Classic analysis of the subject and the development of personal probability; one of the greatest controversies in modern statistcal thought.

Which artificial intelligence (AI) systems are agents? To answer this question, I propose a multidimensional account of agency. According to this account, a system's agency profile is jointly determined by its level of goal-directedness and autonomy as well as is abilities for directly impacting the surrounding world, long-term planning and acting for reasons. Rooted in extant theories of agency, this account enables fine-grained, nuanced comparative characterizations of artificial agency. I show that this account has multiple important virtues and is more (...) informative than alternatives. More speculatively, it may help to illuminate two important emerging questions in AI ethics: 1. Can agency contribute to the moral status of non-human beings, and how? 2. When and why might AI systems exhibit power-seeking behaviour and does this pose an existential risk to humanity? (shrink)

Le point de départ des théologies contextuelles se situe dans la réalité vécue et les problèmes qu’elle pose en vue d’élaborer une réflexion de foi. L’article situe d'abord les théologies contextuelles dans le champ du travail herméneutique; il dégage ensuite leur démarche propre à travers un triple mouvement : contextualisation – décontextualisation - recontextualisation. Il évoque en finale deux chantiers qui appellent quelques déplacements dans l'écriture de ces théologies: l'inculturation comme orthopraxis et l'inventivité. C'est le service de la vie qui (...) est au cœur des théologies contextuelles et justifie ces déplacements récents. (shrink)

Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the permanent disempowerment of humanity, e.g. human extinction, by 2100. It rests on four substantive premises which it motivates and defends: first, the speed of advances in AI capability, as well as the capability level current systems have already reached, suggest that it is practically possible to build AI systems (...) capable of disempowering humanity by 2100. Second, due to incentives and coordination problems, if it is possible to build such AI, it will be built. Third, since it appears to be a hard technical problem to build AI which is aligned with the goals of its designers, and many actors might build powerful AI, misaligned powerful AI will be built. Fourth, because disempowering humanity is useful for a large range of misaligned goals, such AI will try to disempower humanity. If AI is capable of disempowering humanity and tries to disempower humanity by 2100, then humanity will be disempowered by 2100. This conclusion has immense moral and prudential significance. (shrink)

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

Which animals have conscious experiences? Many different, diverse and unrelated behaviors and cognitive capacities have been proposed as tests of the presence of consciousness in an animal. It is unclear which of these tests, if any, are valid. To remedy this problem, I develop a list consisting of eight desiderata which can be used to assess putative tests of animal consciousness. These desiderata are based either on detailed analogies between consciousness-linked human behavior and non-human behavior, on theories of consciousness or (...) on methods from human consciousness science. If a test or set of tests satisfies more of these desiderata, passing it provides stronger evidence of consciousness. Moreover, one can design future tests of animal consciousness with the intention of satisfying these desiderata to ensure their evidential strength. (shrink)

How can one build AI systems such that they pursue the goals their designers want them to pursue? This is the alignment problem. Numerous authors have raised concerns that, as research advances and systems become more powerful over time, misalignment might lead to catastrophic outcomes, perhaps even to the extinction or permanent disempowerment of humanity. In this paper, I analyze the severity of this risk based on current instances of misalignment. More specifically, I argue that contemporary large language models and (...) game-playing agents are sometimes misaligned. These cases suggest that misalignment tends to have a variety of features: misalignment can be hard to detect, predict and remedy, it does not depend on a specific architecture or training paradigm, it tends to diminish a system’s usefulness and it is the default outcome of creating AI via machine learning. Subsequently, based on these features, I show that the risk of AI alignment magnifies with respect to more capable systems. Not only might more capable systems cause more harm when misaligned, aligning them should be expected to be more difficult than aligning current AI. (shrink)

The science of animal consciousness investigates (i) which animal species are conscious (the distribution question) and (ii) how conscious experience differs in detail between species (the quality question). We propose a framework which clearly distinguishes both questions and tackles both of them. This two-tier account distinguishes consciousness along ten dimensions and suggests cognitive capacities which serve as distinct operationalizations for each dimension. The two-tier account achieves three valuable aims: First, it separates strong and weak indicators of the presence of consciousness. (...) Second, these indicators include not only different specific contents but also differences in the way particular contents are processed (by processes of learning, reasoning or abstraction). Third, evidence of consciousness from each dimension can be combined to derive the distinctive multi-dimensional consciousness profile of various species. Thus, the two-tier account shows how the kind of conscious experience of different species can be systematically compared. (shrink)

Numerous authors have expressed concern that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) poses an existential risk to humanity. These authors argue that we might build AI which is vastly intellectually superior to humans (a ‘superintelligence’), and which optimizes for goals that strike us as morally bad, or even irrational. Thus this argument assumes that a superintelligence might have morally bad goals. However, according to some views, a superintelligence necessarily has morally adequate goals. This might be the case either because abilities for moral (...) reasoning and intelligence mutually depend on each other, or because moral realism and moral internalism are true. I argue that the former argument misconstrues the view that intelligence and goals are independent, and that the latter argument misunderstands the implications of moral internalism. Moreover, the current state of AI research provides additional reasons to think that a superintelligence could have bad goals. (shrink)

1. 1.1. Suffering is bad. This is why, ceteris paribus, there are strong moral reasons to prevent suffering. Moreover, typically, those moral reasons are stronger when the amount of suffering at st...

According to a common view, sentience is necessary and sufficient for moral status. In other words, whether a being has intrinsic moral relevance is determined by its capacity for conscious experience. The _epistemic objection_ derives from our profound uncertainty about sentience. According to this objection, we cannot use sentience as a _criterion_ to ascribe moral status in practice because we won’t know in the foreseeable future which animals and AI systems are sentient while ethical questions regarding the possession of moral (...) status are urgent. Therefore, we need to formulate an alternative criterion. I argue that the epistemic objection is dissolved once one clearly distinguishes between the question what determines moral status and what criterion should be employed in practice to ascribe moral status. Epistemic concerns are irrelevant to the former question and—I will argue—criteria of moral status have inescapably to be based on sentience, if one concedes that sentience determines moral status. It follows that doubts about our epistemic access to sentience cannot be used to motivate an alternative criterion of moral status. If sentience turns out to be unknowable, then moral status is unknowable. However, I briefly advocate against such strong pessimism. (shrink)

If a machine attains consciousness, how could we find out? In this paper, I make three related claims regarding positive tests of machine consciousness. All three claims center on the idea that an AI can be constructed “ad hoc”, that is, with the purpose of satisfying a particular test of consciousness while clearly not being conscious. First, a proposed test of machine consciousness can be legitimate, even if AI can be constructed ad hoc specifically to pass this test. This is (...) underscored by the observation that many, if not all, putative tests of machine consciousness can be passed by non-conscious machines via ad hoc means. Second, we can identify ad hoc AI by taking inspiration from the notion of an ad hoc hypothesis in philosophy of science. Third, given the first and the second claim, the most reliable tests of animal consciousness turn out to be valid and useful positive tests of machine consciousness as well. If a non-ad hoc AI exhibits clusters of cognitive capacities facilitated by consciousness in humans which can be selectively switched off by masking and if it reproduces human behavior in suitably designed double dissociation tasks, we should treat the AI as conscious. (shrink)

The book highlights important research strategies in the quest to find thecause of SLI and to develop methods of prevention and treatment.

Illusionism about consciousness entails that phenomenal consciousness doesn’t exist. The distribution question concerns the distribution of consciousness in the animal kingdom. Skepticism of animal consciousness is the view that few or no kinds of animals possess consciousness. Thus, illusionism seems to imply a skeptical view on the distribution question. However, I argue that illusionism and skepticism of animal consciousness are actually orthogonal to each other. If illusionism is true, then phenomenal consciousness does not ground intrinsic value so that the non-existence (...) of phenomenal consciousness would not have ethical implications. In this case, the adequate reaction is to reformulate the distribution question in terms of the quasi-phenomenal functional features associated with the illusion of phenomenal consciousness which do ground intrinsic value. Hence, either illusionism is false or the distribution question does not concern phenomenal consciousness. In any case, illusionism does not directly tell us anything about the distribution question. However, since illusionism forces us to revise our traditional conception of consciousness, it indirectly affects research on animal consciousness by questioning that consciousness is a unified and an all-or-nothing property. (shrink)

I develop the anticipatory argument for the view that it is nomologically possible that some non-biological creatures are phenomenally conscious, including conventional, silicon-based AI systems. This argument rests on the general idea that we should make our beliefs conform to the outcomes of an ideal scientific process and that such an ideal scientific process would attribute consciousness to some possible AI systems. This kind of ideal scientific process is an ideal application of the iterative natural kind (INK) strategy, according to (...) which one should investigate consciousness by treating it as a natural kind which iteratively explains observable patterns and correlations between potentially consciousness-relevant features. The relevant AI systems are psychological duplicates. These are hypothetical non-biological creatures which share the coarse-grained functional organization of humans. I argue that an ideal application of the INK strategy would attribute consciousness to psychological duplicates because this gives rise to a simpler and more unifying explanatory account of biological and non-biological cognition. If my argument is sound, then creatures made from the same material as conventional AI systems can be conscious, thus removing one of the main uncertainties for assessing AI consciousness and suggesting that AI consciousness may be a serious near-term concern. (shrink)

Say that mereological harmony is the view that there is at least some mirroring between the mereological structure of material objects and the mereological structure of their locations: each, in some way, mirrors the other. As it turns out, there is a confusing array of systems of harmony available to the substantivalist. In this paper, I attempt to bring some order to these systems. I explore some systems found in the literature, as well as some natural systems which haven’t been (...) discussed. Along the way, I explore a number of metaphysical consequences of the different systems of harmony. The paper ends with a roadmap of possible views for the substantivalist. (shrink)

Introduction In this introduction I will comment on some of the central issues of the papers included in this volume and point out some of the relations ...

Can material objects be weakly located at regions of spacetime and yet fail to be exactly located anywhere? In this paper, I discuss a case which, at least according to one interpretation, answers affirmatively: the case of blending gunky water and wine, in gunky space. Perhaps after such a blend, the water and wine aren't exactly located anywhere while being weakly located at the location of the blend and any region which overlaps it. I show that the case is interesting (...) and complicated, and has consequences for some ideas found in papers by Daniel Nolan and Josh Parsons. (shrink)

I argue that racism is a form of necro-being entrapped in necro-tragedy. Necro-being, as I present it, is a condition that kills and prevents persons from being born. I defend a conception of tragedy: absolute necrotragedy; absolute irredeemable suffering in a non-moral universe. Explanations of racism are commonly subject to anomalies, for example, volitional accounts offer special desiderata to account for institutional racism; conversely for institutional accounts. I offer a way to see racism, given the existence of a vast array (...) of kinds of racism: a descriptive actuarial approach. The account is intended to avoid the quandaries and anomalies of ‘explanation.’ I use rational-intentional explanations (including accounts by Jorge Garcia and Charles Mills) and social kind racial realism as inadequate explanations and examples of explanations with anomalies. These accounts also help demonstrate that logical systems of racism are inadequate. All such accounts explain racism as a coherent system and offer correlative reasons for its wrongness. I consider death, mortality, morbidity, and irredeemable misery as primary indicators of racism across an array of types of racism globally: racial necro-being. (shrink)

Implementationalism maintains that conventional, silicon-based artificial systems are not conscious because they fail to satisfy certain substantive constraints on computational implementation. In this article, we argue that several recently proposed substantive constraints are implausible, or at least are not well-supported, insofar as they conflate intuitions about computational implementation generally and consciousness specifically. We argue instead that the mechanistic account of computation can explain several of the intuitions driving implementationalism and noncomputationalism in a manner which is consistent with artificial consciousness. Our (...) argument provides indirect support for computationalism about consciousness and the view that conventional artificial systems can be conscious. (shrink)

It is plausible that there is a contrast between the rich emotional content which is often connected to laypeople’s interest in philosophy and the emotional austerity of doing academic philosophy. We propose the hypothesis that this contrast is one cause of the disappointment some students experience when they begin to study philosophy in college. We also propose a more demanding hypothesis, according to which this emotional contrast is confused with a semantic difference, which misleads students to think that the questions (...) which initially caused their interest in philosophy are not even considered by academic philosophy research. Moreover, we provide a list of concrete empirical research questions which need to be answered to establish whether these hypotheses are true, and we argue that, if they are true, they give rise to a hitherto unnoticed and important challenge to the teaching of philosophy. (shrink)

According to the Interpersonal View of Testimony, testimonial justification is non-evidential in nature. I begin by arguing that the IVT has the following problem: If the IVT is true, then young children and people with autism cannot participate in testimonial exchanges; but young children and people with autism can participate in testimonial exchanges; thus, the IVT should be rejected on the grounds that it has over-cognized what it takes to give and receive testimony. Afterwards, I consider what I take to (...) be the two best motivations for the IVT and argue that they both fail. The overarching lesson, then, is that the IVT is unmotivated and false; we should think of testimonial justification as being evidential in nature. (shrink)

Roughly, empirical AI alignment research (AIA) is an area of AI research which investigates empirically how to design AI systems in line with human goals. This paper examines the role of non-epistemic values in AIA. It argues that: (1) Sciences differ in the degree to which values influence them. (2) AIA is strongly value-laden. (3) This influence of values is managed inappropriately and thus threatens AIA’s epistemic integrity and ethical beneficence. (4) AIA should strive to achieve value transparency, critical scrutiny (...) from inside and outside the discipline – involving the public –, and to empower actors without strong commercial interests. (shrink)

Can Rawlsian public reason sufficiently justify public policies that regulate or restrain controversial medical and technological interventions in bioethics (and the broader social world), such as abortion, physician aid-in-dying, CRISPER-cas9 gene editing of embryos, surrogate mothers, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of eight-cell embryos, and so on? The first part of this essay briefly explicates the central concepts that define Rawlsian political liberalism. The latter half of this essay then demonstrates how a commitment to Rawlsian public reason can ameliorate (not completely resolve) (...) many of the policy disagreements related to bioethically controversial medical interventions today. The goal of public reason is to reduce the size of the disagreement by eliminating features of the disagreement that violate the norms of public reason. The norms of public reason are those norms that are politically necessary to preserve the liberal, pluralistic, democratic character of this society. What remains is reasonable disagreement to be addressed through normal democratic deliberative processes. Specific issues addressed from a public reason perspective include personal responsibility for excessive health costs, the utility of a metaphysical definition of death for organ transplantation, and the moral status of excess embryos generated through IVF and/or their use in medical research. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I offer my reading of John Dewey's Art as Experience and propose implications for music education based on Dewey's ideas. Three principal questions guide my task: What are some key ideas in Dewey's theory of art? How does Dewey's theory of art fit within his larger theory of experience? What are the implications of Dewey's ideas for music education? As I shall show, art for Dewey is rooted in nature, civilizes humans, serves as social glue, and has (...) an important role in society throughout most of human history. Modern life, however, separates art and life; there is a need to restore the continuity between art and the ordinary processes of living, a task that Dewey undertakes by positing the notion of art as experience. Dewey's ideas support an expanded curriculum in music education, one in which popular music may be included alongside Western classical music and music from diverse cultures. However, artistic and educational discernment are needed, which necessitates the need for music educators to be sufficiently steeped in varied musical traditions and styles. (shrink)

One well-known objection to supersubstantivalism is that it is inconsistent with the contingency of location. This paper presents a new objection to supersubstantivalism: it is inconsistent with the vagueness of location. Though contingency and vagueness are formally similar, there are important philosophical differences between the two. As a result, the objection from vague location will be structurally different than the objection from contingent location. The paper explores these differences and then defends the argument that supersubstantivalism is inconsistent with the plausible (...) thesis that it is vague where I am located. (shrink)

This study examines the theory of planned behavior and the multidimensional ethics scale. Variables from both are included to determine which ones significantly correlate with student ethical behavioral intention in an academic setting. Using a survey, responses are collected from undergraduate business students from two southwestern universities in the United States using a scenario-based approach, looking at individual situations and group situations. SmartPLS was used to assess the results for four scenarios. From the theory of planned behavior, attitude was a (...) significant predictor of behavioral intention across all four scenarios while subjective norm was significant in one scenario. From the multidimensional ethics scale, moral equity and relativism were significant in one group scenario while moral equity and utilitarianism were each significant in an individual scenario. The findings indicate support for the use of the TPB and the MES when exploring ethics in an academic setting and for the need to study both individual and group situations. A discussion of the findings and implications is given. (shrink)

Scientific method interests the linguist not only as it interests every scientific worker, but also in a special way, because the scientist, as part of his method, utters certain very peculiar speech-forms. The linguist naturally divides scientific activity into two phases: the scientist performs “handling” actions and utters speech. The speech-forms which the scientist utters are peculiar both in their form and in their effect upon hearers.

Explores the continuities and discontinuities in the work of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze.

Sensorimotor enactivism is the view that the content and the sensory modality of perceptual experience are determined by implicit knowledge of lawful regularities between bodily movements and patterns of sensory stimulation. A proponent of the explanatory argument for sensorimotor enactivism holds that this view is able to provide an intelligible explanation for why certain material realizers give rise to certain perceptual experiences, while rival accounts cannot close this “explanatory gap”. However, I argue that the notion of the “material realizer” of (...) perceptual experience is ambiguous. On a narrow construal, the explanatory gap cannot be bridged, not even by enactivism. On a wide construal, enactivism gets a grip on the explanatory gap, but to the same extent do established theories of consciousness. Thus, on both horns of the dilemma, the explanatory power of enactivism is not superior to more traditional theories of conscious experience. (shrink)

Whether animals fare well or not is of ethical significance. For this reason, their capacity for wellbeing, i.e., how good or bad the lives of animals can go, is of ethical significance as well. I assume that the wellbeing of most animals is mainly determined by their phenomenally conscious experiences. If consciousness differences between species determine wellbeing differences, then the kinds of conscious experience species are capable of may entail that some species systematically (can) have higher or lower wellbeing than (...) others. Then, I argue that not all phenomenally conscious states contribute to wellbeing equally. I discuss which features of consciousness are constituents of wellbeing and which can, for ethical purposes, be ignored. In addition, I scrutinize how much different features of experience contribute to wellbeing and how their presence can be detected empirically. This way, this paper exemplifies a novel consciousness-centered approach for the empirical investigation of animal wellbeing. The strengths and weaknesses of this approach are analyzed. While subsequent research is needed to refine the framework, I already note some preliminary implications for animal ethics. (shrink)

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo argue that plants have a surprisingly varied and complex behavioral repertoire. Which of these behavioral capacities are credible indicators of sentience? If we use the standards of evidence common in discussions of animal sentience, the behavioral capacities reviewed are insufficient evidence of sentience. Even if some putative indicators of animal sentience are present in plants, it is not clear whether what we should conclude is that plants are sentient or that those indicators are inadequate.

The core doctrine of supersubstantivalism is that material objects are identical to their spacetime locations. One powerful consideration for the view is the argument from harmony—supersubstantivalism, it is claimed, is in a position to offer an elegant explanation of a number of platitudes concerning objects and their locations. However, I will argue that identifying material objects with their locations does not provide a satisfying explanation of harmony. What the supersubstantivalist needs is not a theory about the identity of objects, but (...) another theory about the identity of some relations. This paper proposes such a theory and shows that with it in place, the argument from harmony can be repaired. (shrink)

According to the Transmission View of Testimony : TVT: If a speaker testifies to a hearer that p, and if the hearer is justified in believing that p on the basis of that speaker's testimony, then the hearer's belief is justified by whatever justification the speaker has for believing that p. The aim of this paper is to develop and defend a novel objection to the TVT.

Do terminally ill patients who have exhausted all other available, government-approved treatment options have a constitutional right to experimental treatment that may prolong their lives? On May 2, 2006, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a startling opinion, Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. Von Eschenbach, held “Yes.” The plaintiffs, Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs and Washington Legal Foundation, sought to enjoin the Food and Drug (...) Administration from refusing to allow the sale of investigational new drugs that had not yet received FDA approval. The terminally ill plaintiffs contended that they quite literally could not wait that long for the drugs. With no other treatment options available, the plaintiffs urged the court to recognize a fundamental, constitutional right to take potentially life-saving or life-prolonging drugs, even though the treatment had not been fully tested through human trials for safety and effectiveness and could not be legally marketed to the public. (shrink)

Originally published: Berkeley, Calif. : Stone Bridge Press, 1994.

Sortal terms, such as table or horse, are count nouns (akin to a basic-level terms). According to some theories, the meaning of sortals provides conditions for telling objects apart (individuating objects, e.g., telling one table from a second) and for identifying objects over time (e.g., determining that a particular horse at one time is the same horse at another). A number of psychologists have proposed that sortal concepts likewise provide psychologically real conditions for individuating and identifying things. However, this paper (...) reports five experiments that cast doubt on these psychological claims. Experiments 1-3 suggest that sortal concepts do not determine when an object ceases to exist and therefore do not decide when the object can no longer be identical to a later one. Experiments 4-5 similarly suggest that sortal concepts do not provide determinate conditions for individuating objects. For example, they do not always decide whether a room contains one table or two. All five experiments feature ordinary objects undergoing ordinary changes. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

At present, instrumental music education, defined in this paper as the teaching and learning of music through wind bands and symphony orchestras of Western origin, appears embattled. Among the many criticisms made against instrumental music education, critics claim that bands and orchestras exemplify an authoritarian model of teaching that does not foster democracy. In this paper, I propose a theoretical framework by which instrumental music education may be conceived democratically. Since educational bands and orchestras have achieved global ubiquity, I theorize (...) broadly for both the East and the West and draw on ancient Chinese philosophy and American pragmatism as sources of inspiration to construct the theory. This theory comprises a quintet of themes that emerge from a comparative analysis of key philosophical texts by Confucian and pragmatist philosophers, namely, the people, participation, equality, cooperation, and conflict. This paper aims to address critical issues in instrumental music education with respect to democracy, complement extant music education philosophies, and serve as a first step towards a transcultural philosophy of music education relevant to the interconnected world in which we live. (shrink)

Forests are under immense stress globally. Economic growth is one reason for this: its impacts can lead to deforestation and put tremendous harvesting pressure on forests. In light of increasingly popular – and growth-based – bio-economy strategies, the need for more wood is likely to accelerate. Degrowth, in contrast, rejects economic growth as the central economic principle, arguing that the material throughput of countries in the Global North must shrink to achieve global sustainability. Although the concept has gained importance, there (...) have been no attempts to link degrowth with the forest sector. This article argues that degrowth principles are beneficial for basing the forest sector on sustainable grounds, while the degrowth movement also needs to define its relationship to the forest. Against this backdrop, this contribution sets the cornerstone by linking the Swiss forest sector to central degrowth principles, and discussing possible interrelations and mismatches. Finally, a future research agenda for degrowth and the forest sector is presented. (shrink)