A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not (...) justified in asserting P. While such arguments often appeal to principles with wide appeal, such as the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, they also require a commitment to principles that seem far less compelling, e.g. the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’ or the principle that having an obligation entails being responsible. It is argued here that these further principles are dubious, and that it will be difficult to construct a valid transcendental argument without them. (shrink)

While philosophers have worried about mental causation for centuries, worries about the causal relevance of conscious phenomena are also increasingly featuring in neuroscientific literature. Neuroscientists have regarded the threat of epiphenomenalism as interesting primarily because they have supposed that it entails free will scepticism. However, the steps that get us from a premise about the causal irrelevance of conscious phenomena to a conclusion about free will are not entirely clear. In fact, if we examine popular philosophical accounts of free will, (...) we find, for the most part, nothing to suggest that free will is inconsistent with the presence of unconscious neural precursors to choices. It is only if we adopt highly non-naturalistic assumptions about the mind (e.g. if we embrace Cartesian dualism and locate free choice in the non-physical realm) that it seems plausible to suppose that the neuroscientific data generates a threat to free will. (shrink)

Haji argues that determinism threatens deontic morality, not via a threat to moral responsibility, but directly, because of the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. Haji’s argument requires not only that we embrace an ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principle, but also that we adopt the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’. I argue that we have little reason to adopt the latter principle, and examine whether deontic morality might be destroyed on the basis of the more commonly embraced ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (...) principle alone. I argue that despite what look like initially compelling reasons why we might suppose that this weaker conclusion is similarly destructive to deontic morality, we actually have good reason to doubt that it has any practical relevance for moral deliberation at all. (shrink)

Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on (...) the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice. (shrink)

The notion of computation has changed the world more than any previous expressions of knowledge. However, as know-how in its particular algorithmic embodiment, computation is closed to meaning. Therefore, computer-based data processing can only mimic life’s creative aspects, without being creative itself. AI’s current record of accomplishments shows that it automates tasks associated with intelligence, without being intelligent itself. Mistaking the abstract for the concrete has led to the religion of “everything is an output of computation”—even the humankind that conceived (...) the computer. The hypostatized role of computers explains the increased dependence on them. The convergence machine called deep learning is only the most recent form through which the deterministic theology of the machine claims more than what it actually is: extremely effective data processing. A proper understanding of complexity, as well as the need to distinguish between the reactive nature of the artificial and the anticipatory nature of the living are suggested as practical responses to the challenges posed by machine theology. (shrink)

Justified by spectacular achievements facilitated through applied deep learning methodology, the “Everything is possible” view dominates this new hour in the “boom and bust” curve of AI performance. The optimistic view collides head on with the “It is not possible”—ascertainments often originating in a skewed understanding of both AI and medicine. The meaning of the conflicting views can be assessed only by addressing the nature of medicine. Specifically: Which part of medicine, if any, can and should be entrusted to AI—now (...) or at some moment in the future? AI or not, medicine should incorporate the anticipation perspective in providing care. (shrink)

In his article “Issues of Pragmaticism” published in 1905, in The Monist, Charles S. Peirce complains that “Logicians have been at fault in giving Vagueness the go-by, so far as not even to analyze it.” That same year, occupying himself with the consequences of “Critical commonsensism,” he affirmed, “I have worked out the logic of vagueness with something like completeness,” a statement that causes the majority of the commentators on his work, including the editors of the Collected Papers to ask (...) where this logic is to be found. The fever for finding Peirce's manuscripts is fed by the hope of some researchers of discovering the logic of vagueness, a hope that has grown since Carolyn Eisele's publication of his mathematical works. Others - and I count myself among them - believe that in reality this is a matter of something already known. That is, they interpret the affirmation ending the paragraph of reproach addressed to logicians, “The present writer has done his best to work out the Stechiology, Critic, and Methodeutik of the subject,” as a tripartite semiotic of the vague, still limited, according to Peirce's older works, to symbols, that is, to the signs of natural language examined from the perspective of logic. (shrink)