Suarez's psychology starts from the triple Aristotelian distinction of the soul: vegetative, sensitive and rational. Having appreciated the need and function of the agent and possible intellects in the human knowledge, especially in the universal ones, we have proceeded to analyse its essential characteristics. The agent intellect is presented as a noncognizant faculty limited to the lighting of images and the production of species.

For Nicholas of Cusa, excellence, worship, law and discipline are not the ways to arrive at divine wisdom and eternal life; instead, virtuous life, keeping the commandments, sensible devotion, mortification of the flesh, scorning the world, and everything that shows love and fear of God are the true ways. These points, which were considered essential to strengthening the religious experience for church members and leading the soul to knowledge of God, had been insisted upon already by thinkers before Cusanus, from (...) Wycliffe to Hus, and including the authors of Devotio Moderna.. (shrink)

Lifestyle refers to a set of personal and group behaviours related to normative and semantic aspects of social life. Any coherent set of behavioural patterns derived from religious teachings that exist in life can be considered a religious lifestyle. Considering that the dominant religion in Jordan is Islam, the present study focused on the Islamic lifestyle. In addition, given that the correct relationship between couples has been compared to life-giving blood in marriage, and since the quality of marital role plays (...) a determining role, the existence of communication skills in any of the couples can generate satisfaction and compatibility, whereas lack of awareness of these skills could cause misunderstandings and tension. Therefore, the current study aims to study the role of the Islamic lifestyle in communication skills of 250 Muslim couples of Jordan (Amman, Zarqa and Irbid) in 2022. Data were collected using questionnaires during four months, and the validity and reliability was confirmed. In addition, data analysis was performed in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) using mean tests and structural equation modelling. According to the results, Islamic lifestyle had a positive, significant effect on the improvement of communication skills in Muslim couples in Jordan (P-value: 0.76; T-value: 7.92). Therefore, it is recommended that more attention should be paid to this issue by families, researchers and cultural authorities in the country.Contribution: Our findings revealed that Islamic lifestyle improved communication skills in Muslim couples, which demands special attention. By adhering to the Islamic lifestyle, couples can influence each other’s knowledge, emotions, education and growth, and try to have a realistic understanding of each other’s desires, needs, living environment and perceptions that each has in life issues. Furthermore, they can organise their role in the common life in appropriate ways to prevent problems and solve them in the event of problems. (shrink)

Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating absences—that has been overlooked (...) by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence. (shrink)

Justice has a high status in Islamic societies, and as one of the most important human ideals, has long been the focus of thinkers and researchers. In fact, when the citizens do not understand the presence of justice in the behaviour of the officials of their society, their trust in the current procedures, and consequently the public participation will be affected. Considering the importance of the subject, the present study has been conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of (...) perception of justice on citizens’ trust and participation in the creation of a democratic Islamic society. The statistical population of this research included 3578 Indonesian Muslim citizens in 2022, and the research questionnaires were distributed among them. Data analyses were done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) statistical software. The results of statistical analyses indicated that the perception of Islamic justice does not have a significant effect on the participation of Muslims in creating a democratic Islamic society. In addition, the perception of Islamic justice has a positive effect on the trust in officials of the Islamic society. Moreover, trust in the officials of the Islamic society positively affects the citizens’ participation in creating a democratic Islamic society.Contribution: According to the results of this research, it is necessary for the officials of the Islamic society to use all their efforts in creating a justice-oriented Islamic society in order to create trust among the citizens, and to involve Muslims in development decisions and to establish democratic Islamic society. (shrink)

Lorenz proposed in his (1935) articulation of a theory of behavioral instincts that the objective of ethology is to distinguish behaviors that are “innate” from behaviors that are “learned” (or “acquired”). Lorenz’s motive was to open the investigation of certain “adaptive” behaviors to evolutionary theorizing. Accordingly, since innate behaviors are “genetic”, they are open to such investigation. By Lorenz’s light an innate/acquired or learned dichotomy rested on a familiar Darwinian distinction between genes and environments. Ever since Lorenz, ascriptions of innateness (...) have become widespread in the cognitive, behavioral, and biological sciences. The trend continues despite decades of strong arguments that show, in particular, the dichotomy that Lorenz invoked in his theory of behavioral instincts is literally false: no biological trait is the product of genes alone. Some critics suggest that the failure of Lorenz’s account shows that innateness is not well-defined in biology and the practice of ascribing innateness to various biological traits should be dropped from respectable science. Elsewhere (Ariew 1996) I argued that despite the arguments of critics, there really is a biological phenomenon underlying the concept of innateness. On my view, innateness is best understood in terms of C.H. Waddington’s concept of “canalization”, i.e. the degree to which a trait is innate is the degree to which its developmental outcome is canalized. The degree to which a developmental outcome is canalized is the degree to which the developmental process is bound to produce a particular endstate despite environmental fluctuations both in the development’s initial state and during the course of development. The canalization account differs in many ways to the traditional ways that ethologists such as Konrad Lorenz originally understood the concept of innateness. Most importantly, on the canalization account the distinction between innate and acquired is not a dichotomy, as Konrad Lorenz had it, but rather a matter of degree difference that lies along a spectrum with highly canalized development outcomes on the one end and highly environmentally sensitive development outcomes on the other end. Nevertheless, I justified the canalization account on the basis of a set of desiderata or criteria that I suggested falls-out of what seemed uncontroversial about Lorenz’s account of innateness (briefly): innateness is a property of a developing individual, innateness denotes environmental stability, and innate-ascriptions are useful in certain natural selection explanations (more below). From that same set of desiderata I argued (in my 1996) that neither the concept of heritability nor of norms of reactions—two concepts from population genetics—suffice to ground innateness. In this essay, I wish to provide further support of the canalization account in two ways. First, I wish to better motivate the desiderata by revisiting a debate between Konrad Lorenz and Daniel Lehrman over the meaning and explanatory usefulness of innate ascriptions in ethology. Second, I wish to compare my canalization account of innateness with accounts proposed by contemporary philosophers, one by Stephen Stich (1975), another by Elliott Sober (forthcoming), and a third by William Wimsatt (1986). (shrink)

In order to explore the political and transformative potential of bodies in relation to gender and affects, I discuss how bodies, gender and politics are entangled through the figuration of ‘overflown bodies’. Departing from a material-discursive feminist conceptualisation of bodies, ‘overflown bodies’ are assemblages embedded in complex relationships of matter, discourse, emotions, affects, ideologies, protest, norms, values, relations, practices, expectations and other possibilities of (for) social and political action. Three ethnographic cases illustrate how ‘overflown bodies’ assemble matter and discourse, and (...) how matter, bodies and gender matter. They are used to explore the political possibilities of gendered bodies and show how matter is entangled, embedded and assembled with our politics of being. The three cases interrogate the limits and boundaries of bodies and the modes and modalities of (political) agency. Finally, the article argues that it is through visibility and recognition that ‘overflown bodies’ become critically and creatively transforming, which can be useful for addressing issues related to exclusion, domination, political emancipation and social transformation. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss whether there is a specific experience of thinking or not. I address this question by analysing if it is possible to reduce the phenomenal character of thinking to the phenomenal character of sensory experiences. My purpose is to defend that there is a specific phenomenality for at least some thinking mental states. I present Husserl's theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations as a way to defend this claim and I consider its assumptions. Then I (...) present the case of understanding as a paradigmatic case for the phenomenal contrast argument and I defend it against two objections. (shrink)

Las discusiones sobre la intencionalidad en la Filosofía de la mente contemporánea se plantean en un marco un tanto ajeno al de la Fenomenología, bajo la suposición, de modo bastante generalizado, de que hay una separación entre intencionalidad y consciencia . Mi objetivo en este artículo es, en primer lugar, exponer tal supuesto. En segundo lugar, presentar los elementos clave de la teoría de la intencionalidad en las Investigaciones Lógicas de Husserl para presentar una visión que se opone a tal (...) separación. Y, en tercer lugar, finalizar con un tema común a ambos espacios de discusión, el de una experiencia o vivencia propia del pensamiento, que surge como un problema para muchas visiones analíticascontemporáneas y que tiene una explicación que puede derivarse de la concepción de Husserl.In contemporary Philosophy of mind, discussions about intentionality areset up in a quite different framework from the phenomenological one, assuming, in general, a separation between intentionality and consciousness. My aim in this paper is, firstly, to present this assumption. Secondly, I will put forward the key elements of Husserl's theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations in order to present a view which is opposed to this assumption. And thirdly, I will end up with a common topic for both frameworks, that is, the topic of a specific experience of thinking, which emerges as a problem for many contemporary analytic views and which has an explanation that can be derived from Husserl's conception. (shrink)

The topic of this paper concerns the relation between thinking and phenomenality as it is discussed in the Philosophy of Mind. Thus, I am addressing the following questions: does the domain of phenomenal consciousness include thinking? And if so, is the phenomenality of thinking (PT) proprietary or not? I will firstly present the debate and the main notions involved in it, by contrasting a certain mainstream picture of the mind with the one offered by Phenomenology. Second, I will consider the (...) particular question of a proprietary phenomenology of conscious thought through the examination of the reductionist and antireductionist positions, concluding with a sceptical remark towards this dialectics. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a position that I call erotetic amelioration, according to which we must evaluate and, eventually, improve our answers to questions of the form “What is x?”. My focus will be on cases where x stands for a strongly social kind, such as marriage. Such a position is offered as an alternative to the idea-sometimes called conceptual engineering-according to which we should evaluate and, eventually, seek to improve our concepts. After introducing the idea of erotetic amelioration, (...) I will show how it can be put into work to deal with what I call the topic preservation challenge, and what advantages it has in relation to a similar position available in the literature, namely, Cappelen’s (2018) Austerity Framework. (shrink)

Moore’s Paradox is a test case for any formal theory of belief. In Knowledge and Belief, Hintikka developed a multimodal logic for statements that express sentences containing the epistemic notions of knowledge and belief. His account purports to offer an explanation of the paradox. In this paper I argue that Hintikka’s interpretation of one of the doxastic operators is philosophically problematic and leads to an unnecessarily strong logical system. I offer a weaker alternative that captures in a more accurate way (...) our logical intuitions about the notion of belief without sacrificing the possibility of providing an explanation for problematic cases such as Moore’s Paradox. (shrink)

This paper raises three questions regarding the attribution of beliefs, desires, and intentions to robots. The first one is whether humans in fact engage in robot mindreading. If they do, this raises a second question: does robot mindreading foster trust towards robots? Both of these questions are empirical, and I show that the available evidence is insufficient to answer them. Now, if we assume that the answer to both questions is affirmative, a third and more important question arises: should developers (...) and engineers promote robot mindreading in view of their stated goal of enhancing transparency? My worry here is that by attempting to make robots more mind-readable, they are abandoning the project of understanding automatic decision processes. Features that enhance mind-readability are prone to make the factors that determine automatic decisions even more opaque than they already are. And current strategies to eliminate opacity do not enhance mind-readability. The last part of the paper discusses different ways to analyze this apparent trade-off and suggests that a possible solution must adopt tolerable degrees of opacity that depend on pragmatic factors connected to the level of trust required for the intended uses of the robot. (shrink)

Why I thought it useful to offer an explanation of Hegel’s doctrine on the Incarnation was so that the reader may be empowered to identify Hegel’s influence in modern accounts of this mystery. Even if, in my view, Hegel’s interpretation of revealed religion differs greatly from Catholic Doctrine, it is not surprising to find the presence of some of his concepts in modern theology. In truth, what matters is not the theologian’s self-identification as Hegelian or as non-Hegelian, but whether or (...) not the theologian adopts Hegel’s concepts. This paper offers an explanation of the internal dynamism of Hegelian concepts and their relation to Christian doctrine in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This research may help to show in what way it is possible to explain Christian religious doctrine with a philosophy other than the Thomistic one and how, at least in Hegel’s case, religious doctrine is changed and reduced to an erroneous philosophical content. Also, an attempt is made to show the internal “coherence” of this Hegelian re-reading of Christianity so that theologians may become more cautious about accepting an explanation of Christian doctrine simply because the Christian language is preserved in that explanation. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

Utilizing the film I, Robot as a springboard, I here consider the feasibility of robot utilitarians, the moral responsibilities that come with the creation of ethical robots, and the possibility of distinct ethics for robot-robot interaction as opposed to robot-human interaction. (This is a revised and expanded version of an essay that originally appeared in IEEE: Intelligent Systems.).

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this essay I characterize arguments by analogy, which have an impor- tant role both in philosophical and everyday reasoning. Arguments by analogy are dif- ferent from ordinary inductive or deductive arguments and have their own distinct features. I try to characterize the structure and function of these arguments. It is further discussed that some arguments, which are not explicit arguments by analogy, nevertheless should be interpreted as such and not as inductive or deductive arguments. The result is that (...) a presumed outcome of a philosophical dispute will have to be reconsidered. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that a proper understanding of the historicity of love requires an appreciation of the irreplaceability of the beloved. I do this through a consideration of ideas that were first put forward by Robert Kraut in “Love De Re” (1986). I also evaluate Amelie Rorty's criticisms of Kraut's thesis in “The Historicity of Psychological Attitudes: Love is Not Love Which Alters Not When It Alteration Finds” (1986). I argue that Rorty fundamentally misunderstands Kraut's Kripkean analogy, and (...) I go on to criticize her claim that concern over the proper object of love should be best understood as a concern over constancy. This leads me to an elaboration of the distinct senses in which love can be seen as historical. I end with a further defense of the irreplaceability of the beloved and a discussion of the relevance of recent debates over the importance of personal identity for an adequate account of the historical dimension of love. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

This essay begins with a consideration of one way in which animals and persons may be valued as “irreplaceable.” Drawing on both Plato and Pascal, I consider reasons for skepticism regarding the legitimacy of this sort of attachment. While I do not offer a complete defense against such skepticism, I do show that worries here may be overblown due to the conflation of distinct metaphysical and normative concerns. I then go on to clarify what sort of value is at issue (...) in cases of irreplaceable attachment. I characterize “unique value” as the kind of value attributed to a thing when we take that thing to be (theoretically, not just practically) irreplaceable. I then consider the relationship between this sort of value and intrinsic value. After considering the positions of Gowans, Moore, Korsgaard, Frankfurt, and others, I conclude that unique value is best understood not as a variety of intrinsic value but rather as one kind of final value that is grounded in the extrinsic properties of the object. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

(From the Introduction) The topic I would like to present is “Scholasticism and Thomism” as found in Chapter 7 of Fabro’s "Brief Introduction to Thomism". My presentation, as both a summary and a partial commentary on some aspects of this work, may be helpful as we wait for the English translation of Fabro’s book. The title of this chapter says exactly what Fr. Fabro wants to do. He wants to relate Scholasticism and Aquinas in two senses: 1) from a historical (...) point of view, so that we may understand the origins, context and later fortune of the doctrine of St. Thomas, and 2) from a doctrinal point of view (and this is the most important) so that we may clearly distinguish St. Thomas’ doctrine from the rest of Scholasticism. This is very important because some people have tried to understand the Church’s invitation—or, rather, instruction—to study St. Thomas as simply a broad invitation to study Scholastic philosophy and theology. This is clearly not the case. The Church wants us to study the principles of Thomistic doctrine which, many times, are substantially different from other scholastic doctrines. (shrink)

This paper offers several criticisms of the account of rightholding laid out in S. Matthew Liao’s recent paper “The Basis of Human Moral Status.” I argue that Liao’s account both does too much and too little: it grants rightholder status to those who may not deserve it, and it does not provide grounds for offering such status to those who arguably do deserve it. Given these troubling aspects of his approach, I encourage Liao to abandon his “physical basis of moral (...) agency” account of moral status and instead adopt a position closer to a traditional “speciesist” view. (shrink)

It's been 41 years since the publication of Ernst Mayr's Cause and Effect in Biology wherein Mayr most clearly develops his version of the influential distinction between ultimate and proximate causes in biology. In critically assessing Mayr's essay I uncover false statements and red-herrings about biological explanation. Nevertheless, I argue to uphold an analogue of the ultimate/proximate distinction as it refers to two different kinds of explanations, one dynamical the other statistical.

In this essay, I deal with the problem of the attribution of psychological predicates to non-human animals. The first section illustrates three research topics where it has become scientifically legitimate to explain the conduct of non-human animals by means of the attribution of psychological predicates. The second section discusses several philosophical objections to the legitimacy of such attributions provided by central thinkers from the last decades. I try to show that these objections —which are related among other questions to the (...) holism of the mental, the indeterminacy of the attributions, and the strangeness of animal concepts— can be alleviated. In the third section, I propose to adopt a literalist view of the attributions in the sense articulated by Figdor. At the same time, I argue that one must draw limits to the conceptual change forwarded by her literalist view, taking into account holistic considerations and the fact that the psychological concepts must retain their core notes. (shrink)

Teleology in biology is making headline news in the United States. Conservative Christians are utilizing a teleological argument for the existence of a supremely intelligent designer to justify legislation calling for the teaching of "intelligent design" (ID) in public schools. Teleological arguments of one form or another have been around since Antiquity. The contemporary argument from intelligent design varies little from William Paley's argument written in 1802. Both argue that nature exhibits too much complexity to be explained by 'mindless' natural (...) forces alone. We need to postulate the existence of an intelligent designer, a creator with forethought and purpose. The inference to an intelligent creator harkens back to Plato’s teleological argument for the order of the cosmos. Plato’s demiurge is a creator that imposes order on the cosmos. Yet, as we shall see when we analyze the distinctly biological form of the more contemporary teleological arguments we will find remanants of Aristotle’s distinctive argument from functional arrangement, but without his distinctive form of telos which is unconscious and immanent rather than intelligent and creative from on high. The aim of this article is to survey various teleological arguments since Antiquity. Since a variant on Paley's argument—ID—is getting so much recent press I will start with a discussion on the nature of Paley’s teleology. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

Here the point of departure of Being and Time is criticized, i.e. the priority of Dasein in the determination of the meaning of being. An overview of Heidegger’s doctrine is offered, his concern for intentionality is acknowledged, then it takes place a critique of his starting point, and finally a Thomistic alternative account of intentionality is proposed.

Jeff McMahan has long shown himself to be a vigorous and incisive critic of speciesism, and in his essay “Our Fellow Creatures” he has been particularly critical of speciesist arguments that draw inspiration from Wittgenstein. In this essay I consider his arguments against speciesism generally and the species-norm account of deprivation in particular. I argue that McMahan's ethical framework is more nuanced and more open to the incorporation of speciesist intuitions regarding deprivation than he himself suggests. Specifically, I argue that, (...) given his willingness to include a comparative dimension in his “Intrinsic Potential Account” he ought to recognize species as a legitimate comparison class. I also argue that a sensible speciesism can be pluralist and flexible enough to accommodate many of McMahan's arguments in defense of “moral individualist” intuitions. In this way, I hope to make the case for at least a partial reconciliation between McMahan and the “Wittgensteinian speciesists”, e.g. Cora Diamond, Stephen Mulhall, and Raimond Gaita. (shrink)