Machine ethics is the field that strives to develop ‘artificial moral agents’ (AMAs), artificial systems that can autonomously make moral decisions. Some authors have questioned the feasibility of machine ethics, by questioning whether artificial systems can possess moral competence, or the capacity to reach morally right decisions in various situations. This paper explores this question by drawing on the work of several moral philosophers (McDowell, Wiggins, Hampshire, and Nussbaum) who have characterised moral competence in a manner inspired by Aristotle. Although (...) disparate in many ways, these philosophers all emphasise what may be called ‘moral sensitivity’ as a precondition for moral competence. Moral sensitivity is the uncodified, practical skill to recognise, in a range of situations, which features of the situations are morally relevant, and how they are relevant. This paper argues that the main types of AMAs currently proposed are incapable of full moral sensitivity. First, top-down AMAs that proceed from fixed rule-sets are too rigid to respond appropriately to the wide range of qualitatively unique factors that moral sensitivity gives access to. Second, bottom-up AMAs that learn moral behaviour from examples are at risk of generalising from these examples in undesirable ways, as they lack embedding in what Wittgenstein calls a ‘form of life’, which allows humans to appropriately learn from moral examples. The paper concludes that AMAs are unlikely to possess full moral competence, but closes by suggesting that they may still be feasible in restricted domains of public morality, where moral sensitivity plays a smaller role. (shrink)

Perfect adaptation in a dynamical system is the phenomenon that one or more variables have an initial transient response to a persistent change in an external stimulus but revert to their original value as the system converges to equilibrium. With the help of the causal ordering algorithm, one can construct graphical representations of dynamical systems that represent the causal relations between the variables and the conditional independences in the equilibrium distribution. We apply these tools to formulate sufficient graphical conditions for (...) identifying perfect adaptation from a set of first-order differential equations. Furthermore, we give sufficient conditions to test for the presence of perfect adaptation in experimental equilibrium data. We apply this method to a simple model for a protein signalling pathway and test its predictions in both simulations and using real-world protein expression data. We demonstrate that perfect adaptation can lead to misleading orientation of edges in the output of causal discovery algorithms. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

Some accounts of moral responsibility hold that an agent's responsibility is completely determined by some aspect of the agent's mental life at the time of action. For example, some hold that an agent is responsible if and only if there is an appropriate mesh among the agent's particular psychological elements. It is often objected that the particular features of the agent's mental life to which these theorists appeal (such as a particular structure or mesh) are not necessary for responsibility. This (...) is because there appear to be cases in which an agent acts at an earlier time which causes her to lack the appropriate psychological features at some later time and yet, intuitively, she is responsible at that later .. (shrink)

People narrating the experience of dysregulated anger after a brain injury call upon metaphor in patterned ways to help them make sense of their situation. Here, I analyze the use of the metaphor of the doubled self in a personal narrative of brain injury, and I situate this metaphor in its cultural history by analyzing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Incredible Hulk as landmark moments in its development. A pattern of thought reflecting Seneca’s philosophy on the incompatibility of (...) anger with rational selfhood emerges. I discuss implications for the way we care for people struggling with post-brain-injury anger. (shrink)

In this review of empirical studies we aimed to assess the influence of religion and world view on nurses' attitudes towards euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. We searched PubMed for articles published before August 2008 using combinations of search terms. Most identified studies showed a clear relationship between religion or world view and nurses' attitudes towards euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. Differences in attitude were found to be influenced by religious or ideological affiliation, observance of religious practices, religious doctrines, and (...) personal importance attributed to religion or world view. Nevertheless, a coherent comparative interpretation of the results of the identified studies was difficult. We concluded that no study has so far exhaustively investigated the relationship between religion or world view and nurses' attitudes towards euthanasia or physician assisted suicide and that further research is required. (shrink)

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a proposition seeming true. Many think that these seeming states can yield justified beliefs. Very few have seriously explored what these seeming states are. I argue that seeming states are not plausibly analyzed in terms of beliefs, partial beliefs, attractions to believe, or inclinations to believe. Given that the main candidates for analyzing seeming states are unsatisfactory, I argue for a brute view of seemings that treats seeming states as irreducible propositional attitudes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 313-333 [Access article in PDF] Vestige of the Third Force: Willem Bilderdijk, Poet, Anti-Skeptic, Millenarian Joris van Eijnatten One of the unfortunate consequences of Babel is that only the Dutch read Dutch poetry. 1 Although English-speaking historians may have heard of the seventeenth-century poet Joost van den Vondel, who generally qualifies as the greatest literary artist of the Netherlands, virtually no (...) one outside Holland knows Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831), poet, jurist, and man of learning. Robert Southey, having met the poet at his home in Leiden in 1825, lamented several years later the fact that Bilderdijk's fame had not traversed national boundaries: "And who is Bilderdyk?" methinks thou sayest: A ready question; yet which, trust me, Allan, Would not be asked, had not the curse that came From Babel, clipt the wings of Poetry. 2When Southey sojourned in the Netherlands, Bilderdijk had already established his reputation as one of the few unconventional figures in Dutch history, comparable, in this sense, to Coornhert and Spinoza. The most outstanding poet of his age, he dominated nineteenth-century Dutch literature through his versatility, rhetorical prowess and sheer output. He is reputed to have written 300,000 lines of verse, not counting his unpublished poems. He practiced virtually all literary genres, from Pindaric odes and erotic rhyme to didactic poetry. Versed in the classics, he wrote numerous translations of, among many others, Homer, Sophocles, Anacreon, Callimachus, Horace, and Ovid. Bilderdijk was a prolific [End Page 313] writer of essays on subjects ranging from moral philosophy, epistemology, and natural law to aesthetics, architecture, and botany. He translated theological and devotional works, including Thomas Chalmers's Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation, Chrysostome's sermons, and books on freemasonry and pneumatology. Besides contributing to perspective drawing, he wrote the first geological study in Dutch. His History of the Fatherland appeared posthumously in thirteen volumes. He himself regarded his linguistic studies and literary essays as his main achievement. Bilderdijk filled thousands of pages with his idiosyncratic views on the gender of nouns, the alphabet, grammar, spelling, medieval manuscripts, tragedy, and drama in general.Not surprisingly, Bilderdijk's varied interests and comprehensive mind have led to different interpretations of his thought. Most are one of two kinds. Writers subscribing to the first interpretation regard him as a somewhat strange but devout apologist for Calvinist orthodoxy. They stress the fact that Bilderdijk was the only intellectual who, in the midst of the soul-destroying rationalism propounded by a complacent liberal establishment, dared to cry out against Revolution and Enlightenment, thus revivifying the religious heart of the nation. 3 Those who follow the second interpretation emphasize the Romantic nature of his thought. This group tends to look upon Bilderdijk as the only true Dutch Romantic, a Wordsworth and Coleridge combined, a metaphysical if rather erratic genius who outgrew the intellectual marshlands of his native country. Writers in this tradition stress his definition of poetry as a spontaneous overflow of feeling, his linguistic achievements, his preoccupation with geology, and his visionary view of Dutch history. 4 One major interpreter, commenting on Bilderdijk's "real position as a philosopher," has stated that "to me there can be no doubt that Bilderdijk should be placed among the post-Kantian idealists like Fichte and Schelling (cf., again, Coleridge!)." 5Such statements are largely products of wishful thinking. Bilderdijk was not a devout Calvinist. He hardly ever went to church, his theology exhibits suspiciously heterodox leanings, and his professed adherence to the doctrine of predestination had less to do with a profound knowledge of the articles of Dort than mystical resignation. Similarly, the depiction of Bilderdijk as a post-Kantian idealist is sympathetic but lacks any evidence. Some literary historians have [End Page 314] tried to salvage the "Romantic" nature of his poetry, but the result is not particularly convincing. 6"And who is Bilderdijk," to echo Southey, if he was neither a Calvinist nor a Romantic? How should one interpret his thought? What should one do... (shrink)

This is a discussion of the state of discussion on pragmatic reasons for belief.

In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, the integration of product-evaluating certificates and reports into advertisements triggered repeated condemnations of “advertisement- Gutachten”, and scientists and science administrators introduced various restrictions to prevent the appearance of such documents. At the same time, the provision of Gutachten to private individuals and firms seemed crucial to the success of many private and public laboratories. Some chemical and other professionals, moreover, argued that the authoring and use of Reklamegutachten could represent a “scientific” and, therefore, (...) ethical practice. By examining the contested history of the advertisement- Gutachten, this article reveals how a previously tolerated knowledge service lost its legitimacy in a particular place and period of time, and highlights the challenges of eliminating this practice or restoring its legitimacy afterward. The article also explores how professional scientists’ approaches to maintaining a reputation for integrity in the face of commercial and competitive pressures related to the better-known efforts of professionals in other fields, particularly the medical. I emphasize that, in determining whether a Gutachten qualified as scientific, the nature and transparency of the underlying research process was only one of the criteria that were considered, and often not the most significant yardstick. At the same time, however, ideas about the personal and professional/institutional integrity of providers of Gutachten were inextricably connected with assessments of the honesty and objectivity of their research. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence (AI) deployment is growing exponentially, questions have been raised whether the developed AI ethics discourse is apt to address the currently pressing questions in the field. Building on critical theory, this article aims to expand the scope of AI ethics by arguing that in addition to ethical principles and design, the organizational dimension (i.e. the background assumptions and values influencing design processes) plays a pivotal role in the operationalization of ethics in AI development and deployment contexts. Through (...) the prism of critical theory, and the notions of underdetermination and technical code as developed by Feenberg in particular, the organizational dimension is related to two general challenges in operationalizing ethical principles in AI: (a) the challenge of ethical principles placing conflicting demands on an AI design that cannot be satisfied simultaneously, for which the term ‘inter-principle tension’ is coined, and (b) the challenge of translating an ethical principle to a technological form, constraint or demand, for which the term ‘intra-principle tension’ is coined. Rather than discussing principles, methods or metrics, the notion of technical code precipitates a discussion on the subsequent questions of value decisions, governance and procedural checks and balances. It is held that including and interrogating the organizational context in AI ethics approaches allows for a more in depth understanding of the current challenges concerning the formalization and implementation of ethical principles as well as of the ways in which these challenges could be met. (shrink)

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

This paper presents Hegel’s criticism of two central ideas of Pyrrhonism: the importance of stating only how things appear and Pyrrhonism as a way of life. After providing a sketch of the main features of Pyrrhonism, the paper lays out and critically evaluates Hegel’s largely unexamined argument against Pyrrhonism in his early 1802 essay on skepticism. Hegel claims that the Pyrrhonist’s appeal to appearance renders Pyrrhonism philosophically vacuous: insofar as Pyrrhonism merely describes the subjective contents of the Pyrrhonist’s mind, it (...) has no philosophical import. Sextus would not accept Hegel’s criticism because the appeal to appearance could express the provisional rather than purely subjective character of Pyrrhonism. The paper proceeds by examining Hegel’s argument in the Phenomenology that skepticism is contradictory on account of conjoining suspension of judgment with acquiescing in appearances as the guide to life. Sextus would reject Hegel’s criticism by insisting on the distinction between judgment and appearance. (shrink)

For Kant, knowledge involves certainty. If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there (...) is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

In his 1978 paper “Mathematical Explanation”, Mark Steiner attempts to modernize the Aristotelian idea that to explain a mathematical statement is to deduce it from the essence of entities figuring in the statement, by replacing talk of essences with talk of “characterizing properties”. The language Steiner uses is reminiscent of language used for proofs deemed “pure”, such as Selberg and Erdős’ elementary proofs of the prime number theorem avoiding the complex analysis of earlier proofs. Hilbert characterized pure proofs as those (...) that use only “means that are suggested by the content of the theorem”, a characterization we have elsewhere called “topical purity”. In this paper we will examine the connection between Steiner’s account of mathematical explanation and topical purity. Are Steiner-explanatory proofs necessarily topically pure? Are topically pure proofs necessarily Steiner-explanatory? Answers to these questions will shed light on the general question of the relation between purity and explanatory power. (shrink)

While many aspects of cognition have been shown to be shared between humans and non-human animals, there remains controversy regarding whether the capacity to mentally time travel is a uniquely human one. In this paper, we argue that there are four ways of representing when some event happened: four kinds of temporal representation. Distinguishing these four kinds of temporal representation has five benefits. First, it puts us in a position to determine the particular benefits these distinct temporal representations afford an (...) organism. Second, it provides the conceptual resources to foster a discussion about which of these representations is necessary for an organism to count as having the capacity to mentally time travel. Third, it enables us to distinguish stricter from more liberal views of mental time travel that differ regarding which kind(s) of temporal representation is taken to be necessary for mental time travel. Fourth, it allows us to determine the benefits of taking a stricter or more liberal view of mental time travel. Finally, it ensures that disagreement about whether some species can mentally time travel is not merely the product of unrecognised disagreement about which temporal representation is necessary for mental time travel. We argue for a more liberal view, on the grounds that it allows us to view mental time travel as an evolutionarily continuous phenomenon, and to recognise that differences in the ways that organisms mentally time travel might reflect different temporal representations, or combinations thereof, that they employ. Our ultimate aim, however, is to create the conceptual framework for further discussion regarding what sorts of temporal representations are required for mental time travel. (shrink)

This three-part chapter explores a higher-order logic we call ‘Classicism’, which extends a minimal classical higher-order logic with further axioms which guarantee that provable coextensiveness is sufficient for identity. The first part presents several different ways of axiomatizing this theory and makes the case for its naturalness. The second part discusses two kinds of extensions of Classicism: some which take the view in the direction of coarseness of grain (whose endpoint is the maximally coarse-grained view that coextensiveness is sufficient for (...) identity), and some which take the view in the direction of fineness of grain (whose endpoint is the maximally fine-grained theory containing all distinctness claims compatible with Classicism). The third part introduces some techniques for constructing models of Classicism, and uses them to prove the consistency of many of the extensions of Classicism introduced in the second part. (shrink)

This volume explores the relevance of decline within the republican tradition. The essays in this volume focus on the Dutch Republic during the revolutionary era, as well as early modern Spain and Venice, the German Enlightenment, and the Weimar Republic.

The aim of the Analytic of Concepts is to derive and deduce a set of pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, which play a central role in Kant’s explanation of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition and judgment. This chapter is structured around two questions. First, what is a pure concept of the understanding? Second, what is involved in a deduction of a pure concept of the understanding? In answering the first, we focus on how the categories differ (...) from the pure forms of sensibility and examine whether they are known only to be the pure forms of human thinking or rather the forms of discursive cognition as such. In answering the second, we draw a distinction between the application and the exemplification of the categories and use it to identify different ways of understanding Kant’s project in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. These questions connect because the answer to the first determines how we should understand the kind of entitlement which is to be established in the Deduction. (shrink)

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a (...) similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy. (shrink)

Many say that ontological disputes are defective because they are unimportant or without substance. In this paper, we defend ontological disputes from the charge, with a special focus on disputes over the existence of composite objects. Disputes over the existence of composite objects, we argue, have a number of substantive implications across a variety of topics in metaphysics, science, philosophical theology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Since the disputes over the existence of composite objects have these substantive implications, they are (...) themselves substantive. (shrink)

Some have it that wholes are, somehow, identical to their parts. This doctrine is as alluring as it is puzzling. But in this paper, I show that the doctrine is inconsistent with two widely accepted theses. Something has to go.

This article is the continuation of a reflection on the role wonder plays in the elaboration of experience in a work related situation. As a classic notion in philosophy, wonder reveals itself as an operating tool to analyze adult›s learning situations. The study of a case coming from our research on occupational doctors› diagnosis activities during the medical visits of a company›s employees, will show that ‹›repeating wonder›› represents a contribution to the understanding of continuous reconstruction of health professionals› experience (...) in a work situation. This contribution is in a wider sense the opportunity to better define the relations between wonder and learning with and by activity. (shrink)

Connectedness is a significant element of sociality that occurs not only ideally and ‘leiblich’, but also consists of a material dimension. This is established through the materiality of the human body and points beyond it at the same time. The material aspect of connectedness is not simply social but has a social meaning nonetheless: Materiality has an impact on society and on the quality of human coexistence with the environment. To be able to describe this aspect, we use approaches of (...) feminist (neo-)materialisms. First, a neo-materialist perspective on subjectivity is developed, which, in addition to the immaterial aspects of the social, is also able to grasp the dependence of the development of human bodies on their environment. Connectedness as a material-discursive phenomenon adds a neo-materialist dimension to the established ‘phenomenological’ interpretation of the resonance concept that integrates interactions of repulsion or alienation by understanding feelings of alienation, rejection, or the silencing of the world-relationship as well as a resonant world-relationship always also as agentic cuts of the LeibKörper. (shrink)

This book advances a novel theory of international justice that combines the orthodox liberal notion that the lives of individuals are what ultimately matter morally with the putatively antiliberal idea of an irreducibly collective right of self-governance. The individual and her rights are placed at center stage insofar as political states are judged legitimate if they adequately protect the human rights of their constituents and respect the rights of all others. Yet, the book argues that legitimate states have a moral (...) right to self-determination and that this right is inherently collective, irreducible to the individual rights of the persons who constitute them. Exploring the implications of these ideas, the book addresses issues pertaining to democracy, secession, international criminal law, armed intervention, political assassination, global distributive justice, and immigration. A number of the positions taken in the book run against the grain of current academic opinion: there is no human right to democracy; separatist groups can be morally entitled to secede from legitimate states; the fact that it is a matter of brute luck whether one is born in a wealthy state or a poorer one does not mean that economic inequalities across states must be minimized or even kept within certain limits; most existing states have no right against armed intervention; and it is morally permissible for a legitimate state to exclude all would-be immigrants. (shrink)

This chapter addresses an ambiguity in some of the literature on rational peer disagreement about the use of the term 'rational'. In the literature 'rational' is used to describe a variety of normative statuses related to reasons, justification, and reasoning. This chapter focuses most closely on the upshot of peer disagreement for what is rationally required of parties to a peer disagreement. This follows recent work in theoretical reason which treats rationality as a system of requirements among an agent's mental (...) states. It is argued that peer disagreement has either no, or a very limited, affect on what rationality requires of an agent in a given circumstance. This is in part because of difficulties generated by a novel example of evidence of evidence of p being evidence against p. This example calls into question the mechanisms whereby peer disagreement might affect what is rationally required of an agent. The chapter also reevaluates the importance of actual peer disagreement against the backdrop of prior expectations about whether disagreement is believed to be likely, arguing that peer disagreement is most likely to change what is rationally required of an agent when it is believed to be unlikely. (shrink)

Higher-order logic augments first-order logic with devices that let us generalize into grammatical positions other than that of a singular term. Some recent metaphysicians have advocated for using these devices to raise and answer questions that bear on many traditional issues in philosophy. In contrast to these 'higher-order metaphysicians', traditional metaphysics has often focused on parallel, but importantly different, questions concerning special sorts of abstract objects: propositions, properties and relations. The answers to the higher-order and the property-theoretic questions may coincide (...) sometimes but will often come apart. I argue that when they do, the higher-order questions are closer to the metaphysical action and so it would be better for these debates to proceed in higher-order terms. (shrink)

Towards the unconditioned: Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit -- Arendt and the time of the pardon -- Kant, evil, and the unconditioned -- Judgment after Derrida.

The norm of monogamy is pervasive, having remained widespread, in most Western cultures at least, in spite of increasing tolerance toward more diverse relationship types. It is also puzzling. People willingly, and often with gusto, adhere to it, yet it is also, prima facie at least, highly restrictive. Being in a monogamous relationship means agreeing to give up certain sorts of valuable interactions and relationships with other people and to severely restrict one’s opportunities for sex and love. It is this (...) restrictiveness which has led for calls among some philosophers for the justification of the norm, and some have argued that it cannot be justified. John McMurtry, for example, writing in 1972, compared monogamy to private property and argued that it serves the capitalist order (McMurtry 1972, 596–97). More recently, Harry Chalmers (2019) has argued that monogamy is morally impermissible. In this chapter we argue that rather than justify the norm, we ought to explain and understand its pervasiveness. Not everyone who follows the norm is doing so blindly, irrationally, or immorally. Indeed, many people are monogamous because being monogamous supports their needs and best enables them to flourish. We suggest that the human need for trust and attachment could underlie many people’s desires for monogamy and, therefore, explain monogamy’s pervasiveness. Focusing on the human need for trust and attachment security can also help us to understand why sexual infidelity can feel like such a betrayal. It can make sense to mutually agree to exclusivity in relationships, in spite of the apparent restrictions this brings. In a sense, not all restrictions are restrictive, because holding ourselves to limits on our behavior can in fact help us to invest in and experience the things we value most. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was an Italian Jesuit and one of the first Christian missionaries to China in the modern era. He was a genuine polymath—a translator, cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, and musician. Above all, Ricci was a missionary for the gospel. As we briefly examine his 1603 seminal work, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, our hope is that we, as evangelical educators, will perceive some of the deeper principles necessary for our own missionary work among unreached people.

To be conscious—according to a common metaphor—is for the “lights to be on inside.” Is this a good metaphor? I argue that the metaphor elicits useful intuitions while staying neutral on controversial philosophical questions. But I also argue that there are two ways of interpreting the metaphor. Is consciousness the inner light itself? Or is consciousness the illuminated room? Call the first sense subjectivity (where ‘consciousness’ =def what makes an entity feel some way at all), and the second sense phenomenal (...) character (where ‘consciousness’ =def what it feels like to be an entity). I use this distinction—as well as the metaphor of the inner light—to clarify some philosophical questions about whether consciousness comes in degrees, whether consciousness is multidimensional, and whether there are borderline cases of consciousness. (shrink)