Societies of the East are often contrasted with those of the West in their stances toward technology. This paper explores these perceived differences in the context of international ethics guidance for artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Japan serves as an example of the East, while Europe and North America serve as examples of the West. The paper’s principal aim is to demonstrate that Western values predominate in international ethics guidance and that Japanese values serve as a much-needed corrective. We recommend (...) a hybrid approach that is more inclusive and truly ‘international’. Following an introduction, the paper examines distinct stances toward robots that emerged in the West and Japan, respectively, during the aftermath of the Second World War, reflecting history and popular culture, socio-economic conditions, and religious worldviews. It shows how international ethics guidelines reflect these disparate stances, drawing on a 2019 scoping review that examined 84 international AI ethics documents. These documents are heavily skewed toward precautionary values associated with the West and cite the optimistic values associated with Japan less frequently. Drawing insights from Japan’s so-called ‘moonshot goals’, the paper fleshes out Japanese values in greater detail and shows how to incorporate them more effectively in international ethics guidelines for AI and robotics. (shrink)

Scientific research is a highly complex and creative domain of human activity. In addition to its intrinsic value, understanding scientific thinking provides insight into the creative potential of human psychological capacities, as they are imbedded in rich social, material, and cultural environments. I discuss findings from my own investigations using two forms of qualitative research suited to studying scientific thinking as situated in context: cognitive-historical and cognitive-ethnographic.

This paper replies to a commentary by John-Stewart Gordon on our paper, “The Moral Standing of Social Robots: Untapped Insights from Africa.” In the original paper, we set forth an African relational view of personhood and show its implica- tions for the moral standing of social robots. This reply clarifies our position and answers three objections. The objections concern (1) the ethical significance of intelligence, (2) the meaning of ‘pro-social,’ and (3) the justification for prioritizing humans over pro-social robots.

In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while the (...) other does not. Interactions of this type are widespread in molecular biology and chemistry. I focus specifically on (i) the actions of enzymes on substrates and (ii) water molecules breaking the bonds of polarized molecules. Finally, I respond to objections by laying out and to a limited extent defending three commitments of my account: emergent entities and powers, realism about chemical kinds or structures, and the assumption of the agent/patient distinction in functional attributions in biology. (shrink)

Who, over the age of 20, hasn’t experienced a serendipitous event: unexpected information that yields some unintended but potential value later on? Sitting next to a stranger on a plane who becomes a business partner? Stumbling onto an article in a journal or newspaper that helps tackle a nagging problem? Creating a new drug by accident?

Stephen Davies taught philosophy at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. His research specialty is the philosophy of art. He is a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics. His books include Definitions of Art (Cornell UP, 1991), Musical Meaning and Expression (Cornell UP, 1994), Musical Works and Performances (Clarendon, 2001), Themes in the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2003), Philosophical Perspectives on Art (OUP, 2007), Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2011), The Artful (...) Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution (OUP, 2012), The Philosophy of Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 second ed.), and Adornment: What Self-decorations Tells Us about Who We Are, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). (shrink)

The “problem of intentionality” from the vantage point of a representational understanding of mind is explaining what thoughts and beliefs are and how they guide behaviour. From an anti-representationalist perspective, on the other hand, on which cognition itself is taken to be a kind of action, intentionality is a capacity to engage in behaviour that is meaningfully directed toward or about some situation. That these are not in fact competing insights is obscured by the representational/anti-representational framing of the debate. This (...) paper begins the work of shifting the conversation in two ways: (1) by arguing that it is the commitment to internal representations, not the acknowledgement of a role for representation per se, that is problematic; and, (2) by describing an alternative, externalist, representational approach that draws on extended, embodied, enactive insights. (shrink)

The current orthodoxy in cognitive science, what I describe as a commitment to deep representationalism, faces intractable problems. If we take these objections seriously, and I will argue that we should, there are two possible responses: 1. We are mistaken that representation is the locus of our cognitive capacities — we manage to be the successful cognitive agents in some other, non-representational, way; or, 2. Our representational capacities do give us critical cognitive advantages, but they are not fundamental to us (...) qua human beings. As Andy Clark has convincingly argued, antirepresentationalism, option one, is explanatorily weak. Consequently, I will argue, we need to take the second option seriously. In the first half of the paper I rehearse the problems with the current representational view and in the second half of the paper I defend and give a positive sketch of a two-systems view of cognition – a non-representational perceptual system coupled with a representational language-dependent one – and look at some consequences of the view. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the close association between withholding and withdrawing futile life-sustaining medical treatments and assisting patients with hastening ending their lives. Section 12.2 sets forth a definition of medical futility and places this concept in the broader context of bioethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. Section 12.3 draws out futility’s ethical implications and considers the view that physicians are ethically permitted to refrain from medically futile treatments, should be encouraged to refrain, or have a duty to refrain. (...) Section 12.4 examines ethical arguments that physicians also have a positive duty to assist patients with terminal conditions who are imminently dying to end their lives. It explores ethical arguments for assisted dying that appeal to the physicians’ significant responsibility and relationship with patients, the claimed moral equivalence of actions and omissions, and the medical goal of helping patients have a peaceful and dignified death. (shrink)

Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at (...) the interface between science and ethics. To illustrate the importance of integrated ethical and scientific analysis, we define key open questions and outline a coupled scientific-ethical research agenda to analyze solar-radiation management geoengineering proposals. We identify nine key fields of coupled research including whether solar-radiation management can be tested, how quickly learning could occur, normative decisions embedded in how different climate trajectories are valued, and justice issues regarding distribution of the harms and benefits of geoengineering. To ensure that ethical analyses are coupled with scientific analyses of this form of geoengineering, we advocate that funding agencies recognize the essential nature of this coupled research by establishing an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program for solar-radiation management. (shrink)

The paper develops a positive account of the representational capacity of cognitive systems: simple, associationist learning mechanisms and an architecture that supports bootstrapping are sufficient conditions for symbol tool use. In terms of the debates within the philosophy of mind, this paper offers a plausibility account of representation externalism, an alternative to the reductive, computational/representational models of intentionality that still play a leading role in the field. Although the central theme here is representation, methodologically this view complements embodied, enactivist approaches (...) to studying cognition. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has an apparent pedigree when it comes to animal welfare. It supports the view that animal welfare matters just as much as human welfare. And many utilitarians support and oppose various practices in line with more mainstream concern over animal welfare, such as that we should not kill animals for food or other uses, and that we ought not to torture animals for fun. This relationship has come under tension from many directions. The aim of this article is to (...) add further considerations in support of that tension. I suggest three ways in which utilitarianism comes significantly apart from mainstream concerns with animal welfare. First, utilitarianism opposes animal cruelty only when it offers an inefficient ratio of pleasure to pain; while this may be true of eating animal products, it is not obviously true of other abuses. Second, utilitarianism faces a familiar problem of the inefficacy of individual decisions; I consider a common response to this worry, and offer further concerns. Finally, the common utilitarian argument against animal cruelty ignores various pleasures that humans may get from the superior status that a structure supporting exploitation confers. (shrink)

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge (...) bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian’s case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well. (shrink)

According to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is (...) not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why—in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language—it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication. (shrink)

A society is said to age when its number of older members increases in relation to its number of younger members. The societies in most of the world’s industrialized nations have been aging since at least 1800. In 1800 the demographic makeup of developed countries was similar to that of many Third World countries in the early 1990s with roughly half the population under the age of 16 and very few people living beyond age of 60. Since that time, increases (...) in life expectancy, combined with declines in fertility rates, have dramatically increased the proportion of older persons in developed nations. The rapid increase in the number of older persons relative to younger ones carries important societal implications. In the domain of healthcare, societal aging will increase costs and exert greater pressure to ration services. It will, thus, bring to the fore questions, regarding a just distribution of healthcare between young and old age groups. This paper considers some of the most influential arguments to date for age-based rationing of health care. I show that these arguments fall short, and that the theoretical assumptions underlying them do not withstand careful scrutiny. (shrink)

We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe-as-a-whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if we redefine (...) God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications. (shrink)

Intelligent neurotechnology is an emerging field that combines neurotechnologies like brain-computer interface (BCI) with artificial intelligence. This paper introduces a capability framework to assess the responsible use of intelligent BCI systems and provide practical ethical guidance. It proposes two tests, the threshold and flourishing tests, that BCI applications must meet, and illustrates them in a series of cases. After a brief introduction (Section 1), Section 2 sets forth the capability view and the two tests. It illustrates the threshold test using (...) examples from clinical medicine of BCI applications that enable patients with profound disabilities to function at a threshold level through computer mediation. Section 3 illustrates the flourishing test by exploring possible future applications of BCI involving neuroenhancements for healthy people, using examples adapted from research currently underway in the US military. Section 3 applies a capability lens to a complex case involving dual effects, both therapeutic and non-therapeutic, showing how the threshold and flourishing tests resolve the case. Section 4 replies to three objections: neurorights are the best tool for assessing BCI; the two tests are moving targets; and the analysis utilizes a capability view to do work it is not designed for. The paper concludes that a capability view offers unique advantages and gives practical guidance for evaluating the responsible use of present and future BCI applications. Extrapolating from our analysis may help guide other emerging technologies, such as germline gene editing, expected to impact central human capabilities. (shrink)

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch a cognitive evolutionary approach for developing explanations of social change that is anchored on the psychological mechanisms underlying normative cognition and the transmission of social norms. We throw the relevant features of this approach into relief by comparing it with the self-fulfilling social expectations account developed by Bicchieri and colleagues. After describing both accounts, we argue that the two approaches are largely compatible, but that the cognitive evolutionary approach is well- suited (...) to encompass much of the social expectations view, whose focus on a narrow range of norms comes at the expense of the breadth the cognitive evolutionary approach can provide. (shrink)

Many people feel that respecting a person’s autonomy is not sufficiently important to obligate us to stay out of their affairs in all cases; but the ground for interference may often turn out to be a hunch that the agent cannot really be competent, or cannot really know what her decision implies; for if she were both of these things, surely she would not make such a foolish decision. This paper suggests a justification of paternalism that does not rely on (...) such appeals. I argue that in cases where an agent will undergo a significant alteration in their evaluative outlook – ‘evaluative shift’ – three central, persuasive objections to paternalism lose their force, and offer a prima facie case for paternalism in some of these cases. I then suggest that we can extend this argument to some cases where evaluative alteration is not predictable, but where the risk and harm are both significant. In such cases, paternalism may be justified. (shrink)

This paper outlines new work in cross-cultural psychology largely drawn from Nisbett, Choi, and Smith (Cognition, 65, 15–32, 1997); Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, Psychological Review, 108(2), 291–310, 2001; Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. New York: Free Press 2003), Ji, Zhang and Nisbett (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 57–65, 2004), Norenzayan (2000) and Peng (Naive Dialecticism and its Effects on Reasoning and Judgement about Contradiction. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1997) (...) Peng and Nisbett (Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in the Understanding of Physical Causality. Paper presented at the Science and Culture: Proceedings of the Seventh Interdisciplinary Conference on Science and Culture, Frankfort, K. Y. 1996), and Peng, Ames, & Knowles (Culture and Human Inference: Perspectives from three traditions. In: D. Matsumoto (Ed.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (pp. 1–2). Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000). The paper argues that the findings on cultural influences on inference-making have implications for teaching and education generally, and specifically for the debate on conceptions and misconceptions of Asian students studying in western tertiary institutions around the world. The position defended is that, while there seems to be compelling empirical evidence for intercultural differences in thought patterns, these patterns are, for the most part, insignificant in everyday exchanges, though language and culture might subtlety modulate our inference-making at the margins. Linguistic determinism however is not defended. Nonetheless, the evidence provides food for thought, and it needs to inform the recent debates about international students studying overseas. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom about advance care planning holds that the normative force of my prior wishes is simply that they are mine. It is their connection to me that matters. This paper challenges conventional thinking. I propose that the normative force of prior wishes does not depend exclusively on personal identity. Instead, it sometimes depends on a special relationship that exists between a prior, capacitated person and a now incapacitated person. I consider what normative guidance governs persons who stand in (...) a special relationship, and contrast these with the standard model of respect for autonomy. My conclusion is that advance care planning for individuals who have lost decision-making capacity should incorporate the virtues of prudence and integrity, even when one and the same person ceases to exist, and respect for personal autonomy is no longer relevant. (shrink)

I argue that Graham Oppy’s attempt to redefend his charge that all modal theistic arguments “must be question-begging” is unsuccessful. Oppy’s attempt to show that theism and modal concretism are compatible is not only tangential for his purposes, it is marred by a misunderstanding of theism, and vulnerable to a counterexample that actually demonstrates incompatibility. Moreover, the notion of begging the question employed by Oppy against the theist is seen to be far too permissive.

A topic of special importance when it comes to responsibility and implicit bias is responsibility for knowledge. Are there strategies for becoming more responsible and respectful knowers? How might we work together, not just as individuals but members of collectives, to reduce the negative effects of bias on what we see and believe, as well as the wrongs associated with epistemic injustice? To explore these questions, Chapter 9 introduces the concept of epistemic responsibility, a set of practices developed through the (...) cultivation of basic epistemic virtues, such as open-mindedness, epistemic humility, and diligence that help knowers seek information about themselves, others, and the world. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a novel class of models used in frontier research in the bioengineering sciences – in vitro simulation models – that provide the basis for biological experimentation. These bioengineered models are hybrid constructions, composed of living tissues or cells and engineered materials. Specifically, it discusses the processes through which in vitro models were built, experimented with, and justified in a tissue engineering lab. It examines processes of design, construction, experimentation, evaluation, and redesign of in vitro simulation models, (...) in general, as instances of building the source analogy (as distinguished from retrieving an analogy), which figures prominently in creative frontier scientific research. Building the analogical source is a bootstrapping process, which furthers the articulation, as well as the solution of the problem. -/- . (shrink)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of scarce healthcare resources consistently presented significant moral and practical challenges. While the importance of vaccines as a key pharmaceutical intervention to stem pandemic scarcity was widely publicized, a sizable proportion of the population chose not to vaccinate. In response, some have defended the use of vaccination status as a criterion for the allocation of scarce medical resources. In this paper, we critically interpret this burgeoning literature, and describe a framework for thinking about vaccine-sensitive resource (...) allocation using the values of responsibility, reciprocity, and justice. Although our aim here is not to defend a single view of vaccine-sensitive resource allocation, we believe that attending critically with the diversity of arguments in favor (and against) vaccine-sensitivity reveals a number of questions that a vaccine-sensitive approach to allocation should answer in future pandemics. (shrink)

We call for a new philosophical conception of models in physics. Some standard conceptions take models to be useful approximations to theorems, that are the chief means to test theories. Hence the heuristics of model building is dictated by the requirements and practice of theory-testing. In this paper we argue that a theory-driven view of models can not account for common procedures used by scientists to model phenomena. We illustrate this thesis with a case study: the construction of one of (...) the first comprehensive model of superconductivity by London brothers in 1934. Instead of theory-driven view of models, we suggest a phenomenologically-driven one. (shrink)

IntroductionAssociative theories of political obligation offer a fresh alternative to approaches such as social contract theory, fair play, and the natural duty of justice. Few suggestions in ethics are more intuitive than the idea that we have special obligations to our family and friends, just in virtue of our relationships with them, and it is reasonable that obligations to political society are also grounded through association.A basic question for associative theories is to explain how associations give rise to obligation, but (...) here there is a common error. Many associative theorists and their critics take this question to be equivalent to the question: what distinguishes associations that are morally acceptable from those that are not? The assumption is that associations which are morally acceptable are those that give rise to obligations. However, this assumption is wrong in two ways. Associations that have some unacceptable features may still give rise to obl .. (shrink)

This chapter discusses three types of sociable robots for older adults: robotic caregivers ; robotic friends ; and sex robots. The central argument holds that society ought to make reasonable efforts to provide these types of robots and that under certain conditions, omitting such support not only harms older adults but poses threats to their dignity. The argument proceeds stepwise. First, the chapter establishes that assisting care-dependent older adults to perform activities of daily living is integral to respecting dignity. Here, (...) the argument establishes the vital role that carebots-of-the-future might play in aged societies as the supply of working age adults falls shy of demand. Next, the chapter extends this analysis to designing friendbots for socially isolated older adults. The argument holds that reasonable efforts to provide access to friendbots for socially isolated adults is also a future societal responsibility. Finally, the chapter applies similar reasoning to show that societies ought to make reasonable efforts to support sexual capabilities for older adults who want to be sexual but are bereft of sex partners. The argument draws on capability accounts of justice to show that when central human capacities, such as bodily integrity; intimate relationships; and the use of senses, imagination and thought, are at risk of falling below a threshold level, society should intercede. (shrink)

This chapter sets forth an interpretation of public reason that appeals to our central capabilities as human beings. I argue that appealing to central human capabilities and to the related idea of respect for threshold capabilities is the best way to understand public reason. My defense of this position advances stepwise: first, I consider a central alternative to a capability account, which regards public reason as a matter of contracting; next, I describe central concerns with contract views and show how (...) a capability view can avoid them; lastly, I consider extending public reason beyond national borders and test the two views in this context. (shrink)

In this lyrical meditation on listening, Jean-Luc Nancy examines sound in relation to the human body. How is listening different from hearing? What does listening entail? How does what is heard differ from what is seen? Can philosophy even address listening, écouter, as opposed to entendre, which means both hearing and understanding? Unlike the visual arts, sound produces effects that persist long after it has stopped. The body, Nancy says, is itself like an echo chamber, responding to music (...) by inner vibrations as well as outer attentiveness. Since “the ear has no eyelid” (Quignard), sound cannot be blocked out or ignored: our whole being is involved in listening, just as it is involved in interpreting what it hears. The mystery of music and of its effects on the listener is subtly examined. Nancy’s skill as a philosopher is to bring the reader companionably along with him as he examines these fresh and vital questions; by the end of the book the reader feels as if listening very carefully to a person talking quietly, close to the ear. (shrink)

Monetary incentives to increase COVID-19 vaccinations are widely used. Even if they work, whether such payments are ethical is contested. This paper reviews ethical arguments for and against using monetary incentives that appeal to utility, liberty, civic responsibility, equity, exploitation, and autonomy. It concludes that in low-income nations and nations with meagre safety nets and income inequality, policy-makers should proceed with caution.

Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research groups and for their bioscience collaborators who rely on these models. In this paper we introduce a new kind of visualization that was developed to address just this sort of epistemic opacity. The visualization (...) is unusual in that it depicts the dynamics and structure of a computer model instead of that model’s target system, and because it is generated algorithmically. Using considerations from epistemology and aesthetics, we explore how this new kind of visualization increases scientific understanding of the content and function of computer models in systems biology to reduce epistemic opacity. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the idea that Pentecostalism is best supported by conjoining it to a postmodern, narrative epistemology in which everything is a text requiring interpretation. On this view, truth doesn’t consist in a set of uninterpreted facts that make the claims of Christianity true; rather, as James K. A. Smith says, truth emerges when there is a “fit” or proportionality between the Christian story and one’s affective and emotional life. We argue that Pentecostals should reject this account (...) of truth, since it leads to either a self-refuting story-relativism or the equally problematic fallacy of story-ism: favoring one’s own story over others without legitimate reason. In either case, we contend, the gospel itself is placed at risk. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus has argued recently that the frame problem, discussion of which has fallen out of favour in the AI community, is still a deal breaker for the majority of AI projects, despite the fact that the logical version of it has been solved. (Shanahan 1997, Thielscher 1998). Dreyfus thinks that the frame problem will disappear only once we abandon the Cartesian foundations from which it stems and adopt, instead, a thoroughly Heideggerian model of cognition, in particular one that does (...) not appeal to representations. I argue that Dreyfus is too hasty in his condemnation of all representational views; the argument he provides licenses only a rejection of disembodied models of cognition. In casting his net too broadly, Dreyfus circumscribes the cognitive playing field so closely that one is left wondering how his Heideggerian alternative could ever provide a foundation explanatorily robust enough for a theory of cognition. As a consequence, he dilutes the force of his legitimate conclusion, that disembodied cognitive models will not work, and this conclusion needs to be heard. By disentangling the ideas of embodiment and representation, at least with respect to Dreyfus‘ frame problem argument, the real locus of the general polemic between traditional computational/representational cognitive science and the more recent embodied approaches is revealed. From this, I hope that productive debate will ensue. (shrink)

Machine learning systems (MLS) that model low-level processes are the cornerstones of current AI systems. These ‘indirect’ learners are good at classifying kinds that are distinguished solely by their manifest physical properties. But the more a kind is a function of spatio-temporally extended properties — words, situation-types, social norms — the less likely an MLS will be able to track it. Systems that can interact with objects at the individual level, on the other hand, and that can sustain this interaction, (...) can learn responses to increasingly abstract properties, including representational ones. This representational capacity, arguably the mark of intelligence, then, is not available to current MLS’s. (shrink)

We present a simple example that disproves the universality principle. Unlike previous counter-examples to computational universality, it does not rely on extraneous phenomena, such as the availability of input variables that are time varying, computational complexity that changes with time or order of execution, physical variables that interact with each other, uncertain deadlines, or mathematical conditions among the variables that must be obeyed throughout the computation. In the most basic case of the new example, all that is used is a (...) single pre-existing global variable whose value is modified by the computation itself. In addition, our example offers a new dimension for separating the computable from the uncomputable, while illustrating the power of parallelism in computation. (shrink)

In the recent twenty-year retrospective issue of Animal Behavior and Cognition, Povinelli and Henley (2020) argue that a host of comparative studies into “complex cognition” suffer, fatally, from a theoretical confusion. To rectify the problem, they issue the following challenge: alongside specifications of the higher-order capacity to be tested, provide hypotheses of the mechanism(s) necessary to implement it. They spearhead this effort with a discussion of how the Relational Reinterpretation Hypothesis (RRH) provides just such an account. In the first part (...) of the paper, I argue that RRH is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the second-order behavior in question. In part two, I describe an alternative hypothesis, externalism, that does sufficiently account for it. Further, it opens new avenues of comparative research. (shrink)

The computational metaphor for mind is still the central guiding idea in cognitive science despite many insightful and well-founded rejections of it. There is good reason for its staying power: when we are at our cognitive best, we reason about our world with our concepts. But the challengers are right, I argue, in insisting that no reductive account of that capacity is forthcoming. Here I describe an externalist account that grounds representations in organism-level engagement with its environment, not in its (...) neural activity. (shrink)

This paper investigates the scope and limits of parents' and physicians' obligations to anencephalic newborns. Special attention is paid to the permissibility of harvesting anencephalic organs for transplant. My starting point is to identify the general justification for treating patients in order to benefit third parties. This analysis reveals that the presence of a close relationship between patients and beneficiaries is often crucial to justifying treating in these cases. In particular, the proper interpretation of the Kantian injunction against treating persons (...) as means only takes on a different light in the context of special relationships. The implications of this analysis for our responsibilities to anencephalic infants is clarified. (shrink)

Effective ethics teaching and training must cultivate both the critical thinking skills and the character traits needed to deliberate effectively about ethical issues in personal and professional life. After highlighting some cognitive and motivational obstacles that stand in the way of this task, the article draws on educational research and the author's experience to demonstrate how cooperative learning techniques can be used to overcome them.

At some point in the future – perhaps within the next few decades – it will be possible for foetuses to develop completely outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, raises substantial issues for the abortion debate. One such issue is that it will become possible for a woman to have an abortion, in the sense of having the foetus removed from her body, but for the foetus to be kept alive. We argue that while there is a (...) right to an abortion, there are reasons to doubt that there is a right to the death of the foetus. Our strategy in this essay is to consider and reject three arguments in favour of this latter right. The first claims that women have a right not to be biological mothers, the second that women have a right to genetic privacy, and the third that a foetus is one's property. Furthermore, we argue that it follows from rejecting the third claim that genetic parents also lack a right to the destruction of cryopreserved embryos used for in vitro fertilization. The conclusion that a woman possesses no right to the death of the foetus builds upon the claims that other pro-choice advocates, such as Judith Jarvis Thomson, have made. (shrink)

Moral distress is a well-documented phenomenon in the nursing profession, and increasingly thought to be implicated in a nation-wide nursing shortage in the US. First identified by the philosopher Andrew Jameton in 1984, moral distress has also proven resistant to various attempts to prevent its occurrence or at least mitigate its effects. While this would seem to be bad news for nurses and their patients, it is potentially good news for philosophical counselors, for whom there is both socially important and (...) philosophically interesting work to be done. In an effort to encourage such work, this paper explicates the philosophical (as opposed to more purely psychological or institutional) contours of the problem. A subsequent paper, titled 'A Philosophical Counseling Approach to Moral Distress,' will highlight ways in which such a response would differ from the strategies so far deployed within the nursing profession. (shrink)