El concepto de desarrollo humano del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) surge en 1990 como una crítica a la consideración de la economía como el fin último de los esfuerzos del desarrollo. En la visión del PNUD, la economía es considerada un fin relativo, es decir, un fin y un medio para el desarrollo humano. Al considerar, por su parte, el fin del desarrollo humano, este es identificado con el ensanchamiento de las opciones y libertades de (...) que gozan los individuos. En este sentido, este concepto de desarrollo humano hace alusión a una práctica política más que a un entendimiento ético-ontológico del ser humano, evitando referirse a desarrollo humano entendido como un desarrollo del ser humano. Este artículo explora los antecedentes del concepto del desarrollo humano del PNUD y los fines que consideran estos enfoques previos. Se observa que la consideración subjetivista del PNUD proviene de la teoría de Amartya Sen, quien queda sujeto a la crítica objetivista de Martha Nussbaum al no considera un fin objetivo para los asuntos humanos, crítica que puede de igual manera aplicarse al concepto de desarrollo humano del PNUD. (shrink)

A ansiedade gerada pela possível criação de inteligência artificial geral, algo profetizado desde a fundação do campo de pesquisa (i.e., Dartmouth's Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence) (MCCARTHY et al., 1955), é algo comumente investigado dentro dos círculos transhumanistas e singularistas (KURZWEIL, 2005; CHALMERS, 2010; TEGMARK, 2016; 2017; CORRÊA; DE OLIVEIRA, 2021). Por exemplo, em seu livro “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies”, Nick Bostrom (2014) apresenta uma série de argumentos para justificar a ideia de que precisamos ser cautelosos em relação (...) a criação de inteligência artificial avançada ou inteligência artificial geral. Contudo, muito dos argumentos levantados, em suas versões originais (i.e., convergência instrumental e ortogonalidade (OMOHUNDRO, 2008), são baseados em noções “vagas” de conceitos complexos (i.e., “inteligência”, “racionalidade”, “agência”). O objetivo deste resumo (apresentação) será introduzir o leitor/ouvinte ao campo de Segurança da Inteligência Artificial. Nesse campo, questões como o “Problema de controle” (i.e., evitar construir inadvertidamente uma inteligência artificial geral que prejudicará seus criadores) e o “Problema de Alinhamento” (i.e., criar sistemas de inteligência artificial que permaneçam seguros mesmo quando atuando de forma autônoma no ambiente real), que são questões muitas vezes debatidas apenas dentro da Filosofia ou Ficção Científica, ganham um aspecto muito mais real e formal (AMODEI et al., 2016, HUBINGER et al., 2019). A criação de alguns dos modelos de inteligência artificial mais avançados já criados (e.g., AlphaGo, GPT-3) (SILVER el al., 2016; BROWN et al., 2020), está ligado a utilização de dois paradigmas da área de Aprendizagem de Máquina, i.e., Aprendizagem Profunda e Aprendizagem por Reforço. Dentro deste contexto, podemos definir “um sistema autônomo inteligente” como “um sistema que implementa uma política ótima (tecnicamente "ϵ-greedy optimal") para alguma função de recompensa” (ORSEAU et al., 2018). Podemos também definir tais sistemas como “maximizadores de utilidade esperada” (VON NEUMANN; MORGENSTERN, 1944). Um sistema de IA maximizando uma função de recompensa (i.e., objetivo) especificada erroneamente pode vir a causar danos reais quando interagindo no ambiente real, seja por erros de especificação (i.e., Efeitos Colaterais Negativos, Hackeamento de Recompensa, Interrupção Segura), ou quando o domínio de treinamento é diferente do domínio de implantação (i.e., Exploração Segura e Mudança de Domínio). Ao mesmo tempo, especificar objetivos complexos (e.g., preferências e valores humanos) é uma tarefa extremamente complexa, e quando visamos a possibilidade de inteligência artificial avançada agindo no mundo real, é imperativo que tais sistemas estejam: (1) alinhados com nossos objetivos; e (2) desenvolvidos com um design que evite os problemas citados acima. Contudo, tais problemas permanecem em aberto. Por fim, gostaria de ressaltar que no cerne desta problemática, não temos apenas problemas técnicos de aprendizagem de máquina, mas uma importante questão de cunho “Moral”: “O que é a coisa ‘certa” a fazer”? “Qual o objetivo correto a ser perseguido”? “Como podemos especificar isso”? Perguntas como essas prometem um fértil campo para pesquisas interdisciplinares envolvendo inteligência artificial, aprendizagem de máquina, ciências da computação e filosofia moral. (shrink)

One of the strands of the Transhumanist movement, Singulitarianism, studies the possibility that high-level artificial intelligence may be created in the future, debating ways to ensure that the interaction between human society and advanced artificial intelligence can occur safely and beneficially. But how can we guarantee this safe interaction? Are there any indications that a Singularity may be on the horizon? In trying to answer these questions, We'll make a small introduction to the area of security research in artificial intelligence. (...) We'll review some of the current paradigms in the development of autonomous intelligent systems and evidence that we can use to prospect the coming of a possible technological Singularity. Finally, we will present a reflection using the COVID-19 pandemic, something that showed that our biggest problem in managing existential risks is our lack of coordination skills as a global society. (shrink)

The AI Robotics Ethics Society (AIRES) is a non-profit organization founded in 2018 by Aaron Hui to promote awareness and the importance of ethical implementation and regulation of AI. AIRES is now an organization with chapters at universities such as UCLA (Los Angeles), USC (University of Southern California), Caltech (California Institute of Technology), Stanford University, Cornell University, Brown University, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). AIRES at PUCRS is the first international chapter of AIRES, and (...) as such, we are committed to promoting and enhancing the AIRES Mission. Our mission is to focus on educating the AI leaders of tomorrow in ethical principles to ensure that AI is created ethically and responsibly. As there are still few proposals for how we should implement ethical principles and normative guidelines in the practice of AI system development, the goal of this work is to try to bridge this gap between discourse and praxis. Between abstract principles and technical implementation. In this work, we seek to introduce the reader to the topic of AI Ethics and Safety. At the same time, we present several tools to help developers of intelligent systems develop "good" models. This work is a developing guide published in English and Portuguese. Contributions and suggestions are welcome. (shrink)

Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...) an overview of the debate on the ethics of partiality through the lens of the domains of permissible and required partiality. After outlining the conceptual space, I first discuss agent-centred moral options that concern permissions not to do what would be impartially optimal. I then focus on required partiality, which concerns associative duties that go beyond our general duties to others and require us to give special priority to people who are close to us. I discuss some notable features of associative duties and the two main objections that have been raised against them: the Voluntarist and the Distributive objections. I then turn to the justification of partiality, focusing on underivative approaches and reasons-based frameworks. I discuss the reductionism and non-reductionism debate: the question whether partiality is derivative or fundamental. I survey arguments for ‘the big three’, according to which partiality is justified by appeal to the special value of either projects, personal relationships, or individuals. I conclude by discussing four newly emerging areas in the debate: normative transitions of various personal relationships, relationships with AI, epistemic partiality, and negative partiality, which concerns the negative analogue of our positive personal relationships. (shrink)

Bioethicists’ views diverge public opinion on various ethical issues, particularly in healthcare. For instance, bioethicists generally oppose payment for organs and advocate for preventing death at any age, whereas the public is more supportive of organ payment and prioritizing younger patients. I offer four arguments on how best to view this divergence. (a) Bioethicists’ specialized training, objectivity, and reliance on research often lead to views that differ from those of the public, which may be less informed and more influenced by (...) biases. (b) Further, divergence between expert and public opinion is a normal and sometimes necessary aspect of bioethics. Divergence can lead to more informed and progressive ethical practices. (c) While public input is valuable, achieving meaningful engagement is difficult due to varying values, risk perceptions, and socioeconomic circumstances. Effective bioethics would balance expert knowledge with public input, aiming for policies that are both scientifically sound and democratically legitimate. (d) Maintaining public trust in bioethics does not require full alignment with public opinion. Instead, bioethicists should focus on educating the public and incorporating informed public perspectives into their analysis and recommendations. (shrink)

Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the development of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance is not made prudently and critically-reflexively, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area have developed a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of AI for the preservation of humanity and the environment. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research (...) arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents and systems, and at the same time specifying what we really want such systems to do, especially when we look for the possibility of intelligent agents acting in several domains over the long term. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop human moral values simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy shows that the human experience of being-in-the-world in several aspects is not well represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive method, especially in regards to the question of learning values. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI. (shrink)

Una interpretación aristotélica del concepto de desarrollo humano propone como fin último del desarrollo la eudaimonía o felicidad, esto es, la plena realización de la capacidad eudemónica en el alma humana. Para esto se requiere del desarrollo de sus partes racional e irracional, lo que demanda como medios una ética y una dianoética del desarrollo, referidos a los modos de ser de las respectivas partes del alma. La interacción entre ambas partes genera siempre un ciclo virtuoso, existiendo la posibilidad de (...) influencias externas a través de la educación, la costumbre, la economía, la legislación y la política. -/- An Aristotelian approach of the concept of human development proposes eudaimonía or happiness as the ultimate goal of development, that is, the full realization of the eudemonic capacity in the human soul. For this, the development of its rational and irrational parts is required, which in turn requires an ethics and dianoethics of development as means, referring to the characters of the respective parts of the soul. The interaction between both parts always generates a virtuous cycle, with the possibility of external influences through education, custom, economics, legislation and politics. (shrink)

Filósofos como Marcuse han subrayado las propiedades liberadoras del quehacer artístico. Pero si hemos de pensar el arte como el Gran Rechazo, es necesario mostrar qué rechaza el arte y con qué busca sustituirlo. Respecto a estas preguntas, existen dos respuestas antagónicas. Mientras una busca en la experiencia artística rechazar lo dado en nombre de una verdad intemporal, la otra también reniega de lo dado, pero admite el carácter provisorio de toda verdad. Aunque en apariencia sutil, esta distinción es sustancial. (...) A partir de una lectura de Platón, muestro por qué en la primera posición no hay cabida para lo humano, y por qué de ella se desprenden implicaciones totalitarias. Para caracterizar a la segunda posición, me sirvo de la concepción estética de Octavio Paz y de la propuesta escultórica de Alexander Calder. Ambas propuestas permiten conciliar la insatisfacción que palpita en el arte con la alteridad que caracteriza a lo humano. (shrink)

Collected essays consider points of affinity and friction between Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, their life (...) trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, “sparks will fly.” Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work. (shrink)

What does Cyberpunk and AI Ethics have to do with each other? Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that explores the post-human relationships between human experience and technology. One similarity between AI Ethics and Cyberpunk literature is that both seek a dialogue in which the reader may inquire about the future and the ethical and social problems that our technological advance may bring upon society. In recent years, an increasing number of ethical matters involving AI have been pointed and (...) debated, and several ethical principles and guides have been suggested as governance policies for the tech industry. However, would this be the role of AI Ethics? To serve as a soft and ambiguous version of the law? I would like to promote in this article a more Cyberpunk way of doing AI Ethics, whit a more anarchic way of governance. In this study, I will seek to expose some of the deficits of the underlying power structures of our society, and suggest that AI governance be subject to public opinion, so that ‘good AI’ can become ‘good AI for all’. (shrink)

Kyle Fritz and Daniel Miller’s reply to my article helpfully clarifies their position and our main points of disagreement. Their view is that those who blame hypocritically lack the right to blame for a violation of some moral norm N in virtue of having an unfair disposition to blame others, but not themselves, for violations of N. This view raises two key questions. First, are there instances of hypocritical blame that do not involve an unfair differential blaming disposition? Second, if (...) the answer to the first question is Yes, do hypocritical blamers of this kind lack the right to blame? In this paper, I argue that the answer to the first question is Yes. Given this, Fritz and Miller’s account faces serious problems regardless of whether the answer to the second question is Yes or No. (shrink)

In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely accepted Bayesian norms is (...) sufficient to identify a normatively privileged updating procedure for this kind of learning. Along the way, we justify a privileged formalization of the notion of ‘epistemic conservativity’, offer a new analysis of the Judy Benjamin problem, and emphasize the distinction between interpreting the content of new evidence and updating one’s beliefs on the basis of that content. (shrink)

Parenting our biological children is a centrally important matter, but how, if it all, can it be justified? According to a contemporary influential line of thinking, the acquisition by parents of a moral right to parent their biological children should be grounded by appeal to the value of the intimate emotional relationship that gestation facilitates between a newborn and a gestational procreator. I evaluate two arguments in defence of this proposal and argue that both are unconvincing.

Hypocrisy is a ubiquitous feature of moral and political life, and accusations of hypocrisy a ubiquitous feature of moral and political discourse. Yet it has been curiously under-theorized in analytic philosophy. Fortunately, the last decade has seen a boomlet of articles that address hypocrisy in order to explain and justify conditions on the so-called “standing” to blame (Wallace 2010; Friedman 2013; Bell 2013; Todd 2017; Herstein 2017; Roadevin 2018; Fritz and Miller 2018). Nevertheless, much of this more recent literature does (...) not adequately address the question, “what is hypocrisy?” In this paper, I develop and defend an account of hypocrisy as vicious, value-expressing inconsistency. I show how this account solves some traditional and some novel philosophical puzzles concerning hypocrisy and affords a deeper understanding of the features of hypocrisy emphasized by other prominent accounts. (shrink)

O pensamento axiomático de Hilbert foi um influente modelo filosófico que motivou movimentos como o positivismo no início do século XX, em diversas áreas dentro, e fora, da filosofia, como a epistemologia e a metamatemática. O formalismo axiomático fornece, através do uso da lógica de primeira ordem, uma importante fundação para modelos lógicos formais, o que, para Hilbert, representaria um modelo universal de investigação empírica, não só para a matemática, mas para todas as ciências naturais, e pela visão positivista, também (...) a filosofia. Contudo, no caso mais específico da matemática, existe uma certa descomunicação entre os fundamentos da matemática e sua prática, onde métodos informais, ainda promovem elegantes ferramentas para matemáticos de diversas áreas, inclusive, quando certos paradigmas tentam ser quebrados. É exatamente esta assincronia entre os fundamentos da matemática, e a sua prática que iremos investigar neste estudo. Lawvere, insatisfeito com a “fundação não fundamentada” do método axiomático proposto por Hilbert, e inspirado pela dialética hegeliana, procurou revisar os fundamentos da matemática pela lógica categórica e a Teoria das Categorias. Vemos neste estudo, como as interpretações de Lawvere de conceitos da lógica de Hegel, como, equivalência, unidade dos opostos e “aufheben”, permitem uma nova abordagem matemática, com um posicionamento filosófico que procura, de certa forma, transcender a dicotomia entre escolas analíticas e continentais. Lawvere trata a lógica objetiva de Hegel como uma possível estratégia para resolver o problema de aterramento lógico em metafísica. Por fim, vemos como as contribuições de Lawvere para a axiomatização da lógica categórica tiveram impactos inovadores na metamatemática, especialmente no desenvolvimento das fundações univalentes de Vladimir Voevodsky. (shrink)

Which principles govern the transmission of reasons from ends to means? Some philosophers have suggested a liberal transmission principle, according to which agents have an instrumental reason for an action whenever this action is a means for them to do what they have non-instrumental reason to do. In this paper, we (i) discuss the merits and demerits of the liberal transmission principle, (ii) argue that there are good reasons to reject it, and (iii) present an alternative, less liberal transmission principle, (...) which allows us to accommodate those phenomena that seem to support the liberal transmission principle while avoiding its problems. (shrink)

It is often thought that traditional recidivism prediction tools used in criminal sentencing, though biased in many ways, can straightforwardly avoid one particularly pernicious type of bias: direct racial discrimination. They can avoid this by excluding race from the list of variables employed to predict recidivism. A similar approach could be taken to the design of newer, machine learning-based (ML) tools for predicting recidivism: information about race could be withheld from the ML tool during its training phase, ensuring that the (...) resulting predictive model does not use race as an explicit predictor. However, if race is correlated with measured recidivism in the training data, the ML tool may ‘learn’ a perfect proxy for race. If such a proxy is found, the exclusion of race would do nothing to weaken the correlation between risk (mis)classifications and race. Is this a problem? We argue that, on some explanations of the wrongness of discrimination, it is. On these explanations, the use of an ML tool that perfectly proxies race would (likely) be more wrong than the use of a traditional tool that imperfectly proxies race. Indeed, on some views, use of a perfect proxy for race is plausibly as wrong as explicit racial profiling. We end by drawing out four implications of our arguments. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to present and defend a new argument for rights contributionism – the view that the notion of a moral claim-right is a contributory (or pro tanto) rather than overall normative notion. The argument is an inference to the best explanation: it is argued that (i) there are contributory moral factors that contrast with standard moral reasons by way of having a number of formal properties that are characteristic of rights, even though they (...) can be overridden, and (ii) that this is best explained by a view that takes these factors to correlate with rights. The second aim is to show that the truth of rights contributionism matters for normative ethics. More specifically, it is argued that rights contributionism clears the way for deontologists to justify the pre-theoretically plausible verdict that we have a duty to save the greater number in so-called Taurek scenarios – scenarios in which we have to choose between saving either a greater or a smaller number of different people. The chapter offers a novel and distinctively deontological explanation of this verdict that is based on the assumption that everyone has a pro tanto right to be saved in a Taurek scenario. (shrink)

A theory of blameworthiness must answer two fundamental questions. First, what makes a person blameworthy when they act? Second, what makes a person blameworthy after the time of action? Two main answers have been given to the second question. According to interminability theorists, blameworthiness necessarily doesn’t even diminish over time. Terminability theorists deny this. In this paper, I argue against interminability and in favour of terminability. After clarifying the debate about whether blameworthiness is interminable or terminable, I argue there’s no (...) positive case for interminability. I then respond to three objections to terminability. In doing so, I clarify the nature of blame, self-blame, and posthumous blame. I also give theoretical reasons in favour of the view that a person’s blameworthiness for a minor wrong can not only diminish but also cease completely. (shrink)

In recent years, a new generation of activists has reinvigorated debate over the public commemorative landscape. While this debate is in no way limited to statues, it frequently crystallizes around public representations of historical figures who expressed support for the oppression of certain groups or contributed to their past or present oppression. In this paper, I consider what should be done about such representations. A number of philosophers have articulated arguments for modifying or removing public monuments. Joanna Burch-Brown (2017) grounds (...) her argument for removal in what I call the “honorific” function of such representations—the ways in which they express and tend to cultivate admiration for their subjects. In the first two sections of the paper, I develop a novel argument for modifying these representations based on this insight. I argue that leaving such representations unmodified in the public space tends to undermine the dignity of members of oppressed groups as well as their assurance that society and government are committed to their rights and constitutional entitlements. In the paper’s third section, I develop a “balancing test” for determining whether the relevant moral and pragmatic considerations favor making a particular representation inaccessible to the public, or recontextualizing it for public consumption. Unlike some of the existing philosophical treatments of honorific representations that focus on particular monuments, this balancing test is designed for general application to any honorific representation that satisfies the presumptive case for modification. To conclude, I offer some reasons why weak forms of recontextualization that do not involve altering institutional context may often be an insufficient remedy for the problems I describe. (shrink)

John Broome argues that rationality cannot consist in reasons-responsiveness since rationality supervenes on the mind, while reasons-responsiveness does not supervene on the mind. I here defend this conception of rationality by way of defending the assumption that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind. Given the many advantages of an analysis of rationality in terms of reasons-responsiveness, and in light of independent considerations in favour of the view that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, we should take seriously the backup view, a hypothesis (...) that explains why reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind even though paradigmatic reasons are external facts. I argue that Broome’s objections to the backup view, as well as his more general objection to the thesis that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, do not succeed. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a justification of punishment which can be endorsed by free will skeptics, and which can also be defended against the "using persons as mere means" objection. Free will skeptics must reject retributivism, that is, the view that punishment is just because criminals deserve to suffer based on their actions. Retributivists often claim that theirs is the only justification on which punishment is constrained by desert, and suppose that non-retributive justifications must therefore endorse (...) treating the people punished as mere means to social ends. Retributivists typically presuppose a monolithic conception of desert: they assume that action-based desert is the only kind of desert. But there are also personhood-based desert claims, that is, desert claims which depend not on facts about our actions, but instead on the more abstract fact that we are persons. Since personhood-based desert claims do not depend on facts about our actions, they do not depend on moral responsibility, so free will skeptics can appeal to them just as well as retributivists. What people deserve based on the mere fact of their personhood is to be treated as they would rationally consent to be treated if all they had in view was the mere fact of their personhood. We can work out the implications of this view for punishment by developing a hypothetical consent justification in which we select principles of punishment in the Rawlsian original position, so long as we are careful not to smuggle in the retributivist assumption that it is under our control whether we end up as criminals or as law-abiding citizens once we raise the veil of ignorance. (shrink)

Para comemorarmos o centenário do patrono da Educação Brasileira, Paulo Reglus Neves Freire, iremos neste breve estudo propor um diálogo entre a pedagogia libertária de Freire e algumas princípios filosóficos que a fundamentam. Inicialmente, investigamos a trajetória histórica do pedagogo nordestino, e os momentos mais marcantes de sua vida cosmopolita. Em segundo, apresentaremos alguns dos principais alicerces de sua metodologia pedagógica, contudo, dada a vasta obra publicada por Freire, qualquer breve revisão será fadada em apenas ser um breve vislumbre da (...) filosofia e pedagogia freireana. Por fim, iremos explorar algumas das origens filosóficas e políticas do conceito de pedagogia libertária, e como essas origens podem ser ligadas a filosofia Anarquista, dado a algumas semelhanças evidentes. A crítica a autoridade injustificada, a amorosa crença do caráter social e solidário do indivíduo humano, e um forte defesa da emancipação humana, algo que só pode ser alcançado através da busca pela liberdade e autonomia do sujeito. Tais paralelos levam à conclusão de que se a pedagogia libertária é um ato de amor, a filosofia libertária também deve ser, pois, ambas se nutrem da mesma fonte, e almejam o mesmo lugar: a emancipação humana. (shrink)

According to Milner and Goodale’s dual visual systems (DVS) theory, a division obtains between visual consciousness and motor action, in that the visual system producing conscious vision (the ventral stream) is distinct from the one guiding action (the dorsal stream). That there would be this division is often taken (by Andy Clark and others) to undermine the folk view on how consciousness and action relate. However, even if this division obtains, this leaves open the possibility that con- scious ventral information (...) is often transmitted to the uncon- scious dorsal stream and then used to guide action, a possibility seeming to preserve a significant role for consciousness in action. This article assesses this possibility. In course of doing so, we will review those arguments recently having been made against the DVS view on how visual consciousness and action relate (ones due to, e.g., Briscoe and Schwenkler, or Schenk and McIntosh). What we will find is that, if we properly analyze the data upon which these arguments are based, we are still left with the impression that the DVS view is largely correct; i.e., it is only rarely that visual experience guides action. (shrink)

How can someone reconcile the desire to eat meat, and a tendency toward vegetarian ideals? How should we reconcile contradictory moral values? How can we aggregate different moral theories? How individual preferences can be fairly aggregated to represent a will, norm, or social decision? Conflict resolution and preference aggregation are tasks that intrigue philosophers, economists, sociologists, decision theorists, and many other scholars, being a rich interdisciplinary area for research. When trying to solve questions about moral uncertainty a meta understanding of (...) the concept of normativity can help us to develop strategies to deal with norms themselves. 2nd-order normativity, or norms about norms, is a hierarchical way to think about how to combine many different normative structures and preferences into a single coherent decision. That is what metanormativity is all about, a way to answer: what should we do when we don’t know what to do? In this study, we will review a decision-making strategy dealing with moral uncertainty, Maximization of Expected Choice-Worthiness. This strategy, proposed by William MacAskill, allows for the aggregation and inter-theoretical comparison of different normative structures, cardinal theories, and ordinal theories. In this study, we will exemplify the metanormative methods proposed by MacAskill, using has an example, a series of vegetarian dilemmas. Given the similarity to this metanormative strategy to expected utility theory, we will also show that it is possible to integrate both models to address decision-making problems in situations of empirical and moral uncertainty. We believe that this kind of ethical-mathematical formalism can be useful to help develop strategies to better aggregate moral preferences and solve conflicts. (shrink)

According to an attractive and widely held view, all practical reasons are explained in terms of the (instrumental or final) value of the action supported by the reason. I argue that this theory is incompatible with plausible assumptions about the practical reasons that correspond to certain moral rights, including the right to a promised action and the right to an exclusive use of one’s property. The argument is an explanatory rather than extensional one: while the actions supported by the relevant (...) reasons (e.g. keeping a valid promise or respecting property) can be argued to have a certain kind of value, I argue that this value presupposes a moral right, and therefore cannot explain the reason. Reflection on such cases suggest the conclusion that reasons that are subject to normative powers are generally not value-based. This also has important implications for the dialectic between ‘value-first’ and ‘reasons-first’ approaches to normativity. (shrink)

When viewing a circular coin rotated in depth, it fills an elliptical region of the distal scene. For some, this appears to generate a two-fold experience, in which one sees the coin as simultaneously circular (in light of its 3D shape) and elliptical (in light of its 2D ‘perspectival shape’ or ‘p-shape’). An energetic philosophical debate asks whether the latter p-shapes are genuinely presented in perceptual experience (as ‘perspectivalists’ argue) or if, instead, this appearance is somehow derived or inferred from (...) experience (as ‘anti-perspectivalists’ argue). This debate, however, has largely turned on introspection. In a recent study, Morales, Bax, and Firestone (2020) aim to provide the first empirical test of this question. They asked subjects to find an elliptical coin seen face-on from a search array that also included a circular coin seen either face-on or at an angle. They found that subjects reacted more slowly when the distracting circle was seen at an angle, such that it’s p-shape matched that of the target ellipse. From this, they concluded that the similar p-shape between the ellipse and circle constituted a phenomenal similarity between the two, and thus that perspectivalism is true. We show that these results can also be explained by pre-attentive guidance by unconscious representations (in what follows, just “unconscious pre-attentive guidance”) and that this explanation is at least as plausible as one from phenomenal similarity. Thus, we conclude that the experiment does not support perspectivalism over anti-perspectivalism. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 131-136, June 2022.

According to epistemic reductionism about practical reasons, facts about practical reasons can be reduced to facts about evidence for ought-judgements. We argue that this view misconstrues practical conflicts. At least some conflicts between practical reasons put us in a position to know that an action ϕ is optional, i.e. that we neither ought to perform nor ought to refrain from performing the action. By understanding conflicts of practical reasons as conflicts of evidence about what one ought to do, epistemic reductionism (...) fails to account for this. In conflict cases in which ϕ-ing is optional, epistemic reductionism suggests that we have equally strong evidence for and against assuming that we ought to ϕ, and thus cannot be in a position to know that it is not the case that we ought to ϕ. This is a serious flaw. (shrink)

Sceptical theists undermine the argument from evil by claiming that our ability to distinguish between justified and unjustified evil is weak enough that we must take seriously the possibility that all evil is justified. However, I argue that this claim leads to a dilemma: either our judgements regarding unjustified evil are reliable enough that the problem of evil remains a problem, or our judgements regarding unjustified evil are so unreliable that it would be misguided to use them in our decision-making. (...) The first horn undermines theism, while the second undermines our moral decision-making. Thus, sceptical theism is problematic. (shrink)

El desarrollo humano es, en el contexto de los estudios del desarrollo internacional, un concepto difundido a partir de 1990 por el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD). Este artículo propone una interpretación alternativa del concepto de desarrollo humano que resuelve algunas inconsistencias producidas por la confluencia de las distintas corrientes teóricas que dieron origen al concepto. La nueva interpretación propuesta proviene de los aportes del enfoque aristotélico de Martha Nussbaum y, más directamente, de la antropología aristotélica (...) y las nociones de acto y potencia. Se argumenta que el desarrollo humano puede ser entendido como el cambio que busca la realización plena del potencial humano. (shrink)

This entry is composed of three sections. In §1, we survey debates about what structural rationality is, including the emergence of the concept in the contemporary literature, its key characteristics, its relationship to substantive rationality, its paradigm instances, and the questions of whether these instances are unified and, if so, how. In §2, we turn to the debate about structural requirements of rationality – including controversies about whether they are “wide-scope” or “narrow-scope”, synchronic or diachronic, and whether they govern processes (...) or states; as well as examining various forms of skepticism about structural requirements of rationality. In §3, we turn to the debate about the normative significance of structural rationality, surveying central challenges for the view that structural rationality is normatively significant and the theoretical options that arise in light of these challenges. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, epistemic reasons are normative reasons for belief – much like prudential or moral reasons are normative reasons for action. In recent years, however, an increasing number of authors have questioned the assumption that epistemic reasons are normative. In this article, I discuss an important challenge for anti-normativism about epistemic reasons and present a number of arguments in support of normativism. The challenge for anti-normativism is to say what kind of reasons epistemic reasons are if (...) they are not normative reasons. I discuss various answers to this challenge and find them all wanting. The arguments for normativism each stress a certain analogy between epistemic reasons and normative reasons for action. Just like normative reasons for action, epistemic reasons provide partial justification; they provide premises for correct reasoning; they constitute good bases for the responses they are reasons for; and they are reasons for which agents can show these responses without committing a mistake. In each case, I argue that the relevant condition is plausibly sufficient for the normativity of a reason, and that normativism is in any case in a much better position to explain the analogy than anti-normativism. (shrink)

If whatever counts as merit for some purpose is unevenly distributed, a decision procedure that accurately sorts people on that basis will “pick up” and reproduce the pre-existing pattern in ways that more random, less merit-tracking procedures would not. This dynamic is an important cause for concern about the use of predictive models to allocate goods and opportunities. In this article, I distinguish two different objections that give voice to that concern in different ways. First, decision procedures may contribute to (...) future social injustice and other social ills by sustaining or aggravating patterns that undermine equality of status and opportunity. Second, the same decision procedures may wrong particular individuals by compounding prior injustices that explain those persons’ predicted or actual characteristics. I argue for the importance of the first idea and raise doubts about the second. In normative assessments and legal regulation of algorithmic decisionmaking, as in our thinking about anti-discrimination norms more broadly, a central concern ought to be the prospect of entrenching harmful and unjust patterns—quite apart from any personal wrong done to the individuals about whom predictions are made. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag möchte ich Argumente für zwei Thesen vorbringen. Erstens möchte ich darlegen, dass der Ausschluss vom Wahlrecht durch eine Altersgrenze rechtfertigungsbedürftig ist. Zweitens werde ich argumentieren, dass es keine hinreichende Rechtfertigung für diesen Ausschluss gibt. Wenn beide Behauptungen richtig sind, dann folgt, dass wir die Altersgrenze beim Wahlrecht abschaffen sollten. Meiner Auffassung nach reicht es also nicht, dass wir das Wahlalter von 18 auf ein geringeres Alter wie 16 oder 14 herabsetzen, wie häufig gefordert wird. Vielmehr sollte jeder (...) Mensch unabhängig von seinem Alter die Möglichkeit bekommen, sich selbstständig als Erstwähler zu registrieren und dann auch wählen zu gehen. (shrink)

A mais de um século que o fenômeno da automatização dos meios de trabalho vem criando grande apreensão entre nós. Afinal, seríamos todos substituídos por máquinas em algum futuro próximo? Seriam todas as formas de trabalho automatizáveis? Tais questionamentos vêm levantando uma série de críticas pela comunidade engajada em ética de máquina e ética da inteligência artificial. Contudo, gostaria de nesta breve resenha, atacar este problema por outro ângulo, afinal, podemos criticar tal fenômeno de uma ampla variedade de pontos de (...) vista. Gostaria de convidar o leitor a avaliar pela seguinte perspectiva: e se a automação dos meios de trabalho for algo benéfico? E se a emancipação humana realmente venha através de nosso desenvolvimento tecnológico? Se a resposta for sim, por quê quê ainda trabalhamos tanto? Acredito que se os processos de automação forem aplicados a pontos chave de nossa estrutura social, podemos vir a emancipar o indivíduo de uma realidade onde realmente trabalhamos por motivo nenhum, inutilmente. Se abandonarmos a cultura do consumismo, a cultura que atrela o trabalho e o consumo a moralidade, uma alternativa mais próspera seria adotarmos a cultura que abraça o valor da autonomia e liberdade do indivíduo humano. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that contractualism, even when it is actually used to construe our moral duties towards non-human animals, does not do so naturally. We can infer from our experiences with companion animals that we owe moral duties to them because of special relationships we are in with them. We can further abstract that we owe general moral duties to non-human animals because they are the kinds of beings that we can have relationships with, and because of the (...) capacities that make possible this relational capacity. This type of approach better explains our duties to non-human animals and other non-rational beings than does the trustee account that Scanlon leaves room for in his contractualism. (shrink)

The motivational constraint on normative reasons says that a consideration is a normative reason for an agent to act only if it is logically possible for the agent to act for that reason, or at least to be moved so to act. The claim figures Zelig-like in philosophical debates about practical reasons: on hand, occasionally prominent, but never the focus of discussion. However, because it is entailed by a number of prominent views about normative reasons—including various forms of internalism and (...) some views that closely connect reasons to good practical reasoning—its truth or falsehood has important implications. Mark Schroeder (2007) and Julia Markovits (2014) have recently criticized the Motivational Constraint on the grounds of so-called “elusive reasons”: reasons for some agent to act that are such that it is logically impossible both that they are normative reasons for that agent and the agent is moved to act for those reasons. In response, a number of philosophers (Sinclair 2016; Ridge and McKeever 2012; Paakkunainen 2017) have attempted to reconcile blindspot reasons with the motivational constraint. My aim in this paper is to show that these conciliatory strategies fail to overcome the challenge posed by elusive reasons. First, I examine each strategy and argue that it unsuccessful on its own terms. Second, I adduce another type of elusive reason not heretofore discussed in the literature, and I argue that these strategies also cannot make this kind of reason consistent with the motivational constraint. Finally, I defend the existence of this kind of reason against an important objection. (shrink)

For more than a century now, the automation of the means of work has created great apprehension among us. After all, will we all be replaced by machines in the future? Will all forms of labor be automatable? Such questions raise several criticisms in the literature concerned with machine ethics. However, in this study, I will approach this problem from another angle. After all, we can criticize the automation of the means of work in several ways. I invite the reader (...) to entertain the following hypothesis: What if the automation of the means of labor is something beneficial? What if human emancipation does come through our technological development? If the answer is yes, why do we still work so much? I conclude that if automation processes are applied to key points in our social structure, we can emancipate the individual from a reality where we work for no reason. (shrink)

Um posicionamento muito comum entre teóricos do campo de pesquisa em Inteligência Artificial é aquele no qual definimos “Inteligência” como uma capacidade intrinsecamente relacionada à perseguição de metas e objetivos, algo que podemos chamar de uma “definição teleológica” para o fenômeno de inteligência. Contudo, uma possível crítica contra esta definição pode ser levantada devido a sua aparente vagueza. Como qualquer comportamento pode ser descrito como um objetivo a ser cumprido, e funções de utilidade pertencem a uma vasta família de funções, (...) podemos dizer que “qualquer comportamento”, desde que esse possa ser descrito como um objetivo sendo perseguido (uma função de utilidade sendo maximizada), serve como evidência de agência inteligente. Neste estudo, gostaria de propor uma definição alternativa para o conceito de Inteligência. Uma definição metafísica, i.e., a Hipótese da Permissibilidade. Para defender tal proposta, irei apresentar um paralelo entre: (1) teoria da otimização; (2) nosso entendimento contemporâneo sobre fenômenos físicos; e (3) aquilo que chamamos de Aprendizagem de Máquina. No fim, proponho que “Inteligência” deve ser compreendida como uma propriedade física permissível de nossa realidade. Uma propriedade a que todos os sistemas físicos têm acesso. (shrink)

If bioethical questions cannot be resolved in a widely acceptable manner by rational argument, and if they can be regulated only on the basis of political decision-making, then bioethics belongs to the political sphere. The particular kind of politics practiced in any given society matters greatly: it will determine the kind of bioethical regulation, legislation, and public policy generated there. I propose approaching bioethical questions politically in terms of decisions that cannot be “correct” but that can be “procedurally legitimate.” Two (...) procedures in particular can deliver legitimate bioethical decisions, once combined: expert bioethics committees and deliberative democracy. Bioethics so understood can exceed bioethics as a moral project or as a set of administrative principles to regulate medical practice; it can now aspire to a democratic project that involves ordinary citizens as far as reasonably possible. I advance this argument in four steps: (1) using the example of human germline gene editing, (2) I propose a general understanding of proceduralism, and (3) then combine two types and (4) conclude with a defense of majoritarian proceduralism. I develop this argument in terms of one example: germline gene editing. (shrink)

In spite of its significance for everyday and philosophical discourse, the explanatory connective has not received much treatment in the philosophy of logic. The present paper develops a logic for based on systematic connections between and the truth-functional connectives.

Can understanding be based on false beliefs? I argue that it can. I first argue that the best way to understand the question is that it is whether one can increase one's degree of understanding by adopting an overall less accurate body of beliefs. I identify three sufficient conditions for one body of beliefs to be more accurate than another. Next, I appeal to two widely used methods of comparing degrees of understanding. With these methods, I show that understanding can (...) be gained by acquiring false beliefs. In addition, I show that this implies that understanding is not factive. (shrink)

More than ever, it is in vogue to argue that no norms either play a role in or directly follow from the theory of mental content. In this paper, I present an intuitive theory of intentionality (including a theory of mental content) on which norms are constitutive of the intentional properties of attitude and content in order to show that this trend is misguided. Although this theory of intentionality—the teleological theory of intentional representation—does involve a commitment to representational norms, these (...) norms are not problematic in the way critics have suggested they would be. In particular, these norms do not guide thinking by motivating intentional agents to (intentionally) accord with them; as a result, no obvious vicious regress threatens the theory. In the final section of this paper, I argue that accepting this teleological theory of intentionality need not commit one to thinking that intentionality is the product of natural selection. (shrink)

O fenômeno de aceleração social, intimamente ligado a nossa modernização tecnológica e os sistemas políticos e sociais que adotamos, vem sendo alvo de questionamentos por parte da teoria crítica por diversos filósofos e sociólogos, principalmente em relação a se tal "aceleração" seja algo que, possa ser justificável pelo bem comum da sociedade. De fato, as rápidas mudanças que ocorreram no último século causaram uma tremenda mudança em nossos estilos-de-vida, e na maneira como experienciamos o mundo. Que a nossa sociedade mudou (...) e continua a mudar é um fato evidente quando olhamos criticamente para o passado e presente, e comparamos diferentes épocas da história humana. Neste ensaio tentaremos explorar algumas possíveis hipóteses que fundamentem o comportamento aceleracionista em certos fatores e mecanismo biológicos que caracterizam os sistemas de motivação e saciação humanos. Também tentaremos mostrar como certos fenômenos sociais podem auxiliar em fortalecer este tipo de comportamento, e suas possíveis origens evolutivas. Este estudo tem como objetivo principal fundamentar a Tese Aceleracionista em evidências neurofisiológicas, cognitivo-comportamentais, evolutivas e sociais. Palavras-chave: aceleração; recompensa; saciação; ciências cognitivas; teoria dos gêneros. (shrink)

This is a semifinal draft of a forthcoming paper. Kant’s account of the pain of remorse involves a hybrid justification based on self-retribution, but constrained by forward-looking principles which say that we must channel remorse into improvement, and moderate its pain to avoid damaging our rational agency. Kant’s corpus also offers material for a revisionist but textually-grounded alternative account based on wrongdoers’ sympathy for the pain they cause. This account is based on the value of care, and has forward-looking constraints (...) much like Kant’s own account. Drawing on both Kant’s texts and recent work in empirical psychology, I argue that experiences of remorse which conform to the sympathetic account may fulfill Kant’s forward-looking goals better than those conforming to his own account. (shrink)

We propose a ‘Moral Imagination’ methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 50 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics and privacy (...) review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)