This essay gives an account of epistemic deference for agents with imprecise credences. I look at the two main imprecise deference principles in the literature, known as Identity Reflection and Pointwise Reflection (Moss, 2021). I show that Pointwise Reflection is strictly weaker than Identity Reflection, and argue that, if you are certain you will update by conditionalisation, you should defer to your future self according to Identity Reflection. Then I give a more general justification for Pointwise and Identity Reflection from (...) the assumption that you defer to someone whenever you consider their doxastic state to be better than yours, in the sense of leading to better decision-making. (shrink)

When we witness a great actor, musician, or sportsperson performing, we share something of their experience. Only recently has it become clear just how this sharing of experience is realised within the human brain. 'Mirrors in the brain' provides an accessible overview of mirror neurons, written by the man who first discovered them.

This paper develops a novel theory of the meaning of moral equality. This theory has two original and significant implications: first, it shows—contra what is commonly held in the literature—that adults and children are not always each other’s equals; rather, the former are sometimes inferior and sometimes superior to the latter, depending on the interest at stake. Second, it reveals that human beings’ comparative moral status changes across time, and what matters is that they are each other’s equals at simultaneous (...) segments of their lives. (shrink)

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense, humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and revision. We (...) argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. (shrink)

One important distinction in the debate over the nature of epistemic justification is the one between propositional and doxastic justification. Roughly, while doxastic justification is a property of beliefs, propositional justification is a property of propositions. On a rather common view, which accounts for doxastic justification in terms of propositional justification plus the so-called ‘basing relation’, propositional justification is seen as the prior notion, and doxastic justification is explained in terms of it. According to the opposing view, the direction of (...) explanation needs to be reversed, and doxastic justification should be seen as primary. I distinguish between two notions of priority, and I argue that they give different verdicts with respect to the issue of which notion of justification comes first. The lesson may be taken to be that propositional and doxastic justification are in a relation of intertwinement. (shrink)

Taking the inspiration from some points made by Scott Sturgeon and Albert Casullo, I articulate a view according to which an important difference between undermining and overriding defeaters is that the former require the subject to engage in some higher-order epistemic thinking, while the latter don’t. With the help of some examples, I argue that underminers push the cognizer to reflect on the way she formed a belief by challenging the epistemic worthiness of either the source of justification or the (...) specific justificatory process. By contrast, overriders needn’t pose any such challenge. I also consider some problems for the proposed view, and I put forward some possible solutions. Finally, I provide some details on how undermining defeat works in different cases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Canti VI, Bruto Minore GIACOMO LEOPARDI (Translated by Steven J. Willett) To Peter Green After Italian Valor, lying in Thracian dust an immense ruin, had been uprooted, then in the valleys of green Hesperia, on Tiber’s shore, Fate prepares the tramp of barbarian horse, and from naked forests oppressed by the freezing Bear, calls forth the Gothic swords to overthrow Rome’s renowned walls; sitting alone, soaked in (...) brothers’ blood, through black night in a desolate site, Brutus is determined to die, and the implacable gods and Hell itself he accuses with savage cries and strikes the somnambulant air in vain. Fatuous Valor, the empty mists, the fields of unquiet phantoms are your schools, and behind you strides remorse. To you, marmoreal gods, (whether you reside in Phlegethon or the clouds), to you a laughingstock and mockery is the miserable race from whom you extort temples and a fraudulent law insulting to mortals. Is heaven’s wrath, then, so provoked by terrestrial piety? and do you then sit, Jove, impiety’s protector? and when storm clouds exult through the air, and when arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 you hurl the swift thunderbolt, do you cast the sacred fire on the just and faithful? Invincible destiny and iron necessity crush the sickly slaves of death: and if nothing avails to end their indignities, the common man takes comfort in their necessity. Is the evil without cure less harsh? Does he feel no grief who’s stripped naked of hope? War to the death, eternal, o ignoble fate, the valorous man wages, incapable of surrender; and your tyrannical right hand, victorious as it bears him down, indomitable he shrugs off with a valiant show, when in his noble side the bitter blade runs with blood, and malignly he smiles at the darkening shadows. He displeases the gods who violently breaks into Tartarus. No such courage could be found in their feeble, eternal breasts. Perhaps our torments, perhaps our bitter accidents and wretched passions heaven created as a pleasing spectacle for their idle hours? Not between calamities and crimes, but free in the forests and pure Nature appointed us, once our queen and goddess. But since on earth impious custom has destroyed the blessed realms and subjected our miserable life to other laws; when a virile soul rejects his luckless days does Nature return, and accuse the arrow that’s not hers? 166 CANTI VI, bruto minore Ignorant of guilt and their own misfortunes are the fortunate beasts; serene old age guides them to an unforeseen passage. But if they dash their foreheads on rough tree-trunks or from a mountain cliff cast bodies headlong to the winds, moved by their anguish, against that miserable desire would stand no arcane law or shadowy conception. You alone, among the numerous progeny that heaven created, alone among all, children of Prometheus, regret life. Alone o wretched ones, to you Jove bans, if sluggish fate delays, the shores of death. And you, from the sea stained by our blood, you rise bright moon, and explore the unquiet night and the deadly battlefield of Italian Valor. The victor tramples on kinsmen’s breasts, the hills shudder, from her highest summits ancient Rome collapses— and are you so placid? You saw the birth of Lavinia’s offspring, and their years of happiness, and the memorable victories; and on the mountain peaks you pour your immutable silent light when, in the wreck of the servile Italian name, this solitary place will echo beneath the barbarian tramp. Giacomo Leopardi 167 Here among naked rocks or on green boughs, beast and bird, breasts heavy with their habitual oblivion, ignore the profound ruin and the altered destiny of the world: and as the rooftop of the industrious peasant first glows red, with its morning song the one will wake the valleys, while through high slopes the other will startle the helpless multitude of smaller creatures. Oh destiny! oh insensate race! we are an abject part of things; neither the bloodstained soil nor the howling caves has our calamity ever perturbed, and no human cares stain the stars. Neither to Olympus’ or Cocytus’ deaf kings, or to the unworthy earth, and... (shrink)

_Selections from Leopardi’s prose masterwork, _Zibaldone_, one of the great intellectual diaries in European literature, expertly translated by Tim Parks__ _Revenge__—Revenge is so sweet one often wishes to be insulted so as to be able to take revenge, and I don’t mean just by an old enemy, but anyone, or even by a friend_._—from _Passions_ The extraordinary quality of Giacomo Leopardi’s writing and the innovative nature of his thought were never fully recognized in his lifetime. _Zibaldone_, his 4,500-page intellectual (...) diary—a vast collection of thoughts on philosophy, civilization, literary criticism, linguistics, humankind and its vanities, and other varied topics—remained unpublished until more than a half-century after his death. But shortly before he died, Leopardi began to organize a small, thematic collection of his writings in an attempt to give structure and system to his philosophical musings. Now freshly translated into English by master translator, novelist, and critic Tim Parks, Leopardi’s _Passions _presents 164 entries reflecting the full breadth of human passion. The volume offers a fascinating introduction to Leopardi’s arguments and insights, as well as a glimpse of the concerns of thinkers to come, among them Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Wittgenstein, Gadda, and Beckett. (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: (i) showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and (ii) offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de (...) re truths about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness (all powers are “for” their manifestation) and Independence (some powers might fail to bring about their manifestation) has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

Dispositionalism is the theory of modality according to which all (metaphysical and natural) modal truths are made true by some actual irreducibly dispositional property. The relationship between Dispositionalism and time is yet to be satisfactorily explored. In this paper we contribute to this task by examining how Dispositionalism deals with ‘dated truths’: propositions involving a specific time, e.g. “It might rain at 12.30”. We examine two possible accounts: the first, 'Dated Manifestations Strategy', is the idea that powers are very fine-grained, (...) and tend towards temporally very specific manifestations. We argue that such strategy should not be adopted, for it leads to unnecessary violations of ontological parsimony; it is unable to accommodate an ontology of platonic universals; and it is incapable of offering a principled explanation of the forward-looking nature of powers. We offer an alternative account, the "Duration Strategy", which relies on an independently determined arrow of time and the existence of some “duration facts” that specify how long a power takes to bring about its manifestation. We argue that the Duration Strategy is to be preferred. We then flesh out the account by exploring the connection between powers, duration facts, and processes. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that even the most radical metaphysics of powers (such as that adopted by Mumford and Anjum, Cartwright, or Groff) are compatible with eternalism. I first offer a taxonomy of powers ontologies, and attempt to characterise the difference between moderate and radical powers ontologies—the latter are characterised by an emphasis on _production_ and _dynamicity_. I consider an argument by C. Friebe to the effect that the productive character of powers is inconsistent with Eternalism and find it (...) wanting. I then elucidate the notion of _dynamicity_ that radical powers theorists employ by making apparent their link with an ontology of irreducible processes. Finally, I respond to an argument by Donatella Donati to the effect that eternalism entails a reductive account of change which is inconsistent with process ontologies, and show that the the two are compatible. I conclude that we have no reason to think that radical powers metaphysics (and, a fortiori, every powers ontology) are not compatible with eternalism. (shrink)

Among the many possible approaches to dealing with logical omniscience, I consider here awareness and impossible worlds structures. The former approach, pioneered by Fagin and Halpern, distinguishes between implicit and explicit knowledge, and avoids logical omniscience with respect to explicit knowledge. The latter, developed by Rantala and by Hintikka, allows for the existence of logically impossible worlds to which the agents are taken to have access; since such worlds need not behave consistently, the agents’ knowledge is fallible relative to logical (...) omniscience. The two approaches are known to be equally expressive in propositional systems interpreted over Kripke semantics. In this paper I show that the two approaches are equally expressive in propositional systems interpreted over Montague-Scott (neighborhood) semantics. Furthermore, I provide predicate systems of both awareness and impossible worlds structures interpreted on neighborhood semantics and prove the two systems to be equally expressive. (shrink)

This paper investigates the epistemic assumptions that David Lewis makes in his account of social conventions. In particular, I focus on the assumption that the agents have common knowledge of the convention to which they are parties. While evolutionary analyses show that the common knowledge assumption is unnecessary in certain classes of games, Lewis’ original account (and, more recently, Cubitt and Sugden’s reconstruction) stresses the importance of including it in the definition of convention. I discuss arguments pro et contra to (...) argue that, although the assumption might be relevant to a descriptively adequate account of social convention, it is not required for its rational reconstruction. I then point out that Lewis’ account, properly speaking, is of common reason to believe, rather than of common knowledge, and argue that, in order to formalize aptly the distinction between reason to believe and belief, standard formal epistemic models need to be supplemented with so-called awareness structures. Finally, I stress that the notion of knowledge implicit in Lewis’ text involves interesting elements that cannot be captured in the standard propositional formalizations, but need the full expressive force of quantified epistemic logic. (shrink)

The philosophy of language of Robert Brandom is based on a theoretical structure composed of three main elements: the normative analysis of linguistic practices, the inferential characterization of conceptual contents and the expressive articulation of the relations between the former two. Normative pragmatics aims to explain how linguistic practices are sufficient to confer contentful states in those who engage in them. Inferential semantics provides a theory of such pragmatic significances in terms of the inferential relations that articulate conceptual contents. Rational (...) expressivism is the thesis that concept application is essentially a process of turning something that can only be done into something that can also be said. Such a threefold structure is the core of normative inferentialism. This book is a concise, selfcontained and comprehensive presentation of this philosophical enterprise. It guides the reader through the analysis of Brandom’s imposing theoretical apparatus, the discovery of the roots of his approach in American pragmatism and German idealism, till the exploration of some of its most interesting and recent outcomes in pragmatics and semantics. It is a valuable resource for both those who approach Brandom’s work for the first time and those who are interested in the potential of normative inferentialism. (shrink)

For the past 20 years or so the literature on noncooperative games has been centered on the search for an equilibrium concept that expresses the notion of rational behavior in interactive situations. A basic tenet in this literature is that if a “rational solution” exists, it must be a Nash equilibrium. The consensus view, however, is that not all Nash equilibria can be accepted as rational solutions. Consider, for example, the game of Figure 1.

Since belief revision deals with the interaction of belief and information over time, branching-time temporal logic seems a natural setting for a theory of belief change. We propose two extensions of a modal logic that, besides the next-time temporal operator, contains a belief operator and an information operator. The first logic is shown to provide an axiomatic characterization of the first six postulates of the AGM theory of belief revision, while the second, stronger, logic provides an axiomatic characterization of the (...) full set of AGM postulates. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The symplectic quantization scheme proposed for matter scalar fields in the companion paper (Gradenigo and Livi, arXiv:2101.02125, 2021) is generalized here to the case of space–time quantum fluctuations. That is, we present a new formalism to frame the quantum gravity problem. Inspired by the stochastic quantization approach to gravity, symplectic quantization considers an explicit dependence of the metric tensor gμν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$g_{\mu \nu }$$\end{document} on an additional time variable, named intrinsic time at variance (...) with the coordinate time of relativity, from which it is different. The physical meaning of intrinsic time, which is truly a parameter and not a coordinate, is to label the sequence of gμν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$g_{\mu \nu }$$\end{document} quantum fluctuations at a given point of the four-dimensional space–time continuum. For this reason symplectic quantization necessarily incorporates a new degree of freedom, the derivative g˙μν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\dot{g}}_{\mu \nu }$$\end{document} of the metric field with respect to intrinsic time, corresponding to the conjugated momentum πμν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\pi _{\mu \nu }$$\end{document}. Our proposal is to describe the quantum fluctuations of gravity by means of a symplectic dynamics generated by a generalized action functional A[gμν,πμν]=K[gμν,πμν]-S[gμν]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {A}}[g_{\mu \nu },\pi _{\mu \nu }] = {\mathcal {K}}[g_{\mu \nu },\pi _{\mu \nu }] - S[g_{\mu \nu }]$$\end{document}, playing formally the role of a Hamilton function, where S[gμν]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$S[g_{\mu \nu }]$$\end{document} is the standard Einstein–Hilbert action while K[gμν,πμν]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {K}}[g_{\mu \nu },\pi _{\mu \nu }]$$\end{document} is a new term including the kinetic degrees of freedom of the field. Such an action allows us to define an ensemble for the quantum fluctuations of gμν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$g_{\mu \nu }$$\end{document} analogous to the microcanonical one in statistical mechanics, with the only difference that in the present case one has conservation of the generalized action A[gμν,πμν]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal {A}}[g_{\mu \nu },\pi _{\mu \nu }]$$\end{document} and not of energy. Since the Einstein–Hilbert action S[gμν]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$S[g_{\mu \nu }]$$\end{document} plays the role of a potential term in the new pseudo-Hamiltonian formalism, it can fluctuate along the symplectic action-preserving dynamics. These fluctuations are the quantum fluctuations of gμν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$g_{\mu \nu }$$\end{document}. Finally, we show how the standard path-integral approach to gravity can be obtained as an approximation of the symplectic quantization approach. By doing so we explain how the integration over the conjugated momentum field πμν\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\pi _{\mu \nu }$$\end{document} gives rise to a cosmological constant term in the path-integral approach. (shrink)

I extend the Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat (HOVUD) defended in Melis (2014) to account for the defeat of propositional justification. In doing so, I clarify the important notion of higher-order commitment, and I make some considerations concerning the defeat of externalist epistemic warrants.

It is widely accepted that parents have a fundamental moral obligation to consider and treat their children as each other’s equals. Yet the question of what grounds the equality of status among children in the eyes of their parents has so far been largely neglected in the literature on the philosophy of childhood and the ethics of parenthood. This paper fills this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of filial equality: it argues that parents ought to consider (...) and treat their children as equals by virtue of loving them. Parental love is the basis of filial equality. (shrink)

A lot of attention has recently been devoted to the notion of Trustworthy AI (TAI). However, the very applicability of the notions of trust and trustworthiness to AI systems has been called into question. A purely epistemic account of trust can hardly ground the distinction between trustworthy and merely reliable AI, while it has been argued that insisting on the importance of the trustee’s motivations and goodwill makes the notion of TAI a categorical error. After providing an overview of the (...) debate, we contend that the prevailing views on trust and AI fail to account for the ethically relevant and value-laden aspects of the design and use of AI systems, and we propose an understanding of the notion of TAI that explicitly aims at capturing these aspects. The problems involved in applying trust and trustworthiness to AI systems are overcome by keeping apart trust in AI systems and interpersonal trust. These notions share a conceptual core but should be treated as distinct ones. (shrink)

AI-based technologies are increasingly pervasive in a number of contexts. Our affective and emotional life makes no exception. In this article, we analyze one way in which AI-based technologies can affect them. In particular, our investigation will focus on affective artificial agents, namely AI-powered software or robotic agents designed to interact with us in affectively salient ways. We build upon the existing literature on affective artifacts with the aim of providing an original analysis of affective artificial agents and their distinctive (...) features. We argue that, unlike comparatively low-tech affective artifacts, affective artificial agents display a specific form of agency, which prevents them from being perceived by their users as extensions of their selves. In addition to this, we claim that their functioning crucially depends on the simulation of human-like emotion-driven behavior and requires a distinctive form of transparency—we call it emotional transparency—that might give rise to ethical and normative tensions. (shrink)

This article defines a possible pragmatist approach to the sociology of emotions by discussing and delimiting the concept of “affective rupture.” According to this approach, emotions emerge from the breaking of habits in the face of the transformation of situations, producing reflexivity and relational adjustments. The pragmatist approach problematizes the “rhythm” of emotions, made up of ruptures, moments of quiet, adjustments, harmonizations, restorations, and relational revolutions. Rhythm is what emotions pragmatically “do,” ordering and transforming every social situation. This article employs (...) this idea to reinterpret some sociological approaches to emotions and, in parallel, to show how the interdependence between affectivity and irruption of events that involve and upset is constitutive of everyone's social behaviors. (shrink)

Cet article soutient que Plotin a écrit l’ Ennéade VI 8 (39) pour mener ses élèves à voir que notre liberté est fondée sur l’Un, un but poursuivi par le biais d’une polémique avec le De fato et le De anima d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise. La première partie cherche à établir que le « discours téméraire » introduit au chapitre 7 est une interprétation de la position du De fato sur la liberté des dieux. Plotin lit la thèse de son adversaire en (...) transférant au niveau de l’Un une structure tripartite constituée par la nature, la raison et le hasard, une structure qu’Alexandre utilisait pour expliquer les événements des réalités en devenir. La seconde partie propose de voir le traité comme un procédé dialectique. Plotin commence son enquête par le niveau de l’âme et celui de l’Intellect. Il arrive ensuite au discours sur l’Un, où il essaie de franchir progressivement les limites du langage en analysant les positions alternatives du point de vue du discours, des mots et enfin de la pensée. Ce faisant, il insiste sur le renversement des thèses d’Alexandre : l’Un est simple et donc il n’est pas contraint par sa nature, il est libre grâce à une volonté incapable de choisir parmi les contraires et tournée métaphoriquement vers elle-même. (shrink)

Risks connected with AI systems have become a recurrent topic in public and academic debates, and the European proposal for the AI Act explicitly adopts a risk-based tiered approach that associates different levels of regulation with different levels of risk. However, a comprehensive and general framework to think about AI-related risk is still lacking. In this work, we aim to provide an epistemological analysis of such risk building upon the existing literature on disaster risk analysis and reduction. We show how (...) a multi-component analysis of risk, that distinguishes between the dimensions of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, allows us to better understand the sources of AI-related risks and effectively intervene to mitigate them. This multi-component analysis also turns out to be particularly useful in the case of general-purpose and experimental AI systems, for which it is often hard to perform both ex-ante and ex-post risk analyses. (shrink)

In recent decades, it has often been argued by environmental ethicists that human beings and the natural world ought to be considered as equals in some basic sense. The aim of this paper is to make sense of this view by examining what role, if any, the idea of equality ought to play in environmental ethics. Specifically, we have two aims: the first aim is to identify those environmental claims that are distinctively egalitarian. The second aim is to show these (...) claims do not rest on a principled and convincing justification. Our main contention is therefore that equality has no place in environmental ethics. There are other promising ways to argue that our relationship with the natural environment must be fundamentally revised. By bringing clarity to this debate and dispelling the possibility of equality-based arguments, we hope to contribute to this endeavor. (shrink)

There is a tension between Dispositionalism––the view that all metaphysical modality is grounded in actual irreducible dispositional properties––and the possibility of time travel. This is due to the fact that Dispositionalism makes it much harder to solve a potentiality-based version of the grandfather paradox. We first present a potentiality-based version of the grandfather paradox, stating that the following theses are inconsistent: 1) time travel is possible, 2) powers fully ground modality, 3) self-defeating actions are impossible, 4) time-travellers retain their intrinsic (...) powers upon time-travelling, and 5) time-travellers are ordinary agents with basic intrinsic potentialities. We then consider a number of potential solutions, and find them wanting. We argue that the metaphysical impossibility of performing a self-defeating action acts as a necessary perfect mask––while time-travel lets us “slip” the potentiality under the mask, thus generating the contradiction. We conclude considering what are the options for the dispositionalist. (shrink)

Branching time is a popular theory of time that is intended to account for the openness of the future. Generally, branching-time models the openness of the future by positing a multiplicity of concrete alternative futures mirroring all the possible ways the future could unfold. A distinction is drawn in the literature among branching-time theories: those that make use of moment-based structures and those that employ history-based ones. In this paper, I introduce and discuss a particular kind of openness relative to (...) the possibility that time ends (doomsday). I then show that whereas moment-based branching structures cannot represent this kind of openness, history-based structures can account for it. The conclusion is that history-based structures have an advantage over moment-based ones. (shrink)

The notion of perfect recall in extensive games was introduced by Kuhn (1953), who interpreted it as "equivalent to the assertion that each player is allowed by the rules of the game to remember everything he knew at previous moves and all of his choices at those moves''. We provide a characterization and axiomatization of perfect recall based on two notions of memory: (1) memory of past knowledge and (2) memory of past actions.

The article _Anthropological crisis or crisis in moral __status: a philosophy of technology approach to the moral consideration of artificial intelligence_ questions the anthropology of properties commonly assumed in philosophical discussions about the relationship between humans and technologies and the attribution of moral status. By beginning to develop the possible link between the ontology of properties and the anthropological question aptly outlined by that contribution, this short commentary suggests that the adoption of a truly relational or non-proprietary approach in the (...) philosophy of technology seems at once necessary and challenging. For, on the one hand, it represents a response to the demands posed by information technologies; on the other it seems to call into question some of our deeply ingrained habits of thought. (shrink)

Vetter (2015) develops a localised theory of modality, based on potentialities of actual objects. Two factors play a key role in its appeal: its commitment to Hardcore Actualism, and to Naturalism. Vetter’s commitment to Naturalism is in part manifested in her adoption of Aristotelian universals. In this paper, we argue that a puzzle concerning the identity of unmanifested potentialities cannot be solved with an Aristotelian conception of properties. After introducing the puzzle, we examine Vetter’s attempt at amending the Aristotelian conception (...) in a way that avoids the puzzle, and conclude that this amended version is no longer to be considered naturalistic. Potentiality theory cannot be both actualist and naturalist. We then argue that, if naturalism is to be abandoned by the actualist, there are good reasons to adopt a Platonist conception of universals, for they offer a number of theoretical advantages and allow us to avoid some of the problems facing Vetter’s theory. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that even the most radical metaphysics of powers (such as that adopted by Mumford & Anjum, Cartwright, or Groff) are compatible with eternalism. I first offer a taxonomy of powers ontologies, and attempt to characterise the difference between moderate and radical powers ontologies – the latter are characterised by an emphasis on production and dynamicity. I consider an argument by C. Friebe to the effect that the productive character of powers is inconsistent with Eternalism and (...) find it wanting. I then elucidate the notion of dynamicity that radical powers theorists employ by making apparent their link with an ontology of irreducible processes. Finally, I respond to an argument by Donatella Donati to the effect that eternalism entails a reductive account of change which is inconsistent with process ontologies, and show that the the two are compatible. I conclude that we have no reason to think that radical powers metaphysics (and, a fortiori, every powers ontology) are not compatible with eternalism. (shrink)

Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection. This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implications for liberal theories of justice. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, it argues (...) that both the CMP and the potential capacity for moral personality are bases of moral status. This pluralist account of the basis of moral status can broaden the scope of justice and provide a solid philosophical justification for the common-sense intuition that almost all human beings have a moral status that is different and superior to that of nonhuman animals. Second, contra what is commonly suggested, it contends that potential and actual moral persons have different and unequal rights, other things being equal. (shrink)

We consider strategic-form games with ordinal payoffs and provide a syntactic analysis of common belief/knowledge of rationality, which we define axiomatically. Two axioms are considered. The first says that a player is irrational if she chooses a particular strategy while believing that another strategy is better. We show that common belief of this weak notion of rationality characterizes the iterated deletion of pure strategies that are strictly dominated by pure strategies. The second axiom says that a player is irrational if (...) she chooses a particular strategy while believing that a different strategy is at least as good and she considers it possible that this alternative strategy is actually better than the chosen one. We show that common knowledge of this stronger notion of rationality characterizes the restriction to pure strategies of the iterated deletion procedure introduced by Stalnaker (1994). Frame characterization results are also provided. (shrink)

The question of the basis of human equality has recently gained increasing attention. However, much of the literature has focused on whether persons—understood as fully competent adults—have equal moral status, while relatively less attention has been devoted to the analysis of what grounds the equal moral status of those human beings who are not fully competent adults. This paper contributes to this debate by addressing the question of the equality of moral status between adults and children. Specifically, this paper has (...) three aims. First, it provides a conceptual map of this complex issue. Second, it argues that the challenges that have been raised against standard accounts of persons’ equal moral status are even more forceful when applied to the question of adults and children’s moral equality. Finally, it examines what a commitment to adults and children’s moral _inequality_ entails and what it does not, thereby showing that the justificatory role of the principle of moral equality is not as far-reaching as commonly assumed. (shrink)

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths (...) about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness and Independence has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

The principle of moral equality is one of the cornerstones of any liberal theory of justice. It is usually assumed that persons’ equal moral status should be grounded in the equal possession of a status-conferring property. Call this the property-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This approach, however, faces some well-known difficulties: in particular, it is difficult to see how the possession of a scalar property can account for persons’ equal moral status. A plausible way of circumventing such (...) difficulties is to explore another avenue for the justification of persons’ equal moral status: moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors. Call this the relation-first approach to the basis of moral equality. This paper aims at providing some reasons as to why this approach should be rejected and clarifying why the property-first approach still represents the most promising way of justifying our commitment to moral equality. Two objections will be pressed against the relation-first approach: first, grounding moral equality in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors gives rise to some disturbing normative implications; second, relation-first accounts cannot vindicate the idea that a range of beings has equal fundamental rights. This, however, is precisely what an account of moral equality is meant to justify. The paper, then, concludes that the relation-first approach fails to provide a plausible answer to the question of the basis of moral equality. Property-first accounts, whatever problems they encounter, are still more viable in principle. (shrink)