This paper analyses the phenomenology and epistemology of chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard. The computational architecture underpinning these chatbots are large language models (LLMs), which are generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on a massive dataset of text extracted from the Web. We conceptualise these LLMs as multifunctional computational cognitive artifacts, used for various cognitive tasks such as translating, summarizing, answering questions, information-seeking, and much more. Phenomenologically, LLMs can be experienced as a “quasi-other”; when that happens, users anthropomorphise them. (...) For most users, current LLMs are black boxes, i.e., for the most part, they lack data transparency and algorithmic transparency. They can, however, be phenomenologically and informationally transparent, in which case there is an interactional flow. Anthropomorphising and interactional flow can, in some users, create an attitude of (unwarranted) trust towards the output LLMs generate. We conclude this paper by drawing on the epistemology of trust and testimony to examine the epistemic implications of these dimensions. Whilst LLMs generally generate accurate responses, we observe two epistemic pitfalls. Ideally, users should be able to match the level of trust that they place in LLMs to the degree that LLMs are trustworthy. However, both their data and algorithmic opacity and their phenomenological and informational transparency can make it difficult for users to calibrate their trust correctly. The effects of these limitations are twofold: users may adopt unwarranted attitudes of trust towards the outputs of LLMs (which is particularly problematic when LLMs hallucinate), and the trustworthiness of LLMs may be undermined. (shrink)

Parto de uma conceitualização geral de como o problema do mal fora abordado ao longo da tradição filosófica e religiosa, enquanto problema ontológico e relativo, no mais das vezes, a uma teodiceia que busca explicar a existência do mal no mundo. Em seguida, abordo uma nova forma de se pensar o problema do mal através do pensamento idealista de Immanuel Kant, que movimentou a problemática em uma direção outra àquela anterior, ou seja, afirmando que o mal não era um problema (...) localizado na realidade, mas no sujeito enquanto ser dotado de moralidade, residindo na dimensão mais radical da natureza humana. Em Arendt, o mal deixa o plano do sujeito singular e passa a ser compreendido enquanto um fenômeno político. Para a autora, o mal não deve ser um fenômeno político, todavia com a ascensão dos movimentos totalitários e outros fenômenos de ruptura com o fio da tradição, esse problema passa a ocupar a dimensão da vida pública. Desta forma, o objetivo da autora é tentar compreender as condições para se pensar o mal enquanto fenômeno político, assim como aquilo que lhe fundamenta e garante legitimidade. O fio condutor deste artigo são as obras Origens do Totalitarismo (ARENDT, 2018) e o conjunto de ensaios publicados no período de 1930-54 (ARENDT, 2008). O produto da presente análise refere-se à experiência humana da solidão enquanto fundamento do mal na esfera política. (shrink)

Essays appraising the contemporary relevance of am kara for inter-religious dialogue and human rights as well as revised assessments of am kara s understanding of divine grace, the role of the gods, Buddhism, am kara s relation to later Advaita, and the unity of the Self.

Long known solely as fascism s precursor, Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) re-emerges in this volume as a versatile thinker with a colossally diverse posterity whose continuing relevance in Europe is ensured by his theorization of the ...

This authoritative new introduction draws on both Richard H. Popkin's unparalleled scholarship and a wealth of historical and philosophical sources to highlight the real influences behind Spinoza's thought. Popkin reconstructs Spinoza the man, and his theories, contrasting these findings with some of the popularity held misconceptions. Locating him within the context of his family and background, the author assesses the impact on Spinoza of everything from his infamous excommunication, to his affection for Euclidian geometry and the work of Descartes. (...) With a full account of Spinoza's groundbreaking Tractatus and Ethics, and an overview of his influence on both of his contemporaries and those who were to folow, this concise survey offers a variety of new perspectives, and will be warmly welcomed by students, scholars and interested readers alike. (shrink)

David Lewis's account of the de se has two parts. The first part involves treating the objects of the attitudes, not as propositions but as properties. The second part involves treating our attitude to these properties as that of self‐ascription. In particular, much recent literature has tried to incorporate his account simply by treating the objects of the attitudes as centered worlds, where a centered world is an ordered pair of a possible world together with a spatiotemporal location. The explanation (...) of the account in terms of centered worlds originates with Lewis himself, in his development of some comments from Quine. This chapter examines some of other potential costs of Lewis's approach, those that stem from the idea of primitive self‐ascription. Lewis's account of the de se is both more radical, and more unintuitive, than has been appreciated. (shrink)

Connaître la date du premier siège de Nisibe est important car celle-ci permet de connaître la date de la mort de l'évêque le plus connu de cette époque : Jacques de Nisibe. L'A. pense à l'année 337. Jacques a du mourir pendant le siège et non après comme l'attestent certaines sources. Il est mort le 15 juillet 337 et a été enterré dans les murs de la cité.

In this article, recent changes in the Mexican research system are examined. The restructuring of the global political economy and a severe crisis of legitimacy in the Mexican political system have generated a turn toward neoliberalism by the ruling party in a bid to attract foreign investment. A key component of neoliberal science policy is the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, a system of salary increments for selected researchers instituted during the 1980s. Examination of SNI's decisions reveals numerous discriminatory and self-serving (...) practices that are inconsistent with widely accepted norms in the scientific community. During the same period, repressive actions against researchers, such as the peremptory closure of research institutions, firings of research ers, and direct intimidation, have increased. The victims of discrimination and repression documented here are disproportionately foreign-born Mexicans, leftists, critics of the ruling party, and researchers in environmental and energy studies. (shrink)

Useful to both students and scholars of the social sciences and humanities, this book provides a guide to fundamental issues in twentieth-century Marxist thought. Outlining the two distinct and incompatible critiques of vulgar Marxism-- Marxist-Leninism and humanistic Marxism--that gained prominence in the aftermath of World War I, this book presents both an historical overview of these two dominant traditions and a critical analysis of their philosophical roots. Challenging the viewpoints of Marxist thought which have prevailed in this century, Richard (...) Hudelson, argues that the supposed philosophical breakthroughs claimed by both Marxist-Leninism and humanistic Marxism rest upon flawed reasoning. With a careful critique of these prevailing views he presents his own view which while receptive to the social scientific work of current analytical Marxism, de-emphasizes the importance of philosophy in the study of Marxism. Hudelson contends that developments in contemporary philosophy of science will allow for an appreciation of the scientific Marxism of the Second International without recourse to the philosophical theories of humanistic Marxism and Marxist-Leninism. Also, using some of the more recent developments in the philosophy of science, this book makes possible a fruitful exchange between analytical Marxism and Marxist-Leninism. Divided into three parts, the book first presents a historical introduction which identifies positions and arguments of historical significance. This is followed by an analytical look at various arguments to determine where the strongest position lies. Finally, the author offers some concluding remarks on the significance of his analysis for current directions within Marxist philosophy. (shrink)

Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes, widely known classical rationalists in the Arabic/Islamic philosophical tradition and strongly infl uential sources for Latin philosophy in the High Middle Ages, all thought themselves to be following Aristotle’s lead regarding the intellectual abstraction of intelligibles in the formation of necessary and unchanging scientific knowledge. For Aristotle it is clear that sensation is a potentiality for apprehending or coming to be individual sensed objects found in the world exterior to the human soul. This takes place by (...) way of a separation of the forms of sensibles from matter and a reception of them as an actualization of the senses of the soul. 1 In an analogous fashion, intellectual knowing is a potentiality for apprehending or coming to be in act non-individuated intellectual forms that are somehow in individuated particular sensible things. Although Aristotle says that “the objects of thought are in the sensible forms”, the analogy with sensation breaks down when it comes to the objects intellectually known. The reason for this is that the nonindividuated or universal forms of human knowledge are not in the sensibles in act as they must be in the intellect. 2 Again following Aristotle De Anima 3.4 and 3.5, these thinkers hold for a part of intellect that is passive or receptive of all things and another part that is active in making all things, this latter described as a disposition like light, this as well describing the active agent as acting like light. This second part, which the Arabic tradition called the Agent Intellect, sometimes describing it also as Active Intellect, al-‘aql al-fa‘il, was understood per Aristotelem to be an eternal cause of the intellectual forms in the human intellect. It was accepted that, without a grounding in separate eternal intellect, there may well be generalization or abstraction – in some sense of the 57term? but scientific knowledge understood as true, necessary and unchanging will not be achieved. 3 Of course, in Posterior Analytics 2.19 Aristotle writes of sensory experience and provides the image of a retreat gradually coming to a halt, saying, “The soul is so constituted that it is capable of the same sort of process”. This process somehow establishes the universal in the soul even though perception is of the particular. He describes this as taking place by induction, writing, “Clearly then it must be by induction that we acquire knowledge of the primary principles, because this is also the way in which general concepts are conveyed to us by sense-perception.” These are “first things” or primary principles or premises required by demonstration. And the Arabic tradition understood Aristotle to hold for the necessity of demonstration in the formation of scientific knowledge, something that stringently requires not only proper syllogistic form but also first premises that are known to be true, not just supposed or simply generalized on the basis of experience. 4 For the Arabic tradition, Aristotle?s doctrine of intellectual understanding required the involvement of that separate Agent Intellect to provide a solid foundation for human scientific knowledge by way of intellectual abstraction. (shrink)

Tradução para o português do verbete "Ceticismo Moderno", de Richard Popkin, retirado de Jonathan Dancy e Ernest Sosa (org.) Um Companheiro para a Epistemologia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, pp. 719-721). ISSN 1749-8457.

L'A. esamina in particolare il Commento grande al De anima. In primo luogo evidenzia l'insegnamento averroista in relazione al tema dell'intelletto e dell'individuo, in secondo luogo esamina alcune proposizioni relative all'immortalità dell'anima individuale, ma sottolinea la difficoltà di conciliare tali affermazioni di Averroè con la dottrina dell'intelletto. L'ultima parte dello studio propone un esame critico del recente studio di O.N. Mohammed, Averroes, Aristotle, and the Qur'an on Immortality «International Philosophical Quarterly» 33 37-55.

Il semble évident que la philosophie de l’art développée par Danto s’oppose en tout point à l’esthétique pragmatiste. Non pas que Danto ait été un commentateur critique de Peirce ou de Dewey, auxquels il se réfère finalement fort peu. Mais le renouveau pragmatiste de l’esthétique, quand il remet au premier plan la notion d’expérience esthétique ou quand il cherche à restaurer la continuité entre l’art et la vie, s’est quant à lui en bonne partie explicitement construit contre l’œuvre de Danto. (...) Sans nier ces différences essentielles, Richard Shusterman revient toutefois ici sur sa dette, à la fois personnelle et théorique, à l’égard de Danto. (shrink)

Many readers of this journal will be familiar with the authors collected in this volume, who are leading Marxian theorists from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The quality of the contributions, combined with the vast range of issues explored, makes this collection all but indispensable for anyone concerned with contemporary Marxian theory. Four of the most important claims distinguishing a Marxian perspective from competing approaches are illuminated here. The first concerns the end of social life in capitalism. As Simon (...) Clarke documents, Adam Smith found the idea that the ultimate goal of economic activity might be something different from the satisfaction of human wants and needs literally unintelligible. Some subsequent mainstream theorists have held that capitalist markets attain this goal more or less automatically; others have insisted that more or less intensive government intervention is required. For Marx, in contrast, an inhuman end – capital accumulation – holds sway, and even the most powerful states must accommodate to it. Human ends tend to be met only to the extent they further (or at least are compatible with) the “the self-valorization of value.” The papers by Clarke, Ben Fine, and Suzanne de Brunhoff provide clear and compelling accounts of this central dimension of Marx’s theory, focusing especially on his theory of money. Other authors in the collection take this understanding of capitalism as their starting point and develop it in original directions. Dick Bryan shows how the.. (shrink)