We consider the questions of whether or not large language models (LLMs) have beliefs, and, if they do, how we might measure them. First, we consider whether or not we should expect LLMs to have something like beliefs in the first place. We consider some recent arguments aiming to show that LLMs cannot have beliefs. We show that these arguments are misguided. We provide a more productive framing of questions surrounding the status of beliefs in LLMs, and highlight the empirical (...) nature of the problem. With this lesson in hand, we evaluate two existing approaches for measuring the beliefs of LLMs, one due to Azaria and Mitchell (The internal state of an llm knows when its lying, 2023) and the other to Burns et al. (Discovering latent knowledge in language models without supervision, 2022). Moving from the armchair to the desk chair, we provide empirical results that show that these methods fail to generalize in very basic ways. We then argue that, even if LLMs have beliefs, these methods are unlikely to be successful for conceptual reasons. Thus, there is still no lie-detector for LLMs. We conclude by suggesting some concrete paths for future work. (shrink)

One of the consequences of the public outcry over the 1929 St Valentine’s Day massacre was the establishment of a Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University. The photogenic ‘Lie Detector Man’, Leonarde Keeler, was the laboratory’s poster boy, and his instrument the jewel in the crown of forensic science. The press often depicted Keeler gazing at a female suspect attached to his ‘sweat box’, a galvanometer electrode in her hand, a sphygmomanometer cuff on her arm and a rubber (...) pneumograph tube strapped across her breasts. Keeler’s fascination with the deceptive charms of the female body was one he shared with his fellow lie detector pioneers, all of whom met their wives – and in William Marston’s case, his mistress too – through their engagement with the instrument. Marston employed his own ‘Love Meter’, as the press dubbed it, to prove that ‘brunettes react far more violently to amatory stimuli than blondes’. In this article, I draw on the psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and pleasure to argue that the female body played a pivotal role in establishing the lie detector’s reputation as an infallible and benign mechanical technology of truth. (shrink)

In a great variety of cultures oaths, ordeals, or lie detectors are used to adjudicate in trials, even though they do not reliably discern liars from truth tellers. I suggest that these practices owe their cultural success to the triggering of cognitive mechanisms that make them more culturally attractive. Informal oaths would trigger mechanisms related to commitment in communication. Oaths used in judicial contexts, by invoking supernatural punishments, would trigger intuitions of immanent justice, linking misfortunes following an oath with perjury. (...) These intuitions would justify the infliction of costs on oath takers in a way that appears morally justified. Ordeals reflect the same logic. Intuitions about immanent justice link a worse outcome following the ordeal with a guilty verdict. This link justifies the application of the ordeal, and the fixed costs involved. Lie detectors also rely on the creation of a link between a specified outcome and a guilty verdict. However, they do not rely on intuitions about immanent justice, but on a variety of intuitions ranging from the plausibly universal to the culturally idiosyncratic. As a result, lie detectors involve lower fixed costs than ordeals, and are less cross-culturally successful than oaths or ordeals. (shrink)

Deepfakes pose a multi-faceted threat to the acquisition of knowledge. It is widely hoped that technological solutions—in the form of artificially intelligent systems for detecting deepfakes—will help to address this threat. I argue that the prospects for purely technological solutions to the problem of deepfakes are dim. Especially given the evolving nature of the threat, technological solutions cannot be expected to prevent deception at the hands of deepfakes, or to preserve the authority of video footage. Moreover, the success of such (...) technologies depends on institutional trust that is in short supply. Finally, outsourcing the discrimination between the real and the fake to automated, largely opaque systems runs the risk of undermining epistemic autonomy. (shrink)

The lie detector test has long been treated with suspicion by the law. Recently, several authors have called this suspicion into question. They argue that the lie detector test may have considerable forensic benefits, particularly if we move past the classic, false-positive prone, autonomic nervous system-based (ANS-based) control question test, to the more reliable, brain-based, concealed information test. These authors typically rely on a “comparative advantage” argument to make their case. According to this argument, we should not be (...) so suspicious of lie detection evidence if it has comparative advantages over the epistemic methods currently utilised by the legal system. In this article, I add to this growing support by making a novel comparative advantage argument in favour of brain-based lie detection evidence. The argument focuses on the P300 concealed information test (P300 CIT), which has several unique properties, and on the effect it may have on pre-trial bargaining in criminal cases rather than in-court evidence. The thesis is that P300 CIT could allow for innocent defendants to credibly signal their innocence to investigators and prosecutors during pre-trial bargaining more effectively than current proposed methods for doing the same thing. I defend this argument from a number of objections, and suggest that it opens up an interesting avenue in the ongoing debate about the merits of this technology. Although the argument is presented with the criminal law in mind, it could form part of a more general cumulative case in favour of this technology. (shrink)

Two studies examined gender differences in lying when the truth-telling bias prevailed and when inspiring lying and disbelief. The first study used 156 community participants in pairs. First, participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the Lie- and Truth Ability Assessment Scale, and the Rational-Experiential Inventory. Then, they participated in a deception game where they performed as senders and receivers of true and false communications. Their goal was to retain as many points as possible according to a payoff matrix that specified (...) the reward they would gain for any possible outcome. Results indicated that men lied more and were more successful lie-tellers than women. In addition, men believed the sender less than women but were not more successful detectors of lies and truths. Higher perceived lie-telling ability, narcissistic features, and experiential thinking style explained men’s performance. The second study used 100 volunteers who underwent the same procedure. However, the payoff matrix encouraged lying and disbelieving. Results showed again that men lied more than women. As to performance, men were more successful lie detectors than women, but there was no truth detection difference. Women did not differ in their success in telling and detecting lies and truths. The inconsistent gender differences in production and detection lies and truths dictate caution in interpreting them. (shrink)

Von Hippel & Trivers (VH&T) argue that people become effective liars through self-deception. It can be said, however, that people who believe their own stories are not lying. VH&T also argue that people are quite good lie detectors, but they provide no evidence for this, and the available literature contradicts their claim. Their reasons to negate this evidence are unconvincing.

Chris N. H. Street Behavioral and Social Sciences Department, University of Huddersfield, UK We are very inaccurate lie detectors, and … Read More →.

Revealing the different types of deception and how to interpret body language and vocal clues, this reference shows how to spot deception from friends, lovers, colleagues, and strangers. Whether in the form of omission, misdirection, evasion, or bald-faced lie, attempts to deceive are ubiquitous in everyday life. With the right tools, inside knowledge from the latest psychological research, and a bit of practice, anyone can improve their ability to sniff out lies—from the well-intentioned white lie to the harmful whopper. Featuring (...) case studies and quizzes to test understanding and developing skill, this is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to become a better lie detector—or even perfect their own deception techniques. (shrink)

This paper analyses Steven Vogel's claim that his account of a post-natural environmental philosophy solves the dualism problem within the field. Through what I will call a novel critique of social constructionism, this paper examines whether Vogel's attempt succeeds or whether it reinforces the problem he wants to solve. Could the ontological foundations of social constructivism themselves be in conflict with Vogel's stated aim of overcoming the human/nature dualism? The last part of the paper focuses on the significance and role (...) of a post-natural environmental philosophy for the field of environmental philosophy in general. (shrink)

The article discusses two bioart projects that bring the symbolically core human substances of blood, sweat and tears into technologically mediated relationships with plants and fungi to explore human kinship with other species: Tarah Rhoda’s BS&T (short for ‘blood, sweat and tears’) and OurGlass, and Saša Spačal’s MycoMythologies: Patterning. The article analyses the art projects through the lens of the molecular gaze and different perspectives on kinning, bringing anthropological conceptualizations of kinship together with Haraway’s pathways to connect with other species. (...) How can bioart use technologies to explore interspecies kinship through a molecular gaze? And may such artworks contribute to the toning down of human exceptionality in the face of a precarious future? We find that artworks providing a molecular gaze on interspecies biological processes may risk a decontextualized approach to complex relational processes but may also create new visions of filiation even with biological organisms imagined to be genetically distant from humans, thus spurring awareness of the fragile interrelationships among species. (shrink)

The World Medical Association’s revised Declaration of Helsinki endorses the view that all trial participants in every country are entitled to the worldwide best standard of care. In this paper the authors show that this requirement has been rejected by every national and international committee that has examined this issue. They argue that the consensus view now holds that it is ethically permissible, in some circumstances, to provide research participants less than the worldwide best care. Finally, the authors show that (...) there is also consensus regarding the broad conditions under which this is acceptable. (shrink)

The current study uses a two-wave longitudinal survey to explores the influence mechanism of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement. The family environment is measured by parents and children’s reports, including family atmosphere, parent–child interaction, and family rules, to reveal the mediating effect of adolescents’ positive or negative peers between the family environment and academic achievement, and whether the gap between self- and parental educational expectation plays a moderating effect. This study uses the data of the China Education Panel (...) Study ; the survey samples include 9,449 eighth-grade students, establishing a multilevel moderated mediating effect model. The results showed the family environment and peer interaction quality can positively predict adolescents’ academic achievement. Using the KHB test, peer interaction quality plays a partial mediating role in the process of family environment positively affecting academic achievement, and the mediating ratio is 27.5%. The educational expectation gap moderates the effect of the family environment on academic achievement and also on peer interaction quality. Therefore, from the perspective of environment and important others, to correctly grasp the academic achievement of junior high school students in the process of socialization, it is necessary to recognize that the family environment, peer interaction quality, and educational expectation gap play an important role. (shrink)

With a specific example from Norway and inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness, this article demonstrates how today’s educational rhetoric lacks the language and will to recognise a key pedagogical dimension in education: what happens when the normative ambitions of education and students meet. At best, teaching students life skills to mitigate their mental health issues is naive. Inspired by Ahmed, such an initiative might actually work against its purpose. At a time when educational outcomes are emphasised in (...) local and international political contexts, I argue that the task of philosophy of education should be 1) to reclaim the significance of the pedagogical dimension in education and 2) to philosophise on what negative emotions such as unhappiness require of education. (shrink)

This article explores possibilities for establishing dialogues between feminism and constructivism in the field of technology studies. Based on an overview of Norwegian feminist debates about technology, it indicates several points where feminism and constructivism meet and can mutually benefit from each other. The article critically examines feminist studies questioning the problems of technological determinism, social deternacnism, and essentialism. It criticizes constructivism for a lack of concern for gender and politics but holds that it is still possible to use theoretical (...) tools from constructivism in feminist analyses. Fruitful dialogues require the application of the principle of symmetry to the dcalogues and sharing some common ground and mutual recognation of each other's strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

Ethical issues related to comparative effectiveness research, or research that compares existing standards of care, have recently received considerable attention. In this paper we focus on how Ethics Review Committees should evaluate the risks of comparative effectiveness research. We discuss what has been a prominent focus in the debate about comparative effectiveness research, namely that it is justified when “nothing is known” about the comparative effectiveness of the available alternatives. We argue that this focus may be misleading. Rather, we should (...) focus on the fact that some experts believe that the evidence points in favor of one intervention, whereas other experts believe that the evidence favors the alternative. We will then introduce a case that illustrates this point, and based on that, discuss how ERCs should deal with such cases of expert disagreement. We argue that ERCs have a duty to assess the range of expert opinions and based on that assessment arrive at a risk judgment about the study under consideration. We also argue that assessment of expert disagreement is important for the assignment of risk level to a clinical trial: what is the basis for expert opinions, how strong is the evidence appealed to by various experts, and how can clinical trial monitoring affect the possible increased risk of clinical trial participation. (shrink)

The comic‐book superheroine Wonder Woman, who debuted in All Star Comics #8 in December 1941, was created by psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston. Most of all, Marston was known for his work on lie detection. Because of the extensive work done on lie detection by her character's creator, it is commonly believed that Wonder Woman's lasso is a magic lie detector. As Matthew Brown says in his article "Love Slaves and Wonder Women: Radical Feminism and Social Reform in the (...) Psychology of Marston", according to Marston there were four basic emotions: inducement, submission, dominance, and compliance. Wonder Woman displays the strong quality of submission by wearing the bracelets of submission. She has an inducement/submission relationship with Aphrodite, which enables her to experience love. Both the bracelets of submission and the magic lasso of Aphrodite have been dropped from contemporary Wonder Woman comic books. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the 1950s it became apparent that antibiotics could not conquer all microbes, and a series of tests were developed to assess the susceptibility of microbes to antibiotics. This article explores the development and standardization of one such testing procedure which became dominant in the Nordic region, and how the project eventually failed in the late 1970s. The standardization procedures amounted to a comprehensive scheme, standardizing not only the materials used, but also the methods and the interpretation of the results. (...) Focusing on Sweden and Norway in particular, the article shows how this comprehensive standardization procedure accounted for several co-dependent factors and demanded collaboration within and across laboratories. Whereas literature on standardization has focused mostly on how facts and artefacts move within and across laboratories, I argue for the importance of also attending to regions and territories. More particularly, while arguing that the practices, ideals, and politics related to what have been called the “Nordic welfare state” were contributing to the design of the standardized procedure in the laboratory, I also argue that Scandinavia was drawn together as a unified region with and by these very same practices. (shrink)

In this issue, Alex London and Kevin Zollman provide an analysis of an influential approach to the ethics of international research, known as the “fair benefits” approach. According to them, the fair benefits approach suffers from a fatal flaw: it is either too vague to be useful, or worse, is internally inconsistent. The fair benefits approach was developed based on a presentation I gave at a workshop organized in Malawi in March 2001 by the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center’s (...) Department of Bioethics. In this presentation, I made what I still think is a valid point, which was accepted by the diverse group of participants and formed the basis of the subsequent publications: One should not .. (shrink)

This book, edited by a team of leading European bioethicists, is in all respects an innovative publication.

Du silex à l'internet l'Homme dans toute sa complexité.