We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world's scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network, sending survey invitation emails internally to scientists at their home institution. The emails link to a ‘10 second survey’, where the participant is presented with a single statement (...) to consider, and a standard five point Likert scale. In June 2023, a group of 30 philosophers and social scientists invited 20,085 scientists across 30 institutions in 12 countries to participate, gathering 6,807 responses to the statement 'Science has put it beyond reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is caused by a virus'. The study demonstrates that it is possible to establish a global network to quickly ascertain scientific opinion on a large international scale, with high response rate, low opt-out rate, and in a way that allows for significant (perhaps indefinite) repeatability. Measuring scientific opinion in this new way would be a valuable complement to currently available approaches, potentially informing policy decisions and public understanding across diverse fields. (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)

Se dice que el utilitarismo es incompatible con la defensa de los derechos humanos, pues la búsqueda del mayor bien para el mayor número que prescribe el utilitarismo, puede exigir, en ocasiones, pasar por encima de los derechos. Sin embargo, quizá sea posible ofrecer una solución al conflicto presentando una doctrina utilitarista, reconocible como tal, que sea lo suficientemente amplia como para dar cabida a los derechos. La presente obra tiene como objeto exponer la doctrina de John Stuart Mill (...) como buen ejemplo de cómo es posible llevar a cabo esta tarea. (shrink)

The triumph of scientific materialism in the Seventeenth Century not only bifurcated nature into matter and mind and primary and secondary qualities, as Alfred North Whitehead pointed out in Science and the Modern World. It divided science and the humanities. The core of science is the effort to comprehend the cosmos through mathematics. The core of the humanities is the effort to comprehend history and human nature through narratives. The life sciences can be seen as the zone in which the (...) conflict between these two very different ways of comprehending the world collide. Evolutionary theory as defended by Schelling developed out of natural history, but efforts have been made to formulate neo-Darwinism through mathematical models. However, it is impossible to eliminate stories from biology. As Stuart Kauffman argued, mathematical models attempt to pre-state all possibilities, but in evolution there can be adjacent possibles that can be embraced by organisms but cannot be pre-stated. To account for such actions it is necessary to tell stories. Mathematics provides analytic precision allowing long chains of deductions, but tends to deny temporal becoming and cannot do justice to the openness of the future, while narratives focus on processes and events, but lack exactitude that would provide precise deductions and predictions. In advancing mathematics adequate to life, Robert Rosen argued that living beings as anticipatory systems must have models of themselves, and strove to develop a form of mathematics able to model life itself. It has been convincingly argued that narratives are central to human self-creation and they are lived out before being explicitly told. Their models of themselves are first and foremost, stories or narratives. If this is the case, might not living beings as biological entities be characterized by proto-stories or narratives in their models of themselves? Biosemiotics, largely inspired by C.S. Peirce, provides a bridge between mathematical and narrative comprehension, conceiving them as different forms of semiosis. The study of life through biosemiotics could reveal how mathematics and narratives can be understood in relation to each other. This could have implications for how we understand science and the humanities and their relationship to each other. In this paper I will examine work in theoretical biology that might advance these efforts. (shrink)

Turkish Bu makalede bireylerin eylemlerine müdahale etmenin tek haklı gerekçesinin başkalarına zarar gelmesini önlemek olduğunu ifade eden ‘‘zarar ilkesine (Zİ)’’ getirilen üç eleştiriyi tartıştım. Öncelikle ilkeyi anlamlı kılabilecek bir zarar tarifinin bulunmadığı eleştirisini ele alarak bu eleştirinin, ilkenin ancak problemsiz bir zarar tanımı ile birlikte makul kabul edilebileceği varsayımına dayandığını tespit ettim. Zarar kavramına ilişkin var olan bilgi dağarcığımızı görmezden gelmesi ve zarara başvuran ilkeler haricindeki diğer birçok ilkeyi de kapsayan genel bir şüpheciliğin önünü açması nedeniyle ilgili varsayımı reddetmemiz gerektiğini (...) savundum. İkinci olarak, zarar vermenin yanlışlığının halihazırda yaygın olarak kabul ediliyor olmasından ötürü Zİ’nin bize yeni bir şey söylemediği, zararın türü/miktarı gibi güncel tartışmaların yoğunlaştığı noktalarda suskun kaldığı ve dolayısıyla artık işlevsiz olduğu eleştirisini değerlendirdim. Buna karşın hangi zarar tarifinin benimsendiğinden bağımsız olarak Zİ’nin, zararın varlığı kanıtlanmadıkça bireylerin eylemlerinde serbest bırakılmaları gerektiğini vurgulayan bir özgürlük karinesini temsil etme ve bazı eylemlerin zarar içermese dahi yasaklanabileceğini düşünen hukuki ahlakçılara yasak taleplerini gerekçelendirme yükümlülüklerini hatırlatma şeklinde iki önemli işleve halen sahip olduğunu iddia ettim. Son olarak Zİ'nin potansiyel kötüye kullanımlarına dair endişelere değindim. Bu endişelerin giderilmesi için yapılması gerekenin, zarar içeren eylemleri belirlemeye çalışmak değil, her eylemin bir miktar zarar içerme olasılığına sahip olduğunu kabul ederek hangi tür zararların hukuken düzenlenmesi gerektiği özelinde makul bir seçenek ortaya koymak olduğunu iddia ettim. Zİ’nin suiistimallerinin genellikle zarar kavramının geniş yorumlanmasının ürünü olduğunu düşünerek, cebir ve hile eylemlerinin neden olduğu birinci derece zararları esas alan, hukuki öngörülebilirliği artıracak bir hukuki çerçeve benimsemeyi tercih ettim. Kuşkusuz bu tercih yasaklanması gereken bazı zararlı eylemlere karşı hukuki koruma sağlayamama riskini içermektedir; ancak bu, özgürlüğü korumayı taahhüt eden genel bir ilke ortaya koymak için ödenmesi gereken bir bedeldir. Buradan hareketle, ele aldığım üç eleştiriden hiçbirinin Zİ’nin reddedilmesini gerektirmediği sonucuna vardım. English In this article, I discuss three criticisms of ‘‘the harm principle (HP)’’, which states that the only justification for interfering with individual’s actions is to prevent harm to others. First, I address the criticism that there is no definition of harm that can make the principle reasonable, and I find that this criticism is based on the assumption that the principle can only be considered reasonable with an unproblematic definition of harm. I argue that we should reject this assumption because it ignores our existing knowledge of the concept of harm and opens the way for a general skepticism that extends to many principles other than those addressing harm. Secondly, I consider the criticism that, since the wrongfulness of causing harm is already widely accepted, the principle tells us nothing new, is silent on the points where current debates intensify, such as the type/amount of harm, and is therefore no longer functional. On the other hand, I argue that, regardless of the definition of harm adopted, the HP still serves two important functions: Representing a presumption of liberty that emphasizes that individuals should be free to act unless the existence of harm is proven, and reminding legal moralists who believe that some acts can be prohibited even if they do not involve harm of their obligation to justify such prohibitions. Finally, I address concerns about potential abuses of the HP. I argue that what is needed to address these concerns is not to try to identify acts that involve harm, but to recognize that every act has the potential to involve some level of harm, and to make a reasonable choice as to which types of harm should be regulated by law. Considering that abuse of HP often arises from a broad interpretation of the concept of harm, I prefer to adopt a legal framework that would increase legal predictability, based on the first-degree harms caused by acts of force and fraud. Undoubtedly, this choice entails the risk of failing to provide legal protection against certain harmful acts that should be prohibited, but this is a price that must be paid for a general principle that is committed to protecting liberty. Thus, I conclude that none of the three criticisms I discussed require the rejection of HP. (shrink)

Die Frage, was eine wissenschaftliche Erklärung ist, stellt seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert ein zentrales Thema der Wissenschaftsphilosophie dar. Die heutige Diskussion begann mit einer richtungsweisenden Arbeit von Carl Hempel im Jahre 1942 über den Erklärungsbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft. In dieser Arbeit gab Hempel, frühere Überlegungen von John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper und anderen präzisierend, eine formale Definition der Erklärung eines singulären Faktums.1 Mit seiner dem zugrunde liegenden Auffassung, dass die Wissenschaften sehr wohl in der Lage sind, Erklärungen (...) zu liefern, setzt sich Hempel ab von den zur damaligen Zeit vorherrschenden antimetaphysisch gestimmten Erklärungsskeptikern wie Pierre Duhem. Es ist jedoch wichtig zu betonen, dass Hempels Definition des Konzeptes der wissenschaftlichen Erklärung nicht wesentlich über das Deskriptive hinaus geht und damit auch und gerade von Empiristen akzeptiert werden kann. Bekanntlich versteht man unter einer Erklärung in Hempels Deduktiv-Nomologischen (D-N) Modell ein deduktiv gültiges Argument, zu dessen Prämisse (dem sog. Explanans) mindestens ein universelles Gesetz und eine Menge von singulären Sätzen gehört und dessen Konklusion das zu erklärende Faktum (das sog. Explanandum) ist. (shrink)

The theoretical biology movement originating in Britain in the early 1930’s and the biosemiotics movement which took off in Europe in the 1980’s have much in common. They are both committed to replacing the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and they have both invoked theories of signs to this end. Yet, while there has been some mutual appreciation and influence, particularly in the cases of Howard Pattee, René Thom, Kalevi Kull, Anton Markoš and Stuart Kauffman, for the most part, these movements have (...) developed independently of each other. Focussing on morphogenesis understood as vegetative semiosis, in this paper I will argue that the ideas of these movements are commensurate. Furthermore, synthesising them would enable us to see life processes as proto-narratives. Doing so will involve synthesising biohermeneutics, Peircian biosemiotics with Waddington’s theoretical biology and Piagetian genetic structuralism, and this, I claim, would strengthen the challenge of these traditions to mainstream biology. At the same time, this should contribute to overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, developing a broader tradition of Schellingian thought which involves developing the humanities and then demanding of the physical and biological sciences that they are consistent with and can make intelligible the emergence of humans as conceived by the humanities. (shrink)

Abstract: Economists are accustomed to distinguishing between a positive and a normative component of their work, a distinction that is peculiar to their field, having no exact counterpart in the other social sciences. The distinction has substantially changed over time, and the different ways of understanding it today are reflective of its history. Our objective is to trace the origins and initial forms of the distinction, from the English classical political economy of the first half of the 19th century to (...) the emergence of welfare economics in the first half of the 20th century. This sequential account will also serve to identify the main representative positions along with the arguments used to support them, and it thus prepares the ground for a discussion that will be less historical and more strictly conceptual. -/- Résumé : Les économistes ont coutume de distinguer entre une composante positive et une composante normative de leurs travaux, ce qui est une singularité de leur discipline, car cette distinction n'a pas de répondant exact dans les autres sciences sociales. Elle a fortement évolué au cours du temps et les différentes manières de la concevoir aujourd'hui en reflètent l'histoire. On se propose ici d'en retracer les origines et les premières formes, de l'économie politique classique anglaise de la première moitié du XIXe siècle jusqu'à l'apparition de l'économie du bien-être dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Ce parcours séquentiel vise aussi à identifier les positions les plus représentatives et les arguments invoqués pour les soutenir, en préparant ainsi une discussion qui serait moins historique et plus strictement conceptuelle. (shrink)

In this Article, I propose a novel law and economics explanation of a deeply puzzling aspect of business organization in market economies. Why are virtually all firms organized as capital-managed and -owned (capitalist) enterprises rather than as labor-managed and -owned cooperatives? Over 150 years ago, J.S. Mill predicted that efficiency and other advantages would eventually make worker cooperatives predominant over capitalist firms. Mill was right about the advantages but wrong about the results. The standard explanation is that capitalist enterprise is (...) more efficient. Empirical research, however, overwhelmingly contradicts this. But employees almost never even attempt to organize worker cooperatives. I critique the explanations of the three leading analysts of the subject (N. Scott Arnold, Henry Hansmann, and Gregory Dow), all of whom offer are different transactions cost accounts, as logically defective and empirically inadequate. I then propose an explanation that has been oddly neglected in the literature, that the rarity of cooperatives is explained by the collective action problem identified by writers such as Mancur Olson. Labor management is a public good that generates the n-person prisoner’s dilemma which gives rational actors the incentive to create it in suboptimal (or no) amounts. I support this by reference to the empirical facts about the origin of existing cooperatives and show that this explanation requires no strong version of a questionable rational choice theory. This explanation is supplemented by the mere exposure or familiarity effect derived from social and cognitive psychology, which turns on the fact that labor managed firms are rare, in part because of the public goods problem, thus unfamiliar, which makes them less attractive and thus more likely to be rare. My account points advocates of labor management towards solutions such as institutional changes in incentives, which, however, themselves involve public goods issues. (shrink)

Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should characterize imagination as a cognitive ability, exercises of which are cognitive processes. Following dual process theories of cognition developed in cognitive science, the set of imaginative processes (...) is then divided into two kinds: one that is unconscious, uncontrolled, and effortless, and another that is conscious, controlled, and effortful. This paper outlines the different epistemological strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of imaginative process, and argues that a dual process model of imagination helpfully resolves or clarifies issues in the epistemology of imagination and the closely related epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

We might think that thought experiments are at their most powerful or most interesting when they produce new knowledge. This would be a mistake; thought experiments that seek understanding are just as powerful and interesting, and perhaps even more so. A growing number of epistemologists are emphasizing the importance of understanding for epistemology, arguing that it should supplant knowledge as the central notion. In this chapter, I bring the literature on understanding in epistemology to bear on explicating the different ways (...) that thought experiments increase three important kinds of understanding: explanatory, objectual and practical. (shrink)

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

What role does the imagination play in scientific progress? After examining several studies in cognitive science, I argue that one thing the imagination does is help to increase scientific understanding, which is itself indispensable for scientific progress. Then, I sketch a transcendental justification of the role of imagination in this process.

Scientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are fundamentally (...) epistemic consequentialists about imagination. (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)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

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)

Group process methods for problem solving and planning are now widely used in organizations in the United States. Such methods, which involve active participation by employees, are not often used in Russia. We believe these methods would help Russia move from a centrally planned, authoritarian style of management to a more participatory, information-sharing style of management. Accordingly, two training sessions were held with faculty members at universities in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk. This article describes how these meetings were arranged, the results (...) of the planning activities, and the implications of participatory methods of decision making for organizations in Russia and in other transitional economies. (shrink)

Attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserl’s rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought (...) within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word “function”. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws. (shrink)

When philosophers discuss the possibility of machines making scientific discoveries, they typically focus on discoveries in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. Observing the rapid increase of computer-use in science, however, it becomes natural to ask whether there are any scientific domains out of reach for machine discovery. For example, could machines also make discoveries in qualitative social science? Is there something about humans that makes us uniquely suited to studying humans? Is there something about machines that would bar them from (...) such activity? A close look at the methodology of interpretive social science reveals several abilities necessary to make a social scientific discovery, and one capacity necessary to possess any of them is imagination. For machines to make discoveries in social science, therefore, they must possess imagination algorithms. (shrink)

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. The argument (...) view of thought experiments claims that thought experiments are arguments, and that they function epistemically however arguments do. These two views have generated a great deal of discussion, although there hasn’t been much written about their combination. I argue that despite some interesting harmonies, there is a serious tension between them. I consider several options for easing this tension, before suggesting a set of changes to the argument view that I take to be consistent with Norton’s fundamental philosophical commitments, and which retain what seems intuitively correct about the argument view. These changes require that we move away from a unitary epistemology of thought experiments and towards a more pluralist position. (shrink)

SNePS, the Semantic Network Processing System 45, 54], has been designed to be a system for representing the beliefs of a natural-language-using intelligent system (a \cognitive agent"). It has always been the intention that a SNePS-based \knowledge base" would ultimatelybe built, not by a programmeror knowledge engineer entering representations of knowledge in some formallanguage or data entry system, but by a human informing it using a natural language (NL) (generally supposed to be English), or by the system reading books or (...) articles that had been prepared for human readers. Because of this motivation, the criteria for the development of SNePS have included: it should be able to represent anything and everything expressible in NL; it should be able to represent generic, as well as speci c information; it should be able to use the generic and the speci c information to reason and infer information implied by what it has been told; it cannot count on any particular order among the pieces of information it is given; it must continue to act reasonably even if the information it is given includes circular de nitions, recursive rules, and inconsistent information. (shrink)

Cognitive agents, whether human or computer, that engage in natural-language discourse and that have beliefs about the beliefs of other cognitive agents must be able to represent objects the way they believe them to be and the way they believe others believe them to be. They must be able to represent other cognitive agents both as objects of beliefs and as agents of beliefs. They must be able to represent their own beliefs, and they must be able to represent beliefs (...) as objects of beliefs. These requirements raise questions about the number of tokens of the belief representation language needed to represent believers and propositions in their normal roles and in their roles as objects of beliefs. In this paper, we explicate the relations among nodes, mental tokens, concepts, actual objects, concepts in the belief spaces of an agent and the agent's model of other agents, concepts of other cognitive agents, and propositions. We extend, deepen, and clarify our theory of intensional knowledge representation for natural-language processing, as presented in previous papers and in light of objections raised by others. The essential claim is that tokens in a knowledge-representation system represent only intensions and not extensions. We are pursuing this investigation by building CASSIE, a computer model of a cognitive agent and, to the extent she works, a cognitive agent herself. CASSIE's mind is implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. (shrink)

Philosophical conceptual analysis is an experimental method. Focusing on this helps to justify it from the skepticism of experimental philosophers who follow Weinberg, Nichols & Stich. To explore the experimental aspect of philosophical conceptual analysis, I consider a simpler instance of the same activity: everyday linguistic interpretation. I argue that this, too, is experimental in nature. And in both conceptual analysis and linguistic interpretation, the intuitions considered problematic by experimental philosophers are necessary but epistemically irrelevant. They are like variables introduced (...) into mathematical proofs which drop out before the solution. Or better, they are like the hypotheses that drive science, which do not themselves need to be true. In other words, it does not matter whether or not intuitions are accurate as descriptions of the natural kinds that undergird philosophical concepts; the aims of conceptual analysis can still be met. (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)

Deleuze’ün Spinozacı yaşam tahayyülünde ‘ne yapmalıyız?’ sorusuna normatif, ahlaki ya da siyasi bir yanıt bulamıyoruz ama varoluşu düşünmenin içkin bir olanağını keşfediyoruz. Düşünmeye 'dışarıdan' yani dünyadan başlamak insani (kurgusal) bir dünyaya değil, içinde yaşadığımız gerçek dünyaya inanmak demektir. İçkinliğin politik anlamı düşünceyi dünyaya getirmektir.

The New Labour we got was different from the New Labour that might have been, had the reform agenda associated with stakeholding and pluralism in the early-1990s been fully realised. We investigate the road not taken and what it means for ‘one nation’ Labour.

The philosophy of science has traditionally assumed that knowledge should be organized in the form of theories. From theories propositions can be deduced that can be tested in experiments. Most propositions deduced from theories take the form of if-then statements. For example, if variable A increases, what happens to variable B, assuming that all other variables are held constant? However, an alternative way of organizing knowledge, in the form of producer-product relationships, was proposed by the philosopher E.A. Singer, Jr. and (...) advocated by two of his students, C. West Churchman and Russell L. Ackoff. Whether to structure knowledge in the form of theories or methods is related to the question of whether there is a fundamental difference between the natural and the social sciences. As opposed to Karl Popper’s doctrine of the unity of method, this paper argues that structuring knowledge in the form of methods is appropriate in applied fields, particularly in management where a large part of the task is to achieve agreement among a group of knowing subjects on an appropriate set of actions. (shrink)

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

Skeptical theists are seeking for some reasonable solutions to the evidential problem of evil. One of the most fundamental responses of skeptical theism is that the concept of “gratuitous evil”, which cannot be a proof of the absence of God. Therefore, it is not the existence of God that skeptical theism suspects. Instead, skeptical theism contemplates whether the evil in the world really has a “gratuitous” basis. This paper focuses on Peter van Inwagen's “no-minimum claim”. No-minimum claim” stands in opposition (...) to the views that assume that God minimizes the evils that exist in the world in order to achieve justice. “No-minimum claim” acknowledges that these evils still have enormous amounts to people. Thus “no-minimum claim” suggests that the evils experienced in the world are incompatible with the “best of all possible worlds” views or the other explanations of classical theodicy. According to the “no minimum claim”, the reason why the amount of evil in the world still seems so high may be God’s deliberate calculations in effecting the distribution of these evils. In order to reach these calculations, it is not necessary for the amount of evil that God allowed to reflect on the world to be perfectly manifested at the minimum level. The purpose of this paper is to consider the skeptical theism approach within the framework of Peter van Inwagen's “no-minimum claim” and to limit his arguments to an alternative approach to skeptic theism. Our claim is that such view coincides with skeptical theism, but the “no- minimum claim” still has some ambiguities at the point of the limits of evil. From this, we can conclude that the “no minimum claim” has received many objections in the skeptical theism literature and these objections are justified at certain points. (shrink)

An adequate understanding of the ubiquitous practice of mechanistic explanation requires an account of what Craver termed “constitutive relevance.” Entities or activities are constitutively relevant to a phenomenon when they are parts of the mechanism responsible for that phenomenon. Craver’s mutual manipulability account extended Woodward’s account of manipulationist counterfactuals to analyze how interlevel experiments establish constitutive relevance. Critics of MM argue that applying Woodward’s account to this philosophical problem conflates causation and constitution, thus rendering the account incoherent. These criticisms, we (...) argue, arise from failing to distinguish the semantic, epistemic, and metaphysical aspects of the problem of constitutive relevance. In distinguishing these aspects of the problem and responding to these critics accordingly, we amend MM into a refined epistemic criterion, the “matched interlevel experiments” account. Further, we explain how this epistemological thesis is grounded in the plausible metaphysical thesis that constitutive relevance is causal betweenness. (shrink)

Is human free will compatible with the natural laws of the universe? To “compatibilists” who see free actions as emanating from the wants and reasons of human agents, free will looks perfectly plausible. However, “incompatibilists” claim to see the more ultimate sources of human action. The wants and reasons of agents are said to be caused by physical processes which are themselves mere natural results of the previous state of the world and the natural laws which govern it. This paper (...) argues that the incompatibilists make a mistake in appealing to such non-agent sources of human action. They fail to realize that free will may exist at one scale, but not at the scales where they look. When free will is considered from the correctly scaled perspective, it does seem compatible with determinism and natural laws. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. -/- Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe (...) trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. -/- Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. -/- Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

Analyses C S Lewis's argument for the existence of 'something in addition to nature' - i.e., something which is of a kind that neither depends on nature's interlocking system, nor could be explained as being a necessary product of it. This singular exceptional item, Lewis argued, is rational thought, 'which is not part of the system of nature'.

Social participation requires certain abilities: communication with other members of society; social understanding which enables planning ahead and dealing with novel circumstances; and a theory of mind which makes it possible to anticipate the mental state of another. In childhood play we learn how to pretend, how to put ourselves in the minds of others, how to imagine what others are thinking and how to attribute false beliefs to them. Without this ability we would be unable to deceive and detect (...) deception in the actions of others, and our ability to interact within our social group would be greatly impaired. In this paper I claim that the capacity for deception is necessary for a theory of mind, and a theory of mind is necessary for complex social interaction. (shrink)

Recent research shows – somewhat astonishingly – that people are willing to ascribe moral blame to AI-driven systems when they cause harm [1]–[4]. In this paper, we explore the moral- psychological underpinnings of these findings. Our hypothesis was that the reason why people ascribe moral blame to AI systems is that they consider them capable of entertaining inculpating mental states (what is called mens rea in the law). To explore this hypothesis, we created a scenario in which an AI system (...) runs a risk of poisoning people by using a novel type of fertilizer. Manipulating the computational (or quasi-cognitive) abilities of the AI system in a between-subjects design, we tested whether people’s willingness to ascribe knowledge of a substantial risk of harm (i.e., recklessness) and blame to the AI system. Furthermore, we investigated whether the ascription of recklessness and blame to the AI system would influence the perceived blameworthiness of the system’s user (or owner). In an experiment with 347 participants, we found (i) that people are willing to ascribe blame to AI systems in contexts of recklessness, (ii) that blame ascriptions depend strongly on the willingness to attribute recklessness and (iii) that the latter, in turn, depends on the perceived “cognitive” capacities of the system. Furthermore, our results suggest (iv) that the higher the computational sophistication of the AI system, the more blame is shifted from the human user to the AI system. (shrink)

From the time of Confucius and Aristotle up until the present day, theorists have argued that the individual self exists only as an aspect of social structures. The claim is not merely that the self is causally affected by social structures; but that the self is just social structure. The most recent iteration of this claim comes in book-length from Brian Lowery, though the argument was made more completely by Charles Taylor and Kenneth Gergen in the preceding decades. The most (...) rigorous version of the argument draws on Wittgenstein, claiming that thought itself is impossible without socially constructed meanings. Wittgenstein argued that a “private language” would be incoherent because the person using the language could not have any criteria by which to judge the correctness of the symbols used. However, this reasoning fails as an argument against individualized thought because it applies equally well to the use of public languages. So this paper argues that eliminative social constructivism has never made any sense, least of all in its latest form. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

Pada musim semi, entah kenapa, tidak banyak ikan. Karena tangkapannya sangat tidak stabil, Pekakak mulai berpikir. Lalu membuat beberapa rencana. Dengan otoritas komandonya, dia memanggil Bangau: – Ini adalah musim penangkapan ikan yang sangat sulit. Jika kita ingin kenyang, kita harus membuat usaha patungan. Bangau mengangguk, menambahkan: - Saya setuju; mari kita beternak ikan kakap putih dan ikan mas krusia. Jenis ini berumur panjang dan sangat produktif. Pekakak dan Bangau sepakat untuk berbagi tugas beternak, dan tidak ada diskriminasi yang diizinkan. (...) Namun imbalannya berbeda: Pekakak bertanggung jawab untuk ikan kakap putih dan, dengan demikian, dapat memiliki lebih banyak ikan kakap putih, sedangkan Bangau mendapat ikan mas krusia. Siapapun yang memelihara ikan mana yang lebih banyak akan menikmati 80% dari panen akhir ikan tersebut. Keduanya akan mengevaluasi dan membagi produk ternak pada akhir musim beternak. Ini berarti mengantongi sendiri ikan hasil usaha patungan untuk diri sendiri itu dilarang. (shrink)

Suatu pagi di musim panas, desa burung diselimuti keheningan. Semua orang sibuk mendengarkan pengembara baru. Burung pengembara ini berasal dari keluarga yang tidak jelas; bulunya berwarna-warni, gerak-geriknya lucu, dan ilmunya baru. Dia bercerita seolah-olah sedang memberi ceramah, tepat sekali, warga desa memanggilnya burung Guru – orang yang menjawab setiap pertanyaan aneh warga desa yang rajin belajar. Burung pelatuk telah belajar menangkap cacing di sore hari, sehingga mereka tidak perlu bangun pagi. Burung pipit sekarang tahu cara mencuri beras dari gudang saat (...) sawah mulai kering. Bulbul, sementara itu, telah mengambil kesempatan berkumpul untuk memamerkan kecantikan dan fashion mereka… . (shrink)

Pekakak selama ini tinggal di gua galiannya sendiri di tepi kolam, tapi sekarang dia memutuskan bahwa dia membutuhkan rumah baru. Dia melakukan tur keliling desa untuk melihat bagaimana burung-burung lain membangun rumah mereka. Dia mengunjungi Tuan Pipit, yang tinggal di pohon pinus yang bersiul. Bagian depan bangunannya tampak indah, dan lokasinya yang tinggi memberikan ventilasi yang baik. Tapi, semakin lama dia menginap, dia jadi semakin pusing. Hembusan angin apa pun yang menerpa membuat seluruh struktur bangunan bergetar seolah-olah akan hancur berantakan.

The focus of the study is on the values, priorities and arguments needed to advance ‘design for sustainability’. The discussion critiques conventions related to innovation and technology and offers a product design approach that emphasises minimal intervention, integrated thinking-and-doing, reinstating the familiar, localization and the particularities of place. These interdependent themes are discussed in terms of their relationship to design for sustainability and are clarified through the conceptualization, design, production and use of a simple functional object that is, essentially, a (...) ‘symbolic sustainable artefact’. Although it is fully functional, its practical usefulness in contemporary society would probably be seen as marginal. Its potential contribution is as a symbol of an alternative direction. It asks us to consider aspects of our humanity that are beyond instrumental approaches. It challenges sustainable initiatives that become so caught up in practical and environmental concerns that they fail to question the underlying values, priorities and social drivers which affect how we act in the world; those behaviours and norms that have created the very problems we are so urgently trying to tackle. The discussion is accompanied by a parallel series of photographs that document the relationship between argument, locale and the creation of the conceptual artefact. These photographs convey some of the qualitative differences between the place of much contemporary arte- fact acquisition, i.e. the shopping mall, and the particular locale that yielded the artefact created during this study; they are also useful in conveying the potential relationship that exist between place and the aesthetics of functional objects. (shrink)

The philosophy of science has traditionally assumed that knowledge should be organized in the form of theories. From theories propositions can be deduced that can be tested in experiments. Most propositions deduced from theories take the form of if-then statements. For example, if variable A increases, what happens to variable B, assuming that all other variables are held constant? However, an alternative way of organizing knowledge, in the form of producer-product relationships, was proposed by the philosopher E.A. Singer, Jr. and (...) advocated by two of his students, C. West Churchman and Russell L. Ackoff. Whether to structure knowledge in the form of theories or methods is related to the question of whether there is a fundamental difference between the natural and the social sciences. As opposed to Karl Popper’s doctrine of the unity of method, this paper argues that structuring knowledge in the form of methods is appropriate in applied fields, particularly in management where a large part of the task is to achieve agreement among a group of knowing subjects on an appropriate set of actions. (shrink)

Are words like ‘woman’ or ‘man’ sex terms that we use to talk about biological features of individuals? Are they gender terms that we use to talk about non-biological features e.g. social roles? Contextualists answer both questions affirmatively, arguing that these terms concern biological or non-biological features depending on context. I argue that a recent version of contextualism from Jennifer Saul that Esa Diaz-Leon develops doesn't exhibit the right kind of flexibility to capture our theoretical intuitions or moral and political (...) practices concerning our uses of these words. I then float the view that terms like 'woman' or 'man' are polysemous, arguing that it makes better sense of the significance of some forms of criticisms of mainstream gender ideology. (shrink)

One of the central criteria for free will is “Could I have done otherwise?” But because of a temporal asymmetry in human choice, the question makes no sense. The question is backward-looking, while human choices are forward-looking. At the time when any choice is actually made, there is as of yet no action to do otherwise. Expectation is the only thing to contradict (do other than). So the ability to do something not expected by the ultimate expecter, Laplace’s demon, is (...) a better criterion for free will. If human action is fundamentally unpredictable, then we have free will. Scientists have studied a form of fundamental unpredictability, known as undecidability. The features that make a system capable of undecidable dynamics have been identified: program-data duality; potential to access an infinite computational medium; and the ability to implement negation. Humans have all three of these features, so we very likely are fundamentally unpredictable, so we have free will. (shrink)

We present a computational analysis of de re, de dicto, and de se belief and knowledge reports. Our analysis solves a problem first observed by Hector-Neri Castañeda, namely, that the simple rule -/- `(A knows that P) implies P' -/- apparently does not hold if P contains a quasi-indexical. We present a single rule, in the context of a knowledge-representation and reasoning system, that holds for all P, including those containing quasi-indexicals. In so doing, we explore the difference between reasoning (...) in a public communication language and in a knowledge-representation language, we demonstrate the importance of representing proper names explicitly, and we provide support for the necessity of considering sentences in the context of extended discourse (for example, written narrative) in order to fully capture certain features of their semantics. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin made the distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty. Since then, prominent contemporary philosophers including Charles Taylor and Martha Nussbaum have declared negative liberty insufficient or incoherent. This is a critique of those declarations, which have been unduly accepted to a large extent. The critique primarily focuses on Taylor, who made the most direct and complete argument against negative liberty. His argument is shown to be ineffective. And further, his conception of positive liberty is shown to be incoherent.

Upon doing something generous for someone with whom you are close, some kind of reciprocity may be appropriate. But it often seems wrong to actually request reciprocity. This chapter explores the wrongness in making these requests, and why they can nevertheless appear appropriate. After considering several explanations for the wrongness at issue (involving, e.g. distinguishing oughts from obligation, the suberogatory, imperfect duties, and gift-giving norms), a novel proposal is advanced. The requests are disrespectful; they express that their agent insufficiently trusts (...) the hearer to recognize their own reasons to reciprocate, and the close relationship between them morally requires this kind of trust. This proposal is articulated and situated in the recent discussion of the normativity of requests. The chapter concludes by explaining how these requests may appear appropriate. Agents in these relationships often have standing to make requests, though the standing is lacking in these particular cases. (shrink)