If consciousness emerges into ontological reality at some point in nature, as system complexity increases, then it also ‘submerges’ at some adjoining point, as structures simplify. This has led some to posit a ‘latent-consciousness’ in what Bohr saw as the consciousness-like spontaneity of quantum phenomena. Yet to move on this basis to Whitehead's ontological pan-experientialism or to direct quantum explanations of consciousness faces serious epistemological limitations -- perhaps being more unwittingly projective than genuinely explanatory. More reasonable would be an epistemological (...) pan- experientialism in the sense of the later James. Consciousness, as the ultimate lens and medium of all knowledge, is inseparable from the physical reality it would know, especially at the very limits of empirical observation in microphysics. ‘Submerged’ consciousness is better understood in Jamesian pragmatic terms than via assumed but unprovable ontologies. (shrink)

New AI technologies have the potential to cause unintended harms in diverse domains including warfare, judicial sentencing, biomedicine and governance. One strategy for realising the benefits of AI whilst avoiding its potential dangers is to ensure that new AIs are properly ‘aligned’ with some form of ‘alignment target.’ One danger of this strategy is that – dependent on the alignment target chosen – our AIs might optimise for objectives that reflect the values only of a certain subset of society, and (...) that do not take into account alternative views about what constitutes desirable and safe behaviour for AI agents. In response to this problem, several AI ethicists have suggested alignment targets that are designed to be sensitive to widespread normative disagreement amongst the relevant stakeholders. Authors inspired by voting theory have suggested that AIs should be aligned with the verdicts of actual or simulated ‘moral parliaments’ whose members represent the normative views of the relevant stakeholders. Other authors inspired by decision theory and the philosophical literature on moral uncertainty have suggested that AIs should maximise socially expected choiceworthiness. In this paper, I argue that both of these proposals face several important problems. In particular, they fail to select attractive ‘compromise options’ in cases where such options are available. I go on to propose and defend an alternative, bargaining-theoretic alignment target, which avoids the problems associated with the voting- and decision-theoretic approaches. (shrink)

This collection of articles, mostly by philosophers, but including two doctors and an economic historian, is intended as a contribution to applied ethics and medical ethics. The articles tackle two questions: how can the autonomy of the elderly be increased, and how can a just proportion of medical resources be secured for them? The seven articles dealing with the first question apply work in the theory of ethics on the nature and limits of autonomy to the particular case study of (...) the elderly: there are a number of detailed conclusions about what can and should be done, and a general consensus that, while the right to die with dignity is important, even more important is the improvement of the quality of life. The seven articles dealing with resources examine the problems created by an ageing population and the arguements for discriminating against the elderly: the main conclusions is that none of these arguments are sound or convincing. Overall the book seeks to make both a theoretical and a practical contribution to this field. (shrink)

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book defends the constructivist view of science, namely, the view that scientific theories are mental constructions in the mind of the scientist, rather than the realist view that scientific theories are accounts of what nature itself is like. To prove this point, evolution theory is contrasted with "creation science" as two paradigms or extremely divergent theories, each of which, as a mental construct, explains the data or facts of the natural world equally well. Contents: Realism vs. Constructivism; Meaning and (...) Reference in the Natural Sciences; The Role of Paradigm in the Creationism Controversy; Science As Mental Construction. (shrink)

Recent developments in artificial intelligence based on neural nets—deep learning and large language models which together I refer to as NEWAI—have resulted in startling improvements in language handling and the potential to keep up with changing human knowledge by learning from the internet. Nevertheless, examples such as ChatGPT, which is a ‘large language model’, have proved to have no moral compass: they answer queries with fabrications with the same fluency as they provide facts. I try to explain why this is, (...) basing the argument on the sociology of knowledge, particularly social studies of science, notably ‘studies of expertise and experience’ and the ‘fractal model’ of society. Learning from the internet is not the same as socialisation: NEWAI has no primary socialisation such as provides the foundations of human moral understanding. Instead, large language models are retrospectively socialised by human intervention in an attempt to align them with societally accepted ethics. Perhaps, as technology advances, large language models could come to understand speech and recognise objects sufficiently well to acquire the equivalent of primary socialisation. In the meantime, we must be vigilant about who is socialising them and be aware of the danger of their socialising us to align with them rather than vice-versa, an eventuality that would lead to the further erosion of the distinction between the true and the false giving further support to populism and fascism. (shrink)

This paper considers four institutional models for funding higher education in the light of principles of fairness and meritocracy, with particular reference to the debate in the UK over ‘top-up fees’. It concludes that, under certain plausible but unproven assumptions, the model the UK government has adopted is fairer and more meritocratic than alternatives, including, surprisingly, the Graduate Tax.

Commentary in reply to an article by Jeff McMahan and Julian Savulescu.

‘Interactional expertise’ is developed through linguistic interaction without full scale practical immersion in a culture. Interactional expertise is the medium of communication in peer review in science, in review committees, and in interdisciplinary projects. It is also the medium of specialist journalists and of interpretative methods in the social sciences. We describe imitation game experiments designed to make concrete the idea of interactional expertise. The experiments show that the linguistic performance of those well socialized in the language of a specialist (...) group is indistinguishable from those with full blown practical socialization but distinguishable from those who are not well socialized. The imitation game can also be used to indicate whether an individual can enter an esoteric domain and master the interactional expertise, a skill required by interpretative sociologists of science, anthropologists, ethnographers, and the like.Keywords: Expertise; Interactional expertise; Imitation game; Turing test; Colour blindness; Interpretative methods. (shrink)

The use of a reporter gene in transgenic mice indicates that there are many local mutations and large genomic rearrangements per somatic cell that accumulate with age at different rates per organ and without visible effects. Dissociation of the cells for monolayer culture brings out great heterogeneity of size and loss of function among cells that presumably reflect genetic and epigenetic differences among the cells, but are masked in organized tissue. The regulatory power of a mass of contiguous normal cells (...) is expressed in its capacity to normalize the appearance and growth behavior of solitary homophilic neoplastic cells, and to redirect differentiation of solitary heterophilic stem‐like cells. Intimate contact between the interacting cells is required to induce these changes. The normalization of the neoplastic phenotype does not require gap junctional communication between cells, though transdifferentiation might. These varied relationships are manifestations of the unifying biological principle of “order in the large over heterogeneity in the small”. BioEssays 28: 515–524, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

With progress in genetic research advancing as it is, a host of novel theoretical and practical challenges are thereby being raised. From a bioethical perspective, it is easy to get the feeling that, because of this rapid progress, many fundamental concepts that should be in place arent yet in place. This lack may be felt especially in relation to human gene modification. with the Human Genome Projects potential to yield innumerable applications, one of the things that should be in place (...) is a set of fundamental conceptual guidelines demarcating the kinds of genetic modifications that should count as ethically acceptable and legally permissible. In this paper, my goal is to articulate such guidelines, specifically for the set of all possible human germline modifications. (shrink)