Recent progress in artificial intelligence has renewed interest in building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or even beats that of humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly human-like learning and thinking (...) machines will have to reach beyond current engineering trends in both what they learn and how they learn it. Specifically, we argue that these machines should build causal models of the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely solving pattern recognition problems; ground learning in intuitive theories of physics and psychology to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned; and harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete challenges and promising routes toward these goals that can combine the strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive models. (shrink)

Both scientists and children make important structural discoveries, yet their computational underpinnings are not well understood. Structure discovery has previously been formalized as probabilistic inference about the right structural form—where form could be a tree, ring, chain, grid, etc.. Although this approach can learn intuitive organizations, including a tree for animals and a ring for the color circle, it assumes a strong inductive bias that considers only these particular forms, and each form is explicitly provided as initial knowledge. Here we (...) introduce a new computational model of how organizing structure can be discovered, utilizing a broad hypothesis space with a preference for sparse connectivity. Given that the inductive bias is more general, the model's initial knowledge shows little qualitative resemblance to some of the discoveries it supports. As a consequence, the model can also learn complex structures for domains that lack intuitive description, as well as predict human property induction judgments without explicit structural forms. By allowing form to emerge from sparsity, our approach clarifies how both the richness and flexibility of human conceptual organization can coexist. (shrink)

We were encouraged by the broad enthusiasm for building machines that learn and think in more human-like ways. Many commentators saw our set of key ingredients as helpful, but there was disagreement regarding the origin and structure of those ingredients. Our response covers three main dimensions of this disagreement: nature versus nurture, coherent theories versus theory fragments, and symbolic versus sub-symbolic representations. These dimensions align with classic debates in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, although, rather than embracing these debates, we (...) emphasize ways of moving beyond them. Several commentators saw our set of key ingredients as incomplete and offered a wide range of additions. We agree that these additional ingredients are important in the long run and discuss prospects for incorporating them. Finally, we consider some of the ethical questions raised regarding the research program as a whole. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

Neural network models have recently made striking progress in natural language processing, but they are typically trained on orders of magnitude more language input than children receive. What can these neural networks, which are primarily distributional learners, learn from a naturalistic subset of a single child's experience? We examine this question using a recent longitudinal dataset collected from a single child, consisting of egocentric visual data paired with text transcripts. We train both language-only and vision-and-language neural networks and analyze the (...) linguistic knowledge they acquire. In parallel with findings from Jeffrey Elman's seminal work, the neural networks form emergent clusters of words corresponding to syntactic (nouns, transitive and intransitive verbs) and semantic categories (e.g., animals and clothing), based solely on one child's linguistic input. The networks also acquire sensitivity to acceptability contrasts from linguistic phenomena, such as determiner-noun agreement and argument structure. We find that incorporating visual information produces an incremental gain in predicting words in context, especially for syntactic categories that are comparatively more easily grounded, such as nouns and verbs, but the underlying linguistic representations are not fundamentally altered. Our findings demonstrate which kinds of linguistic knowledge are learnable from a snapshot of a single child's real developmental experience. (shrink)

_Kant, Duty and Moral Worth _is a fascinating and original examination of Kant's account of moral worth. The complex debate at the heart of Kant's philosophy is over whether Kant said moral actions have worth only if they are carried out from duty, or whether actions carried out from mixed motives can be good. Philip Stratton-Lake offers a unique account of acting from duty, which utilizes the distinction between primary and secondary motives. He maintains that the moral law should (...) not be understood as a normative moral reason but as playing a transcendental role. Thus a Kantian account of moral worth is one where the virtuous agent may be responsive to concrete particular considerations, whilst preserving an essential role for universal moral principles. _Kant, Duty and Moral Worth _is a lucid examination of Kant's moral thought that will appeal to Kant scholars and anyone interested in moral theory. (shrink)

Big Data’s calculative ontology relies on and reproduces a form of hyperindividualism in which the ontological unit of analysis is the discrete data point, the meaning and identity of which inheres in itself, preceding, separate, and independent from its context or relation to any other data point. The practice of Big Data governed by an ontology of hyperindividualism is also constitutive of that ontology, naturalizing and diffusing it through practices of governance and, from there, throughout myriad dimensions of everyday life. (...) In this paper, I explicate Big Data’s ontology of hyperindividualism by contrasting it to a coconstitutive ontology that prioritizes relationality, context, and interdependence. I then situate the ontology of hyperindividualism in its genealogical context, drawing from Patrick Joyce’s history of liberalism and John Dewey’s pragmatist account of individualism, liberalism, and social action. True to its genealogical provenance, Big Data’s ontological politics of hyperindividualism reduces governance to the management of atomistic behavior, undermines the contribution of urban complexity as a resource for governance, erodes the potential for urban democracy, and eviscerates the possibility of collective resistance. (shrink)

Discovering the underlying mathematical expressions describing a dataset is a core challenge for artificial intelligence. This is the problem of symbolic regression. Despite recent advances in training neural networks to solve complex tasks, deep learning approaches to symbolic regression are underexplored. We propose a framework that leverages deep learning for symbolic regression via a simple idea: use a large model to search the space of small models. Specifically, we use a recurrent neural network to emit a distribution over tractable mathematical (...) expressions and employ a novel risk-seeking policy gradient to train the network to generate better-fitting expressions. Our algorithm outperforms several baseline methods (including Eureqa, the gold standard for symbolic regression) in its ability to exactly recover symbolic expressions on a series of benchmark problems, both with and without added noise. More broadly, our contributions include a framework that can be applied to optimize hierarchical, variable-length objects under a blackbox performance metric, with the ability to incorporate constraints in situ, and a risk-seeking policy gradient formulation that optimizes for best-case performance instead of expected performance. (shrink)

In his ‘The Identity Objection to the future‐like‐ours argument’ (Bioethics, 2019, 33: 287–293), Brill argues that Marquis's 'future of value' account of the wrong of abortion is still vulnerable to the identity objection—the claim that the foetus and the later person are not numerically identical, so the later person's valuable experiences are not the foetus's future experiences—even if it is conceded that the future organism, as well as the person, has experiences. This is because the organism has these experiences in (...) a different way from the person. The person has them directly, and the organism has them only derivatively. This implies, he maintains, that the organism cannot be deprived of those experiences in a way that is wrong. Only the person can be deprived in this morally relevant way. But, I argue, if the organism genuinely has those experiences, it is not at all clear why its being deprived of them would be permissible. I argue that the reason why Brill can claim that having those experiences derivatively makes this moral difference is because the sense in which the organism has experiences is not a genuine sense. But that is a problem for this theory of personal identity, not for Marquis's account of the wrong of abortion. I also argue that supposing that one cannot morally harm the human organism has various implausible implications, which cast doubt on the idea that having experiences derivatively means that the organism is not morally harmed by being deprived of them. (shrink)

How should goods be distributed in our society? Some say equally, others say according to what people are responsible for. Both ideas seem plausible but neither tell the whole story. The author examines what draws us to these two ideas and looks at recent attempts by egalitarian thinkers to bring them together in a single distributive ideal.

This Hypatia cluster aims to create space for sharing stories and tools designed to support situated, embodied, and dialogical philosophical activism. It emerges from a new generation of pragmatist feminists, illustrating how the field has evolved. These pieces locate pragmatist feminism in place- and issue-based philosophical activism. As an activist and pragmatically grounded philosophy, this approach values the embodied and relational nature of social change as well as the need to create multiple pathways of engagement situated in and across communities.

In Moniker Betzler, Kant ’s Virtue Ethics,.

BackgroundEthics is the science of moral and ethical rules recognised in human life and attempts to verify what is morally right and wrong. Healthcare ethics is seen as an integrated part of the daily activities of health facilities. Healthcare professionals’ standardisation and uniformity in healthcare ethics are urgent and basic requirements. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the practice of the code of ethics and associated factors among health professionals in Central Gondar Zone public hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia, 2021.MethodsA facility-based cross-sectional (...) study design with a mixed method was conducted on 631 health professionals from Central Gondar Zone public hospitals. For the quantitative part, pre-tested self-administered questionnaires were used, and for the qualitative part, key informant interviews with a semi-structured questionnaire were used. Variables with a p value of < 0.2 in binary logistic regression entered into a multivariable logistic regression, then p value < 0.05 and AOR were used to declare statistically significant variables in quantitative data. A thematic content analysis was used for qualitative data analysis.ResultsThis study revealed that only 286 health professionals had good practice of the code of ethics. Good ethical knowledge, favourable attitude, and satisfaction of health professionals with their jobs were significantly associated with the practice of health care ethics.ConclusionsHealth professionals' overall level of practice of health care ethics in the Central Gondar Zone public hospitals was poor. This necessitates practical training, ongoing follow-up, availing of necessary medical equipment, a smooth working environment, and modification of the recognition system for health professionals. (shrink)

The article focuses on the Baltic Song and Dance Celebration, which is analysed in the context of the nation branding concept. It is possible to conditionally distinguish between two kinds of methods how to increase international recognition – special strategies created by professionals, and spontaneous or natural branding, based on marking of significant cultural and symbolic aspects of a particular nation. A strategic process of nation branding in the Baltics became particularly active in the beginning of the 21st century, when (...) the governments of all three nations started a purposeful, state-financed development of nation brands, but generally neglecting the informal brand of the Baltic states as the “singing nations”. Nevertheless, the latter, having been developed alongside with the statehood ideas and particularly manifesting itself in the Song and Dance Celebration phenomena, is still very strong in the Baltic states. Based on the sociological survey data, the authors compare the attitude of the residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania towards the Song and Dance Celebrations and discuss their role in the nation brand development. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Right and the Good in Kant Clarifying the Negative Thesis Clarifying the Positive Thesis Why Motives of Inclination Lack Moral Worth The Right Sort of Reasons An Alternative Account of Acting from Duty Kant's Critics.

Roger Crisp distinguishes a positive and a negative aspect of the buck-passing account of goodness (BPA), and argues that the positive account should be dropped in order to avoid certain problems, in particular, that it implies eliminativism about value. This eliminativism involves what I call an ontological claim, the claim that there is no real property of goodness, and an error theory, the claim that all value talk is false. I argue first that the positive aspect of the BPA is (...) necessary to explain the negative aspect. I accept the ontological claim but argue that this does not imply any sort of error theory about value. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 18 Bart Streumer argues that all normative properties are descriptive properties. His first argument is based on the principle that necessarily coextensive predicates ascribe the same property, and the claim that there is a descriptive predicate that is necessarily coextensive with normative predicates. From this Streumer concludes that normative properties are identical with descriptive properties. I argue that, even if we accept, this conclusion does not follow. Normative properties could only be descriptive properties if there is (...) some descriptive way in which all instances of normative properties are similar. But Streumer does not show that, and the prospects for doing so are, I believe, not good. His second argument rests on the premise that the nature of normative properties cannot depend on which first order normative theory is true. I argue that this premise is false, and that the argument for it does not sit comfortably with. (shrink)

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the great scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding of (...) Ross's great work today. (shrink)

Mental health professionals can help patients understand exceptional and paranormal experiences, integrate them into day-to-day life, and cope with confusion and anxiety that sometimes accompany them. However, a broader clinical perspective and specialized training in clinical parapsychology is needed. In the first part of the paper I argue that psychiatry as currently practiced is limited because it embraces a strictly materialist paradigm, emphasizes treatment over prevention, and relies principally on pharmaceuticals that are often ineffective and/or unsafe. A paradigm shift in (...) psychiatry is taking place that will soon lead to novel concepts of energy and innovations in therapeutic approaches. In the second part of the paper I review the ongoing debate over consciousness, implications of novel understandings of energy for psychiatry, and research findings in physics, neuroscience and parapsychology that are contributing to a postmaterialist paradigm in psychiatry. I comment on an important problem in the philosophy of science called Hempel’s dilemma and argue that future scientific theories of consciousness will probably encounter similar conceptual limits to those faced by current theories. Following Beauregard, Trent and Schwartz (2018) I argue that different categories of theories may be needed to adequately explain the variety of human experiences and I propose an integral paradigm that acknowledges the validity of both conventional scientific explanations and postmaterialist theories of consciousness. Finally, I discuss implications of postmaterialism for research, education and training in psychiatry. (shrink)

In his path-breaking study, A Colonial Liberalism: The Lost World of Three Victorian Visionaries (1991), Stuart Macintyre makes a case for the distinctiveness of colonial liberalism and its local habitat, with liberals' insistence on the principle of political equality and the democratic right of self-government. Macintyre's three visionaries — Higinbotham, Pearson and Syme — were also leading crusaders against Chinese immigration, which peaked in Victoria in the 1850s, the decade in which self-government and manhood suffrage were introduced. The local habitat (...) wore a racial aspect. In this essay I suggest that it was precisely the democratic ideal of equality, espoused in the context of Chinese immigration and colonial nation-building, that led to the insistence on racial exclusion. Colonial liberals called for racial exclusion because of, not in spite of, their commitment to democracy. The apparent paradox of a policy of exclusion promoted in the name of equality was, I suggest, definitive of the project of colonial liberalism. (shrink)

Ethical Intuitionism was the dominant moral theory in Britain for much of the 18th, 19th and the first third of the twentieth century. However, during the middle decades of the twentieth century ethical intuitionism came to be regarded as utterly untenable. It was thought to be either empty, or metaphysically and epistemologically extravagant, or both. This hostility led to a neglect of the central intuitionist texts, and encouraged the growth of a caricature of intuitionism that could easily be rejected before (...) moving on to 'more serious' philosophical theories. More recently, however, this hostility towards ethical intuitionism has subsided. A wide range of moral philosophers, from Aristotelians, to rule-consequentialists, to expressivists, Kantians and deontologists, are beginning to look to the ethical intuitionists's work as a positive resource. It is, therefore, a good time to get clear on what it was that intuitionists said, and re-evaluate their contribution to our understanding of morality. This volume is the first serious engagement with ethical intuitionism in the light of contemporary developments in ethical theory. It contains essays by eminent moral philosophers working in very different traditions whose aim is to clarify and assess ethical intuitionism. Issues addressed include whether the plurality of basic principles intuitionists adhere to can be grounded in some more fundamental principle; the autonomy of ethics and self-evidence; moral realism and internalism; and the open question argument and naturalism. (shrink)

The University of Kentucky has required that all researchers and research-eligible individuals complete RCR training every 2 years to ensure there is at least a baseline of RCR training throughout the wider research community. The overall goal is to create a research climate that fosters RCR across the institution for approximately 14,400 researchers and research eligible faculty, staff, and trainees engaged in research or creative work. A systematic data strategy was developed and implemented to identify individuals required to complete the (...) RCR training and included real-time data tracking using data analytic tools and sophisticated data models. The RCR training consists of the completion of online asynchronous modules and an in-person RCR training event where case studies are discussed to apply the learning gained from the online modules and prepare participants to practice ethical decision-making in future real-world problem-solving. A train-the-trainer approach was implemented to conduct the in-person RCR training of all researchers and research eligible individuals. A library of interactive case scenarios was developed for the mandatory in-person RCR training applicable to various disciplines across the institution. A survey of participants on the RCR training provided empirical data from approximately 12% of participants. Over 72% of respondents indicated the training positively impacted their behavior. An initiative of this magnitude and reach is the broadest of its kind in the United States (US) and the article outlines the procedures and experiences in implementing the project. (shrink)

The law of armed conflict prevents the coerced extraction of information from Prisoners of War (PoWs). We claim, however, that the letter of that law involves too broad a concept of coercion. On a natural reading, there is a sense in which any extraction of information—by any method—is coercive. We respect the notion that PoWs ought not be treated poorly, but we argue “coercion” should not be understood so broadly. With respect to its use in international law, we favor a (...) moralized notion of “coercion,” as opposed to a non-moralized one. We explain what this means, and argue why this is a better reading of the law. We think a moralized notion of coercion is more intuitive, is more in line with both actual practice and the intent of the framers of international law, and has practical benefits as well. (shrink)

Traditional, theoretical pedagogical practices based in disciplinary expertise generally fail to prepare students for high-stakes, public problems. In contrast, “Wicked Problems of Sustainability” is an undergraduate course designed to provide students with the opportunity to redress complex, local problems through an experiential, community-engaged model. By implementing pedagogy developed through the integration of a feminist pragmatist framework with the literature on wicked problems, this course offers opportunities to impact real problems, develop skills, and foster virtues necessary for tackling public problems. Given (...) the value of this work, but also the difficulties, this article highlights the potential pitfalls of community work on wicked problems in addition to providing a series of recommendations for a pragmatic, community-based, experiential pedagogy in a “wicked” world. (shrink)

An original reading of fictional narratives that raise the question of what it means to be human in the face of rapidly developing bioenhancement technologies.

What does Jane Addams's approach to social change offer to publicly engaged scholars and activists today? This essay explores several dimensions of Addams's work that have been misinterpreted and overlooked, putting these aspects of her work into conversation with research on endeavors to move higher education toward civic democratic engagement. The goal is to visualize opportunities and strategies for more inclusive and democratic engagement with issues across local, regional, and global communities. In particular, this essay explores how Addams's place-based, boundary-spanning (...) methods of engagement provide strategies for more inclusive and collaborative philosophical activism, including fostering and sustaining relationships across difference, engaging with soft systems mapping, and using synthetic imagination in crafting transdisciplinary engaged narratives. In conjunction with research on social change and creative innovation, Addams's work highlights the potential value of collaborative and democratic endeavors across difference as a means toward more radical imaginaries and relational revolution. (shrink)

Seeking to answer the question of what it is that nurses do, scholars researching nursing have worked with theoretical approaches ranging from the more abstract to the concrete: from philosophizing the nature of nursing to emphasizing the interpersonal nature of nursing practice to exploring processes of clinical decision‐making. In this paper, we engage with Bourdieu's theory of practice as an alternative approach that helps to understand the finer points of nurses' everyday practices of nursing as being grounded in an ontology (...) of practice. We first outline the foundations of Bourdieu's thinking as he established both a relational philosophy of science and an embodied philosophy of action to develop the theory of practice around notions of habitus, capital and field. Then, using the inter‐relationships of these key elements of the theory of practice as a ‘toolkit to think with’, we explore an instance of nursing in practice in an acute care setting and show how, in taking account of social context, the dialectics between the elements reveal the social interactions that are accomplished in the doing. Moving to the relationships of these three elements with Bourdieu's further notions of illusio, symbolic power and symbolic violence, we uncover an ontology of nursing practices in the everyday. We conclude by summarising what this ontology of practice has to offer investigations into practices of nursing in any social context. (shrink)