Various publications claim that medical AI systems perform as well, or better, than clinical experts. However, there have been very few controlled trials and the quality of existing studies has been called into question. There is growing concern that existing studies overestimate the clinical benefits of AI systems. This has led to calls for more, and higher-quality, randomized controlled trials of medical AI systems. While this a welcome development, AI RCTs raise novel methodological challenges that have seen little discussion. We (...) discuss some of the challenges arising in the context of AI RCTs and make some suggestions for how to meet them. (shrink)

Konstantin Pollok offers the first book-length analysis of Kant's theory of normativity that covers foundational issues in theoretical and practical philosophy as well as aesthetics. Interpreting Kant's 'critical turn' as a normative turn, he argues that Kant's theory of normativity is both original and radical: it departs from the perfectionist ideal of early modern rationalism, and arrives at an unprecedented framework of synthetic a priori principles that determine the validity of our judgments. Pollok examines the hylomorphism in Kant's theory (...) of normativity and relates Kant's idea of our reason's self-legislation to the 'natural right' tradition, revealing Kant's debt to his predecessors as well as his relevance to contemporary debates on normativity. This book will appeal to academic researchers and advanced students of Kant, early modern philosophy and intellectual history. (shrink)

Konstantin Pollok - Kant's Critical Concepts of Motion - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 559-575 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant's Critical Concepts of Motion Konstantin Pollok There are two significant places in Kant's Critical corpus where he discusses the concept of motion. The first is in the Critique of Pure Reason, where in the "Deduction of the Categories" Kant writes: Motion, as an act of the subject , (...) and therefore the synthesis of the manifold in space, first produces the concept of succession—if we abstract from this manifold and attend solely to the act through which we determine the inner sense according to its form. In this passage Kant simply refers to the concept of motion, and the immediate context in which this reference occurs reveals little about what he means by it. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, however, motion plays a more significant role, and, concomitantly, it is in his writings on natural science that Kant most fully expresses his thoughts on the subject. For present purposes, the most relevant passage is paragraph 15 of the Preface of the Metaphysical Foundations, where Kant says that the concept of matter had … to be carried through all four of the indicated functions of the concepts of the understanding , where in each a new determination of this concept was added. The.. (shrink)

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s ‘The Politics of Life Itself’ there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This article uses what Rose terms ‘molecular politics’, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question ‘What, then, of biopolitics today?’ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. (...) In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that, taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not ‘life itself’ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of governance. (shrink)

PA is Peano Arithmetic. Pr(x) is the usual Σ1-formula representing provability in PA. A strong provability predicate is a formula which has the same properties as Pr(·) but is not Σ1. An example: Q is ω-provable if PA + ¬ Q is ω-inconsistent (Boolos [4]). In [5] Dzhaparidze introduced a joint provability logic for iterated ω-provability and obtained its arithmetical completeness. In this paper we prove some further modal properties of Dzhaparidze's logic, e.g., the fixed point property and the Craig (...) interpolation lemma. We also consider other examples of the strong provability predicates and their applications. (shrink)

Definition of the problem The umbrella term “explicability” refers to the reduction of opacity of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These efforts are challenging for medical AI applications because higher accuracy often comes at the cost of increased opacity. This entails ethical tensions because physicians and patients desire to trace how results are produced without compromising the performance of AI systems. The centrality of explicability within the informed consent process for medical AI systems compels an ethical reflection on the trade-offs. Which (...) levels of explicability are needed to obtain informed consent when utilizing medical AI? Arguments We proceed in five steps: First, we map the terms commonly associated with explicability as described in the ethics and computer science literature, i.e., disclosure, intelligibility, interpretability, and explainability. Second, we conduct a conceptual analysis of the ethical requirements for explicability when it comes to informed consent. Third, we distinguish hurdles for explicability in terms of epistemic and explanatory opacity. Fourth, this then allows to conclude the level of explicability physicians must reach and what patients can expect. In a final step, we show how the identified levels of explicability can technically be met from the perspective of computer science. Throughout our work, we take diagnostic AI systems in radiology as an example. Conclusion We determined four levels of explicability that need to be distinguished for ethically defensible informed consent processes and showed how developers of medical AI can technically meet these requirements. (shrink)

Synchronic norms of theory choice, a traditional concern in scientific methodology, restrict the theories one can choose in light of given information. Diachronic norms of theory change, as studied in belief revision, restrict how one should change one’s current beliefs in light of new information. Learning norms concern how best to arrive at true beliefs. In this paper, we undertake to forge some rigorous logical relations between the three topics. Concerning, we explicate inductive truth conduciveness in terms of optimally direct (...) convergence to the truth, where optimal directness is explicated in terms of reversals and cycles of opinion prior to convergence. Concerning, we explicate Ockham’s razor and related principles of choice in terms of the information topology of the empirical problem context and show that the principles are necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence to the truth. Concerning, we weaken the standard principles of agm belief revision theory in intuitive ways that are also necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence. Then we show that some of our weakened principles of change entail corresponding principles of choice, completing the triangle of relations between,, and. (shrink)

This article is a commentary on ChatGPT and LLMs (Large Language Models) in general. It argues that this technology has matured to the point where calling systems such as ChatGPT “stochastic parrots” is no longer warranted. But it also argues that these systems continue to have serious limitations when it comes to reasoning. These limitations are much more severe than commonly thought. A large array of examples are given to support these claims.

ArgumentPost-Stalinist reforms resulted in dramatic changes in the ways of operation of Soviet science: one can say that they altered the very understanding of what science was, or should be, in the socialist society. A new vision came about as a result of political and rhetorical efforts of scientists, who pushed forward their various, often conflicting, agendas acting in accordance with specific rules of Soviet polity. The most visible part of the reform came with the 1961 administrative reorganization of the (...) USSR Academy of Sciences. The related series of changes, however, was much broader and comprehensive, modifying the relationships between science and ideology, politicians and academic researchers, and establishing the very division between fundamental and applied research, which had been strongly rejected during the preceding Stalinist period. (shrink)

Recent work has demonstrated that the sense of agency is not only determined by efference-copy-based internal predictions and internal comparator mechanisms, but by a large variety of different internal and external cues. The study by Moore and colleagues [Moore, J. W., Wegner, D. M., & Haggard, P. . Modulating the sense of agency with external cues. Conscious and Cognition] aimed to provide further evidence for this view by demonstrating that external agency cues might outweigh or even substitute efferent signals to (...) install a basic registration of self-agency. Although the study contains some critical points that, so we argue, are central to a proper interpretation of the data, it hints at a new perspective on agency: optimal cue integration seems to be the key to a robust sense of agency. We here argue that this framework could allow integrating the findings of Moore and colleagues and other recent agency studies into a comprehensive picture of the sense of agency and its pathological disruptions. (shrink)

Against the well-established critical rejection of rights a growing literature in the tradition of agonistic democracy asserts their emancipatory role in the struggles for social change. However, agonistic theorists, invested as they are in the idea of democratic innovation as a process of gradual ‘augmentation’ of existing rules, institutions and practices, fail to account for the ruptural capacity, and hence for the full radical potential, of rights. Using the performative approach, I develop a conception of rights claiming as a defiant (...) practice to express the ruptural dimension of certain forms of rights politics. I demonstrate how defiant rights claiming articulates immanent critique by declaring the incapacity of putative duty-bearer institutions and governments to uphold the claimed right due to structural constraints, thereby generating inevitable contradictions within the extant order and creating the necessity for an alternative one. Moreover, in order to fully capture the emancipatory potential and creative capacity of rights, this article argues for understanding certain forms of rights politics both as augmentation and rupture, taking the two to be different dimensions of the same radical democratic practice. I present the creative use of rights discourse by the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil and the transnational network of agrarian movements, La Via Campesina, as precisely such a combination of the practice of augmentation and defiant claims, which has led to the transformation of the right to food and land into the right to food sovereignty, demonstration of the structural embeddedness of rights violations in the existing global regime of food production and distribution, and authorisation of an alternative vision of the future. (shrink)

Synchronic norms of theory choice, a traditional concern in scientific methodology, restrict the theories one can choose in light of given information. Diachronic norms of theory change, as studied in belief revision, restrict how one should change one’s current beliefs in light of new information. Learning norms concern how best to arrive at true beliefs. In this paper, we undertake to forge some rigorous logical relations between the three topics. Concerning, we explicate inductive truth conduciveness in terms of optimally direct (...) convergence to the truth, where optimal directness is explicated in terms of reversals and cycles of opinion prior to convergence. Concerning, we explicate Ockham’s razor and related principles of choice in terms of the information topology of the empirical problem context and show that the principles are necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence to the truth. Concerning, we weaken the standard principles of agm belief revision theory in intuitive ways that are also necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence. Then we show that some of our weakened principles of change entail corresponding principles of choice, completing the triangle of relations between,, and. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 176-228.

Nowadays the answer to the question “what is logic?” seems very simple and obvious—“logic is a science,” and after that usually one says what is this science about. As for the expressions “logic is an art” or “the art of logic,” then they are only metaphors or some kind of “façon de parler” used in serious scientific discourse. One of my aims here is to trace the line of development of dichotomy “logic as an art—logic as a science” and to (...) demonstrate that both these feat uses of logic have fundamental historical roots and play very important conceptual role in any theorizing about logic. Despite the fact that logic is undoubtedly a science, it can be interpreted as an art, moreover, the analysis of logic from this point of view expands, it seems to me, the researching possibilities in the field of the philosophy of logic at least in better understanding what is logic, what creates its unity independently from the historical period of its development, topics, and methods. (shrink)

The original proof of the four-color theorem by Appel and Haken sparked a controversy when Tymoczko used it to argue that the justification provided by unsurveyable proofs carried out by computers cannot be a priori. It also created a lingering impression to the effect that such proofs depend heavily for their soundness on large amounts of computation-intensive custom-built software. Contra Tymoczko, we argue that the justification provided by certain computerized mathematical proofs is not fundamentally different from that provided by surveyable (...) proofs, and can be sensibly regarded as a priori. We also show that the aforementioned impression is mistaken because it fails to distinguish between proof search (the context of discovery) and proof checking (the context of justification). By using mechanized proof assistants capable of producing certificates that can be independently checked, it is possible to carry out complex proofs without the need to trust arbitrary custom-written code. We only need to trust one fixed, small, and simple piece of software: the proof checker. This is not only possible in principle, but is in fact becoming a viable methodology for performing complicated mathematical reasoning. This is evinced by a new proof of the four-color theorem that appeared in 2005, and which was developed and checked in its entirety by a mechanical proof system. (shrink)

Translation of Celan’s and Lévinas’ Meridian. On the Topology of Meeting-Through-a-Caesura by Konstantin Sigov.

In this paper, we tackle the widely held view that practice-oriented approaches to ethics are conservative, preserving the moral status quo, and, in particular, that they do not promote any change in our dealings with animals or formulate clear principles that help us to achieve such change. We shall challenge this view with reference to Wittgensteinian ethics. As a first step, we show that moral thought and action rest on basic moral certainties like: equals are to be treated equally and (...) unequals unequally. We then explore the relations between this insight and the notion of the difficulty of reality elaborated by Cora Diamond. Our goal is to show that a Wittgensteinian-Diamondian approach to animal ethics is not necessarily morally conservative. Indeed, it offers a profound practice-oriented approach to animal ethics that is capable of promoting change in human dealings with animals because it is compatible with radical critique. (shrink)

The article examines main competing conceptions of the cor­respondence theory of truth. First, the author investigates pos­sible candidates for the role of truth-bearers. Among those he examines following entities: instances of sentences as concrete sequences of symbols (sounds or letters), which should satisfy wide scope of requirements, such as to be grammatical, mean­ingful, affirmative and so on; abstract propositions, which are ex­pressed by concrete sentences; utterances (either explicit or in lingua mentalis); beliefs of agents as their special mental states. Then (...) he turns to the study of possible candidates for the role of truth-makers, i.e. of those entities to which truth-bearers should correspond to be true. He observes states of affairs, situations, facts and mereological sums of individuals. Then he shows that a notion of correspondence is a functional relationship of interpre­tation of linguistic expressions, where certain fragment of real­ity is taken as a model, i.e. as a finite set of elements on which some functions and relations can be operationally defined. He shows how in some simple cases such interpretation function can be built in operationalist’s manner. After that, he considers some natural objections to this approach, which point that he has no direct cognitive access to the actual world, so it is not possible to take its fragments as a model for any theory. Such objections lead us to the coherentist’s approach, but he shows that the question about origin and status of so-called “specified set” implicitly either leads to infinite regress or requires certain correspondence on some level of investigation and reasoning. Finally, the authore presents some reflections on the meaning of correspondence approach for scientific realism and all other versions of realistic philosophy and metaphysics. (shrink)

By taking into account some texts published between the first and the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that have been neglected by most of those who have dealt with the deduction of the categories, I argue that the core of the deduction is to be identified as the ‘almost single inference from the precisely determined definition of a judgment in general’, which Kant adumbrates in the Metaphysical Foundations in order to ‘make up for the deficiency’ of the (...) A-deduction. Whereas the first step of the B-deduction is an attempt to show that the manifold of an intuition belongs to the ‘necessary unity of self-consciousness’ by means of the synthesis of the understanding, the second step has the task of showing that the very same synthesis is responsible for the spatio-temporal unity of the manifold. Thus, Kant's ‘answer to Hume’ is that no spatio-temporal objects of experience at all are merely ‘given’, independently of the conceptual activities of the understanding. Against the established view I substantiate the claim that with this ‘almost single inference’ of the second proof step the distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience consequently vanished from Kant's thinking. (shrink)

In general, analyses of voting power are performed through the notion of a simple voting game (SVG) in which every voter can choose between two options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Felsenthal and Machover [Felsenthal, D.S. and Machover, M. (1997), International Journal of Game Theory 26, 335–351.] introduced the concept of ternary voting games (TVGs) which recognizes abstention alongside. They derive appropriate generalizations of the Shapley–Shubik and Banzhaf indices in TVGs. Braham and Steffen [Braham, M. and Steffen, F. (2002), in Holler, et (...) al. (eds.), Power and Fairness, Jahrbuch für Neue Politische Ökonomie 20, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 333–348.] argued that the decision-making structure of a TVG may not be justified. They propose a sequential structure in which voters first decide between participation and abstention and then between ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, we compare the two approaches and show how the probabilistic interpretation of power provides a unifying characterization of analogues of the Banzhaf (Bz) measure. Second, using the probabilistic approach we shall prove a special case of Penrose’s Limit Theorem (PLT). This theorem deals with an asymptotic property in weighted voting games with an increasing number of voters. It says that under certain conditions the ratio between the voting power of any two voters (according to various measures of voting power) approaches the ratio between their weights. We show that PLT holds in TVGs for analogues of Bz measures, irrespective of the particular nature of abstention. (shrink)

The article considers A.F. Losev''s philosophy of music in the context ofhis entire religious worldview and as the part of hisChristian-Neoplatonic philosophy. Synthesizing Pythagorean-Platonic andRomantic musical doctrines, Losev concludes: music is the expression ofthe life of numbers, a meonic-hyletic element that rages inside numericconstructions. So it is necessary to analyse the concept of number inthe system of Neoplatonic thought. In the Neoplatonic hierarchy of theuniverse both numeric sphere and music are located at the source of allthe eidei, above them and (...) between the One (the first hypostasis) and theWorld Intelligence (the second hypostasis). Then music is considered inthe context of the relation between the uncreated Absolute (Tetrade A)and the created world (Tetrade B). Losev''s doctrine on the Tetrades Aand B (connected not by essence but by energies) is the importantmodification of Neoplatonism. Finally the article considers Losev''saccount of music in relation to the absolutized individual person. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Konstantin Kolenda IMMORTALITY REVISITED In his essay, "Poets and Thinkers: Their Kindred Roles in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger," J. Glenn Gray points out that Heidegger "does not treat imaginative literature and other works of art qua literature and art but as aspects of philosophy or meditative thought." To Heidegger's question, "How long are we going to prevent ourselves from experiencing the actual as actual?", Gray is inclined (...) to answer as follows: "Until we have become aware that the poetic eye is capable of seeing as deeply into nature and man as the scientific eye," and he adds that "there is hope that philosophers may once again take seriously the discoveries of creative writers who are not consciously seeking to 'do' philosophy."2 There is little evidence that Gray's hope has materialized to any great extent; few philosophers are paying much attention to discoveries of creative writers, thus bearing out Heidegger's contention that "at this moment in the world's history we have first to learn that the making of poetry, too, is a matter of thinking."3 But it should not surprise us that when philosophers turn to the thinking of poets they will not necessarily agree in their interpretations. Although it has been remarked that Rilke translated Nietzsche into poetry and then in turn Heidegger translated Rilke into prose, when we look at what Heidegger actually says about Rilke's ideas, we may find that these ideas allow alternative interpretations.4 Nevertheless, the fact that alternative interpretations are possible bears out the soundness of Heidegger's and Gray's claim that at least some poetic thought is worth taking seriously. In this article we shall examine Rilke's view of the relationship between life and death, as expressed in his Duino Elegies. Since this is a theme which figures prominently in Heidegger's philosophy, it is only proper to begin by pointing out certain basic correspondences between the views of the two thinkers on this topic. But as we pursue the matter further it soon becomes apparent that Rilke has set forth an intriguing and original, albeit unorthodox, notion of immortality, a notion that 167 1 68Philosophy and Literature does not need to be tied down to Heidegger's philosophy as a whole but can be defended in its own right. This article constitutes such a defense. In Being and Time, Heidegger suggests that death "belongs" to Dasein. "In Dasein there is undeniably a constant 'lack of totality' which finds an end with death. This 'not-yet' 'belongs' to Dasein as long as it is; this is how things stand phenomenally." Rilke's way of expressing a similar thought is to say, in the First Elegy, that "all of the living make the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions." The contrast he speaks of is that between life and death. Like Heidegger, Rilke calls attention to phenomena that seem to go against the ingrained tendency to view life and death as belonging to two separate realms. Both manage to break the hold of pictures which for so long have led our thinking on this topic into dead ends. The radical temporality of human existence, its inevitable mortality, leads Heidegger to include the resolute acceptance of "being-toward-death" as a necessary condition of authentic existence. The "not-yet" of eventual death is always with us; since we cannot escape it, we must not keep denying our mortality by self-deception or by resigned waiting but should take it up into a resolute anticipation. The factor of death must be included in the consciousness of our vital decisions. In other words, death is to be taken up into human life and is to be viewed, paradoxically perhaps, as its essential component. Thus, the radical contrast between life and death is undermined. The taming of death is one of the central themes in Rilke's poem. Like Novalis before him, Rilke thought of death as the night-side of life. "Death is the side of life that is turned away from us and is unillumined for us."7 But he made use of still another notion to break down a distinction which, in his opinion, we the... (shrink)

In den Kant-Forschungen werden sowohl historisch als auch systematisch orientierte Arbeiten zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants veröffentlicht. Die Bände stellen Funde unbekannter oder verschollen geglaubter Kantischer Autographen und Vorlesungsskripte vor und erörtern Editionsprobleme der Kantischen Vorlesungen und Werke. Sie enthalten darüber hinaus Studien zu Kants Umfeld und zur Kant-Rezeption im 18. Jahrhundert sowie systematisch angelegte Arbeiten zu Architektonik und System der Philosophie Kants.

Against the standard interpretation of Kant's ‘Copernican revolution’ as the prioritization of epistemology over ontology, I argue in this paper that his critique of traditional metaphysics must be seen as a farewell to the perfectionism on which early modern rationalist ontology and epistemology are built. However, Kant does not simply replace ‘perfection’ with another fundamental concept of normativity. More radically, Kant realizes that it is not simply ideas but only the relation of ideas that can be subject to norms, and (...) thus he shifts the focus from the reality of ideas to the validity of judgments. Section 1 of this paper clarifies the pre-Kantian role of the concept of perfection and examines Kant's critical response to that concept. Section 2 identifies Kant's point of departure from the Cartesian ‘way of ideas.’ Section 3 explains the key problem of his novel account of epistemic normativity. I conclude that Kant's anti-perfectionism must be seen as the driving force behind his ‘Copernican revolution’ in order to fully appreciate his mature account of epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 4 Seiten: 509-530.

The aim of psychology is to understand the human mind and behavior. In contemporary psychology, the method of choice to accomplish this incredibly complex endeavor is the experiment. This dominance has shaped the whole discipline from the self-concept as an empirical science and its very epistemological and theoretical foundations, via research practice and the scientific discourse to teaching. Experimental psychology is grounded in the scientific method and positivism, and these principles, which are characteristic for modern thinking, are still upheld. Despite (...) this apparently stalwart adherence to modern principles, experimental psychology exhibits a number of aspects which can best be described as facets of postmodern thinking although they are hardly acknowledged as such. Many psychologists take pride in being “real natural scientists” because they conduct experiments, but it is particularly difficult for psychologists to evade certain elements of postmodern thinking in view of the specific nature of their subject matter. Postmodernism as a philosophy emerged in the 20th century as a response to the perceived inadequacy of the modern approach and as a means to understand the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the times. Therefore, postmodernism offers both valuable insights into the very nature of experimental psychology and fruitful ideas on improving experimental practice to better reflect the complexities and ambiguities of human mind and behavior. Analyzing experimental psychology along postmodern lines begins by discussing the implications of transferring the scientific method from fields with rather narrowly defined phenomena—the natural sciences—to a much broader and more heterogeneous class of complex phenomena, namely the human mind and behavior. This ostensibly modern experimental approach is, however, per se riddled with postmodern elements: creating phenomena in an experimental setting, including the hermeneutic processes of generating hypotheses and interpreting results, is no carbon copy of “reality” but rather an active construction which reflects irrevocably the pre-existing ideas of the investigator. These aspects, analyzed by using postmodern concepts like hyperreality and simulacra, did not seep in gradually but have been present since the very inception of experimental psychology, and they are necessarily inherent in its philosophy of science. We illustrate this theoretical analysis with the help of two examples, namely experiments on free will and visual working memory. The postmodern perspective reveals some pitfalls in the practice of experimental psychology. Furthermore, we suggest that accepting the inherently fuzzy nature of theoretical constructs in psychology and thinking more along postmodern lines would actually clarify many theoretical problems in experimental psychology. (shrink)