The concept of alignment has undergone a remarkable rise in recent years to take center stage in the ethics of artificial intelligence. There are now numerous philosophical studies of the values that should be used in this ethical framework as well as a technical literature operationalizing these values in machine learning models. This article takes a step back to address a more basic set of critical questions: Where has the ethical imperative of alignment come from? What is the ethical logic (...) of alignment—how, exactly, does it propose to regulate machines’ and peoples’ conduct? And what are the social and political implications of this ethics? After discussing the logical and normative implications of the term itself—in what sense alignment can have an ethical meaning—we undertake a four-part “anatomy” of alignment in contemporary large language models (LLMs): first, a relatively technical sense in sequence modeling; second, a more normative sense relating to how outputs of pre-trained models are ethically evaluated; a third sense where external values are introduced using fine-tuning techniques to manage undesired model behaviors; and fourth sense, where alignment is given extreme ethical stakes in philosophical discussions of existential risks. We find that the ethics of alignment is fundamentally concerned with the problem of control, with unintended model behaviors that arise from divergences between training objectives and the normative expectations that govern the contexts in which they are used. Alignment serves to bridge the gap between what we call an “is” normativity, of statistical patterns identified by models and an “ought” normativity where values are technically introduced in models to steer them away from undesired behaviors. By problematizing control, the ethics of alignment weakens capacities to both make more substantive ethical judgments and also political decisions about how to live with AI. (shrink)

Ritual and Myth in the International Corona-Drama. A Conversation with Jeffrey Alexander.

I argue that standard functionalism leads to absurd conclusions as to the number of minds that would exist in the universe if persons were duplicated. Rather than yielding the conclusion that making a molecule-by-molecule copy of a material person would result in two persons, it leads to the conclusion that three persons, or perhaps only one person, would result. This is absurd and standard functionalism should be abandoned. Social varieties of functionalism fare no better, though there is an Aristotelian variety (...) of functionalism that accepts irreducible finality that escapes this particular reductio. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that divine creation of human beings is compatible with evolutionary theory, except perhaps in regard of the human soul, and that neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory provides an explanation of speciation and of complex features of organisms that undercuts Paley-style teleological arguments, whether or not the evolutionary mechanisms are truly random or deterministic. I will argue that a plausible understanding of the doctrine of creation of human beings is either logically or rationally incompatible with full evolutionary theory, even (...) if one does not take souls into account. Consequently, a theist needs to move to a weaker version either of the creation doctrine or of evolutionary theory, or both. (shrink)

The production of a number of vaccines involves the use of cell-lines originally derived from fetuses directly aborted in the 1960s and 1970s. Such cell-lines, indeed sometimes the very same ones, are important to on-going research, including at Catholic institutions. The cells currently used are removed by a number of decades and by a significant number of cellular generations from the original cells. Moreover, the original cells extracted from the bodies of the aborted fetuses were transformed to produce the cell (...) lines, since otherwise they would be incapable of the kind of culturing that is required. (shrink)

Mill predicted that “[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written … because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out in ever greater relief.” Indeed, _On Liberty_ is one of the most influential books ever written, and remains a foundational document for the understanding of vital political, philosophical and (...) social issues. In addition to its many useful appendices, this new edition includes a chronology, bibliography, and a substantial introduction which outlines Mill’s life and works, and sets this central work of 1859 in the context of both his own intellectual development and of the play of ideas and political forces in Victorian society. (shrink)

This paper explicates two notions of emergencewhich are based on two ways of distinguishinglevels of properties for dynamical systems.Once the levels are defined, the strategies ofcharacterizing the relation of higher level to lower levelproperties as diachronic and synchronic emergenceare the same. In each case, the higher level properties aresaid to be emergent if they are novel or irreducible with respect to the lower level properties. Novelty andirreducibility are given precise meanings in terms of the effectsthat the change of a bifurcation (...) or perturbation parameterin the system has. (The same strategy can be applied to otherways of separating levels of properties, like themicro/macro distinction.)The notions of emergence developed here are notions of emergencein a weak sense: the higher level emergent properties wecapture are always structural properties (or are realized insuch properties), that is, they are defined in terms of the lowerlevel properties and their relations. Diachronic and synchronicemergent properties are distinctions within thecategory of structural properties. (shrink)

R. W. Sharples provides a new edition, with introduction and commentary in English, of the Greek text. The Mantissa is a collection of short discussions, transmitted as a supplement to the treatise On the Soul by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200 AD).The collection includes discussion of a range of topics, among them the nature of soul and intellect, theories of how seeing takes place, issues in ethics, and the nature of fate. The text is based upon a (...) new collation of the principal manuscript, the ninth century Venetus Marcianus graecus 258, and the apparatus corrects Bruns' misreportings of the principal manuscript and of the others that he used. Account has also been taken of the medieval Arabic and Latin versions of some of the sections which circulated independently, notably On Intellect which had a substantial influence on medieval philosophy. The introduction is chiefly concerned with the manuscripts and the relation between them. The commentary is based on the notes to the editor's English translation of the work (London: Duckworth and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); however, the commentary also takes into account more recent work on the collection by various scholars. (shrink)

This paper discusses two passages from Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentary on Aristotle’s _ Topics _ that are transmitted in Ps-Jābir’s _ Kitāb al-Nukhab _. It argues that the Arabic translation of Alexander’s commentary may have been made from a fuller version than what came down to us in Greek. Especially since the author(s) of the Jābir-corpus form a tradition different from the school of Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 873) and authors associated to the ‘Baghdad school’, whose earliest figure (...) is Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 940), the Arabic fragments of Alexander’s commentary preserved in the _ Kitāb al-Nukhab _ promise to shed more light on the early reception of the _ Topics _ and the different contexts in which Aristotelian dialectic was studied in the Islamic world. (shrink)

Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structural stability familiar from dynamical systems theory. Robust supervenience, I argue, captures what the non-reductive physicalist (...) wants from supervenience; most importantly, it provides a natural background for reconstructing the notion of (diachronic) property emergence in a way acceptable to physicalists. (shrink)

The judgment competent reasoners exhibit in deciding when reasoning should not be used to resolve disagreements is eroded by adopting the popular strategy of ascending to higher levels of generality. That strategy encourages disputants to believeoften incorrectly-that they stand on some common ground that can be exploited to reach agreement. But if we regularly assume that we share values and interests with our opponents in seemingly intractable disputes, we risk losing the ability to judge whether or not we share enough. (...) And when we lose track of the difference between promising and unpromising conditions for reasoning, we end up trying to reason at the wrong times. Such reasoning can in turn seriously damage our reasoning skills themselves. (shrink)

Alexander Eliot, distinguished critic and art historian, breaks through to the silent world of masterpieces and makes them live anew in the eye of the imagination. Eliot plumbs the truths expressed by the greatest works of painting, sculpture and architecture. Eliot¿s style is crystalline, and his purpose plain: to bring art back to the center of our culture.

The concept of deep disagreement is useful for highlighting skills and resources required for reasons-giving to be effective in restoring cooperative or joint action. It marks a limit. When it is instead understood as a challenge to be overcome by using reasons, it leads to significant practical, theoretical, and moral distortions.

A. G. Baumgarten's foundation of aesthetics as a branch of philosophical reflection is itself deeply rooted in Leibnizian metaphysics. From this starting-point Baumgarten comes to a kind of monadological concept of the work of art, that gets now an inexhaustible and thruthrepresenting meaning. This truth of the work of art however cannot be recognized rationally, for it is impossible for human beings to be aware of a beautiful object's 'metaphysical truth', which can only be perceived by the senses as - (...) to quote Baumgarten - 'aesthetical truth'. Still it is possible, by rational and scientific hermeneutics, to transfer some aspects of aesthetical to logical truth. The interest in art is therefore at the same time an interest in the cognition of the metaphysical cosmic order, and Baumgarten's aesthetics similarly are the first foundation of philosophical hermeneutics of art. (shrink)

Alexander Hamilton presents his early formative years, sharing the way his engagement with the cyanotype process has informed his art practice, from his time at Edinburgh College of Art, to his program of exhibitions and residencies, through to his work within the field of public arts. This personal history is combined with essays by academics, scholars and curators who engage with the intellectual roots of his work and practice. A comprehensive selection of Hamilton’s photography, including his unique plant-based cyanotypes, (...) completes this beautiful book. (shrink)

Some, notably Peter van Inwagen, in order to avoid problems with free will and omniscience, replace the condition that an omniscient being knows all true propositions with a version of the apparently weaker condition that an omniscient being knows all knowable true propositions. I shall show that the apparently weaker condition, when conjoined with uncontroversial claims and the logical closure of an omniscient being's knowledge, still yields the claim that an omniscient being knows all true propositions.

The "Supplement" transmitted as the second book of "On the Soul" by Alexander of Aphrodisias is a collection of short texts on a wide range of topics from psychology, including the general hylomorphic account of soul and its faculties, and the theory of vision; questions in ethics ; and issues relating to responsibility, chance and fate. One of the texts in the collection, "On Intellect", had a major influence on medieval Arabic and Western thought, greater than that of (...) class='Hi'>Alexander's "On the Soul" itself. The treatises may all be by Alexander himself; certainly the majority of them are closely connected with his other works. Many of them, however, consist of collections of arguments on particular issues, collections which probably incorporate material from earlier in the history of the Peripatetic school. This translation is from a new edition of the Greek text based on a collation of all known manuscripts and comparison with medieval Arabic and Latin translations. (shrink)

SENSATIONALISM 1 1. Introductory 1 2. Mach's Sensationalism 4 3. Developments of Sensationalism 22 II. THE INHERENT WEAKNESS OF SEN- SATIONALISM 25 1. The Point of Sensationalism 25 2. The Ambiguity of 'Sensation' 27 3. The Fundamental Conflict 35 4. Mistakes, Incorrigibility and Simplicity 40 III. DESCRIPTION 51 1. Describing and Descriptions 51 2. Describing in Terms of Sensations 67 IV. THE POSSIBILITY OF 'PURE' DES- CRIPTIONS 79 V. SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS 99 VI. DESCRIPTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 111 BIBLIOGRAPHY 142 INDEX 145 (...) -/- -v- . (shrink)

This volume contains the Arabic translations of a lost treatise by Alexander of Aphrodisias "On the Principles of the Universe" with English translation, introduction and commentary. It also includes an Arabic and Syriac glossary. The introduction and commentary deal in detail with the manuscripts, the translators and the exegetical tendencies of the text, as well as with its reception in Arabic philosophy. The main theme of the work is the motion of the heavenly bodies and their influence on the (...) physical world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions HEDONISM IN THE PROTAGORAS SOME INSOLUBLEPROBLEMSOf historical scholarship are posed by the fact that the hero of Plato's dialogues was also an historical figure. Commentators are prone to identify the Socrates of the dialogues with the man who drank the hemlock and walked the streets of Athens. This is perhaps unexceptionable 9 But beyond this they are often tempted (even when they know better) to speak (...) of the dialogues as if they were reports or descriptions of actual events in the life of the historical Socrates. Even so astute a scholar as Gregory Vlastos, in his recent lucid Introduction to the Protagoras, falls into this pit. The dramatic date of the Protagoras is no later than 433, five years before the birth of Plato. It would require clear and strong evidence (of which there is none) to convince us that a verbatim report of this encounter was preserved for thirty years or more, to be handed on to Plato at the appropriate moment. Vlastos, of course, would laugh at this suggestion, but hear him talking about the logic of Socrates' argument: I trust I have made it clear that Socrates' performance in this argument is much better than would appear from the fact, which it would be folly to hush up, that he has made a definite error. For the error he does make is one that he could easily have detected when he got the chance to think out his moves in a more leisurely moment. He would then have seen that he could have produced a valid deductive argument for his immediate objective, and did not have to revoke a single inference he had made.... This is not to deny that he occasionally makes grave errors. 9 It is only to insist that as a practitioner of logical inference, and one who practices on his feet, in the stress of live debate, and with no calculus or any formal patterns of valid inference to guide him, Socrates is not a bungler, but a master? This is all very well, except that the argument Vlastos is discussing was not constructed in the stress of live debate but rather, as it were, in the cool of Plato's study. Plato was not practicing on his feet, and, we may presume, had ample time to think through and revise the arguments in question. Are we to interpret Vlastos as claiming that in later, real encounters witnessed by Plato, Socrates did argue in this way? And that Plato here has Socrates commit logical errors (which he, Plato, knows are errors; for he has Protagoras object to them) in order to portray Socrates as a man who makes frequent mistakes but thinks pretty well on his feet? 1Plato's Protagoras, edited, with an Introduction, by Gregory Vlastos (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1956), pp. xxxv-xxxvi. [7s] 74 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY In fact, we tend to think of the dialogues as having two authors, Plato and Socrates, and we frequently cannot choose between them. In the Protagoras it is even worse; for many scholars have assumed the existence of a third author, Protagoras, who is credited with having written at least part of his role in the dialogue. I offer here the radical thesis that the Protagoras has but one author, Plato, and that everything in the dialogue is to be laid to him.2 My assumptions are that from beginning to end the Protagoras is a product of Plato's imagination, and that Plato is primarily a philosopher and only secondarily a biographer--or perhaps we might say he is a biographer of ideas, not of persons. The philosophical stances assumed by the disputants may or may not resemble those of the historical figures, but we have no reason to attribute the words spoken or the turns taken in the argument to anyone but Plato. The question, why does Socrates say this at this point, must, if it is to be sensible, mean why does Plato have Socrates say this at this point. The answers, if there are answers, will be found within the dialogues and not in speculative history. In the final argument in the Protagoras (351b... (shrink)

This volume argues in favor of rethinking basic issues in cognitive science in the context of recent developments.

I argue that an examination of the analogy between the notion of a bug and that of a genetic defect supports an analogy not just between a computer program and DNA, but between a computer program designed by a programmer and DNA. This provides an analogical teleological argument for the existence of a highly intelligent designer.