Analytic philosophers have a tendency to forget that they are human beings, and one of the reasons that P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, has been so influential is that it promises to bring discussions of moral responsibility back down to earth. Strawson encouraged us to “keep before our minds...what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal relationships”, which is, after all, the context in which questions about responsibility arise in the first place. In this (...) essay I explore what we can learn about ordinary interpersonal relationships from three works of literature – Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. My intention is to try to heed Strawson’s advice without imposing upon the data any particular theoretical agenda, and my hope is that the data collected will prove useful for future theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

Through the lens of feminist speech act theory, this paper argues that artificial intelligence romance systems objectify and subordinate nonvirtual women. AI romance systems treat their users as consumers, offering them relational invulnerability and control over their (usually feminized) digital romantic partner. This paper argues that, though the output of AI chatbots may not generally constitute speech, the framework offered by an AI romance system communicates an unjust perspective on intimate relationships. Through normalizing controlling one’s intimate partner, these systems operate (...) as speakers that rank women as non-player characters and license their oppression, which is unjust even in the absence of empirical harms. Understanding AI romance systems as speakers has implications for policymakers. First, this account helps close the so-called responsibility gap in the operation of an AI system. Second, it places these systems under the purview of institutions’ policies regarding hate speech, suggesting one avenue for arguing that these systems may violate extant policies. Finally, it provides support for the pursuit of empirical research into AI romance systems’ effects on users. (shrink)

Anthony Price's recent book presents a contextualist approach to practical rationality. Price develops his proposal in four chapters. In the first one , he outlines a contextual account of the validity of practical inferences. This chapter deals with logicism. Logicism assumes that ‘there is a form of rationality within practical thinking that connects with the logical validity of a practical entailment’ . Price argues that although the principles of logic are ‘invariant and universal’ , their relevance in evaluating a practical (...) inference is constrained by contextual factors related to the teleology of practical thinking and by the functional role of intentions in guiding our behaviour.In the second chapter , Price argues that the content of A's remark to B – ‘I must put in another 20p’, while both stand together on an underground platform in front of a dispenser – must be interpreted contextually, i.e. as referring to a particular end of A for which she needs to put in …. (shrink)

With the past and future tense propositional operators in its syntax, a formal logical system for sortal quantifiers, sortal identity and (second order) quantification over sortal concepts is formulated. A completeness proof for the system is constructed and its absolute consistency proved. The completeness proof is given relative to a notion of logical validity provided by an intensional semantic system, which assumes an approach to sortals from a modern form of conceptualism.

Work in the setting of the recursively enumerable sets and their Turing degrees. A set X is low if X', its Turning jump, is recursive in $\varnothing'$ and high if X' computes $\varnothing''$ . Attempting to find a property between being low and being recursive, Bickford and Mills produced the following definition. W is deep, if for each recursively enumerable set A, the jump of $A \bigoplus W$ is recursive in the jump of A. We prove that there are no (...) deep degrees other than the recursive one. Given a set W, we enumerate a set A and approximate its jump. The construction of A is governed by strategies, indexed by the Turning functionals Φ. Simplifying the situation, a typical strategy converts a failure to recursively compute W into a constraint on the enumeration of A, so that $(W \bigoplus A)'$ is forced to disagree with Φ(-; A'). The conversion has some ambiguity; in particular, A cannot be found uniformly from W. We also show that there is a "moderately" deep degree: There is a low nonzero degree whose join with any other low degree is not high. (shrink)

Comparative study of the Mimamsa philosophy of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhākaramiśra, 7th century philosophers.