An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the brain (...) and its environment. This boundary defines the mind-world relation, opens the door to skepticism, and makes the mind transpire as more inferentially secluded and neurocentrically skull-bound than many would nowadays think. Therefore, PEM somewhat deflates contemporary hypotheses that cognition is extended, embodied and enactive; however, it can nevertheless accommodate the kinds of cases that fuel these hypotheses. (shrink)

A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The Predictive Mind (...) is that the mechanism explains the rich, deep, and multifaceted character of our conscious perception. It also gives a unified account of how perception is sculpted by attention, and how it depends on action. The mind is revealed as having a fragile and indirect relation to the world. Though we are deeply in tune with the world we are also strangely distanced from it. (shrink)

On the whole, the US Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022 (US AAA) is a pragmatic approach to balancing the benefits and risks of automated decision systems. Yet there is still room for improvement. This commentary highlights how the US AAA can both inform and learn from the European Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AIA).

Predictive processing (PP) is now a prominent theoretical framework in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This review focuses on PP research with a relatively philosophical focus, taking stock of the framework and discussing new directions. The review contains an introduction that describes the full PP toolbox; an exploration of areas where PP has advanced understanding of perceptual and cognitive phenomena; a discussion of PP's impact on foundational issues in cognitive science; and a consideration of the philosophy of science (...) of PP. The overall picture is that PP is a fruitful framework, with exciting new directions awaiting exploration. (shrink)

The phenomenology of agency and perception is probably underpinned by a common cognitive system based on generative models and predictive coding. I defend the hypothesis that this cognitive system explains core aspects of the sense of having a self in agency and perception. In particular, this cognitive model explains the phenomenological notion of a minimal self as well as a notion of the narrative self. The proposal is related to some influential studies of overall brain function, and to psychopathology. These (...) elusive notions of the self are shown to be the natural upshots of general cognitive mechanisms whose fundamental purpose is to enable agents to represent the world and act in it. (shrink)

The free energy principle says that any self-organising system that is at nonequilibrium steady-state with its environment must minimize its free energy. It is proposed as a grand unifying principle for cognitive science and biology. The principle can appear cryptic, esoteric, too ambitious, and unfalsifiable—suggesting it would be best to suspend any belief in the principle, and instead focus on individual, more concrete and falsifiable ‘process theories’ for particular biological processes and phenomena like perception, decision and action. Here, I explain (...) the free energy principle, and I argue that it is best understood as offering a conceptual and mathematical analysis of the concept of existence of self-organising systems. This analysis offers a new type of solution to long-standing problems in neurobiology, cognitive science, machine learning and philosophy concerning the possibility of normatively constrained, self-supervised learning and inference. The principle can therefore uniquely serve as a regulatory principle for process theories, to ensure that process theories conforming to it enable self-supervision. This is, at least for those who believe self-supervision is a foundational explanatory task, good reason to believe the free energy principle. (shrink)

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are epistemically opaque in the sense that their inner functioning is often unintelligible to human investigators. Inkeri Koskinen has recently argued that this poses special problems for a widespread view in social epistemology according to which thick normative trust between researchers is necessary to handle opacity: if DNNs are essentially opaque, there simply exists nobody who could be trusted to understand all the aspects a DNN picks up during training. In this paper, I present a counterexample (...) from scientific practice, AlphaFold2. I argue that for epistemic reliance on an opaque system, trust is not necessary, but reliability is. What matters is whether, for a given context, the reliability of a DNN has been compellingly established by empirical means and whether there exist trustable researchers who have performed such evaluations adequately. (shrink)

A diferencia de todos los demás sistemas de imputación, Jakobs ubica el acento de la relevancia jurídico-penal del hecho en su significado normativo, como algo que trasciende la mera causalidad exterior y la finalidad del autor, de manera que lo decisivo para la imputación jurídico-penal no es ni lo psíquicoreal querido por el autor, ni la causalidad desplegada por su conducta, sino el significado normativo de esa conducta como la expresión de un sentido objetivo de desautorización de la vigencia de (...) la norma en un determinado contexto social. (shrink)

The search for the neural correlates of consciousness is in need of a systematic, principled foundation that can endow putative neural correlates with greater predictive and explanatory value. Here, we propose the predictive processing framework for brain function as a promising candidate for providing this systematic foundation. The proposal is motivated by that framework’s ability to address three general challenges to identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, and to satisfy two constraints common to many theories of consciousness. Implementing the search (...) for neural correlates of consciousness through the lens of predictive processing delivers strong potential for predictive and explanatory value through detailed, systematic mappings between neural substrates and phenomenological structure. We conclude that the predictive processing framework, precisely because it at the outset is not itself a theory of consciousness, has significant potential for advancing the neuroscience of consciousness. (shrink)

Self-evidencing describes the purported predictive processing of all self-organising systems, whether conscious or not. Self-evidencing in itself is therefore not sufficient for consciousness. Different systems may however be capable of self-evidencing in different, specific and distinct ways. Some of these ways of self-evidencing can be matched up with, and explain, several properties of consciousness. This carves out a distinction in nature between those systems that are conscious, as described by these properties, and those that are not. This approach throws new (...) light on phenomenology, and suggests that some self-evidencing may be characteristic of consciousness. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has many times been suggested as a promising recipe for the construction of artificial moral agents due to its emphasis on moral character and learning. However, given the complex nature of the theory, hardly any work has de facto attempted to implement the core tenets of virtue ethics in moral machines. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate how virtue ethics can be taken all the way from theory to machine implementation. To achieve this goal, we (...) critically explore the possibilities and challenges for virtue ethics from a computational perspective. Drawing on previous conceptual and technical work, we outline a version of artificial virtue based on moral functionalism, connectionist bottom–up learning, and eudaimonic reward. We then describe how core features of the outlined theory can be interpreted in terms of functionality, which in turn informs the design of components necessary for virtuous cognition. Finally, we present a comprehensive framework for the technical development of artificial virtuous agents and discuss how they can be implemented in moral environments. (shrink)

The application and practice of virtue ethics raises an important question: How do we become virtuous? The pessimistic mainstream view is that virtue can only be cultivated in children who still have malleable characters and virtuous predispositions. This paper argues that even adults can cultivate virtues. We can cultivate virtues by using the empirically tested techniques of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – if they work in the treatment of difficult problems like depression or phobias, then they should also work to (...) ameliorate our character. This paper develops an account of cognitive behavioural virtue. To this purpose, it first introduces CBT’s theoretical framework, second it shows how this framework naturally integrates with Aristotelian rather than Stoic virtue theory, third it proposes how CBT’s techniques can be applied in the cultivation of virtue. Finally, it examines some of the proposal’s theoretical consequences and shows its advantages over competing accounts, notably Stichter’s account of virtue cultivation as skill acquisition. (shrink)

A series of recent developments points towards auditing as a promising mechanism to bridge the gap between principles and practice in AI ethics. Building on ongoing discussions concerning ethics-based auditing, we offer three contributions. First, we argue that ethics-based auditing can improve the quality of decision making, increase user satisfaction, unlock growth potential, enable law-making, and relieve human suffering. Second, we highlight current best practices to support the design and implementation of ethics-based auditing: To be feasible and effective, ethics-based auditing (...) should take the form of a continuous and constructive process, approach ethical alignment from a system perspective, and be aligned with public policies and incentives for ethically desirable behaviour. Third, we identify and discuss the constraints associated with ethics-based auditing. Only by understanding and accounting for these constraints can ethics-based auditing facilitate ethical alignment of AI, while enabling society to reap the full economic and social benefits of automation. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there is at least a pro tanto reason to favor the control account of the right to privacy over the access account of the right to privacy. This conclusion is of interest due to its relevance for contemporary discussions related to surveillance policies. We discuss several ways in which the two accounts of the right to privacy can be improved significantly by making minor adjustments to their respective definitions. We then test the improved versions (...) of the two accounts on a test case, to see which account best explains the violation that occurs in the case. The test turns out in favor of the control account. (shrink)

Although virtue ethics has repeatedly been proposed as a suitable framework for the development of artificial moral agents, it has been proven difficult to approach from a computational perspective. In this work, we present the first technical implementation of artificial virtuous agents in moral simulations. First, we review previous conceptual and technical work in artificial virtue ethics and describe a functionalistic path to AVAs based on dispositional virtues, bottom-up learning, and top-down eudaimonic reward. We then provide the details of a (...) technical implementation in a moral simulation based on a tragedy of the commons scenario. The experimental results show how the AVAs learn to tackle cooperation problems while exhibiting core features of their theoretical counterpart, including moral character, dispositional virtues, learning from experience, and the pursuit of eudaimonia. Ultimately, we argue that virtue ethics provides a compelling path toward morally excellent machines and that our work provides an important starting point for such endeavors. (shrink)

Departing from popular imaginations around artificial intelligence (AI), this article engages in the I in the AI acronym but from perspectives outside of mathematics, computer science and machine learning. When intelligence is attended to here, it most often refers to narrow calculating tasks. This connotation to calculation provides AI an image of scientificity and objectivity, particularly attractive in societies with a pervasive desire for numbers. However, as is increasingly apparent today, when employed in more general areas of our messy socio-cultural (...) realities, AI- powered automated systems often fail or have unintended consequences. This article will contribute to this critique of AI by attending to Nicholas of Cusa and his treatment of intelligence. According to him, intelligence is equally dependent on an ability to handle the unknown as it unfolds in the present moment. This suggests that intelligence is organic which ties Cusa to more contemporary discussions in tech philosophy, neurology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences in which it is argued that intelligence is dependent on having—and acting through—an organic body. Understanding intelligence as organic thus suggests an oxymoronic relationship to artificial. (shrink)

We use the hierarchical nature of Bayesian perceptual inference to explain a fundamental aspect of the temporality of experience, namely the phenomenology of temporal flow. The explanation says that the sense of temporal flow in conscious perception stems from probabilistic inference that the present cannot be trusted. The account begins by describing hierarchical inference under the notion of prediction error minimization, and exemplifies distrust of the present within bistable visual perception and action initiation. Distrust of the present is then discussed (...) in relation to previous research on temporal phenomenology. Finally, we discuss how there may be individual differences in the experience of temporal flow, in particular along the autism spectrum. The resulting view is that the sense of temporal flow in conscious perception results from an internal, inferential process. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend what I call the ‘Inference Principle’. This principle holds that if an agent obtains some information legitimately, then the agent can make any inference she wants based on the information, without violating anyone’s right to privacy. This principle is interesting for at least three reasons. First, it constitutes a novel answer to the timely question of whether the widespread use of ‘data analytics’ to infer personal information about individuals is morally permissible. Second, it contradicts what (...) seems to be a common view of inferences’ ability to violate privacy rights. Third, it offers an account of the theoretically underdeveloped issue of what duties are engendered by the moral right to privacy with regard to inferred information. (shrink)

Performativity refers to the phenomenon that scientific conceptualisations can sometimes change their target systems or referents. A widely held view in the literature is that scientists ought not to deliberately deploy performative models or theories with the aim of eliciting desirable changes in their target systems. This paper has three aims. First, I cast and defend this received view as a worry about autonomy-infringing paternalism and, to that end, develop a taxonomy of the harms it can impose. Second, I consider (...) various approaches to this worry within the extant literature and argue that these offer only unsatisfactory responses. Third, I propose two positive claims. Manipulation of target systems is (a) not inherently paternalist and can be unproblematic, and is (b) sometimes paternalist, but whenever such paternalism is inescapable, it has got to be justifiable. I generalise an example of modelling international climate change coordination to develop this point. (shrink)

The involvement of ethicists, philosophers or others who might qualify as ‘moral experts’ in policy-development, where they are sometimes, typically as members of a committee, given an advisory role, is often seen as problematic, for several reasons. First, there may be doubts as to the very existence of moral experts, and it may be hard to know who the moral experts are. Next, even if these problems are solved, giving experts a special role in policy-making might be problematic from a (...) democratic point of view, if it involves politicians deferring to the moral judgements of experts. The paper considers possible replies to this problem of moral deference. One reply is that moral deference is unnecessary, because even moral non-experts are well equipped to assess the arguments offered by moral experts; I argue that this reply underestimates the complexity of moral arguments. Another reply is that if moral experts are simply given the ‘technical’ role of clarifying which concrete positions that follow from the values which decision-makers already accept, deference is not problematic. I will argue that this reply underestimates how a given set of moral values underdetermines which concrete positions follow from it. Finally, I will consider and defend the reply that since policy decisions are subject to a requirement that they be justified within the limits of public reason, and since these limits include a requirement that the justification be accessible, moral experts are barred from providing policy advice which rests on too complex moral arguments. (shrink)

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have fueled widespread academic discourse on the ethics of AI within and across a diverse set of disciplines. One notable subfield of AI ethics is machine ethics, which seeks to implement ethical considerations into AI systems. However, since different research efforts within machine ethics have discipline-specific concepts, practices, and goals, the resulting body of work is pestered with conflict and confusion as opposed to fruitful synergies. The aim of this paper is to explore ways to (...) alleviate these issues, both on a practical and theoretical level of analysis. First, we describe two approaches to machine ethics: the philosophical approach and the engineering approach and show how tensions between the two arise due to discipline specific practices and aims. Using the concept of disciplinary capture, we then discuss potential promises and pitfalls to cross-disciplinary collaboration. Drawing on recent work in philosophy of science, we finally describe how metacognitive scaffolds can be used to avoid epistemological obstacles and foster innovative collaboration in AI ethics in general and machine ethics in particular. (shrink)

Korleis kan forsking fremje menneskerettane? Og korleis oppfattar forskarar frå forskjellige fag og disiplinar menneskerettar innanfor si forsking? Kapitla i denne boka er skrivne av 14 forskarar som represen.terer varierande fagtradisjonar og forskingsmetodar. Dei viser at menneske.rettsspørsmål er aktuelle som aldri før, og inspirerer forskarar i eit breitt spekter av fag. Sjølv om menneskerettane tar ulik form i ulike fag, viser boka at dei er viktige også i fag der dei er mindre synlege. Forskarane som skriv i denne boka, konsentrerer (...) seg om grunnleggjande menneskerettar med stikkord som fred, fridom, likskap, verdighet, utdanning og fråver av diskriminering av svake enkeltindivid, grupper eller folk. Forsking har bi.dratt til at desse menneskerettane i dag står sterkare internasjonalt enn nokon gong. Men nettopp fordi menneskerettane er blitt så synlege og internasjonalt nærverande, blir det tydeleg kor grove brota på dei er i.mange land, og kor mykje arbeid som står att før dei er sikra som rettar for alle menneske. Kapitla i boka er reviderte og ajourførte versjonar av foredraga på ein konferanse som menneskerettskomiteen i Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi arrangerte i desember 2015. Jakob Lothe er professor i engelsk litteratur ved Universitetet i Oslo og leiar av menneskerettskomiteen i Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi. (shrink)

Most laypersons and political theorists endorse the claims that all adults should be enfranchised and all children should be disenfranchised. The first claim rejects epistocracy; the second...

Important decisions that impact humans lives, livelihoods, and the natural environment are increasingly being automated. Delegating tasks to so-called automated decision-making systems can improve efficiency and enable new solutions. However, these benefits are coupled with ethical challenges. For example, ADMS may produce discriminatory outcomes, violate individual privacy, and undermine human self-determination. New governance mechanisms are thus needed that help organisations design and deploy ADMS in ways that are ethical, while enabling society to reap the full economic and social benefits of (...) automation. In this article, we consider the feasibility and efficacy of ethics-based auditing as a governance mechanism that allows organisations to validate claims made about their ADMS. Building on previous work, we define EBA as a structured process whereby an entity’s present or past behaviour is assessed for consistency with relevant principles or norms. We then offer three contributions to the existing literature. First, we provide a theoretical explanation of how EBA can contribute to good governance by promoting procedural regularity and transparency. Second, we propose seven criteria for how to design and implement EBA procedures successfully. Third, we identify and discuss the conceptual, technical, social, economic, organisational, and institutional constraints associated with EBA. We conclude that EBA should be considered an integral component of multifaced approaches to managing the ethical risks posed by ADMS. (shrink)

It appears that consciousness science is progressing soundly, in particular in its search for the neural correlates of consciousness. There are two main approaches to this search, one is content-based (focusing on the contrast between conscious perception of, e.g., faces vs. houses), the other is state-based (focusing on overall conscious states, e.g., the contrast between dreamless sleep vs. the awake state). Methodological and conceptual considerations of a number of concrete studies show that both approaches are problematic: the content-based approach seems (...) to set aside crucial aspects of consciousness; and the state-based approach seems over-inclusive in a way that is hard to rectify without losing sight of the crucial conscious-unconscious contrast. Consequently, the search for the neural correlates of consciousness is in need of new experimental paradigms. (shrink)

Eine zentrale Frage der Populationsethik ist, ob eine Welt mit zusätzlichen glücklichen Individuen besser ist als eine ansonsten gleiche Welt ohne diese Individuen. Natürlich wirkt sich die Existenz zusätzlicher Individuen auf verschiedenste Weise auf das Wohlergehen anderer (wie z.B. der Eltern) aus und ist aus diesem Grund instrumentell gut oder schlecht. Es verbleibt jedoch die strittige Frage, ob die Existenz zusätzlicher glücklicher Individuen an sich gut ist. Nach einer verbreiteten (obgleich keineswegs universellen) Intuition ist die Existenz zusätzlicher glücklicher Individuen, zumindest (...) wenn es diesen nicht außergewöhnlich gut geht, an sich weder gut noch schlecht, sondern ethisch neutral. Diese Intuition motiviert das starke Neutralitätsprinzip, welches in etwa besagt, dass eine Welt mit zusätzlichen Individuen, denen es nicht besonders gut oder schlecht geht, genauso gut ist wie die gleiche Welt ohne diese Individuen. Im Folgenden rekonstruiere ich ein einflussreiches Argument von John Broome gegen das starke Neutralitätsprinzip. Broomes Argument ist ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie eine überraschende und für viele kontraintuitive Konklusion aus weitgehend anerkannten Prämissen abgeleitet werden kann. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Over the years several non-equivalent probabilistic measures of coherence have been discussed in the philosophical literature. In this paper we examine these measures with respect to their empirical adequacy. Using test cases from the coherence literature as vignettes for psychological experiments we investigate whether the measures can predict the subjective coherence assessments of the participants. It turns out that the participants’ coherence assessments are best described by Roche’s coherence measure based on Douven and Meijs’ average mutual support approach and the (...) conditional probability. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is traditionally a conservative project. It analyses the virtues that humanity has been relying on since antiquity. This conservatism unduly limits the potential of virtue ethics to contribute to moral progress. Instead, we should pay more attention to constructionist virtue ethics with the help of conceptual engineering. I will argue that revising and ameliorating the virtue concepts which a community uses directly and indirectly leads to a change of the virtues that exist in this community. By revising and (...) innovating virtue concepts, we can re-make and improve the virtues that we have. (shrink)

The notion that the brain is a prediction error minimizer entails, via the notion of Markov blankets and self-evidencing, a form of global scepticism — an inability to rule out evil demon scenarios. This type of scepticism is viewed by some as a sign of a fatally flawed conception of mind and cognition. Here I discuss whether this scepticism is ameliorated by acknowledging the role of action in the most ambitious approach to prediction error minimization, namely under the free energy (...) principle. I argue that the scepticism remains but that the role of action in the free energy principle constrains the demon’s work. This yields new insights about the free energy principle, epistemology, and the place of mind in nature. (shrink)

What may democratic citizens hope for? In order to answer this question, this article takes its cue from John Rawls’s notion of reasonable hope. Rawls is acutely aware of a tension we face in demarcating the limits of hope in democratic politics, yet fails to resolve it: hope should allow us to critically distance ourselves from the existing social world, yet not be entirely disconnected from it. In order to do justice to both desiderata, I propose to distinguish between individual (...) and collective levels of reasonable hope, with democratic institutions and practices mediating between the two. (shrink)

Bortolotti’s Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs defends the view that delusions are beliefs on a continuum with other beliefs. A different view is that delusions are more like illusions, that is, they arise from faulty perception. This view, which is not targeted by the book, makes it easier to explain why delusions are so alien and disabling but needs to appeal to forensic aspects of functioning.

In rubber hand illusions and full body illusions, touch sensations are projected to non-body objects such as rubber hands, dolls or virtual bodies. The robustness, limits and further perceptual consequences of such illusions are not yet fully explored or understood. A number of experiments are reported that test the limits of a variant of the rubber hand illusion. Methodology/Principal Findings -/- A variant of the rubber hand illusion is explored, in which the real and foreign hands are aligned in personal (...) space. The presence of the illusion is ascertained with participants' scores and temperature changes of the real arm. This generates a basic illusion of touch projected to a foreign arm. Participants are presented with further, unusual visuotactile stimuli subsequent to onset of the basic illusion. Such further visuotactile stimulation is found to generate very unusual experiences of supernatural touch and touch on a non-hand object. The finding of touch on a non-hand object conflicts with prior findings, and to resolve this conflict a further hypothesis is successfully tested: that without prior onset of the basic illusion this unusual experience does not occur. Conclusions/Significance -/- A rubber hand illusion is found that can arise when the real and the foreign arm are aligned in personal space. This illusion persists through periods of no tactile stimulation and is strong enough to allow very unusual experiences of touch felt on a cardboard box and experiences of touch produced at a distance, as if by supernatural causation. These findings suggest that one's visual body image is explained away during experience of the illusion and they may be of further importance to understanding the role of experience in delusion formation. The findings of touch on non-hand objects may help reconcile conflicting results in this area of research. In addition, new evidence is provided that relates to the recently discovered psychologically induced temperature changes that occur during the illusion. (shrink)

There is surprising evidence that introspection of our phenomenal states varies greatly between individuals and within the same individual over time. This puts pressure on the notion that introspection gives reliable access to our own phenomenology: introspective unreliability would explain the variability, while assuming that the underlying phenomenology is stable. I appeal to a body of neurocomputational, Bayesian theory and neuroimaging findings to provide an alternative explanation of the evidence: though some limited testing conditions can cause introspection to be unreliable, (...) mostly it is our phenomenology itself that is variable. With this account of phenomenal variability, the occurrence of the surprising evidence can be explained while generally retaining introspective reliability. (shrink)

Changing weather conditions and barometer changes usually coincide. Accordingly, the propositions that my barometer falls and that the weather conditions deteriorate are quite coherent—especially under the assumption that there is a drop in atmospheric pressure. Nevertheless, scenarios like these involving common causes turn out to be highly problematic for a prominent class of probabilistic coherence measures, namely, those explicating coherence based on the idea of relevance-sensitivity. In this article, we show that none of these measures accords with the intuition that (...) in the light of a common cause, two propositions referring to the cause’s effects should turn out to be coherent. This result casts doubts on the view that these measures can be considered proper explications of the concept of coherence. 1Introduction2Relevance-Sensitive Coherence Measures3Common Causes, Screening-off, and Coherence4Discussion 4.1Multiple explications of coherence4.2Conditionalization versus set expansion5Conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper, we sketch a programme for AI-driven social theory. We begin by defining what we mean by artificial intelligence (AI) in this context. We then lay out our specification for how AI-based models can draw on the growing availability of digital data to help test the validity of different social theories based on their predictive power. In doing so, we use the work of Randall Collins and his state breakdown model to exemplify that, already today, AI-based models can (...) help synthesise knowledge from a variety of sources, reason about the world, and apply what is known across a wide range of problems in a systematic way. However, we also find that AI-driven social theory remains subject to a range of practical, technical, and epistemological limitations. Most critically, existing AI-systems lack three essential capabilities needed to advance social theory in ways that are cumulative, holistic, open-ended, and purposeful. These are (1) semanticisation, i.e., the ability to develop and operationalize verbal concepts to represent machine-manipulable knowledge; (2) transferability, i.e., the ability to transfer what has been learned in one context to another; and (3) generativity, i.e., the ability to independently create and improve on concepts and models. We argue that if the gaps identified here are addressed by further research, there is no reason why, in the future, the most advanced programme in social theory should not be led by AI-driven cumulative advances. (shrink)

Este texto contrasta o entendimento comum do "perspectivismo de Nietzsche" com o seu uso da palavra "Perspektive" e termos semelhantes. As primeiras seções proporcionam uma breve pesquisa do desenvolvimento dos diversos significados através da carreira de Nietzsche e a influência de Gustav Teichmüller. As seções subsequentes revelam alguns problemas de leituras comuns do perspectivismo, como a teoria do conhecimento de Nietzsche. Discutindo os assuntos de falsificação, objetividade e autorreferência, as seções remanescentes levam à conclusão que o perspectivismo não deve ser (...) entendido como a doutrina epistemológica de Nietzsche, mas como algo que não o deixa criar tal doutrina.This paper contrasts common understandings of "Nietzsche's perspectivism" with his use of the word "Perspektive" and related wordforms. The first sections provide a brief survey of the development of different meanings throughout Nietzsche's career and the influence of Gustav Teichmüller. The next sections unfold some problems of common readings of perspectivism as Nietzsche's theory of knowledge. Discussing the issues of falsification, objectivity and self-reference, the remaining sections lead to the conclusion that perspectivsm should not be understood as Nietzsche's doctrine of epistemology but rather as what keeps him from providing such a doctrine. (shrink)

It is common in moral philosophy to test the validity of moral principles by proposing counter-examples in the form of cases where the application of the principle does not give the conclusion we intuitively find valid. These cases are often imaginary and sometimes rather ‘outlandish’, involving ray guns, non-existent creatures, etc. I discuss whether we can test moral principles with the help of outlandish cases, or if only realistic cases are admissible. I consider two types of argument against outlandish cases: (...) 1) Since moral principles are meant for guiding action in this world, cases drawn from other worlds are irrelevant. 2) We lack the capacity to apply our intuitive moral competence to outlandish cases. I argue that while the first approach is importantly flawed, the second approach is plausible, not because our moral competence per se is limited to cases from this world, but because we lack the capacity to imagine outlandish cases, and we cannot apply our moral competence to a case we fail to imagine properly. (shrink)

Two kinds of cosmopolitan vision are typically associated with Kant's practical philosophy: on the one hand, the ideal of a universal moral community of rational agents who constitute a 'kingdom of ends' qua shared humanity. On the other hand, the ideal of a distinctly political community of'world citizens' who share membership in some kind of global polity. Kant's Grounded Cosmopolitanism introduces a novel account of Kant's global thinking, one that has hitherto been largely overlooked: a grounded cosmopolitanism concerned with spelling (...) out the normative implications of the fact thata plurality of corporeal agents concurrently inhabit the earth's spherical surface. It is neither concerned with a community of shared humanity in the abstract, nor of shared citizenship, but with a 'disjunctive' community of earth dwellers, that is, embodied agents in direct physical confrontationwith each other. Kant's grounded cosmopolitanism as laid out in the Doctrine of Right frames the question how individuals relate to one another globally by virtue of concurrent existence and derives from this a specific set of constraints on cross-border interactions. (shrink)