Context — Children and adults with psychopathic traits and conduct or oppositional defiant disorder demonstrate poor decision making and are impaired in reversal learning. However, the neural basis of this impairment has not previously been investigated. Furthermore, despite high comorbidity of psychopathic traits and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, to our knowledge, no research has attempted to distinguish neural correlates of childhood psychopathic traits and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Objective—To determine the neural regions that underlie the reversal learning impairments in children with psychopathic traits (...) plus conduct or oppositional defiant disorder. Design — Case-control study. Setting — Government clinical research institute. Participants — Forty-two adolescents aged 10 to 17 years: 14 with psychopathic traits and oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder, 14 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder only, and 14 healthy controls. Main Outcome Measure — Blood oxygenation level–dependent signal as measured via functional magnetic resonance imaging during a probabilistic reversal task. Results — Children with psychopathic traits showed abnormal responses within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 10) during punished reversal errors compared with children wit hattention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and healthy children (P < .05 corrected for multiple comparisons). Conclusions — To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence of abnormal ventromedial prefrontal cortex responsiveness in children with psychopathic traits and demonstrates this dysfunction was not attributable to comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. These findings suggest that reversal learning impairments in patients with developmental psychopathic traits relate to abnormal processing of reinforcement information. (shrink)

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a research (...) agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that faith’s going beyond the evidence need not compromise faith’s epistemic rationality. First, I explain how some of the recent literature on belief and credence points to a distinction between what I call B-evidence and C-evidence. Then, I apply this distinction to rational faith. I argue that if faith is more sensitive to B-evidence than to C-evidence, faith can go beyond the evidence and still be epistemically rational.

A popular objection to theistic commitment involves the idea that faith is irrational. Specifically, some seem to put forth something like the following argument: (P1) Everyone (or almost everyone) who has faith is epistemically irrational, (P2) All theistic believers have faith, thus (C) All (or most) theistic believers are epistemically irrational. In this paper, I argue that this line of reasoning fails. I do so by considering a number of candidates for what faith might be. I argue that, for each (...) candidate, either (P1) is false or (P2) is false. Then, I make two positive suggestions for how faith can be epistemically rational but nonetheless have a unique relationship to evidence: one, that Jamesian self-justifying attitudes describe a distinctive kind of faith in oneself and others, and two, that faith is not solely based on empirical evidence. (shrink)

The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed by future ontologists; these (...) recommendations are intended as guidelines for institutions and organizations that may consider establishing a program for training ontologists. Further, we recommend a number of specific actions for the community to pursue. (shrink)

The approximate number system (ANS) enables organisms to represent the approximate number of items in an observed collection, quickly and independently of natural language. Recently, it has been proposed that the ANS goes beyond representing natural numbers by extracting and representing rational numbers (Clarke & Beck, 2021a). Prior work demonstrates that adults and children discriminate ratios in an approximate and ratio-dependent manner, consistent with the hallmarks of the ANS. Here, we use a well-known “connectedness illusion” to provide evidence that these (...) ratio-dependent ratio discriminations are (a) based on the perceived number of items in seen displays (and not just non-numerical confounds), (b) are not dependent on verbal working memory, or explicit counting routines, and (c) involve representations with a part-whole (or subset-superset) format, like a fraction, rather than a part-part format, like a ratio. These results vindicate key predictions of the hypothesis that the ANS represents rational numbers. (shrink)

Des branches entières des mathématiques sont fondées sur des liens posés entre les nombres et l’espace : mesure de longueurs, définition de repères et de coordonnées, projection des nombres complexes sur le plan… Si les nombres complexes, comme l’utilisation de repères, sont apparus relativement récemment (vers le XVIIe siècle), la mesure des longueurs est en revanche un procédé très ancien, qui remonte au moins au 3e ou 4e millénaire av. J-C. Loin d’être fortuits, ces liens entre les nombres et l’espace (...) reflèteraient une intuition fondamentale, universelle, façonnée au cours des millénaires par la sélection naturelle, et qui aurait servi de guide et d’inspiration aux mathématiciens au fil des siècles. (shrink)

I discuss the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one, more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist (...) opponents for polemical purposes, which she seems to endorse even though it is an image manufactured by the same writers she choose as a polemical target; d) the difficulty to identify the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favor of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is precisely a response to difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action, a case for which Anscombe herself has nothing better to offer. (shrink)

One of Elizabeth Anscombe’s most decisive legacies is the rejection of modern legalistic morality, in the name of a rescue of Aristotelian-inspired natural normativity. However, as I will argue in this contribution, this legacy does not seem to have been fully collected, neither by those who, like Philippa Foot, are explicitly inspired by Anscombe’s work, nor by those who, while apparently opposing its assumptions, have also somehow recovered it by different routes, as emblematically does Christine Korsgaard in her constitutivist (...) proposal. In more detail, I aim to explore the relationship between teleology and normativity at the crossroads between neo-Aristotelian naturalism and constitutivism: both theories, though opposed, rest normativity on a link between function (the Aristotelian ergon) and practical reason and fail precisely in declining this relationship convincingly. (shrink)

Creativity pervades human life. It is the mark of individuality, the vehicle of self-expression, and the engine of progress in every human endeavor. It also raises a wealth of neglected and yet evocative philosophical questions: What is the role of consciousness in the creative process? How does the audience for a work for art influence its creation? How can creativity emerge through childhood pretending? Do great works of literature give us insight into human nature? Can a computer program really be (...) creative? How do we define creativity in the first place? Is it a virtue? What is the difference between creativity in science and art? Can creativity be taught? The new essays that comprise The Philosophy of Creativity take up these and other key questions and, in doing so, illustrate the value of interdisciplinary exchange. Written by leading philosophers and psychologists involved in studying creativity, the essays integrate philosophical insights with empirical research. CONTENTS I. Introduction Introducing The Philosophy of Creativity Elliot Samuel Paul and Scott Barry Kaufman II. The Concept of Creativity 1. An Experiential Account of Creativity Bence Nanay III. Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art 2. Creativity and Insight Gregory Currie 3. The Creative Audience: Some Ways in which Readers, Viewers and/or Listeners Use their Imaginations to Engage Fictional Artworks Noël Carroll 4. The Products of Musical Creativity Christopher Peacocke IV. Ethics & Value Theory 5. Performing Oneself Owen Flanagan 6. Creativity as a Virtue of Character Matthew Kieran V. Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science 7. Creativity and Not So Dumb Luck Simon Blackburn 8. The Role of Imagination in Creativity Dustin Stokes 9. Creativity, Consciousness, and Free Will: Evidence from Psychology Experiments Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and C. Nathan DeWall 10. The Origins of Creativity Elizabeth Picciuto and Peter Carruthers 11. Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: a Contradiction in Terms? Margaret Boden VI. Philosophy of Science 12. Hierarchies of Creative Domains: Disciplinary Constraints on Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Dean Keith Simonton VII. Philosophy of Education (& Education of Philosophy) 13. Educating for Creativity Berys Gaut 14. Philosophical Heuristics Alan Hájek. (shrink)

Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics takes a fresh look at the history of aesthetics and at current debates within the philosophy of art by exploring the ways in which gender informs notions of art and creativity, evaluation and interpretation, and concepts of aesthetic value. Multiple intellectual traditions have formed this field, and the discussions herein range from consideration of eighteenth century legacies of ideas about taste, beauty, and sublimity to debates about the relevance of postmodern analyses for feminist aesthetics. Forward (...) by Arthur C. Danto, 20 authors include Paul Mattick, Jr., Caroline Korsmeyer, Timothy Gould, Christine Battersby, Mary Devereaux, bell hooks, REnee Lorraine, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Elizabeth Ann Dobie, Adrian Piper, Anita Silvers, Susan Feagin, Mary D. Garrard, Ellen Handler Spitz, Noel Carroll, Joanne Waugh, Joseph Margolis, Rita Felski, and Hilde Hein, as well as Peg Brand's essay, "Revising the Aesthetic-Nonaesthetic Distinction: The Aesthetic Value of Activist Art.". (shrink)

This is the introduction to a special issue of 'Science in Context' on vitalism that I edited. The contents are: 1. Guido Giglioni — “What Ever Happened to Francis Glisson? Albrecht Haller and the Fate of Eighteenth-Century Irritability” 2. Dominique Boury— “Irritability and Sensibility: Two Key Concepts in Assessing the Medical Doctrines of Haller and Bordeu” 3. Tobias Cheung — “Regulating Agents, Functional Interactions, and Stimulus-Reaction-Schemes: The Concept of “Organism” in the Organic System Theories of Stahl, Bordeu and Barthez” 4. (...) Charles T. Wolfe & Motoichi Terada — “The Animal Economy as Object and Program in Montpellier Vitalism” 5. Timo Kaitaro — “Can Matter Mark the Hours? – Eighteenth-Century Vitalist Materialism and Functional Properties” 6. Elizabeth Williams —“Of Two Lives One? Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud and the Question of Holism in Vitalist Medicine” 7. Philippe Huneman — “Montpellier Vitalism and the Emergence of Alienism in France (1750-1800): The Case of the Passions” 8. Elke Witt —“Form – A Matter of Generation. The Relation of Generation, Form and Function in the Epigenetic Theory of C.F. Wolff” . (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In his A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen suggests a theory of disability that holds that to have a disability just is to be worse off, sometimes referred to as the ‘medical’ or ‘individual’ model of disability. I argue that Johannsen’s understanding of disability might force some of his key claims into an uncomfortable position. In particular, for his theory to avoid the thrust of Elizabeth Anderson’s criticisms of luck egalitarianism, the assumption of the medical model of (...) disability must be dropped, but this comes at the cost of his criticism of John Rawls’ difference principle. -/- RÉSUMÉ : Dans son livre, A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen semble invoquer une théorie du handicap selon laquelle le fait d’avoir un handicap, c’est être pire qu’une autre personne, un modèle parfois appelé le modèle de handicap «médical» ou «individuel». Je soutiens que la compréhension de Johannsen en matière d’invalidité peut mettre sa theorie dans une position difficile. En particulier, pour que sa théorie évite les critiques d’Elizabeth Anderson sur l’égalitarisme de la chance, l’hypothèse du modèle médical du handicap doit être abandonnée. Cependant, cela se fait au détriment de la critique du principe de différence de John Rawls formulée par Johannsen. (shrink)

This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances, such as in criminal justice contexts, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. Contributing philosophers include Myisha Cherry, Jonathan Jacobs, Barrett Emerick, Alice MacLachlan, David McNaughton and Eve Garrard. Contributing psychologists include Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Robert D. Enright and Mary Jacqueline Song, C. Ward Struthers, Joshua Guilfoyle, Careen Khoury, Elizabeth van Monsjou, Joni Sasaki, Curtis Phills, Rebecca Young, and (...) Zdravko Marjanovic. (shrink)

Contributors in the order of contributions: David Ebrey, Richard Kraut, T. H. Irwin, Leonard Brandwood, Eric Brown, Agnes Callard, Gail Fine, Suzanne Obdrzalek, Gábor Betegh, Elizabeth Asmis, Henry Mendell, Constance C. Meinwald, Michael Frede, Emily Fletcher, Verity Harte, Rachana Kamtekar, and Rachel Singpurwalla. -/- The first edition of the Cambridge Companion to Plato (1992), edited by Richard Kraut, shaped scholarly research and guided new students for thirty years. This new edition introduces students to fresh approaches to Platonic dialogues while (...) advancing the next generation of research. Of its seventeen chapters, nine are entirely new, written by a new generation of scholars. Six others have been thoroughly revised and updated by their original authors. The volume covers the full range of Plato's interests, including ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, religion, mathematics, and psychology. Plato's dialogues are approached as unified works and considered within their intellectual context, and the revised introduction suggests a way of reading the dialogues that attends to the differences between them while also tracing their interrelations. The result is a rich and wide-ranging volume which will be valuable for all students and scholars of Plato. (shrink)

In 1948 a legendary debate occurred at the Oxford Socratic Club between C. S. Lewis and Elizabeth Anscombe. In this meeting, Lewis shows that atheistic naturalism is refute in meaning the strict materialism. Anscombe makes three basic criticisms against Lewis' argument:1. Lack of distinction between irrational and non-rrational causes of belief,2. The threat of skepticism,3. Lack of distinction between types of “full” explanations. Lewis and Anscombe's views can be considered in several ways: 1. Despite Anscombe's correct critique, the lack (...) of distinction between irrational and non-rational causes does not solve the problem of naturalism which is an inference belief of other beliefs. 2. Anscombe considers that “if naturalism is correct, there is no valid human argument”, is a skeptical threat to knowledge, while this objection does not problem on Lewis' argument. 3. Contrary to Anscombe's claim, the ommisive approach to other explanations is not a consequence of Lewis's Argument, but the main idea of naturalism itself. 4. Lewis's incorrect analysis of mental states is accidental because he considers the origin of these states to be non-physical. 5. Lewis did not explain well what he meant by “did not explain well what he meant by "the impossibility of evolutionary processes in creating creatures with perception and understanding of creatures without understanding”. By an analytical, comparative and critical insightcan eliminate, correct and reconstruct the weaknesses of Anscombe and Lewis' views. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are digital technologies that will have significant impact on the development of humanity in the near future. They have raised fundamental questions about what we should do with these systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve, and how we can control these. - After the Introduction to the field (§1), the main themes (§2) of this article are: Ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e., tools made and used (...) by humans. This includes issues of privacy (§2.1) and manipulation (§2.2), opacity (§2.3) and bias (§2.4), human-robot interaction (§2.5), employment (§2.6), and the effects of autonomy (§2.7). Then AI systems as subjects, i.e., ethics for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (§2.8) and artificial moral agency (§2.9). Finally, the problem of a possible future AI superintelligence leading to a “singularity” (§2.10). We close with a remark on the vision of AI (§3). - For each section within these themes, we provide a general explanation of the ethical issues, outline existing positions and arguments, then analyse how these play out with current technologies and finally, what policy consequences may be drawn. (shrink)

There is, in some quarters, concern about high–level machine intelligence and superintelligent AI coming up in a few decades, bringing with it significant risks for humanity. In other quarters, these issues are ignored or considered science fiction. We wanted to clarify what the distribution of opinions actually is, what probability the best experts currently assign to high–level machine intelligence coming up within a particular time–frame, which risks they see with that development, and how fast they see these developing. We thus (...) designed a brief questionnaire and distributed it to four groups of experts in 2012/2013. The median estimate of respondents was for a one in two chance that high-level machine intelligence will be developed around 2040-2050, rising to a nine in ten chance by 2075. Experts expect that systems will move on to superintelligence in less than 30 years thereafter. They estimate the chance is about one in three that this development turns out to be ‘bad’ or ‘extremely bad’ for humanity. (shrink)

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first (triage), and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first (vaccine distribution). Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both whole lives (survival to discharge) and life-years (survival for (...) years past discharge). This process of collective moral reasoning has revealed our common commitment to both Kantian and utilitarian principles. For Kant, respecting people’s rights entails that we ought to value whole lives equally. Therefore we ought to allocate resources so as to maximise the number of patients who survive to discharge. By contrast, the principle of utility has us maximise life-years so that people can satisfy more of their considered preferences. Although people are treated impartially in the utilitarian calculus, it does not recognise their equal worth. Subjecting Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to the process of reflective equilibrium lends support to the idea that we need a pluralistic approach that would accommodate our moral intuitions regarding both the equal value of whole lives and the additive value of life-years. (shrink)

The turn of the nineteenth century marked a rich and exciting explosion of philosophical energy and talent. The enormity of the revolution set off in philosophy by Immanuel Kant was comparable, in Kant's own estimation, with the Copernican Revolution that ended the Middle Ages. The movement he set in motion, the fast-moving and often cantankerous dialectic of "German Idealism," inspired some of the most creative philosophers in modern times: including G. W. F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer as well as those (...) who reacted against Kant--Marx and Kierkegaard, for example. This volume traces the emergence of German Idealism from Kant and his predecessors through the first half of the nineteenth century, ending with the irrationalism of Kierkegaard. It provides a broad, scholarly introduction to this period for students of philosophy and related disciplines, as well as some original interpretations of these authors. Also included is a glossary of technical terms as well as a chronological table of philosophical, scientific and other important cultural events. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve a beginningless set each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. Such paradoxes have been wielded on behalf of arguments for the impossibility of an infinite past. These arguments often deploy patchwork principles in support of their key linking premise. Here I argue that patchwork principles fail to justify this key premise.

Some authors have recently suggested that it is time to consider rights for robots. These suggestions are based on the claim that the question of robot rights should not depend on a standard set of conditions for ‘moral status’; but instead, the question is to be framed in a new way, by rejecting the is/ought distinction, making a relational turn, or assuming a methodological behaviourism. We try to clarify these suggestions and to show their highly problematic consequences. While we find (...) the suggestions ultimately unmotivated, the discussion shows that our epistemic condition with respect to the moral status of others does raise problems, and that the human tendency to empathise with things that do not have moral status should be taken seriously—we suggest that it produces a “derived moral status”. Finally, it turns out that there is typically no individual in real AI that could even be said to be the bearer of moral status. Overall, there is no reason to think that robot rights are an issue now. (shrink)

The paper offers a solution to the generality problem for a reliabilist epistemology, by developing an “algorithm and parameters” scheme for type-individuating cognitive processes. Algorithms are detailed procedures for mapping inputs to outputs. Parameters are psychological variables that systematically affect processing. The relevant process type for a given token is given by the complete algorithmic characterization of the token, along with the values of all the causally relevant parameters. The typing that results is far removed from the typings of folk (...) psychology, and from much of the epistemology literature. But it is principled and empirically grounded, and shows good prospects for yielding the desired epistemological verdicts. The paper articulates and elaborates the theory, drawing out some of its consequences. Toward the end, the fleshed-out theory is applied to two important case studies: hallucination and cognitive penetration of perception. (shrink)

I defend a new argument for causal finitism, the view that nothing can have an infinite causal history. I begin by defending a number of plausible metaphysical principles, after which I explore a host of novel variants of the Littlewood-Ross and Thomson’s Lamp paradoxes that violate such principles. I argue that causal finitism is the best solution to the paradoxes.

James Henry Collin recently developed a new symmetry breaker favouring the ontological argument’s possibility premiss over that of the reverse ontological argument. The symmetry breaker amounts to an undercutting defeater for the reverse possibility premiss based on Kripkean cases of a posteriori necessity. I argue, however, that symmetry re-arises in two forms. First, I challenge the purported asymmetry in epistemic entitlements to the original and reverse possibility premisses. Second, relevantly similar Kripkean cases equally undercut the original possibility premiss.

We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response (...) to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

I focus on three mereological principles: the Extensionality of Parthood (EP), the Uniqueness of Composition (UC), and the Extensionality of Composition (EC). These principles are not equivalent. Nonetheless, they are closely related (and often equated) as they all reflect the basic nominalistic dictum, No difference without a difference maker. And each one of them—individually or collectively—has been challenged on philosophical grounds. In the first part I argue that such challenges do not quite threaten EP insofar as they are either self-defeating (...) or unsupported. In the second part I argue that they hardly undermine the tenability of EC and UC as well. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem is supposed to show that straightforward versions of reliabilism are false: reliability is not necessary for justification after all. I argue that it does no such thing. The reliabilist can count a number of beliefs as justified even in demon worlds, others as unjustified but having positive epistemic status nonetheless. The remaining beliefs---primarily perceptual beliefs---are not, on further reflection, intuitively justified after all. The reliabilist is right to count these beliefs as unjustified in demon worlds, (...) and it is a challenge for the internalist to be able to do so as well. (shrink)

The standard argument to the conclusion that artificial intelligence (AI) constitutes an existential risk for the human species uses two premises: (1) AI may reach superintelligent levels, at which point we humans lose control (the ‘singularity claim’); (2) Any level of intelligence can go along with any goal (the ‘orthogonality thesis’). We find that the singularity claim requires a notion of ‘general intelligence’, while the orthogonality thesis requires a notion of ‘instrumental intelligence’. If this interpretation is correct, they cannot be (...) joined as premises and the argument for the existential risk of AI turns out invalid. If the interpretation is incorrect and both premises use the same notion of intelligence, then at least one of the premises is false and the orthogonality thesis remains itself orthogonal to the argument to existential risk from AI. In either case, the standard argument for existential risk from AI is not sound.—Having said that, there remains a risk of instrumental AI to cause very significant damage if designed or used badly, though this is not due to superintelligence or a singularity. (shrink)

Will future lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), or ‘killer robots’, be a threat to humanity? The European Parliament has called for a moratorium or ban of LAWS; the ‘Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention at the United Nations’ are presently discussing such a ban, which is supported by the great majority of writers and campaigners on the issue. However, the main arguments in favour of a ban are unsound. LAWS do not support extrajudicial killings, they do not take responsibility away (...) from humans; in fact they increase the abil-ity to hold humans accountable for war crimes. Using LAWS in war would probably reduce human suffering overall. Finally, the availability of LAWS would probably not increase the probability of war or other lethal conflict—especially as compared to extant remote-controlled weapons. The widespread fear of killer robots is unfounded: They are probably good news. (shrink)

In common with traditional forms of epistemic internalism, epistemological disjunctivism attempts to incorporate an awareness condition on justification. Unlike traditional forms of internalism, however, epistemological disjunctivism rejects the so-called New Evil Genius thesis. In so far as epistemological disjunctivism rejects the New Evil Genius thesis, it is revisionary. -/- After explaining what epistemological disjunctivism is, and how it relates to traditional forms of epistemic internalism / externalism, I shall argue that the epistemological disjunctivist’s account of the intuitions underlying the New (...) Evil Genius thought experiment is at best incomplete. As presented, therefore, epistemological disjunctivism is unable to accommodate the core guiding intuitions of epistemic internalism. Given the stated aim of not being revisionary on this score, the view is at a dialectical disadvantage over the traditional forms of epistemic internalism the position is meant to replace. Unfortunately, therefore, at present, the impasse between internalism and externalism remains. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is (...) to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the value of epistemic justification cannot be adequately explained as being instrumental to truth. I intend to show that false belief, which is no means to truth, can nevertheless still be of epistemic value. This in turn will make a good prima facie case that justification is valuable for its own sake. If this is right, we will have also found reason to think that truth value monism is false: assuming that true belief does (...) have value, there is more of final epistemic value than mere true belief. (shrink)

This paper presents the main topics, arguments, and positions in the philosophy of AI at present (excluding ethics). Apart from the basic concepts of intelligence and computation, the main topics of ar-tificial cognition are perception, action, meaning, rational choice, free will, consciousness, and normativity. Through a better understanding of these topics, the philosophy of AI contributes to our understand-ing of the nature, prospects, and value of AI. Furthermore, these topics can be understood more deeply through the discussion of AI; so (...) we suggest that “AI Philosophy” provides a new method for philosophy. (shrink)

The contribution of the body to cognition and control in natural and artificial agents is increasingly described as “off-loading computation from the brain to the body”, where the body is said to perform “morphological computation”. Our investigation of four characteristic cases of morphological computation in animals and robots shows that the ‘off-loading’ perspective is misleading. Actually, the contribution of body morphology to cognition and control is rarely computational, in any useful sense of the word. We thus distinguish (1) morphology that (...) facilitates control, (2) morphology that facilitates perception and the rare cases of (3) morphological computation proper, such as ‘reservoir computing.’ where the body is actually used for computation. This result contributes to the understanding of the relation between embodiment and computation: The question for robot design and cognitive science is not whether computation is offloaded to the body, but to what extent the body facilitates cognition and control – how it contributes to the overall ‘orchestration’ of intelligent behaviour. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve infinite collections of Grim Reapers, assassins, demons, deafening peals, or even sentences. These paradoxes have recently been used in arguments for finitist metaphysical theses such as temporal finitism, causal finitism, and discrete views of time. Here we develop a new finite Benardete-like paradox. We then use this paradox to defend a companions in guilt argument that challenges recent applications of patchwork principles on behalf of the aforementioned finitist arguments. Finally, we develop another problem for those applications by (...) examining the notion of exact duplication. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception is the idea that what we see is influenced by such states as beliefs, expectations, and so on. A perceptual belief that results from cognitive penetration may be less justified than a nonpenetrated one. Inferentialism is a kind of internalist view that tries to account for this by claiming that some experiences are epistemically evaluable, on the basis of why the perceiver has that experience, and the familiar canons of good inference provide the appropriate standards by (...) which experiences are evaluated. I examine recent defenses of inferentialism by Susanna Siegel, Peter Markie, and Matthew McGrath and argue that the prospects for inferentialism are dim. (shrink)

I argue that Universalism (the thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted) entails Extensionalism (the thesis that sameness of composition is sufficient for identity) as long as the parthood relation is transitive and satisfies the Weak Supplementation principle (to the effect that whenever a thing has a proper part, it has another part disjoint from the first).

Edward Feser defends the ‘Aristotelian proof’ for the existence of God, which reasons that the only adequate explanation of the existence of change is in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual being. His argument, however, relies on the falsity of the Existential Inertia Thesis, according to which concrete objects tend to persist in existence without requiring an existential sustaining cause. In this article, I first characterize the dialectical context of Feser’s Aristotelian proof, paying special attention to EIT and its rival (...) thesis—the Existential Expiration Thesis. Next, I provide a more precise characterization of EIT, after which I outline two metaphysical accounts of existential inertia. I then develop new lines of reasoning in favor of EIT that appeal to the theoretical virtues of explanatory power and simplicity. Finally, I address the predominant criticisms of EIT in the literature. (shrink)

The philosophy of AI has seen some changes, in particular: 1) AI moves away from cognitive science, and 2) the long term risks of AI now appear to be a worthy concern. In this context, the classical central concerns – such as the relation of cognition and computation, embodiment, intelligence & rationality, and information – will regain urgency.

Aristotle’s typical procedure is to identify something's four causes. Intentional action has typically been treated as an exception: most think that Aristotle has the standard causalist account, according to which an intentional action is a bodily movement efficiently caused by an attitude of the appropriate sort. I show that action is not an exception to Aristotle’s typical procedure: he has the resources to specify four causes of action, and thus to articulate a powerful theory of action unlike any other on (...) offer. (shrink)

What makes an intellectual virtue a virtue? A straightforward and influential answer to this question has been given by virtue-reliabilists: a trait is a virtue only insofar as it is truth-conducive. In this paper I shall contend that recent arguments advanced by Jack Kwong in defence of the reliabilist view are good as far as they go, in that they advance the debate by usefully clarifying ways in how best to understand the nature of open-mindedness. But I shall argue that (...) these considerations do not establish the desired conclusions that open-mindedness is truth-conducive. To establish these much stronger conclusions we would need an adequate reply to what I shall call Montmarquet’s objection. I argue that Linda Zagzebski’s reply to Montmarquet’s objection, to which Kwong defers, is inadequate. I conclude that it is contingent if open-mindedness is truth-conducive, and if a necessary tie to truth is what makes an intellectual virtue a virtue, then the status of open-mindedness as an intellectual virtue is jeopardised. We either need an adequate reliabilist response to Montmarquet’s objection, or else seek alternative accounts of what it is that makes a virtue a virtue. I conclude by briefly outlining some alternatives. (shrink)

Majority cycling and related social choice paradoxes are often thought to threaten the meaningfulness of democracy. But deliberation can prevent majority cycles – not by inducing unanimity, which is unrealistic, but by bringing preferences closer to single-peakedness. We present the first empirical test of this hypothesis, using data from Deliberative Polls. Comparing preferences before and after deliberation, we find increases in proximity to single-peakedness. The increases are greater for lower versus higher salience issues and for individuals who seem to have (...) deliberated more versus less effectively. They are not merely a byproduct of increased substantive agreement. Our results both refine and support the idea that deliberation, by increasing proximity to single-peakedness, provides an escape from the problem of majority cycling. (shrink)

What explains change? Edward Feser argues in his ‘Aristotelian proof’ that the only adequate answer to these questions is ultimately in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual being. In this paper, I target the cogency of Feser’s reasoning to such an answer. In particular, I present novel paths of criticism—both undercutting and rebutting—against one of Feser’s central premises. I then argue that Feser’s inference that the unactualized actualizer lacks any potentialities contains a number of non-sequiturs.

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of (...) introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)

A self-fulfilling prophecy in neuroprognostication occurs when a patient in coma is predicted to have a poor outcome, and life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn on the basis of that prediction, thus directly bringing about a poor outcome for that patient. In contrast to the predominant emphasis in the bioethics literature, we look beyond the moral issues raised by the possibility that an erroneous prediction might lead to the death of a patient who otherwise would have lived. Instead, we focus on the (...) problematic epistemic consequences of neuroprognostic SFPs in settings where research and practice intersect. When this sort of SFP occurs, the problem is that physicians and researchers are never in a position to notice whether their original prognosis was correct or incorrect, since the patient dies anyway. Thus, SFPs keep us from discerning false positives from true positives, inhibiting proper assessment of novel prognostic tests. This epistemic problem of SFPs thus impedes learning, but ethical obligations of patient care make it difficult to avoid SFPs. We then show how the impediment to catching false positive indicators of poor outcome distorts research on novel techniques for neuroprognostication, allowing biases to persist in prognostic tests. We finally highlight a particular risk that a precautionary bias towards early withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment may be amplified. We conclude with guidelines about how researchers can mitigate the epistemic problems of SFPs, to achieve more responsible innovation of neuroprognostication for patients in coma. (shrink)

Outside of philosophy, ‘intuition’ means something like ‘knowing without knowing how you know’. Intuition in this broad sense is an important epistemological category. I distinguish intuition from perception and perception from perceptual experience, in order to discuss the distinctive psychological and epistemological status of evaluative property attributions. Although it is doubtful that we perceptually experience many evaluative properties and also somewhat unlikely that we perceive many evaluative properties, it is highly plausible that we intuit many instances of evaluative properties as (...) such. The resulting epistemological status of evaluative property attributions is very much like it would be if we literally perceived such properties. (shrink)

Public opinion research has shown that voters accept many falsehoods about politics. This observation is widely considered troubling for democracy—and especially participatory ideals of democracy. I argue that this influential narrative is nevertheless flawed, because it misunderstands the nature of political understanding. Drawing on philosophical examinations of scientific modelling, I demonstrate that accepting falsehoods within one’s model of political reality is compatible with—and indeed can positively enhance—one’s understanding of that reality. Thus, the observation that voters accept many political falsehoods does (...) not necessarily establish that they lack political understanding. I then address three worries: that voters cannot generally engage in such political modelling; that political modelling obscures facts that are crucial to political understanding; and that successful political modelling would require knowing that one’s model contains falsehoods. My responses reveal how, going forward, we should measure political ignorance; and they highlight the standing importance of participatory democracy. (shrink)