Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has also demonstrated the need for systemic thinking and transdisciplinarity and the limits (...) of MSM: the neglect of the bio-psycho-social systemic nature of humans and their context as the object of individual therapeutic and population-oriented interventions. COVID-19 illustrates how a medical problem requires a transdisciplinary approach in epidemiology, pathology, internal medicine, public health, environmental medicine, and socio-economic modeling. Regarding the need for conceptual integration of these different kinds of knowledge we suggest the application of general system theory (GST). This approach endorses an organism-centered view on health and disease, which according to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who was the founder of GST, we call Organismal Systems Medicine (OSM). We argue that systems science offers wider applications in the field of pathology and can contribute to an integrative systems medicine by (i) integration of evidence across functional and structural differentially scaled subsystems, (ii) conceptualization of complex multilevel systems, and (iii) suggesting mechanisms and non-linear relationships underlying the observed phenomena. We underline these points with a proposal on multi-level systems pathology including neurophysiology, endocrinology, immune system, genetics, and general metabolism. An integration of these areas is necessary to understand excess mortality rates and polypharmacological treatments. In the pandemic era this multi-level systems pathology is most important to assess potential vaccines, their effectiveness, short-, and long-time adverse effects. We further argue that these conceptual frameworks are not only valid in the COVID-19 era but also important to be integrated in a medicinal curriculum. (shrink)

The neutral and nearly neutral theories of molecular evolution are sometimes characterized as theories about drift alone, where drift is described solely as an outcome, rather than a process. We argue, however, that both selection and drift, as causal processes, are integral parts of both theories. However, the nearly neutral theory explicitly recognizes alleles and/or molecular substitutions that, while engaging in weakly selected causal processes, exhibit outcomes thought to be characteristic of random drift. A narrow focus on outcomes obscures the (...) significant role of weakly selected causal processes in the nearly neutral theory. (shrink)

Analogical reminding in humans and machines is a great source for chance discoveries because analogical reminding can produce representational change and thereby produce insights. Here, we present a new kind of representational change associated with analogical reminding called packing. We derived the algorithm in part from human data we have on packing. Here, we explain packing and its role in analogy making, and then present a computer model of packing in a micro-domain. We conclude that packing is likely used in (...) human chance discoveries, and is needed if our machines are to make their own chance discoveries. (shrink)

Indem dieser Band sich auf das Verhältnis von Naturerkennen und Natursein konzentriert, thematisiert er einen wesentlichen Ausschnitt aus dem weiten Spektrum von Böhmes philosophischer Arbeit. Um die Naturthematik möglichst breit zu entfalten und für Querverbindungen offenzuhalten, ist der vorliegende Band in drei Abschnitte gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt stehen Charakter und Reichweite der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis von Natur im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes stellt alternative Perspektiven auf Natur vor. Im dritten Teil schließlich stehen der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zu sich (...) selbst im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Inhaltsverzeichnis Krohn, Wolfgang: Wissenschaftsentwicklung zwischen Dezentrierung und Dekonstruktion. Stehr, Nico: Von den Grenzen der Macht wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Schäfer, Wolf: Zweifel am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Kamper, Dietmar: Wissen ist Ohnmacht. Macht ist Unwissen. Gamm, der Technik. Janich, Peter: Zeit und Natur. Kimmerle, Heinz: »Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird«. Wie kann Zeit Zeit werden? Schiemann, Gregor: Natur auf dem Rückzug. Zur Relevanz der aristotelischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Technik. Hauskeller, Michael: Ist Schönheit eine Atmosphäre?. Zur Bestimmung des landschaftlich Schönen. Schmitz, Hermann: Situationen und Atmosphären. Zur Ästhetik und Onthologie bei Gernot Böhme. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph: Über Relationalität. Was ist das »Ökologische« in der Naturästhetik? Meyer-Abich, Klaus Michael: Erinnerung an die natürliche Mitwelt. Andreas-Griesebach, Manon: Idee plus Erfahrung. Goethes Begründung eines neuen Typs von Naturwissenschaft. Engelhardt, Dietrich von: Madame de Stael über Naturphilosophie, Naturwissenschaft und Medizin in De l'Allemagne. Deneke, Michael: Schramm, Engelbert: »Soziale Naturwissenschaft«. Zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Böhme, Hartmut: Enthüllen und Verhüllen des Körpers. Biblische, mythische und künstlerische Deutungen des Nackten. Lippe, Rudolf zur: Eine Logik des gestischen Wissens. Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang: Gernot Böhme - Anima naturaliter japonica. Hoffmann, Gisbert: Das menschliche Sein als mediales. Martens, Ekkehard: »Natürlich« denken?. Heideggers Pseudosokratismus als Irrationalismus. Fleischer, Helmut: Naturalität ohne Naturalismus. Zum lebensweltlichen Fundus jeder höheren Erkenntnis-Artistik. Gerhard: Technik als Medium. Grundlinien einer Philosophie. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...) that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to shed new light on the role of feeling in Kant’s psychology of moral motivation by focusing on the concept of an incentive (Triebfeder), a term he borrowed from one of his most important rationalist predecessors, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. I argue that, similar to Baumgarten, Kant understands an incentive to refer to the ground of desire and that feelings function as a specific kind of ground within Kant’s psychology of moral action, namely as the ‘impelling (...) cause’ of desire. I claim that this interpretation has several advantages over the alternatives currently on offer in the literature. (shrink)

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. (...) We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participant was in their scientific career, the more they valued imagination. Further, positive attitudes toward imagination were primarily due to the perceived role of imagination in problem-solving. (...) But not all problem-solving episodes involved clear appeals to imagination, only maximally specific problems did. This pattern is explained by the presence of an implicit norm governing imagination use in the two labs: only use imagination on maximally specific problems, and only when all other available methods have failed. This norm was confirmed by the participants, and I argue that it has epistemological reasons in its favour. I also found that its strength varies inversely with career stage, such that more advanced scientists do (and should) occasionally bring their imaginations to bear on more general problems. A story about scientific pedagogy explains the trend away from (and back to) imagination over the course of a scientific career. Finally, some positive recommendations are given for a more imagination-friendly scientific pedagogy. (shrink)

We introduce a “reason-based” framework for explaining and predicting individual choices. It captures the idea that a decision-maker focuses on some but not all properties of the options and chooses an option whose motivationally salient properties he/she most prefers. Reason-based explanations allow us to distinguish between two kinds of context-dependent choice: the motivationally salient properties may (i) vary across choice contexts, and (ii) include not only “intrinsic” properties of the options, but also “context-related” properties. Our framework can accommodate boundedly rational (...) and sophisticatedly rational choice. Since properties can be recombined in new ways, it also offers resources for predicting choices in unobserved contexts. (shrink)

Which rules for aggregating judgments on logically connected propositions are manipulable and which not? In this paper, we introduce a preference-free concept of non-manipulability and contrast it with a preference-theoretic concept of strategy-proofness. We characterize all non-manipulable and all strategy-proof judgment aggregation rules and prove an impossibility theorem similar to the Gibbard--Satterthwaite theorem. We also discuss weaker forms of non-manipulability and strategy-proofness. Comparing two frequently discussed aggregation rules, we show that “conclusion-based voting” is less vulnerable to manipulation than “premise-based voting”, (...) which is strategy-proof only for “reason-oriented” individuals. Surprisingly, for “outcome-oriented” individuals, the two rules are strategically equivalent, generating identical judgments in equilibrium. Our results introduce game-theoretic considerations into judgment aggregation and have implications for debates on deliberative democracy. (shrink)

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, (...) we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

The widely discussed "discursive dilemma" shows that majority voting in a group of individuals on logically connected propositions may produce irrational collective judgments. We generalize majority voting by considering quota rules, which accept each proposition if and only if the number of individuals accepting it exceeds a given threshold, where different thresholds may be used for different propositions. After characterizing quota rules, we prove necessary and sufficient conditions on the required thresholds for various collective rationality requirements. We also consider sequential (...) quota rules, which ensure collective rationality by adjudicating propositions sequentially and letting earlier judgments constrain later ones. Sequential rules may be path-dependent and strategically manipulable. We characterize path-independence and prove its essential equivalence to strategy-proofness. Our results shed light on the rationality of simple-, super-, and sub-majoritarian decision-making. (shrink)

This chapter explores a potential analogy between mereological principles and laws of nature. Against a backdrop of what Marmodoro has termed ‘power structuralism’ (and a rejection of a Humean worldview), the connection between parthood and modality may be richer than has hitherto been considered. Mereological principles delineate possibilities for parts and wholes, and putting powers at the centre of a discussion about parthood can furnish a novel conception of mereological laws, much as dispositionalism has done so for natural laws; namely, (...) these principles express connections between fundamental dispositional properties. By extending dispositionalism to comprehend mereology in this way, we can help fulfil its promise to provide a foundational, naturalistic metaphysics, as foundational mereological debates then begin to mirror those relating to dispositionalist views of laws of nature: we may treat natural and mereological laws in tandem, as holding either necessarily or contingently, with associated strategies for dealing with supposed counterexamples to one’s preferred set of mereological principles. We can thus bring new life to the debate over whether questions of composition admit of contingent or only necessary answers. (shrink)

In the theory of judgment aggregation, it is known for which agendas of propositions it is possible to aggregate individual judgments into collective ones in accordance with the Arrow-inspired requirements of universal domain, collective rationality, unanimity preservation, non-dictatorship and propositionwise independence. But it is only partially known (e.g., only in the monotonic case) for which agendas it is possible to respect additional requirements, notably non-oligarchy, anonymity, no individual veto power, or implication preservation. We fully characterize the agendas for which there (...) are such possibilities, thereby answering the most salient open questions about propositionwise judgment aggregation. Our results build on earlier results by Nehring and Puppe (2002), Nehring (2006), Dietrich and List (2007a) and Dokow and Holzman (2010a). (shrink)

This chapter offers an account of Crusius’ conception of freedom. In the first part of the chapter I sketch Crusius’ understanding of ‘Thelematology’ or ‘science of the will’ and his conception of the will itself. In the second part of the paper I provide an account of Crusius’ conception of freedom of the will and I focus on two topics: his understanding of freedom as self-determination and his conception of free choice. Contrary to how some of the secondary literature portrays (...) his view, I argue that freedom of the will, for Crusius, is not best described as the freedom to choose otherwise or liberty of indifference. On the contrary, Crusius argues that free choice is rarely indifferent to its choices and is most often strongly inclined towards certain ends that free choice must overcome and choose against. (shrink)

A perceptual realism that is naive in a good way must be naively realistic about world and mind. But contemporary self-described naive realists often have trouble acknowledging that both the good cases of successful perception and the bad cases of illusion and hallucination involve internal experiential states with intentional contents that present the world as being a certain way. They prefer to think about experience solely in relational terms because they worry that otherwise we won’t be able to escape from (...) radical skepticism. I argue that experiential relations to objects require that their subjects be in internal experiential states. But this does not mean that these states are our epistemological starting point which can be known independently of any knowledge of the external world. We do escape the epistemological predicament of radical skepticism because the good cases are primary over the bad ones. But this is not because the good cases alone provide reasons for belief, but because we do not need a reason to think we are in a good case, but do need a reason to think we are not, and such a reason must come from a good case. So bad cases can only be thought of as deviations from good cases. And we can only understand experiences as states with contents distinct from their objects and present in good and bad cases once we understand misrepresentation, that is, bad cases, and therefore only as we ascribe knowledge of the external world to ourselves. (shrink)

All existing impossibility theorems on judgment aggregation require individual and collective judgment sets to be consistent and complete, arguably a demanding rationality requirement. They do not carry over to aggregation functions mapping profiles of consistent individual judgment sets to consistent collective ones. We prove that, whenever the agenda of propositions under consideration exhibits mild interconnections, any such aggregation function that is "neutral" between the acceptance and rejection of each proposition is dictatorial. We relate this theorem to the literature.

What is consciousness? Of course, each of us knows, privately, what consciousness is. And we each think, for basically irresistible reasons, that all other conscious humans by and large have experiences like ours. So we conclude that we all know what consciousness is. It's the felt experiences of our lives. But that is not the answer we, as cognitive scientists, seek in asking our question. We all want to know what physical process consciousness is and why it produces this very (...) strange, almost mysterious, phenomenon of felt experience. (shrink)

Husserl famously argues that it is essential to perception to present the perceived object in perspectives. Hence, there is no – and there cannot be – perception without perspectival givenness. Yet, it seems that there are counterexamples to this essentialist claim, for we seem to be able to imagine beings that do not perceive in perspectives. Recently, there have been some accounts in the literature that critically discuss those counterexamples and assess to what extent they succeed in challenging Husserl’s essentialist (...) claim. In this paper I discuss three different answers to these counterexamples, all of them are found wanting. I offer a novel solution, taking into account some crucial findings of the contemporary debate about imagination and modality. I argue that this new solution is capable of fully vindicating Husserl’s essentialist claim. Finally, I reconstruct Husserl’s own way to treat such counterexamples, in order to showcase the notion of modality Husserlian phenomenology relies on. I argue for the hitherto widely underappreciated point that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology cannot appeal to strictly absolute modality but that the kind of modality in Husserlian phenomenology is conditional on the facticity that we have the transcendental structure we do in fact have. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is well-known for her insistence that there are absolutely prohibited actions, though she is somewhat obscure about why this is so. Nonetheless, I contend in this paper that Anscombe is more concerned with the epistemology of absolute prohibitions, and that her thought on connatural moral knowledge – which resembles moral intuition – is key to understanding her thought on moral prohibitions. I shall identify key features of Anscombe’s moral epistemology before turning to investigate its sources, examining the roots (...) of connaturality in Aquinas and comparing it with rationalist ethical intuitionism, which Anscombe differs from in rejecting “good” as a simple, non-natural property. I then develop a two-stage argument about absolute prohibition: The first will be loosely Thomistic, while the second will suggest how Anscombe’s absolute prohibitions can be seen as a continuation of Wittgenstein’s anti-scepticism in On Certainty. I develop an account of absolute prohibitions as a form of Wittgensteinian hinge proposition – they are not the conclusions of deductive arguments, but the foundations for intelligibility in action. (shrink)

This is a book review of Karim Bschir and Jamie Shaw (eds.); Interpreting Feyerabend: critical essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 290 pp, $99.99 HB.

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit by relativizing the (...) rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency and requirements dictated by the environment . We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on judgment aggregation. (shrink)

Inauguration speech at chair number 18 of the Brasilian Academy of Philosophy.

This thesis develops an account of ethics called the Linguistic Perspective, which is realist in a practical, non-theoretical sense, and is rooted Wittgenstein’s 'On Certainty'. On this account, normativity is intrinsic to human action and language; the norms of ethics are the logical limits of the most basic, unassailable concepts that practical reasoning requires for intelligibility. Part I lays the groundwork for this account by developing a Tractarian Reading of 'On Certainty'. Here, I contend that 'On Certainty' is primarily concerned (...) with the logical requirements and limits of language, and like the 'Tractatus' it develops these concerns in a realist direction. 'On Certainty', I argue, does so by advancing three key claims about logic: Everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic; the boundary between logical and empirical propositions is not sharp; logic is founded on action. I investigate these claims, with particular emphasis on how natural human reactions provide logical conditions for the possibility of language. Hinge propositions, I argue, are rooted in these reactions; they point us to the limits of intelligibility of our concepts, though these limits are vague and inarticulable. In Part II, I discuss the practical syllogism and its validity. I argue that practical reasoning is distinct from theoretical reasoning and embodies a different standard of logical validity for inference. This standard is not strict and narrow, but creative and wide open; furthermore, it is an intrinsically ethical standard. Then, I advance my Linguistic Perspective on ethics, according to which human reactions provide the conditions for ethical normativity, just as they do for language. I argue that we can access ethical norms by reflecting on those linguistic concepts that are rooted in the most basic patterns of action, and by identifying the norms of behaviour that ensure the development of those concepts without contradiction. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh starts his book with a very powerful picture based on a real incident: On the 9th of January 2020, Robert Williams was wrongfully arrested by Detroit police officers in front of his two young daughters, wife and neighbors. For 18 hours the police would not disclose the grounds for his arrest (American Civil Liberties Union 2020; Hill 2020). The decision to arrest him was primarily based on a facial detection algorithm which matched Mr. Williams’ driving license photo with (...) the picture of a man who was suspected of watch theft two years earlier. Not only did the computer ‘get it wrong’ as one of the detectives said, when Mr. Williams made them aware that the picture of the suspect obviously wasn’t resembling him, the probably unreliable algorithm very likely contributed to racial discrimination (Hill 2020). It is well documented that many available facial detection algorithms at this time had significant problems (e.g. a comparably high false positive rate) with respect to black persons, like Mr. Williams (NIST 2019). Multiple causes may exist, such as unbalanced training datasets and insufficient optimization. Coeckelbergh compares the disturbing case of Mr. Williams with a political interpretation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, where the protagonist, Josef K., is accused of an unspecified crime by an opaque, oppressive and absurd bureaucracy: “In the 21st-century United States, Josef K. is black and is falsely accused by an algorithm, without explanation” (p. 2). (shrink)

This paper investigates some classical oppositional categories, like synthetic vs. analytic, posterior vs. prior, imagination vs. grammar, metaphor vs. hermeneutics, metaphysics vs. observation, innovation vs. routine, and image vs. sound, and the role they play in epistemology and philosophy of science. The epistemological framework of objective cognitive constructivism is of special interest in these investigations. Oppositional relations are formally represented using algebraic lattice structures like the cube and the hexagon of opposition, with applications in the contexts of modern color theory, (...) Kantian philosophy, Jungian psychology, and linguistics. (shrink)

Suppose several individuals (e.g., experts on a panel) each assign probabilities to some events. How can these individual probability assignments be aggregated into a single collective probability assignment? This article reviews several proposed solutions to this problem. We focus on three salient proposals: linear pooling (the weighted or unweighted linear averaging of probabilities), geometric pooling (the weighted or unweighted geometric averaging of probabilities), and multiplicative pooling (where probabilities are multiplied rather than averaged). We present axiomatic characterisations of each class of (...) pooling functions (most of them classic, but one new) and argue that linear pooling can be justified procedurally, but not epistemically, while the other two pooling methods can be justified epistemically. The choice between them, in turn, depends on whether the individuals' probability assignments are based on shared information or on private information. We conclude by mentioning a number of other pooling methods. (shrink)

This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that ‘‘framework debate’’ in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled (...) by these points to explore existing literature on the topic. Despite this literature, pluralism has garnered very little attention from broader cognitive science. We end by briefly considering what it might mean for theoretical cognitive science. (shrink)

Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a (...) mental condition where the affected person denies there is any problem. The theories of two eminent philosophers supporting the No-Progress view are also examined. The final section offers an explanation for philosophy 's inability to solve any philosophical problem, ever. The paper closes with some reflections on philosophy 's future. (shrink)

We present a new “reason-based” approach to the formal representation of moral theories, drawing on recent decision-theoretic work. We show that any moral theory within a very large class can be represented in terms of two parameters: a specification of which properties of the objects of moral choice matter in any given context, and a specification of how these properties matter. Reason-based representations provide a very general taxonomy of moral theories, as differences among theories can be attributed to differences in (...) their two key parameters. We can thus formalize several distinctions, such as between consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories, between universalist and relativist theories, between agent-neutral and agent-relative theories, between monistic and pluralistic theories, between atomistic and holistic theories, and between theories with a teleological structure and those without. Reason-based representations also shed light on an important but under-appreciated phenomenon: the “underdetermination of moral theory by deontic content”. (shrink)

In response to recent work on the aggregation of individual judgments on logically connected propositions into collective judgments, it is often asked whether judgment aggregation is a special case of Arrowian preference aggregation. We argue for the converse claim. After proving two impossibility theorems on judgment aggregation (using "systematicity" and "independence" conditions, respectively), we construct an embedding of preference aggregation into judgment aggregation and prove Arrow’s theorem (stated for strict preferences) as a corollary of our second result. Although we thereby (...) provide a new proof of Arrow’s theorem, our main aim is to identify the analogue of Arrow’s theorem in judgment aggregation, to clarify the relation between judgment and preference aggregation, and to illustrate the generality of the judgment aggregation model. JEL Classi…cation: D70, D71.. (shrink)

Many debates in philosophy focus on whether folk or scientific psychological notions pick out cognitive natural kinds. Examples include memory, emotions and concepts. A potentially interesting type of kind is: kinds of mental representations (as opposed, for example, to kinds of psychological faculties). In this chapter we outline a proposal for a theory of representational kinds in cognitive science. We argue that the explanatory role of representational kinds in scientific theories, in conjunction with a mainstream approach to explanation in cognitive (...) science, suggest that representational kinds are multi-level. This is to say that representational kinds’ properties cluster at different levels of explanation and allow for intra- and inter-level projections. (shrink)

While ordinary decision theory focuses on empirical uncertainty, real decision-makers also face normative uncertainty: uncertainty about value itself. From a purely formal perspective, normative uncertainty is comparable to (Harsanyian or Rawlsian) identity uncertainty in the 'original position', where one's future values are unknown. A comprehensive decision theory must address twofold uncertainty -- normative and empirical. We present a simple model of twofold uncertainty, and show that the most popular decision principle -- maximising expected value (`Expectationalism') -- has different formulations, namely (...) Ex-Ante Expectationalism, Ex-Post Expectationalism, and hybrid theories. These alternative theories recommend different decisions, reasoning modes, and attitudes to risk. But they converge under an interesting (necessary and sufficient) condition. (shrink)

The aggregation of individual judgments over interrelated propositions is a newly arising field of social choice theory. I introduce several independence conditions on judgment aggregation rules, each of which protects against a specific type of manipulation by agenda setters or voters. I derive impossibility theorems whereby these independence conditions are incompatible with certain minimal requirements. Unlike earlier impossibility results, the main result here holds for any (non-trivial) agenda. However, independence conditions arguably undermine the logical structure of judgment aggregation. I therefore (...) suggest restricting independence to premises, which leads to a generalised premise-based procedure. This procedure is proven to be possible if the premises are logically independent. (shrink)

There is a surprising disconnect between formal rational choice theory and philosophical work on reasons. The one is silent on the role of reasons in rational choices, the other rarely engages with the formal models of decision problems used by social scientists. To bridge this gap, we propose a new, reason-based theory of rational choice. At its core is an account of preference formation, according to which an agent’s preferences are determined by his or her motivating reasons, together with a (...) ‘weighing relation’ between different combinations of reasons. By explaining how someone’s preferences may vary with changes in his or her motivating reasons, our theory illuminates the relationship between deliberation about reasons and rational choices. Although primarily positive, the theory can also help us think about how those preferences and choices ought to respond to normative reasons. (shrink)

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the ‘wisdom of crowds’. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises – voter independence – is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem's misleading conclusion that ‘large crowds are infallible’. We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, ‘large crowds are fallible but better than small groups’. This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation (...) and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha's (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable (‘indistinguishable’) voters based on de Finetti's Theorem. We also prove a more general and simpler such jury theorem. (shrink)

The new field of judgment aggregation aims to merge many individual sets of judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a single collective set of judgments on these propositions. Judgment aggregation has commonly been studied using classical propositional logic, with a limited expressive power and a problematic representation of conditional statements ("if P then Q") as material conditionals. In this methodological paper, I present a simple unified model of judgment aggregation in general logics. I show how many realistic decision problems can (...) be represented in it. This includes decision problems expressed in languages of classical propositional logic, predicate logic (e.g. preference aggregation problems), modal or conditional logics, and some multi-valued or fuzzy logics. I provide a list of simple tools for working with general logics, and I prove impossibility results that generalise earlier theorems. (shrink)

John Broome has developed an account of rationality and reasoning which gives philosophical foundations for choice theory and the psychology of rational agents. We formalize his account into a model that differs from ordinary choice-theoretic models through focusing on psychology and the reasoning process. Within that model, we ask Broome’s central question of whether reasoning can make us more rational: whether it allows us to acquire transitive preferences, consistent beliefs, non-akratic intentions, and so on. We identify three structural types of (...) rationality requirements: consistency requirements, completeness requirements, and closedness requirements. Many standard rationality requirements fall under this typology. Based on three theorems, we argue that reasoning is successful in achieving closedness requirements, but not in achieving consistency or completeness requirements. We assess how far our negative results reveal gaps in Broome's theory, or deficiencies in choice theory and behavioral economics. (shrink)

Decision-making typically requires judgments about causal relations: we need to know the causal effects of our actions and the causal relevance of various environmental factors. We investigate how several individuals' causal judgments can be aggregated into collective causal judgments. First, we consider the aggregation of causal judgments via the aggregation of probabilistic judgments, and identify the limitations of this approach. We then explore the possibility of aggregating causal judgments independently of probabilistic ones. Formally, we introduce the problem of causal-network aggregation. (...) Finally, we revisit the aggregation of probabilistic judgments when this is constrained by prior aggregation of qualitative causal judgments. (shrink)

How can different individuals' probability assignments to some events be aggregated into a collective probability assignment? Classic results on this problem assume that the set of relevant events -- the agenda -- is a sigma-algebra and is thus closed under disjunction (union) and conjunction (intersection). We drop this demanding assumption and explore probabilistic opinion pooling on general agendas. One might be interested in the probability of rain and that of an interest-rate increase, but not in the probability of rain or (...) an interest-rate increase. We characterize linear pooling and neutral pooling for general agendas, with classic results as special cases for agendas that are sigma-algebras. As an illustrative application, we also consider probabilistic preference aggregation. Finally, we compare our results with existing results on binary judgment aggregation and Arrovian preference aggregation. This paper is the first of two self-contained, but technically related companion papers inspired by binary judgment-aggregation theory. (shrink)

Through modern driver assistant systems, algorithmic decisions already have a significant impact on the behavior of vehicles in everyday traffic. This will become even more prominent in the near future considering the development of autonomous driving functionality. The need to consider ethical principles in the design of such systems is generally acknowledged. However, scope, principles and strategies for their implementations are not yet clear. Most of the current discussions concentrate on situations of unavoidable crashes in which the life of human (...) beings is existentially affected. In this paper, we argue that ethical considerations should be mandatory for any algorithmic decision of autonomous vehicles, instead of a limitation to hazard situations. Such an ethically aligned behavior is relevant because autonomous vehicles, like any other traffic participants, operate in a shared public space, where every behavioral decision impacts the operational possibilities of others. These possibilities concern the fulfillment of a road-user’s safety, utility and comfort needs. We propose that, to operate ethically in such space, an autonomous vehicle will have to take its behavior decisions according to a just distribution of operational possibilities among all traffic participants. Using an application on a partially-autonomous prototype vehicle, we describe how to apply and implement concepts of distributive justice to the driving environment and demonstrate the impact on its behavior in comparison to an advanced but egoistic decision maker. (shrink)

Democratic decision-making is often defended on grounds of the ‘wisdom of crowds’: decisions are more likely to be correct if they are based on many independent opinions, so a typical argument in social epistemology. But what does it mean to have independent opinions? Opinions can be probabilistically dependent even if individuals form their opinion in causal isolation from each other. We distinguish four probabilistic notions of opinion independence. Which of them holds depends on how individuals are causally affected by environmental (...) factors such as commonly perceived evidence. In a general theorem, we identify causal conditions guaranteeing each kind of opinion independence. These results have implications for whether and how ‘wisdom of crowds’ arguments are possible, and how truth-conducive institutions can be designed. (shrink)

Under the independence and competence assumptions of Condorcet’s classical jury model, the probability of a correct majority decision converges to certainty as the jury size increases, a seemingly unrealistic result. Using Bayesian networks, we argue that the model’s independence assumption requires that the state of the world (guilty or not guilty) is the latest common cause of all jurors’ votes. But often – arguably in all courtroom cases and in many expert panels – the latest such common cause is a (...) shared ‘body of evidence’ observed by the jurors. In the corresponding Bayesian network, the votes are direct descendants not of the state of the world, but of the body of evidence, which in turn is a direct descendant of the state of the world. We develop a model of jury decisions based on this Bayesian network. Our model permits the possibility of misleading evidence, even for a maximally competent observer, which cannot easily be accommodated in the classical model. We prove that (i) the probability of a correct majority verdict converges to the probability that the body of evidence is not misleading, a value typically below 1; (ii) depending on the required threshold of ‘no reasonable doubt’, it may be impossible, even in an arbitrarily large jury, to establish guilt of a defendant ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’. (shrink)

We present a general framework for representing belief-revision rules and use it to characterize Bayes's rule as a classical example and Jeffrey's rule as a non-classical one. In Jeffrey's rule, the input to a belief revision is not simply the information that some event has occurred, as in Bayes's rule, but a new assignment of probabilities to some events. Despite their differences, Bayes's and Jeffrey's rules can be characterized in terms of the same axioms: "responsiveness", which requires that revised beliefs (...) incorporate what has been learnt, and "conservativeness", which requires that beliefs on which the learnt input is "silent" do not change. To illustrate the use of non-Bayesian belief revision in economic theory, we sketch a simple decision-theoretic application. (shrink)

Advocates of dynamic systems have suggested that higher mental processes are based on continuous representations. In order to evaluate this claim, we first define the concept of representation, and rigorously distinguish between discrete representations and continuous representations. We also explore two important bases of representational content. Then, we present seven arguments that discrete representations are necessary for any system that must discriminate between two or more states. It follows that higher mental processes require discrete representations. We also argue that discrete (...) representations are more influenced by conceptual role than continuous representations. We end by arguing that the presence of discrete representations in cognitive systems entails that computationalism (i.e., the view that the mind is a computational device) is true, and that cognitive science should embrace representational pluralism. (shrink)

Several recent results on the aggregation of judgments over logically connected propositions show that, under certain conditions, dictatorships are the only propositionwise aggregation functions generating fully rational (i.e., complete and consistent) collective judgments. A frequently mentioned route to avoid dictatorships is to allow incomplete collective judgments. We show that this route does not lead very far: we obtain oligarchies rather than dictatorships if instead of full rationality we merely require that collective judgments be deductively closed, arguably a minimal condition of (...) rationality, compatible even with empty judgment sets. We derive several characterizations of oligarchies and provide illustrative applications to Arrowian preference aggregation and Kasher and Rubinsteinís group identification problem. (shrink)

Jury theorems are mathematical theorems about the ability of collectives to make correct decisions. Several jury theorems carry the optimistic message that, in suitable circumstances, ‘crowds are wise’: many individuals together (using, for instance, majority voting) tend to make good decisions, outperforming fewer or just one individual. Jury theorems form the technical core of epistemic arguments for democracy, and provide probabilistic tools for reasoning about the epistemic quality of collective decisions. The popularity of jury theorems spans across various disciplines such (...) as economics, political science, philosophy, and computer science. This entry reviews and critically assesses a variety of jury theorems. It first discusses Condorcet's initial jury theorem, and then progressively introduces jury theorems with more appropriate premises and conclusions. It explains the philosophical foundations, and relates jury theorems to diversity, deliberation, shared evidence, shared perspectives, and other phenomena. It finally connects jury theorems to their historical background and to democratic theory, social epistemology, and social choice theory. (shrink)

I propose a relevance-based independence axiom on how to aggregate individual yes/no judgments on given propositions into collective judgments: the collective judgment on a proposition depends only on people’s judgments on propositions which are relevant to that proposition. This axiom contrasts with the classical independence axiom: the collective judgment on a proposition depends only on people’s judgments on the same proposition. I generalize the premise-based rule and the sequential-priority rule to an arbitrary priority order of the propositions, instead of a (...) dichotomous premise/conclusion order resp. a linear priority order. I prove four impossibility theorems on relevance-based aggregation. One theorem simultaneously generalizes Arrow’s Theorem (in its general and indifference-free versions) and the well-known Arrow-like theorem in judgment aggregation. (shrink)