When scientists act unethically, their actions can cause harm to participants, undermine knowledge creation, and discredit the scientific community. Responsible Conduct of Research training i...

Efforts to promote responsible conduct of research (RCR) should take into consideration how scientists already conceptualize the relationship between ethics and science. In this study, we investigated how scientists relate ethics and science by analyzing the values expressed in interviews with fifteen science faculty members at a large midwestern university. We identified the values the scientists appealed to when discussing research ethics, how explicitly they related their values to ethics, and the relationships between the values they appealed to. We found (...) that the scientists in our study appealed to epistemic and ethical values with about the same frequency, and much more often than any other type of value. We also found that they explicitly associated epistemic values with ethical values. Participants were more likely to describe epistemic and ethical values as supporting each other, rather than trading off with each other. This suggests that many scientists already have a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between ethics and science, which may be an important resource for RCR training interventions. (shrink)

In Perception: First Form of Mind, Tyler Burge develops an understanding of the most primitive type of representational mind: perception. Focusing on its form, function, and underlying capacities, as indicated in the sciences of perception, Burge provides an account of the representational content and formal representational structure of perceptual states, and develops a formal semantics for them. The account is elaborated by an explanation of how the representational form is embedded in an iconic format. These structures are then situated (...) in current theoretical accounts of the processing of perceptual representations, with an emphasis on the formation of perceptual categorizations. An exploration of the relationship between perception and other primitive capacities-conation, attention, memory, anticipation, affect, learning, and imagining-clarifies the distinction between perceiving, with its associated capacities, and thinking, with its associated capacities. Drawing on a broad range of historical and contemporary research, rather than relying on introspection or ordinary talk about perception, Perception: First Form of Mind is a scientifically rigorous and agenda-setting work in the philosophy of perception and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

We argue for an imaginative analog of desire from premises about imaginative engagement with fiction. There's a bit about the paradox of fiction, too.

In this paper I argue that luck and fortune are distinct concepts that apply to different sets of events. I do so by suggesting that lucky events are best understood as significant events that are either modally fragile or improbable (depending on whether you accept a modal account or a probability account of luck), whereas fortunate events are best understood as significant events that are outside of our control. I call this the Pure Control Account of Fortune. I show that (...) this account of fortune forces control theorists about luck to be fortune reductionists but allows those who endorse a modal or probability account of luck to be fortune realists. Additionally, I argue that this account of fortune helps us overcome prominent counterexamples and challenges found in the luck literature. (shrink)

Abstract: There are epistemic manipulators in the world. These people are actively attempting to sacrifice epistemic goods for personal gain. In doing so, manipulators have led many competent epistemic agents into believing contrarian theories that go against well-established knowledge. In this paper, I explore one mechanism by which manipulators get epistemic agents to believe contrarian theories. I do so by looking at a prominent empirical model of trustworthiness. This model identifies three major factors that epistemic agents look for when trying (...) to determine who is trustworthy. These are (i) ability, (ii) benevolence, and (iii) moral integrity. I then show how manipulators can manufacture the illusion that they possess these factors. This leads epistemic agents to view manipulators as trustworthy sources of information. Additionally, I argue that fact-checking will be an ineffective – or even harmful – practice when correcting the beliefs of epistemic agents who have been tricked by this illusion of epistemic trustworthiness. I suggest that in such cases we should use an alternative correction, which I call trust undercutting. (shrink)

This paper concerns top-down approaches in machine ethics. It is divided into three main parts. First, I briefly describe top-down design approaches, and in doing so I make clear what those approaches are committed to and what they involve when it comes to training an AI to behave ethically. In the second part, I formulate two underappreciated motivations for endorsing them, one relating to predictability of machine behavior and the other relating to scrutability of machine decision-making. Finally, I present three (...) major worries about such approaches, and I attempt to show that advocates of top-down approaches have some plausible avenues of response. I focus most of my attention on what I call the ‘technical manual objection’ to top-down approaches, inspired by the work of Annas (2004). In short, the idea is that top-down approaches treat ethical decision-making as being merely a matter of following some ethical instructions in the same way that one might follow some set of instructions contained in a technical manual (e.g., computer manual), and this invites sensible skepticism about the ethical wisdom of machines that have been trained on those approaches. I respond by claiming that the objection is successful only if it is understood as targeting machines that have certain kinds of goals, and it should not compel us to totally abandon top-down approaches. Such approaches could still be reasonably employed to design ethical AI that operate in contexts that include fairly noncontroversial answers to ethical questions. In fact, we should prefer top-down approaches when it comes to those types of context, or so I argue, due to the advantages I claim for them. (shrink)

Employment-based vaccine mandates have worse consequences for existing than prospective employees. Prospective employees are not yet dependent on a particular employment arrangement, so they are better positioned to respond to such mandates. Yet despite this asymmetry in consequences, Smith argues that if vaccine mandates are justified for prospective employees, they are similarly justified for existing employees. This paper responds to Smith’s argument. First, Smith holds that bona fide occupational requirements are actions that are necessary for the safe and effective completion (...) of one’s job. As such, they apply to existing and prospective employees alike. However, I argue that the existence of effective alternative interventions precludes vaccination from being considered a bona fide occupational requirement under current circumstances. Second, Smith holds that if a requirement is justified for prospective employees, it is justified for existing employees, despite the asymmetry in consequences. However, I argue that since vaccination is not a bona fide requirement, the asymmetry in the harms of mandates experienced by prospective versus existing employees entails an asymmetry in the justification required to mandate vaccination for each group. As such, vaccination can be considered a requirement for prospective employees while not being required for existing employees. (shrink)

AI is increasingly becoming based upon Internet-dependent systems to handle the massive amounts of data it requires to function effectively regardless of the availability of stable Internet connectivity in every affected community. As such, sustainable development (SD) for rural and mountain communities will require more than just equitable access to broadband Internet connection. It must also include a thorough means whereby to ensure that affected communities gain the education and tools necessary to engage inclusively with new technological advances, whether they (...) be focused on machine learning algorithms or community infrastructure, as they will be increasingly dependent upon the automational capabilities of AI. In this essay, an exploration will be conducted into the means whereby student-engaged learning (SEL) can effectively be utilized to provide targeted, inclusive education to rural and mountain communities regarding the implications of AI for SD. (shrink)

Based on a deliberative democracy, this book uses a hermeneutic-critical methodology to study bibliographical sources and practical issues in order to analyse the possibilities, limits and consequences of the digital transformation of democracy. Drawing on a two-way democracy, the aim of this book is intended as an aid for thinking through viable alternatives to the current state of democracy with regard to its ethical foundations and the moral knowledge implicit in or assumed by the way we perceive and understand democracy. (...) It is intended to stimulate reflection and discussion on the basis that, by addressing what we understand as democracy, we can inevitably influence the reality known as democracy. Democracy’s evident regression in today’s world makes this all too apparent: it has become a hostage to all kinds of autocracies and technopopulisms, which are supported to a greater or lesser extent by the current algorithmic revolution. (shrink)

The richness of the term “unsettling” has made it readily employable for phenomenological accounts of racism in philosophy of race literature; yet, the term has been left largely under-theorized. Here, I argue that unsettling encounters can be said to occur when the unfamiliar other has come into contact with the boundary of one’s existential home. For many white people, interracial interactions produce an (often unwarranted) feeling of physical danger, but as I hope to show, this habitual (mis)perception of such encounters (...) is not merely a conditioned response; it also functions to subvert situations that might unsettle white identifies partially constituted by phenomenological demarcations of space along racial lines. Drawing on empirical literature and recent developments in critical phenomenology, I suggest that by exercising habitual, racist gestures and perceptions, white people (mis)perceive ontological threats to their worldview—e.g., a bookish Black student or a masculine gay man—as ontically threatening so as to avoid the kind of work and existential anguish that altering one’s normative expectations would require. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for activists to use the language of colonization or occupation to describe the social dynamics at work in cities undergoing gentrification. Should these claims be regarded as ou...

Inspired by Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), we develop an argument—the “Scriptural Argument Against Dogmatic Protestantism” (SAADP)—that Protestants who accept the doctrine of sola scriptura cannot reasonably hold that Catholic and Eastern churches are in doctrinal error. If sola scriptura is true and Catholic and Eastern Churches have fallen into error, it is improbable that any Protestant can reliably form true beliefs about controversial points of Christian doctrine, including sola scriptura or suggestions that Catholic and Eastern Christians are in (...) error. We evaluate potential responses to SADDP, considering how SAADP should affect ecumenical doctrinal debates. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a formal criterion for physical computation that allows us to objectively distinguish between competing computational interpretations of a physical system. The criterion construes a computational interpretation as an ordered pair of functions mapping (1) states of a physical system to states of an abstract machine, and (2) inputs to this machine to interventions in this physical system. This interpretation must ensure that counterfactuals true of the abstract machine have appropriate counterparts which are (...) true of the physical system. The criterion proposes that rival interpretations be assessed on the basis of simplicity. Simplicity is construed as the Kolmogorov complexity of the interpretation. This approach is closely related to the notion of algorithmic information distance and draws on earlier work on real patterns. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

What does free will mean to laypersons? The present investigation sought to address this question by identifying how laypersons distinguish between free and unfree actions. We elicited autobiographical narratives in which participants described either free or unfree actions, and the narratives were subsequently subjected to impartial analysis. Results indicate that free actions were associated with reaching goals, high levels of conscious thought and deliberation, positive outcomes, and moral behavior (among other things). These findings suggest that lay conceptions of free will (...) fit well with the view that free will is a form of action control. (shrink)

How do we build up our institutional reality? What do we need in order to construct such things as universities, law firms, banks, retail stores, factories, leg.

Daniel Dennett distinguishes real patterns from bogus patterns by appeal to compressibility. As information theorists have shown, data are compressible if and only if those data exhibit a pattern....

I defend the view that circular definitions can be useful and illuminating by focusing on the fitting-attitudes analysis of value. This definition states that an item has value if and only if it is a fitting target of attitudes. Good items are the fitting targets of positive attitudes, and bad items are the fitting targets of negative ones. I shall argue that a circular version of this definition, defended by Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2006), is preferable to its non-circular counterpart and (...) upholds reasonable standards of acceptability. The standards I will be discussing come from Humberstone (1997), who claims that definitions cannot be informative as long as they are inferentially circular. (shrink)

TWEEN POP examines the creation of the "tween" in the early 2000s as a gendered and raced consumer audience. The tween, aged nine to twelve, and usually thought of as a white girl, occupies a temporality between childhood and adolescence: she has aged out of children's products but is too young to fully engage in marketing directed at teenagers. But, as Tyler Bickford argues, this seemingly narrow market grew to broadly include four to fifteen year olds, with producers and (...) marketers pulling upwards and downwards by creating material that would attract younger viewers and teenagers, thereby creating a demographic that expanded, rather than limited, the traditional reach of child and teenage markets. According to Bickford, the key to this expansion was pop music, as it provided an intensity of experience that mirrored childhood in its investments in emotional authenticity, cultural value, and relational intimacies. In other words, pop music needed to be both intimate and public--a tension that Bickford argues defined the tween's positionality as well--and tween pop did so by pairing the mainstream pop of adulthood with images and lyrics suitable for younger audiences. Throughout the book, Bickford reveals how childhood's status as a private domestic position outside of politics was not a hindrance to the cultivation of children as a mass audience but rather was the very foundation of that project. By creating an intimate public of tween pop, the tween music industry was able to position tweens as still within the private domestic sphere of family life, but connected in a broader public of other tween-pop-listening tweens. Chapter 1 looks at Kidz Bop music videos to argue that the tween music industry framed childhood domesticity as complementary to participation in a public culture. Chapter 2 focuses on Disney Channel's popular music programs' efforts to engage older children, particularly older girls, in their marketing tactics. Chapter 3 analyzes the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana and its foregrounding of tensions between girlhood, public culture, and family. Chapter 4 attends to how whiteness served as central to the tween construction of innocence and childhood. Bickford concludes the book by periodizing the tween moment as the decade from 2001 to 2011, and then outlines the developments in popular culture for children since that time. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnomusicology, feminism and gender studies, and cultural studies. (shrink)

This chapter shows that reflecting on Hidden Mickeys can take people at least part of the way to a solution to the problem of divine hiddenness. Here is the basic idea: it is often ambiguous whether some constellation of shapes is a Hidden Mickey, and similarly, it is often ambiguous whether some experience is an experience of God's presence and love. In order to develop this idea, the chapter steps away from Hidden Mickeys in order to develop the problem of (...) divine hiddenness in a bit more detail. There is a crucial disanalogy between the problem of divine hiddenness and Hidden Mickeys. One way to bridge the divide is to try out the idea that God simply cannot make his existence as apparent to people as the Disney corporation can make it apparent that it is run by agents acting intentionally. (shrink)

The story of the Vox Populi embodies conflict theory, one popular interpretation of Marx's ideas, portraying a bloody revolution that loses sight of its ideals, turns anarchistic, and becomes the new oppressor. In Columbia, Zachary Hale Comstock and Jeremiah Fink illustrate the way the bourgeoisie may come to create and control the means of production. As the friction builds between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, historical processes contribute to the inevitable collapse of capitalism. In BioShock Infinite, the simmering friction between (...) the upper and lower classes boils over into the rise of the Vox Populi. The functionalist perspective often casts religion as a social structure that keeps society together despite any negative costs it may have for any particular group. In order for the bourgeoisie to own the means of production and keep the working class oppressed, it uses propaganda and indoctrination as powerful agents of control. (shrink)

Part of the ingenious quality of LEGO is that it is a system of play, fundamentally based on interconnecting sets of parts and open‐endedness. Nowadays, themed and specialized LEGO playsets far outnumber the more free‐form building oriented sets we might see on store shelves. Everything from the themed LEGO Space and LEGO City to extensions of the imaginary franchise universes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Simpsons suggest a kind of play experience where purely imagination‐driven building becomes secondary to (...) the kinds of storytelling and narrative play that LEGO playsets encourage. The different kinds of play—LEGO playset building compared to LEGO video game playing—can be thought of as ludus (more structured, goal‐oriented play) and paidia (exuberant, spontaneous free play). LEGO in many ways serves as a helpful analogy for how philosophical thinking can lead people toward new connections between their thoughts and ideas. LEGO and philosophy invite them to question the nature of play. (shrink)

Non‐Humean theories of natural necessity invoke modally‐laden primitives to explain why nature exhibits lawlike regularities. However, they vary in the primitives they posit and in their subsequent accounts of laws of nature and related phenomena (including natural properties, natural kinds, causation, counterfactuals, and the like). This article provides a taxonomy of non‐Humean theories, discusses influential arguments for and against them, and describes some ways in which differences in goals and methods can motivate different versions of non‐Humeanism (and, for that matter, (...) Humeanism). In short, this article provides an introduction to non‐Humeanism concerning the metaphysics of laws of nature and natural necessity. (shrink)

There seems to be a distinction between primary and secondary properties; some philosophers defend the view that properties like colours and values are secondary, while others criticize it. The distinction is usually introduced in terms of essence; roughly, secondary properties essentially involve mental states, while primary properties do not. In part because this does not seem very illuminating, philosophers have produced different reductive analyses in modal terms, metaphysic or epistemic. Here I will argue, firstly, that some well-known examples fail, and (...) also that there are deep reasons why such approaches should do so. Secondly, I will argue that it is acceptable to remain satisfied with the non-reductive account in terms of essence. To that end, I will indicate how such an explication could be put to use to support the claim that properties like colours and values are secondary. In a series of recent writings, Kit Fine has argued that essence cannot be reductively analysed in modal terms. Fine offers some examples to motivate his claim. I suggest that the primary/secondary distinction constitutes a philosophically interesting illustration. (shrink)

The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, (...) it is surprising that law makers internationally have come to a standstill to protect our silicon brainchildren. In this essay, it will be assumed that future artificial entities, such as Sophia the Robot, will be granted citizenship on an international scale. With this assumption, an analysis of rights will be made with respect to the needs of a non-biological intelligence possessing legal and civic duties akin to those possessed by humanity today. This essay does not present a full set of rights for artificial intelligence—instead, it aims to provide international jurisprudence evidence aliunde ab extra de lege lata for any future measures made to protect non-biological intelligence. (shrink)

Waiting time is widely used in health and social policy to make resource allocation decisions, yet no general account of the moral significance of waiting time exists. We provide such an account. We argue that waiting time is not intrinsically morally significant, and that the first person in a queue for a resource does not ipso facto have a right to receive that resource first. However, waiting time can and sometimes should play a role in justifying allocation decisions. First, there (...) is a duty of fairness prohibiting line-cutting where a sufficiently just queue exists. Second, waiting time has several morally attractive features that can justify its incorporation into allocation schemes. Where candidates are in relevantly similar circumstances, allocating by waiting time is relatively efficient, maximizes distribution equality relative to other Pareto efficient distributions, and treats candidates fairly. The claim that allocation using waiting time is fair is controversial. Some have claimed that formal lotteries are a fairer way to select among equal beneficiaries. We argue that lotteries are no fairer than allocation based on waiting time when it is equiprobable how a prospective queue will be ordered. In practice, lotteries share many of the disadvantages of queues; which is fairer will depend on contingent features of the allocation scenario. The upshot is that first-come, first-served is in fact a just way to allocate resources in many of the cases where it seems pre-theoretically compelling, and waiting time has unique normative properties which frequently justify its incorporation into resource allocation schemes. (shrink)

In all probability, future generations will outnumber us by thousands or millions to one. In the aggregate, their interests therefore matter enormously, and anything we can do to steer the future of civilization onto a better trajectory is of tremendous moral importance. This is the guiding thought that defines the philosophy of longtermism. Political science tells us that the practices of most governments are at stark odds with longtermism. But the problems of political short-termism are neither necessary nor inevitable. In (...) principle, the state could serve as a powerful tool for positively shaping the long-term future. In this chapter, we make some suggestions about how to align government incentives with the interests of future generations. First, in Section II, we explain the root causes of political short-termism. Then, in Section III, we propose and defend four institutional reforms that we think would be promising ways to increase the time horizons of governments: 1) government research institutions and archivists; 2) posterity impact assessments; 3) futures assemblies; and 4) legislative houses for future generations. Section IV concludes with five additional reforms that are promising but require further research: to fully resolve the problem of political short-termism we must develop a comprehensive research program on effective longtermist political institutions. (shrink)

Traditional epistemic and doxastic logics cannot deal with inconsistent beliefs nor do they represent the evidence an agent possesses. So-called ‘evidence logics’ have been introduced to deal with both of those issues. The semantics of these logics are based on neighbourhood or hypergraph frames. The neighbourhoods of a world represent the basic evidence available to an agent. On one view, beliefs supported by evidence are propositions derived from all maximally consistent collections evidence. An alternative concept of beliefs takes them to (...) be propositions derivable from consistent partitions of one’s inconsistent evidence; this is known as Schotch-Jennings Forcing. This paper develops a modal logic based on the hypergraph semantics to represent Schotch-Jennings Forcing. The modal language includes an operator U(φ1,…,φn;ψ)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$U(\varphi _1, \ldots, \varphi _n;\psi )$$\end{document} which is similar to one introduced in Instantial Neighbourhood Logic. It is of variable arity and the input formulas enjoy distinct roles. The U operator expresses that all evidence at a particular world that supports ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi $$\end{document} can be supported by at least one of the φi\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varphi _i$$\end{document}s. U can then be used to express that all the evidence available can be unified by the finite set of formulas φ1,…,φn\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varphi _1,\ldots, \varphi _n$$\end{document} if ψ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\psi $$\end{document} is taken to be ⊤\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\top $$\end{document}. Future developments will then use that semantics as the basis for a doxastic logic akin to evidence logics. (shrink)

One widely used method for allocating health care resources involves the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to rank treatments in terms of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained. CEA has been criticized for discriminating against people with disabilities by valuing their lives less than those of non-disabled people. Avoiding discrimination seems to lead to the ’QALY trap’: we cannot value saving lives equally and still value raising quality of life. This paper reviews existing responses to the QALY trap and argues that all (...) are problematic. Instead, we argue that adopting a moderate form of prioritarianism avoids the QALY trap and disability discrimination. (shrink)

Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

The legacies of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth remain influential for contemporary theologians, who have increasingly put them into conversation on debated questions over analogy and the knowledge of God. However, little explicit dialogue has occurred between their theologies of God. This book offers one of the first extended analyzes of this fundamental issue, asking how each theologian seeks to confess in fact and in thought God's qualitative distinctiveness in relation to creation. Wittman first examines how they understand the correspondence (...) and distinction between God's being and external acts within an overarching concern to avoid idolatry. Second, he analyzes the kind of relation God bears to creation that follows from these respective understandings. Despite many common goals, Aquinas and Barth ultimately differ on the subject matter of theological reason with consequences for their ability to uphold God's distinctiveness consistently. These mutually informative issues offer some important lessons for contemporary theology. (shrink)

Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well- being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate (...) wild animals with negative well-being to ensure future such animals do not exist. We argue that this conflict is overstated. Once we have properly accounted for indirect effects, such as the role that our policies play in shaping moral attitudes and behavior and the importance of accepting policies that are robust against deviation, we can see that consequentialism may converge with animal rights theory significantly, even if not entirely. (shrink)

In this study, Tyler Frick aims to display and commend the theological ontology that arises from a careful analysis of Karl Barth's understanding of divine action.

According to the Nomological Argument, observed regularities in nature are best explained by an appeal to a supernatural being. A successful explanation must avoid two perils. Some explanations provide too little structure, predicting a universe without regularities. Others provide too much structure, thereby precluding an explanation of certain types of lawlike regularities featured in modern scientific theories. We argue that an explanation based in the creative, intentional action of a supernatural being avoids these two perils whereas leading competitors do not. (...) Although our argument falls short of a full defense, it does suggest that the Nomological Argument is worthy of philosophical attention. (shrink)

According to structuralism, all natural properties are individuated by their roles in causal/nomological structures. According to quidditism, at least some natural properties are individuated in some other way. Because these theses deal with the identities of natural properties, this distinction cuts to the core of a serious metaphysical dispute: Are the intrinsic natures of all natural properties essentially causal/nomological in character? I'll argue that the answer is ‘no’, or at least that this answer is more plausible than many critics of (...) quidditism have recognized. In section 1, I distinguish between two versions of quidditism. Bare quidditism holds that worlds with distinct properties and isomorphic structures must be qualitatively identical in the following sense: inhabiting one world would be indistinguishable from inhabiting the other. In contrast, qualitative quidditism allows such worlds to have qualitative differences. In section 2, I discuss an epistemological position that allows us to bett... (shrink)

Dennett [1991] proposes a novel ontological account of the propositional attitudes—real patterns. Despite its name, the degree to which this account is committed to realism remains unclear. In this paper, I propose an alternative criterion of pattern instantiation, one that assesses the difficultly of faithfully interpreting a physical system as instantiating a particular pattern. Drawing on formal measures of simplicity and similarity, I argue that, for well-instantiated patterns, our interpretation will be computable by using a short program. This approach preserves (...) the flexibility of Dennett’s original, while offering substantially stronger realist commitments. (shrink)

This contribution aims at proposing a framework for articulating different kinds of “normativities” that are and can be attributed to “algorithmic systems.” The technical normativity manifests itself through the lineage of technical objects. The norm expresses a technical scheme’s becoming as it mutates through, but also resists, inventions. The genealogy of neural networks shall provide a powerful illustration of this dynamic by engaging with their concrete functioning as well as their unsuspected potentialities. The socio-technical normativity accounts for the manners in (...) which engineers, as actors folded into socio-technical networks, willingly or unwittingly, infuse technical objects with values materialized in the system. Surveillance systems’ design will serve here to instantiate the ongoing mediation through which algorithmic systems are endowed with specific capacities. The behavioral normativity is the normative activity, in which both organic and mechanical behaviors are actively participating, undoing the identification of machines with “norm following,” and organisms with “norminstitution”. This proposition productively accounts for the singularity of machine learning algorithms, explored here through the case of recommender systems. The paper will provide substantial discussions of the notions of “normative” by cutting across history and philosophy of science, legal, and critical theory, as well as “algorithmics,” and by confronting our studies led in engineering laboratories with critical algorithm studies. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed that rule consequentialism (utilitarianism) collapses into act consequentialism, because sometimes there are benefits from breaking the rules. I suggest this argument is less powerful than has been believed. The argument requires a commitment to a very particular (usually implicit) account of feasibility and constraints. It requires the presupposition that thinking of rules as the relevant constraint is incorrect. Supposedly we should look at a smaller unit of choice—the single act—as the relevant choice variable. But once we (...) see feasibility as a matter of degree, there is no obvious cut-off point for how broadly we should think about the constraints on our choices. Treating “a bundle of choices” as a relevant free variable is no less defensible than treating “a single act” as the relevant free variable. Rule utilitarianism, rule consequentialism, and other rules-based approaches are stronger than their current reputation. (shrink)

Tyler Burge presents an original study of the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind.

George Grant (1918-1988) was one of Canada’s foremost public philosophers. Though his thought arose out of reflection on the history of political philosophy, pressing political concerns were never far from view. He was particularly adept at locating the causes of political developments in philosophical movements that were centuries in the making. This book reassesses his ideas in light of philosophical and political developments of recent decades, including the resurgence of nationalism, criticisms of globalization and technocracy, and the ideological realignments having (...) a particularly noticeable effect on right-wing politics. The contemporary reader of Grant is thus able to reflect on his broader criticisms of modernity from within a slightly different historical articulation of modernity. Though George Grant died in 1988, the philosophical themes in his work remain relevant into the 21st century. (shrink)