According to the additive view of sensory imagination, mental imagery often involves two elements. There is an image-like element, which gives the experiences qualitative phenomenal character akin to that of perception. There is also a non-image element, consisting of something like suppositions about the image's object. This accounts for extra- sensory features of imagined objects and situations: for example, it determines whether an image of a grey horse is an image of Desert Orchid, or of some other grey horse. The (...) view promises to give a simple and intuitive explanation of some puzzling features of imagination, and, further, to illuminate imagination 's relation to modal knowledge. I contend that the additive view does not fulfil these two promises. The explanation of how images come to be determinate is redundant: the content constituting the indeterminate mental images on which the view relies is sufficient to deliver determinate images too, so the extra resources offered by the view are not required.. (shrink)

I argue that at least one of the following propositions is true: the human species is very likely to become extinct before reaching a ’posthuman’ stage; any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of its evolutionary history ; we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we shall one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living (...) in a simulation. I discuss some consequences of this result. (shrink)

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of (...) our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career. In addition to well-known threats such as nuclear holocaust, the propects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks. Our future, and whether we will have a future at all, may well be determined by how we deal with these challenges. In the case of radically transforming technologies, a better understanding of the transition dynamics from (...) a human to a "posthuman" society is needed. Of particular importance is to know where the pitfalls are: the ways in which things could go terminally wrong. While we have had long exposure to various personal, local, and endurable global hazards, this paper analyzes a recently emerging category: that of existential risks. These are threats that could case our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth - originating intelligent life. Some of these threats are relatively well known while others, including some of the gravest, have gone almost unrecognized. Existential risks have a cluster of features that make ordinary risk management ineffective. A final section of this paper discusses several ethical and policy implications. A clearer understanding of the threat picture will enable us to formulate better strategies. (shrink)

To what extent should we use technological advances to try to make better human beings? Leading philosophers debate the possibility of enhancing human cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and controlling aging. Would this take us beyond the bounds of human nature? These are questions that need to be answered now.

In his theory of the event, Alain Badiou argues that the realm of politics is particularly important. Drawing to an extent on Marx, Lenin and Mao, he argues that true politics is revolutionary, or at least 'eventmental'. Badiou's political thought places great emphasis on the role of the agent of change — the subject — but he argues controversially that subjecthood in politics as well as in other domains comes only after the event has taken place, leaving the potential subject (...) in a highly passive position before the event has taken place. He has relinquished some but not all of Marx's materialist and historical approach, in favour of a more idealist approach influenced in part by Plato, with the effect that his theory of politics is rather disjointed. Badiou's uneasy blend of idealism and materialism means that he has at times highly unorthodox things to say about the notion of democracy and has uneven positions regarding both parliamentary politics and political activism. A lonely, committed voice in contemporary France, Badiou's theory of politics nevertheless offers a rare opportunity to engage with a thinker who is attempting to offer a new philosophy of praxis. (shrink)

The human desire to acquire new capacities is as ancient as our species itself. We have always sought to expand the boundaries of our existence, be it socially, geographically, or mentally. There is a tendency in at least some individuals always to search for a way around every obstacle and limitation to human life and happiness.

The view that chances are relative frequencies of occurrence within actual, finite reference classes has long been written off. I argue that it ought to be reconsidered. Focusing on non-deterministic chance, I defend a version of finite frequentism in which reference classmates are required to have qualitatively identical pasts. While my analysis can evade or resist several standard objections, it has a counterintuitive consequence: non-trivial chances entail the existence of past light cones that are perfect intrinsic duplicates. In mitigation, I (...) argue that our scientific knowledge is consistent with the hypothesis that there are many such duplicates in the actual world. Moreover, my analysis has some striking advantages: it is simple, it is metaphysically undemanding, and it makes possible a satisfying explanation of the chance–credence connection. 1 Introduction2 Target3 Sketch and Skirmish4 Articulation5 Standard Worries5.1 Frequency tolerance5.2 Leibniz’s dictum5.3 Single case chance5.4 Missing values5.5 Explanation5.6 Counterfactual chances6 Chance and Credence6.1 An indefeasible indifference intuition6.2 Articulating the credence principle6.3 Appraising the credence principle7 Confirmation8 Laws9 Summing Up. (shrink)

A pervasive and influential argument appeals to trivial truths to demonstrate that the aim of inquiry is not the acquisition of truth. But the argument fails, for it neglects to distinguish between the complexity of the sentence used to express a truth and the complexity of the truth expressed by a sentence.

It is widely thought that moral obligations are necessarily guidance giving. This supposed fact has been put to service in defence of the ‘ought-implies-can’ principle according to which one cannot be morally obligated to do the impossible, since impossible-to-satisfy obligations would not give guidance. It is argued here that the supposed fact is no such thing; moral obligations are not necessarily guiding giving, and so the ‘guidance argument’ for ought-implies-can fails. This is the result of no non-trivial condition being ‘luminous’.

What is artistic style? In the literature one answer to this question has proved influential: the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. In what follows we elaborate upon and evaluatively compare the two most plausible versions of this view with a new proposal—that style is the expression of the artist’s ideals for her art. We proceed by comparing the views’ answers to certain questions we think a theory of individual artistic style should address: Are there limits on (...) what range of features can figure in a style? Can flaws be stylistic? Are there limits on the range of art forms across which a given style can be exhibited? To what extent is a style a kind of unity, and why? What makes style an artistic achievement? Why do we care about style? By considering the different views' answers to these questions we argue that our proposal is a workable theory of individual style and suggest that it fares better on the whole than both versions of the influential and widely accepted view. (shrink)

We present a theory of decision by sampling (DbS) in which, in contrast with traditional models, there are no underlying psychoeconomic scales. Instead, we assume that an attribute’s subjective value is constructed from a series of binary, ordinal comparisons to a sample of attribute values drawn from memory and is its rank within the sample. We assume that the sample reflects both the immediate distribution of attribute values from the current decision’s context and also the background, real-world distribution of attribute (...) values. DbS accounts for concave utility functions; losses looming larger than gains; hyperbolic temporal discounting; and the overestimation of small probabilities and the underestimation of large probabilities. Ó 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

What's aesthetically interesting or significant about electronic dance music? The first answer I consider here is that dancing is significant. Using literature on groove, dance and expression, I sketch an account of club dancing as expressive activity. I next consider the aesthetic achievements of DJs, introducing two conceptions of what they do. These thoughts lead to discussions of dance music's ontology. I suggest that the fundamental work of dance music is the mix and that mixes require their own ontology, distinct (...) from ontologies of recordings or improvisations. Finally, I explore two aspects of dance music's aesthetics: its connection with repetition and repetitiveness and its use of electronic sounds and technologies. I conclude with some speculative thoughts about the unique relation dance music bears to repetition and electronics. This article is Part II of two; in Part I, I consider the problem of defining dance music, via the framing question of authenticity. I explore history, genre, scenes and subcultures, and blackness. (shrink)

We present a new notion of game equivalence that captures basic powers of interacting players. We provide a representation theorem, a complete logic, and a new game algebra for basic powers. In doing so, we establish connections with imperfect information games and epistemic logic. We also identify some new open problems concerning logic and games.

We present a new notion of game equivalence that captures basic powers of interacting players. We provide a representation theorem, a complete logic, and a new game algebra for basic powers. In doing so, we establish connections with imperfect information games and epistemic logic. We also identify some new open problems concerning logic and games.

What is it to have and act on a personal ideal? Someone who aspires to be a philosopher might imaginatively think “I am a philosopher” by way of motivating herself to think hard about a philosophical question. But doing so seems to require her to act on an inaccurate self-description, given that she isn’t yet what she regards herself as being. J. David Velleman develops the thought that action-by-ideal involves a kind of fictional self-conception. My aim is to expand our (...) thinking about personal ideals by developing another way of understanding them. On this view action-by-ideal involves a kind of metaphorical self-conception. I investigate some salient differences between these views with the aim of understanding the different perspectives they take on the rationality of action-by-ideal. Where the fiction view runs into problems of literary coherence, the metaphor view exploits the richness of poetic invention. But action-by-ideal is a complex phenomenon about which there may be no tidy story to be told. This paper is an attempt to clarify and understand more of this messy terrain. (shrink)

Human cognition requires coping with a complex and uncertain world. This suggests that dealing with uncertainty may be the central challenge for human reasoning. In Bayesian Rationality we argue that probability theory, the calculus of uncertainty, is the right framework in which to understand everyday reasoning. We also argue that probability theory explains behavior, even on experimental tasks that have been designed to probe people's logical reasoning abilities. Most commentators agree on the centrality of uncertainty; some suggest that there is (...) a residual role for logic in understanding reasoning; and others put forward alternative formalisms for uncertain reasoning, or raise specific technical, methodological, or empirical challenges. In responding to these points, we aim to clarify the scope and limits of probability and logic in cognitive science; explore the meaning of the explanation of cognition; and re-evaluate the empirical case for Bayesian rationality. (shrink)

Electronic dance music has much about it to interest philosophers. In this article, I explore facets of dance music cultures, using the issue of authenticity as a framing question. The problem of sorting real or authentic dance music from mainstream or commercial clubbing can be treated as a matter of history and genre-definition; as a matter of defining scenes or subcultures; and as a matter of blackness. In each case, electronic dance music, and critical discourse surrounding it, offers fresh illumination (...) of aesthetic questions. I briefly characterise the main genres of dance music, match conversations about the hardcore continuum with philosophers’ accounts of genre, survey sociologists’ ways of thinking about cultures and their connections to taste and personal identity, and link criticisms that dance music now lacks blackness to conceptions of black aesthetics. This article is Part I of two; Part II focusses on dancers, DJs, and the aesthetics and ontology of dance music itself. Video abstract. (shrink)

Stable logics are modal logics characterized by a class of frames closed under relation preserving images. These logics admit all filtrations. Since many basic modal systems such as K4 and S4 are not stable, we introduce the more general concept of an M-stable logic, where M is an arbitrary normal modal logic that admits some filtration. Of course, M can be chosen to be K4 or S4. We give several characterizations of M-stable logics. We prove that there are continuum many (...) S4-stable logics and continuum many K4-stable logics between K4 and S4. We axiomatize K4-stable and S4-stable logics by means of stable formulas and discuss the connection between S4-stable logics and stable superintuitionistic logics. We conclude the article with many examples (and nonexamples) of stable, K4-stable, and S4-stable logics and provide their axiomatization in terms of stable rules and formulas. (shrink)

Millikan's nondescriptionist approach applies an account of meaning to concepts in terms of designation. The essentialism that provides the principal grounds for rigid designation, however, receives no empirical support from concepts. Whatever the grounding, this view not only faces the problems of rigid designation in theories of meaning, it also calls for a role for pragmatics more consonant with descriptionist theories of concepts.

"This volume is concerned with how we ought to evaluate the individual and collective actions on which the existence, numbers and identities of future people depend - discussed here as the "problem of contingent future persons." For it seems that those future persons who are brought into existence by such actions cannot benefit from or be harmed by them in any conventional sense. This is a relatively novel problem in ethics and as yet there is simply no consensus on how (...) we ought to evaluate such actions or, indeed, on whether we can. However, the pursuit of a solution to the problem has been interestingly employed by moral philosophers to press the limits of ethics and to urge a reconsideration of the nature and source of value at its most fundamental level. Intended for professional ethicists, policy researchers, and graduate students, this volume explores the theological implications of the problem and advances the investigation of it both philosophical and in theological terms." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

Icons of knowledge -- Two small embryos in spirits of wine -- Like flies on the Parlon ceiling -- Drawing and Darwinism -- Illustrating the magic word -- Professors and progress -- Visual strategies -- Schematics, forgery, and the so-called educated -- Imperial grids -- Setting standards -- Forbidden fruit -- Creative copying -- Trials and tributes -- Scandal for the people -- A hundred Haeckels -- The textbook illustration -- Iconoclasm -- The shock of the copy.

This paper discusses the relation between intelligence and motivation in artificial agents, developing and briefly arguing for two theses. The first, the orthogonality thesis, holds (with some caveats) that intelligence and final goals (purposes) are orthogonal axes along which possible artificial intellects can freely vary—more or less any level of intelligence could be combined with more or less any final goal. The second, the instrumental convergence thesis, holds that as long as they possess a sufficient level of intelligence, agents having (...) any of a wide range of final goals will pursue similar intermediary goals because they have instrumental reasons to do so. In combination, the two theses help us understand the possible range of behavior of superintelligent agents, and they point to some potential dangers in building such an agent. (shrink)

This the final volume of a five volume edited work on the history 0f western philosophy of religion. It contains chapters on James, Bergson, Dewey, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Russell, Scheler, Buber, Maritain, Jaspers, Tillich, Barth, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Levinas, Weil, Ayer, Alston, Hick, Daly, Derrida, Plantinga, and Swinburne.

A set of axioms is presented defining an ‘analytic Zariski structure’, as a generalisation of Hrushovski and Zilber’s Zariski structures. Some consequences of the axioms are explored. A simple example of a structure constructed using Hrushovski’s method of free amalgamation is shown to be a non-trivial example of an analytic Zariski structure. A number of ‘quasi-analytic’ results are derived for this example e.g. analogues of Chow’s theorem and the proper mapping theorem.

This paper examines the evidential argument from evil put forward by William Rowe during his early and middle periods (1978-1995). Having delineated some of the important features of Rowe’s argument, it is then assessed in the light of “the skeptical theist critique.” According to skeptical theists, Rowe’s crucial (“noseeum”) inference from inscrutable evil to pointless evil can be exposed as unwarranted, particularly by appealing to the disparity between our cognitive abilities and the infinite wisdom of God. However, by relating the (...) problem of evil to that of divine hiddenness, the adverse consequences and hence the highly dubious nature of this skeptical theist position are brought to light. (shrink)

We consider the question of the manner of the internalization of the geometry and topology of physical space in the mind, both the mechanism of internalization and precisely what structures are internalized. Though we will not argue for the point here, we agree with the long tradition which holds that an understanding of this issue is crucial for addressing many metaphysical and epistemological questions concerning space.

The Evidential Problem of Evil The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, if so, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential […].