My pocket calculator (Cal) has certain arithmetical abilities: it seems Cal calculates. That calculating is thinking seems equally untendentious. Yet these two claims together provide premises for a seemingly valid syllogism whose conclusion -- Cal thinks -- most would deny. I consider several ways to avoid this conclusion, and find them mostly wanting. Either we ourselves can't be said to think or calculate if our calculation-like performances are judged by the standards proposed to rule out Cal; or the standards -- (...) e.g., autonomy and self-consciousness -- make it impossible to verify whether anything or anyone (save myself) meets them. While appeals to the intentionality of thought or the unity of minds provide more credible lines of resistance, available accounts of intentionality and mental unity are insufficiently clear and warranted to provide very substantial arguments against Cal's title to be called a thinking thing. Indeed, considerations favoring granting that title are more formidable than generally appreciated. (shrink)

The Chinese room argument is a thought experiment of John Searle (1980a) and associated (1984) derivation. It is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence (AI)—that is, to claims that computers do or at least can (someday might) think. According to Searle’s original presentation, the argument is based on two key claims: brains cause minds and syntax doesn’t suffice for semantics. Its target is what Searle dubs “strong AI.” According to strong AI, Searle (...) says, “the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind, rather the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states” (1980a, p. 417). Searle contrasts strong AI with “weak AI.” According to weak AI, computers just simulate thought, their seeming understanding isn’t real understanding (just as-if), their seeming calculation is only as-if calculation, etc. Nevertheless, computer simulation is useful for studying the mind (as for studying the weather and other things). (shrink)

The intelligent-seeming deeds of computers are what occasion philosophical debate about artificial intelligence (AI) in the first place. Since evidence of AI is not bad, arguments against seem called for. John Searle's Chinese Room Argument (1980a, 1984, 1990, 1994) is among the most famous and long-running would-be answers to the call. Surprisingly, both the original thought experiment (1980a) and Searle's later would-be formalizations of the embedding argument (1984, 1990) are quite unavailing against AI proper (claims that computers do or someday (...) will think ). Searle lately even styles it a "misunderstanding" (1994, p. 547) to think the argument was ever so directed! The Chinese room is now advertised to target Computationalism (claims that computation is what thought essentially is ) exclusively. Despite its renown, the Chinese Room Argument is totally ineffective even against this target. (shrink)

What Robots Can and Can't Be (hereinafter Robots) is, as Selmer Bringsjord says "intended to be a collection of formal-arguments-that-border-on-proofs for the proposition that in all worlds, at all times, machines can't be minds" (Bringsjord, forthcoming). In his (1994) "Précis of What Robots Can and Can't Be" Bringsjord styles certain of these arguments as proceeding "repeatedly . . . through instantiations of" the "simple schema".

The abject failure of Turing's first prediction (of computer success in playing the Imitation Game) confirms the aptness of the Imitation Game test as a test of human level intelligence. It especially belies fears that the test is too easy. At the same time, this failure disconfirms expectations that human level artificial intelligence will be forthcoming any time soon. On the other hand, the success of Turing's second prediction (that acknowledgment of computer thought processes would become commonplace) in practice amply (...) confirms the thought that computers think in some manner and are possessed of some level of intelligence already. This lends ever-growing support to the hypothesis that computers will think at a human level eventually, despite the abject failure of Turing's first prediction. (shrink)

Hauser defends the proposition that our languages of thought are public languages. One group of arguments points to the coincidence of clearly productive (novel, unbounded) cognitive competence with overt possession of recursive symbol systems. Another group relies on phenomenological experience. A third group cites practical and methodological considerations: Occam's razor and the "streetlight principle" (other things being equal, look under the lamp) that motivate looking for instantiations of outer languages in thought first.

Hauser defends the proposition that public languages are our languages of thought. One argument for this proposition is coincidence of productive (i.e., novel, unbounded) cognitive competence with overt possession of recursive symbol systems. Another is phenomenological experience. A third is Occam's razor and the "streetlight principle.".

Hauser replies that performances in question provide prima facie warrant for attributions of mental properties that appeals to consciousness are empirically too vexed and theoretically too ill connected to override.

John Searle's 1980a) thought experiment and associated 1984a) argument is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence (AI), i.e., to claims that computers _do_ or at least _can_ (roughly, someday will) think. According to Searle's original presentation, the argument is based on two truths: _brains cause minds_ , and _syntax doesn't suffice_ _for semantics_ . Its target, Searle dubs "strong AI": "according to strong AI," according to Searle, "the computer is not merely a (...) tool in the study of the mind, rather the appropriately programmed computer really _is_ a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to _understand_ and have other cognitive states" 1980a, p. 417). Searle contrasts "strong AI" to "weak AI". According to weak AI, according to Searle, computers just. (shrink)

In connection with John Searle's denial that computers genuinely act, Hauser considers Searle's attempt to distinguish full-blooded acts of agents from mere physical movements on the basis of intent. The difference between me raising my arm and my arm's just going up, on Searle's account, is the causal involvement of my intention to raise my arm in the former, but not the latter, case. Yet, we distinguish a similar difference between a robot's raising its arm and its robot arm (...) just going up. Either robots are rightly credited with intentions, or it is not intention that distinguishes action from mere movement. In either case full-blooded acts under "aspects" are attributable to robots and computers. Since the truth of such attributions depends on "intrinsic" features of the things not on the speaker's "intentional stance," they are not merely figurative "as if" attributions. (shrink)

Zombies recently conjured by Searle and others threaten civilized philosophy of mind and scientific psychology as we know it. Humanoid beings that behave like us and may share our functional organizations and even, perhaps, our neurophysiological makeups without qualetative conscious experiences, zombies seem to meet every materialist condition for thought on offer and yet -- the wonted intuitions go -- are still disqualefied from being thinking things. I have a plan. Other zombies -- good zombies -- can battle their evil (...) cousins to a standoff. Perhaps even defeat them. Familiar zombies and supersmart zombies resist disqualefication, making the world safe, again, for materialism. Behavioristic materialism. Alas for functionalism, good zombies still eat programs. Alas for identity theory, all zombies -- every B movie fan knows -- eat brains. (shrink)

Against the claim that folk psychology is a theory, I contend thatfolk psychology is not empirically vulnerable in the same way theories are, and has evaluative functions that make it irreplaceable by a scientific theory. It is neither would-be nor has-been science.

From the fact that experiencing is in the head, nothing follows about the nature, location - or even the existence - of the experiencing's presumed object. It does not follow that direct realism "cannot possibly be true" ; much less that "that the experienced world is wholly locked up within one's brain"; much less still, that it must be "located" in in some spiritual "place" outside of physical space or some "higher-dimensional space " . Direct realism is not only consistent (...) with all the known neurophysiological facts, it coheres far better with surrounding and grounding science - and the neuroscience itself - than the Smythian alternative towards which Crooks tends; and it may be had for a reasonable naïve phenomenological cost. (shrink)

Accident: A property or attribute that a (type of) thing or substance can either have or lack while still remaining the same (type of) thing or substance. For instance, I can either be sitting or standing, shod or unshod, and still be me (i.e., one and the same human being). Contrast: essence.

George Lakoff (in his book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1987) and the paper "Cognitive semantics" (1988)) champions some radical foundational views. Strikingly, Lakoff opposes realism as a metaphysical position, favoring instead some supposedly mild form of idealism such as that recently espoused by Hilary Putnam, going under the name internal realism." For what he takes to be connected reasons, Lakoff also rejects truth conditional model-theoretic semantics for natural language.

The apparently intelligent doings of computers occasion philosophical debate about artificial intelligence . Evidence of AI is not bad; arguments against AI are: such is the case for. One argument against AI--currently, perhaps, the most influential--is considered in detail: John Searle's Chinese room argument . This argument and its attendant thought experiment are shown to be unavailing against claims that computers can and even do think. CRA is formally invalid and informally fallacious. CRE's putative experimental result is not robust and (...) fails to generalize from understanding to other mental attributes as claimed. Further, CRE depends for its credibility, in the first place, on a dubious tender of the epistemic privilege of overriding all "external" behavioral evidence to first person disavowals of mental properties like understanding. ;Advertised as effective against AI, Searle's argument is an ignoratio elenchi, feigning to refute AI by disputing a similar claim of "strong AI" or Turing machine functionalism metaphysically identifying minds with programs. AI, however, is warranted independently of FUN: even if CRA disproved FUN this would still fail to refute or seriously disconfirm claims of AI. Searle's contention that everyday predications of mental terms of computers are discountable as equivocal "as-if" predications--impugning independent seeming-evidence of AI if tenable--is unwarranted. Lacking intuitive basis, such accusations of ambiguity require theoretical support. The would-be theoretical differentiation of intrinsic intentionality from as-if intentionality Searle propounds to buttress allegations of ambiguity against mental attributions to computers, however, depends either on dubious doctrines of objective intrinsicality according to which meanings are physically in the head or on even more dubious notions of subjective intrinsicality according to which meanings are phenomenologically "in" consciousness. Neither would such would-be differentiae as these unproblematically rule out seeming instances of AI if granted. The dubiousness of as if dualistic identification of thought with consciousness also undermines the epistemic privileging of the "first person point of view" crucial to Searle's thought experiment. (shrink)

_The Chinese room argument_ - John Searle's (1980a) thought experiment and associated (1984) derivation - is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence (AI), i.e., to claims that computers _do_ or at least _can_ (someday might) think. According to Searle's original presentation, the argument is based on two truths: _brains cause minds_ , and _syntax doesn't_ _suffice for semantics_ . Its target, Searle dubs "strong AI": "according to strong AI," according to Searle, "the (...) computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind, rather the appropriately programmed computer really _is_ a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to _understand_ and have other cognitive states" (1980a, p. 417). Searle contrasts "strong AI" to "weak AI". According to weak AI, according to Searle, computers just. (shrink)

It will be found that the great majority, given the premiss that thought is not distinct from corporeal motion, take a much more rational line and maintain that thought is the same in the brutes as in us, since they observe all sorts of corporeal motions in them, just as in us. And they will add that the difference, which is merely one of degree, does not imply any essential difference; from this they will be quite justified in concluding that, (...) although there may be a smaller degree of reason in the beasts than there is in us, the beasts possess minds which are of exactly the same type as ours. (Descartes 1642: 288–289.). (shrink)

John Searle's Chinese room argument is perhaps the most influential andwidely cited argument against artificial intelligence (AI). Understood astargeting AI proper – claims that computers can think or do think– Searle's argument, despite its rhetorical flash, is logically andscientifically a dud. Advertised as effective against AI proper, theargument, in its main outlines, is an ignoratio elenchi. It musterspersuasive force fallaciously by indirection fostered by equivocaldeployment of the phrase "strong AI" and reinforced by equivocation on thephrase "causal powers" (at least) equal (...) to those of brains." On a morecarefully crafted understanding – understood just to targetmetaphysical identification of thought with computation ("Functionalism"or "Computationalism") and not AI proper the argument is still unsound,though more interestingly so. It's unsound in ways difficult for high church– "someday my prince of an AI program will come" – believersin AI to acknowledge without undermining their high church beliefs. The adhominem bite of Searle's argument against the high church persuasions of somany cognitive scientists, I suggest, largely explains the undeserved reputethis really quite disreputable argument enjoys among them. (shrink)

Harnad''s proposed robotic upgrade of Turing''s Test (TT), from a test of linguistic capacity alone to a Total Turing Test (TTT) of linguisticand sensorimotor capacity, conflicts with his claim that no behavioral test provides even probable warrant for attributions of thought because there is no evidence of consciousness besides private experience. Intuitive, scientific, and philosophical considerations Harnad offers in favor of his proposed upgrade are unconvincing. I agree with Harnad that distinguishing real from as if thought on the basis of (...) (presence or lack of) consciousness (thus rejecting Turing (behavioral) testing as sufficient warrant for mental attribution)has the skeptical consequence Harnad accepts — there is in factno evidence for me that anyone else but me has a mind. I disagree with hisacceptance of it! It would be better to give up the neo-Cartesian faith in private conscious experience underlying Harnad''s allegiance to Searle''s controversial Chinese Room Experiment than give up all claim to know others think. It would be better to allow that (passing) Turing''s Test evidences — evenstrongly evidences — thought. (shrink)

(This insularity was further promoted by the guileless duplicity of scholars in other fields, who were all too prepared to bequeath "the problem of ...

By targeting and critiquing these assumptions, he lays the groundwork for a post-positivist philosophy of science that does not provide aid and comfort to the enemies of reason. This book consists of thirteen essays.

Thomistic Hylomorphists claim that we human persons have rational or intellective souls which can continue to exist separately from our bodies after we die. Much of the recent scholarly discussion of Thomistic Hylomorphism has centered on this thesis and the question of whether human persons can survive death along with their souls or whether only their souls can survive in this separated, disembodied, post-mortem state. As a result, two rival versions of Thomistic Hyomorphism have been formulated: Survivalism and Corruptionism. This (...) chapter makes a new contribution to the debate between Survivalists and Corruptionists by identifying a heretofore undiscussed problem for Corruptionist Thomistic Hylomorphism. In particular, it is argued that if Corruptionists were right that human persons cannot survive their deaths along with their souls, this would undermine the grounds on which all Thomistic Hylomorphists, including Corruptionists, rely to justify their belief that our souls can continue to exist after our deaths. Given this, it is argued that Thomistic Hylomorphists have grounds for thinking that our souls can continue to exist after our deaths only if they allow, as Survivalists do and Corruptionists do not, that we human persons can continue to exist after our deaths, with souls but no bodies. (shrink)

There is extensive discussion in current Just War literature about the normative principles which should govern the initiation of war (jus ad bellum) and also the conduct of war (jus in bello), but this is the first book to treat the important and difficult issue of justice after the end of war. Larry May examines the normative principles which should govern post-war practices such as reparations, restitution, reconciliation, retribution, rebuilding, proportionality and the Responsibility to Protect. He discusses the emerging (...) international law literature on transitional justice and the problem of moving from a position of war and possible mass atrocity to a position of peace and reconciliation. He questions the Just War tradition, arguing that contingent pacifism is most in keeping with normative principles after war ends. His discussion is richly illustrated with contemporary examples and will be of interest to students of political and legal philosophy, law and military studies. (shrink)

EDITORIAL NOTE.—Arnold Hauser died in February 1978 shortly after returning to his native Hungary; he had lived nearly half of his 85 years in a kind of self-imposed exile. He is considered, by those who know his work, to be perhaps the greatest sociologist of art, though his last years were spent in comparative neglect and obscurity. We present here as a testament to the importance of both the critic and the discipline he helped shape a section from the (...) translation of his Sociology of Art . Hauser's work draws on the influences of his teachers, Simmel, Bergson, Lukács, Mannheim, Sombart, and Troeltsch. He developed in his immense Social History of Art the groundwork for a sociological analysis of art ranging from prehistoric cave painting to film. In his later works—The Philosophy of Art History , Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origins of Modern Art , and The Sociology of Art—he continued to redefine his brilliant defense of art for society's sake. The theory of l'art pour l'art wants nothing to do with this contradiction and denies not only the moral and social usefulness of art but its every possible practical function as well. "Nobody would write poetry," says Eugenio Montale, "if the problem of literature consisted in making oneself understood." It has been doubted whether the capacity of making oneself understood, the unambiguous communication of feelings and experiences, even lies within the power of art. What Eduardo Hanslick asserts about music in Von musikalischen Schönen, namely, that its relation to everything which is nonmusical, everything which has emotional content, is vague and noncommittal, is to some extent true for all arts. Just as music expresses something which cannot be translated into any other form, so literature expresses something which is eminently literary, linguistic, something locked into words and syntactic structures. In the same way the untranslatable content of a painting, a pictorial idea, a vision, can only be seized and held onto in optical forms. The composer thinks in tones, the painter in lines and colors, the poet in words, tropes, and rhythms. Indubitable as this is, it is not the whole truth; side by side with the content which can only be expressed adequately in a particular form, there is an intrinsic value which can be translated into any form. Kenneth Northcott, translator of this essay, is professor of older German literature and of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. He is currently engaged in the translation of The Sociology of Art and in the study of late medieval satire in Germany and the works of Harold Pinter, in whose plays he also delights to act. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2004) argues that emotional feelings (“state emotions”) can by themselves perceptually represent significant organism-environment relations. I object to this view mainly on the grounds that (1) it does not rule out the at least equally plausible view that emotional feelings are non-representational sensory registrations rather than perceptions, as Tyler Burge (2010) draws the distinction, and (2) perception of a relation requires perception of at least one of the relation’s relata, but an emotional feeling by itself perceives neither the (...) subject’s environment, nor in many cases the relevant subject itself. I then explore two ways in which emotional feelings as non-perceptual sensory registrations might still contribute to significant relation representation when associated with representations of the subject and/or its environment. After briefly discussing some difficulties presented by a multimodal, sensory-perceptual view of such representation, I argue in favor of a “cognitive recognition theory” that holds that significant relation instances are represented during emotion occurrences via applications of emotion-type concepts to "incoming" emotional feelings and their associated mental states. (shrink)

Appraisal theories of emotion generally presuppose that emotions are “directed at” various items. They also hold that emotions have motivational properties. However, although it coheres well with their views, they have yet to seriously develop the idea that the function of emotional direction is to guide those properties. I argue that this “guidance hypothesis” can open up a promising new field of research in emotion theory. But I also argue that before appraisal theorists can take full advantage of it, they (...) must drop their further assumption that to determine an emotion's direction, one need only retrace the process that caused it. Contrary to this “retracing view,” I argue for an “independence thesis”: directed emotions are produced by two functionally independent sub-processes. The first, “affect-causation,” functions in part to produce a state with certain motivational properties given certain representations. The second, “affect-direction,” has the function of optimally guiding those motivational properties by associating them with representations that may properly be quite dissimilar from the causal ones. By provisionally adopting the independence thesis and empirically testing the guidance hypothesis, I argue that appraisal theorists stand a good chance of significantly increasing the explanatory power of their theories. (shrink)

This is a study of what constituted legality and the role of law in ancient societies. Investigating and comparing legal codes and legal thinking of the ancient societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire and of the ancient Rabbis, this volume examines how people used law to create stable societies. Starting with Hammurabi's Code, this volume also analyzes the law of the pharaohs and the codes of the ancient rabbis and of the Roman Emperor Justinian. (...) Focusing on the key concepts of justice equity and humaneness, the status of women and slaves, and the idea of criminality and of war and peace; no other book attempts to examine such diverse legal systems and legal thinking from the ancient world. (shrink)

This book, the result of cooperation between the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and the Dewey Center at the University of ...

This text addresses various topics in applied ethics from Western and non-Western perspectives. Multicultural perspectives are fully integrated throughout the text.

This book introduces Hegel's best-known and most influential work, Phenomenology of Spirit, by interpreting it as a unified argument for a single philosophical claim: that human beings achieve their freedom through retrospective self-understanding. In clear, non-technical prose, Larry Krasnoff sets this claim in the context of the history of modern philosophy and shows how it is developed in the major sections of Hegel's text. The result is an accessible and engaging guide to one of the most complex and important (...) works of nineteenth-century philosophy, which will be of interest to all students and teachers working in this area. (shrink)

This chapter wades into the growing discussion surrounding embodied cognition and predictive processing. After surveying a recent debate between Jakob Hohwy and Andy Clark, it articulates two outstanding issues facing discussions of compatibility. It argues that headway on these issues can be made by drawing on the resources of philosophy of science.

After reviewing current proposals for standardized testing in K-12 education (United States) and for imposition of free-market economic and business models on higher education (Texas, Florida, and the United Kingdom), I argue that both types of proposals rest on flawed pedagogical assumptions and tend to undermine educational practices that promote the development of global citizens. I suggest that John Dewey was aware of the type of challenges now faced by educators and that he provided tools for blunting the force of (...) these proposals and moving educational practice toward more desirable ends. (shrink)