have sought to account for doxastic and epistemic norms by supposing that belief ‘aims at truth.’ A central challenge for this approach is to articulate a version of the truth-aim that is at once weak enough to be compatible with the many truth-independent influences on belief formation, and strong enough to explain the relevant norms in the desired way. One phenomenon in particular has seemed to require a relatively strong construal of the truth-aim thesis, namely ‘transparency’ in doxastic (...)
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  12. An Instrumentalist Account of How to Weigh Epistemic and Practical Reasons for Belief.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Mattias Skipper - 2019 - Mind 129 (516):1071-1094.
    When one has both epistemic and practical reasons for or against some belief, how do these reasons combine into an all-things-considered reason for or against that belief? The question might seem to presuppose the existence of practical reasons for belief. But we can rid the question of this presupposition. Once we do, a highly general ‘Combinatorial Problem’ emerges. The problem has been thought to be intractable due to certain differences in the combinatorial properties of epistemic and practical reasons. Here we (...)
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  13. Fictional Persuasion and the Nature of Belief.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2017 - In Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Art and Belief. Oxford University Press. pp. 174-193.
    Psychological studies on fictional persuasion demonstrate that being engaged with fiction systematically affects our beliefs about the real world, in ways that seem insensitive to the truth. This threatens to undermine the widely accepted view that beliefs are essentially regulated in ways that tend to ensure their truth, and may tempt various non-doxastic interpretations of the belief-seeming attitudes we form as a result of engaging with fiction. I evaluate this threat, and argue that it is benign. Even if the relevant (...)
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  14. Curiosity and Zetetic Style in ADHD.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Somogy Varga - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.
    While research on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally focused on cognitive and behavioral deficits, there is increasing interest in exploring possible resources associated with the disorder. In this paper, we argue that the attention-patterns associated with ADHD can be understood as expressing an alternative style of inquiry, or “zetetic” style, characterized mainly by a lower barrier for becoming curious and engaging in inquiry, and a weaker disposition to regulate curiosity in response to the cognitive and practical costs associated (...)
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  15. The No Guidance Argument.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2013 - Theoria 79 (1):279-283.
    In a recent article, I criticized Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss's so-called “no guidance argument” against the truth norm for belief, for conflating the conditions under which that norm recommends belief with the psychological state one must be in to apply the norm. In response, Glüer and Wikforss have offered a new formulation of the no guidance argument, which makes it apparent that no such conflation is made. However, their new formulation of the argument presupposes a much too narrow understanding (...)
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  16. Weighing the Aim of Belief Again.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2017 - Logos and Episteme 8 (1):141-145.
    In his influential discussion of the aim of belief, David Owens argues that any talk of such an ‘aim’ is at best metaphorical. In order for the ‘aim’ of belief to be a genuine aim, it must be weighable with other aims in deliberation, but Owens claims that this is impossible. In previous work, I have pointed out that if we look at a broader range of deliberative contexts involving belief, it becomes clear that the putative aim of belief is (...)
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  17. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Recalcitrant Emotion: Relocating the Seat of Irrationality.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Somogy Varga - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology:1-26.
    It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD (Taylor 2022), we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argue instead that the irrationality of OCD is located in the emotions that are (...)
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  18. Why Desire Reasoning is Developmentally Prior to Belief Reasoning.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & John Michael - 2015 - Mind and Language 30 (5):526-549.
    The predominant view in developmental psychology is that young children are able to reason with the concept of desire prior to being able to reason with the concept of belief. We propose an explanation of this phenomenon that focuses on the cognitive tasks that competence with the belief and desire concepts enable young children to perform. We show that cognitive tasks that are typically considered fundamental to our competence with the belief and desire concepts can be performed with the concept (...)
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  19. Knowing the Answer to a Loaded Question.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2015 - Theoria 81 (2):97-125.
    Many epistemologists have been attracted to the view that knowledge-wh can be reduced to knowledge-that. An important challenge to this, presented by Jonathan Schaffer, is the problem of “convergent knowledge”: reductive accounts imply that any two knowledge-wh ascriptions with identical true answers to the questions embedded in their wh-clauses are materially equivalent, but according to Schaffer, there are counterexamples to this equivalence. Parallel to this, Schaffer has presented a very similar argument against binary accounts of knowledge, and thereby in favour (...)
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  20. Body Checking in Anorexia Nervosa: from Inquiry to Habit.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Somogy Varga - forthcoming - Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
    Body checking, characterized by the repeated visual or physical inspection of particular parts of one’s own body (e.g. thighs, waist, or upper arms) is one of the most prominent behaviors associated with eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN). In this paper, we explore the explanatory potential of the Recalcitrant Fear Model of AN (RFM) in relation to body checking. We argue that RFM, when combined with certain plausible auxiliary hypotheses about the cognitive and epistemic roles of emotions, is able to (...)
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  21. Against Essential Mental Normativity Again.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2011 - Dialogue 50 (2):333-346.
    In a recent paper (2008), I presented two arguments against the thesis that intentional states are essentially normative. In this paper, I defend those arguments from two recent responses, one from Nick Zangwill in his (2010), and one from Daniel Laurier in the present volume, and offer improvements of my arguments in light of Laurier’s criticism.
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  22. When Conciliation Frustrates the Epistemic Priorities of Groups.Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2021 - In Fernando Broncano-Berrocal & J. Adam Carter (eds.), The Epistemology of Group Disagreement. Routledge.
    Our aim in this chapter is to draw attention to what we see as a disturbing feature of conciliationist views of disagreement. Roughly put, the trouble is that conciliatory responses to in-group disagreement can lead to the frustration of a group's epistemic priorities: that is, the group's favoured trade-off between the "Jamesian goals" of truth-seeking and error-avoidance. We show how this problem can arise within a simple belief aggregation framework, and draw some general lessons about when the problem is most (...)
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  23. An Instrumentalist Explanation of Pragmatic Encroachment.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    Many have found it plausible that practical circumstances can affect whether someone is in a position to know or rationally believe a proposition. For example, whether it is rational for a person to believe that the bank will be open tomorrow, can depend not only on the person’s evidence, but also on how practically important it is for the person not to be wrong about the bank being open tomorrow. This supposed phenomenon is known as “pragmatic encroachment” on knowledge and (...)
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  24. Explaining the Illusion of Asymmetric Insight.Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen & Mattias Skipper - 2019 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (4):769-786.
    People tend to think that they know others better than others know them. This phenomenon is known as the “illusion of asymmetric insight.” While the illusion has been well documented by a series of recent experiments, less has been done to explain it. In this paper, we argue that extant explanations are inadequate because they either get the explanatory direction wrong or fail to accommodate the experimental results in a sufficiently nuanced way. Instead, we propose a new explanation that does (...)
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  25. Group disagreement: a belief aggregation perspective.Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen - 2019 - Synthese 196 (10):4033-4058.
    The debate on the epistemology of disagreement has so far focused almost exclusively on cases of disagreement between individual persons. Yet, many social epistemologists agree that at least certain kinds of groups are equally capable of having beliefs that are open to epistemic evaluation. If so, we should expect a comprehensive epistemology of disagreement to accommodate cases of disagreement between group agents, such as juries, governments, companies, and the like. However, this raises a number of fundamental questions concerning what it (...)
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  26. Another Defence of Owen’s Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims.Ema Sullivan-Bissett & Paul Noordhof - 2017 - Logos and Episteme 8 (1):147-153.
    David Owens objected to the truth-aim account of belief on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not meet a necessary condition on aims, namely, that aims can be weighed against other aims. If the putative aim of belief cannot be weighed, then belief does not have an aim after all. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen responded to this objection by appeal to other deliberative contexts in which the aim could be weighed, and we argued that this response to (...)
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  27. Propositional Attitudes as Commitments: Unleashing Some Constraints.Alireza Kazemi - 2020 - Dialogue 59 (3):437-457.
    ABSTRACTIn a series of articles, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen and Nick Zangwill argue that, since propositional attitude ascription judgements do not behave like normative judgements in being subject to a priori normative supervenience and the Because Constraint, PAs cannot be constitutively normative.1 I argue that, for a specific version of normativism, according to which PAs are normative commitments, these arguments fail. To this end, I argue that commitments and obligations should be distinguished. Then, I show that the intuitions allegedly governing (...)
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  28. Fictional persuasion, transparency, and the aim of belief.Ema Sullivan-Bissett & Lisa Bortolotti - 2017 - In E. Sullivan-Bissett (ed.), Art and Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 153-73.
    In this chapter we argue that some beliefs present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief, according to which it is constitutive of belief that it is aimed at truth. We draw on empirical literature which shows that subjects form beliefs about the real world when they read fictional narratives, even when those narratives are presented as fiction, and subjects are warned that the narratives may contain falsehoods. We consider Nishi Shah’s teleologist’s dilemma and a response to it (...)
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  29.  40
    What is Metaphysics in Baroque Scotism? Key Passages from Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics (1646–1647).Claus Asbjørn Andersen - 2019 - Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 44:49–71.
    Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics is the single most important work on metaphysics produced in the Scotist school during the Early Modern period. This contribution guides through the work by highlighting a selection of key passages that convey an impression of its historical-literary context, its subject matter, its main motifs and scientific aims, but also its limitations. Especially, we see Mastri emphasizing the theological aspect of theology, though he in the end refrains from exploring this aspect of metaphysics within his (...)
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  30. On the Epistemology of the Precautionary Principle: Reply to Steglich-Petersen.J. Adam Carter & Martin Peterson - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (2):297-304.
    In a recent paper in this journal, we proposed two novel puzzles associated with the precautionary principle. Both are puzzles that materialise, we argue, once we investigate the principle through an epistemological lens, and each constitutes a philosophical hurdle for any proponent of a plausible version of the precautionary principle. Steglich-Petersen claims, also in this journal, that he has resolved our puzzles. In this short note, we explain why we remain skeptical.
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  31. Conceptual fingerprints: Lexical decomposition by means of frames – a neuro-cognitive model.Wiebke Petersen & Markus Werning - 2007 - In U. Priss, S. Polovina & R. Hill (eds.), Conceptual structures: Knowledge architectures for smart applications. Heidelberg: pp. 415-428.
    Frames, i.e., recursive attribute-value structures, are a general format for the decomposition of lexical concepts. Attributes assign unique values to objects and thus describe functional relations. Concepts can be classified into four groups: sortal, individual, relational and functional concepts. The classification is reflected by different grammatical roles of the corresponding nouns. The paper aims at a cognitively adequate decomposition, particularly, of sortal concepts by means of frames. Using typed feature structures, an explicit formalism for the characterization of cognitive frames is (...)
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  32. Utilitarian epistemology.Steve Petersen - 2013 - Synthese 190 (6):1173-1184.
    Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value theory: (...)
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  33. In Defence of the Hivemind Society.John Danaher & Steve Petersen - 2020 - Neuroethics 14 (2):253-267.
    The idea that humans should abandon their individuality and use technology to bind themselves together into hivemind societies seems both farfetched and frightening – something that is redolent of the worst dystopias from science fiction. In this article, we argue that these common reactions to the ideal of a hivemind society are mistaken. The idea that humans could form hiveminds is sufficiently plausible for its axiological consequences to be taken seriously. Furthermore, far from being a dystopian nightmare, the hivemind society (...)
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  34. Intеrnеt Ассеss fоr Сhildrеn’s Оnlinе Sсhооling during thе СОVID-19 Pаndеmiс аnd Pаrеntаl Mеntаl Hеаlth.Nguyеn My - 2019 - WP.
    Thе оutbrеаk оf thе соrоnаvirus disеаsе 2019 (СОVID-19) саusing milliоns оf pеоplе tо bе infесtеd hаs pоsеd mаjоr publiс hеаlth аnd gоvеrnаnсе сhаllеngеs. This study еvаluаtеs thе еxtеnt tо whiсh thе unаvаilаbility оf intеrnеt fоr сhildrеn tо lеаrn оnlinе during thе pаndеmiс аffесts pаrеntаl psyсhоlоgiсаl wеllbеing. Wе find thаt pаrеnts hаving nо intеrnеt fоr thеir сhildrеn tо lеаrn оnlinе during tо thе pаndеmiс аrе 40.37, 47.22, 43.68, аnd 46.90 pеrсеntаgе pоints mоrе likеly tо fееl аnxiоus, wоrriеd, displеаsеd, аnd dеprеssеd еvеry (...)
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  35. Epistemic norms of assertion and action.Mikkel Gerken & Esben Nedenskov Petersen - 2020 - In Sanford Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    The purpose of the present chapter is to survey the work on epistemic norms of action, practical deliberation and assertion and to consider how these norms are interrelated. On a more constructive note, we will argue that if there are important similarities between the epistemic norms of action and assertion, it has important ramifications for the debates over speech acts and harm. Thus, we hope that the chapter will indicate how thinking about assertions as a speech act can benefit from (...)
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  36.  24
    Late Modern Subjectivity.Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen & Bert Bergh - 2017 - London: Routledge.
    This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders of (...)
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  37. Designing People to Serve.Steve Petersen - 2011 - In Patrick Lin, George Bekey & Keith Abney (eds.), Robot Ethics. MIT Press.
    I argue that, contrary to intuition, it would be both possible and permissible to design people - whether artificial or organic - who by their nature desire to do tasks we find unpleasant.
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  38. Superintelligence as superethical.Steve Petersen - 2017 - In Patrick Lin, Keith Abney & Ryan Jenkins (eds.), Robot Ethics 2. 0: New Challenges in Philosophy, Law, and Society. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 322-337.
    Nick Bostrom's book *Superintelligence* outlines a frightening but realistic scenario for human extinction: true artificial intelligence is likely to bootstrap itself into superintelligence, and thereby become ideally effective at achieving its goals. Human-friendly goals seem too abstract to be pre-programmed with any confidence, and if those goals are *not* explicitly favorable toward humans, the superintelligence will extinguish us---not through any malice, but simply because it will want our resources for its own purposes. In response I argue that things might not (...)
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  39. Donald Davidson: Philosophy of Language.Bjørn T. Ramberg - 1989 - New York, NY, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25 years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best understood as an ongoing attempt to purge semantics of theoretical reifications. Seen in this light the recent attack on the notion of language itself emerges as a natural development of his Quinian scepticism towards "meanings" and his rejections of reference-based semantic theories. Linguistic understanding is, for Davidson, essentially dynamic, arising (...)
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  40. Machines learning values.Steve Petersen - 2020 - In S. Matthew Liao (ed.), Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Whether it would take one decade or several centuries, many agree that it is possible to create a *superintelligence*---an artificial intelligence with a godlike ability to achieve its goals. And many who have reflected carefully on this fact agree that our best hope for a "friendly" superintelligence is to design it to *learn* values like ours, since our values are too complex to program or hardwire explicitly. But the value learning approach to AI safety faces three particularly philosophical puzzles: first, (...)
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  41. Only Human: a book review of The Turing Guide. [REVIEW]Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen - forthcoming - Notices of the American Mathematical Society 66 (4).
    This is a review of The Turing Guide (2017), written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others. The review includes a new sociological approach to the problem of computability in physics.
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  42. The ethics of robot servitude.Stephen Petersen - 2007 - Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 19 (1):43-54.
    Assume we could someday create artificial creatures with intelligence comparable to our own. Could it be ethical use them as unpaid labor? There is very little philosophical literature on this topic, but the consensus so far has been that such robot servitude would merely be a new form of slavery. Against this consensus I defend the permissibility of robot servitude, and in particular the controversial case of designing robots so that they want to serve human ends. A typical objection to (...)
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  43. Scientists as experts: A distinct role?Torbjørn Gundersen - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 69:52-59.
    The role of scientists as experts is crucial to public policymaking. However, the expert role is contested and unsettled in both public and scholarly discourse. In this paper, I provide a systematic account of the role of scientists as experts in policymaking by examining whether there are any normatively relevant differences between this role and the role of scientists as researchers. Two different interpretations can be given of how the two roles relate to each other. The separability view states that (...)
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  44.  56
    Multiple patterns, multiple explanations.Steve Petersen - 2023 - In Jonah N. Schupbach & David H. Glass (eds.), Conjunctive Explanations: The Nature, Epistemology, and Psychology of Explanatory Multiplicity. New York: Routledge. pp. 38-48.
    A "patternist" approach to explanation seeks to formalize unificationism using notions from algorithmic information theory. Among other advantages, this account provides both a rigorous sense of how data can admit multiple explanations, and a rigorous sense of how some of those explanations can conjoin, while others compete.
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  45. Is it good for them too? Ethical concern for the sexbots.Steve Petersen - 2017 - In John Danaher & Neil McArthur (eds.), Robot Sex: Social Implications and Ethical. Cambridge, USA: MIT Press. pp. 155-171.
    In this chapter I'd like to focus on a small corner of sexbot ethics that is rarely considered elsewhere: the question of whether and when being a sexbot might be good---or bad---*for the sexbot*. You might think this means you are in for a dry sermon about the evils of robot slavery. If so, you'd be wrong; the ethics of robot servitude are far more complicated than that. In fact, if the arguments here are right, designing a robot to serve (...)
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  46. Stirb und Werde: The Creation of Thinking in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy.Torbjørn Eftestøl - 2016 - Cosmos and History 12 (1):67-86.
    What does it mean to think? In the following article I will show Gilles Deleuze’s answer to this question. According to him ’to think is to create — there is no other creation — but to create is first of all to engender ' thinking ' in thought ’. To understand what this means, to grasp the radical nature of such an event, we need to see how for Deleuze to engender thinking in thought means a repetition of that genetic (...)
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  47. Composition as pattern.Steve Petersen - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (5):1119-1139.
    I argue for patternism, a new answer to the question of when some objects compose a whole. None of the standard principles of composition comfortably capture our natural judgments, such as that my cat exists and my table exists, but there is nothing wholly composed of them. Patternism holds, very roughly, that some things compose a whole whenever together they form a “real pattern”. Plausibly we are inclined to acknowledge the existence of my cat and my table but not of (...)
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  48. Transparent quantification into hyperpropositional contexts de re.Duží Marie & Bjørn Jespersen - 2012 - Logique & Analyse 55 (220):513-554.
    This paper is the twin of (Duží and Jespersen, in submission), which provides a logical rule for transparent quantification into hyperprop- ositional contexts de dicto, as in: Mary believes that the Evening Star is a planet; therefore, there is a concept c such that Mary be- lieves that what c conceptualizes is a planet. Here we provide two logical rules for transparent quantification into hyperpropositional contexts de re. (As a by-product, we also offer rules for possible- world propositional contexts.) One (...)
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  49. Toward an algorithmic metaphysics.Steve Petersen - 2013 - In David Dowe (ed.), Algorithmic Probability and Friends: Bayesian Prediction and Artificial Intelligence. Springer. pp. 306-317.
    There are writers in both metaphysics and algorithmic information theory (AIT) who seem to think that the latter could provide a formal theory of the former. This paper is intended as a step in that direction. It demonstrates how AIT might be used to define basic metaphysical notions such as *object* and *property* for a simple, idealized world. The extent to which these definitions capture intuitions about the metaphysics of the simple world, times the extent to which we think the (...)
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  50. Age change in healthcare settings: a reply to Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen.Joona Räsänen - 2020 - Journal of Medical Ethics 46 (9):636-637.
    Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen discuss my ‘Moral case for legal age change’ in their article ‘Age change, official age and fairness in health’. They argue that in important healthcare settings (such as distributing vital organs for dying patients), the state should treat people on the basis of their chronological age because chronological age is a better proxy for what matters from the point of view of justice than adjusted official age. While adjusted legal age should not be used in deciding (...)
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