Causal models of agents have been used to analyse the safety aspects of machine learning systems. But identifying agents is non-trivial -- often the causal model is just assumed by the modeler without much justification -- and modelling failures can lead to mistakes in the safety analysis. This paper proposes the first formal causal definition of agents -- roughly that agents are systems that would adapt their policy if their actions influenced the world in a different way. From this we (...) derive the first causal discovery algorithm for discovering agents from empirical data, and give algorithms for translating between causal models and game-theoretic influence diagrams. We demonstrate our approach by resolving some previous confusions caused by incorrect causal modelling of agents. (shrink)

This article explores Nietzsche’s philosophical aestheticism—the conception of art and the aesthetic as playing a necessary, internal, privileged role in the task of philosophy. It begins with an overview of the discussions of art and the aesthetic in Nietzsche’s writings, focusing on his early theory of tragedy. It then shows how Nietzsche’s position allows itself to be reconstructed as a distinctive and coherent form of philosophical aestheticism. The great importance Nietzsche gives to the aesthetic state is not matched by extensive (...) treatment of art. Instead, he associates the aesthetic state with his own philosophical ideas of will to power and eternal recurrence. (shrink)

Danielle Celermajer advocates for reconceptualizing responsibility in light of the climate crisis. I argue instead that we must understand current concepts of responsibility which are implicit in actual responsibility practices. I illustrate this by appeal to the practice of holding each other responsible for our beliefs-a practice in which we are constantly involved, but which is often obscured. It extends our responsibility to involuntary aspects of our own mind and involves socially distributed cognitive duties. Cognitive responsibility is part and parcel (...) of shared human conceptual frameworks that we should work to uncover and fully understand rather than revise. (shrink)

Theoretical equivalence and duality are two closely related notions: but their interconnection has so far not been well understood. In this paper I explicate the contribution of a recent schema for duality to discussions of theoretical equivalence. I argue that duality suggests a construal of theoretical equivalence in the physical sciences. The construal is in terms of the isomorphism of models, as defined by the schema. This construal gives interpretative constraints that should be useful for discussions of theoretical equivalence more (...) generally. I illustrate the construal in various formulations of Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. (shrink)

A core commitment of meta-ethical expressivism is that ordinary descriptive judgements are representational states, while normative judgements are non-representational directive states. Traditionally, this commitment has been understood as a psychological thesis about the nature of normative judgements, as the view that normative judgements consist in certain sorts of conative propositional attitudes. This paper’s aim is to challenge this reading and to show that changing our view on how this commitment is to be understood opens up space for attractive forms of (...) expressivism. The paper argues this by example: by presenting one of the possible expressivist views that can be developed on this reading and by arguing that this view has distinctive advantages over forms of expressivism that endorse the traditional interpretation of expressivism. (shrink)

Speech planning is a sophisticated process. In dialog, it regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. In a dialogic experiment, participants took turns with a confederate describing lists of objects. The confederate’s utterances (to which participants responded) were pre‐recorded and varied in whether they ended in a verb or an object noun and whether this (...) ending was predictable or not. We found that response planning in overlap with sentence‐final verbs evokes larger task‐evoked pupillary responses, while end predictability had no effect. This finding indicates that planning in overlap leads to higher processing load for next speakers in dialog and that next speakers do not proactively modulate the time course of their response planning based on their predictions of turn endings. The turn‐taking system exerts pressure on the language processing system by pushing speakers to plan in overlap despite the ensuing increase in processing load. (shrink)

Given the impressive success of environment-induced decoherence, nowadays no interpretation of quantum mechanics can ignore its results. The modal-Hamiltonian interpretation has proved to be effective for solving several interpretative problems, but since its actualization rule applies to closed systems, it seems to stand at odds with EID. The purpose of this article is to show that this is not the case: the states einselected by the interaction with the environment according to EID are the eigenvectors of an actual-valued observable belonging (...) to the preferred context selected by the MHI. (shrink)

The Description for this book, Machiavelli in Hell, will be forthcoming.

Long presented as a universal policy-recipe for social prosperity and economic growth, the promise of innovation seems to be increasingly in question, giving way to a new vision of progress in which society is advanced as a central enabler of technoeconomic development. Frameworks such as “Responsible” or “Mission-oriented” Innovation, for example, have become commonplace parlance and practice in the governance of the innovation–society nexus. In this paper, we study the dynamics by which this “social fix” to technoscience has gained legitimacy (...) in institutions of global governance by investigating recent projects at two international organizations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Commission, to mainstream “Responsible Innovation” frameworks and instruments across countries. Our analysis shows how the turn to societal participation in both organizations relies on a new deficit logic—a democratic deficit of innovation—that frames a lack of societal engagement in innovation governance as a major barrier to the uptake and dissemination of new technologies. These deficit politics enable global governance institutions to present “Responsible Innovation” frameworks as the solution and to claim authority over the coproduction of particular forms of democracy and innovation as intertwined pillars of a market-liberal international order. (shrink)

The sheer multitude of criteria of empirical significance has been taken as evidence that the pre-analytic notion being explicated is too vague to be useful. I show instead that a significant number of these criteria—by Ayer, Popper, Przełęcki, Suppes, and David Lewis, among others—not only form a coherent whole, but also connect directly to the theory of definition, the notion of empirical content as explicated by Ramsey sentences, and the theory of measurement; two criteria by Carnap and Sober are trivial, (...) but can be saved and connected to the other criteria by slight modifications. A corollary is that the ordinary language defense of Lewis, the conceptual arguments by Ayer and Popper, the theoretical considerations by Przełęcki, and the practical considerations by Suppes all apply to the same criterion or closely related criteria. Furthermore, the equivalence of some criteria allows for their individual justifications to be taken cumulatively and, together with the entailment relations between nonequivalent criteria, suggest criteria for general auxiliary assumptions, comparative criteria, and more liberal conceptions of observation. (shrink)

This entry reviews Carnap's philosophical views on the quantum mechanics of his time. It also offers some thoughts on how he might have reacted to some recent developments in the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Los textos publicados sobre el poshumanismo han ido creciendo en los últimos años, asimismo, la recepción del fenómeno se ha hecho cada vez más matizada y los análisis diversos. Tampoco han faltado las metáforas usadas para acercar el fenómeno, un tanto nuevo y desconocido, a otros más familiares. Entre estas metáforas, una de las primeras y, a nuestro juicio, más interesantes es la de Frankenstein. No obstante, su amplio uso, consideramos que falta un análisis más detallado de los motivos antropológicos (...) y las estrategias narrativas que encierra el uso de esta metáfora como critica al poshumanismo. El artículo busca desarrollar dicho análisis. (shrink)

El estado del avance tecnológico actual permite pensar en formas en las que la humanidad podría tener una mejor vida, pero, por el contrario, las condiciones parecen ser peores cada día. Las propuestas de Nick Srnicek y Alex Williams, y de Franco Berardi, abordan el problema de superar la sujeción de la tecnología al neoliberalismo, para permitir un mejor vivir. Sin embargo, sus propuestas, contrahegemonía y liberación del conocimiento, se separan en la forma, entre un proyecto político y la morfogénesis (...) producto de la comunidad. (shrink)

An introduction to the Buddha's thought in the language of contemporary philosophy. 'The Philosophy of the Buddha' is an intro to Buddhist thinking which doesn't assuming any prior knowledge. This book introduces key concepts of Buddhist philosophy such as suffering, karma, or nirvana, and explains the fundamentals of Buddhist thought using these concepts. It demonstrates that the central ideas of Buddha are understandable in the present day and can be discussed and understood as a philosophy, independent of religious affiliations. Real-life (...) examples and questions for further discussion and reflection provide opportunities for deeper engagement with the text. (shrink)

The study of complexity and optimization in decision theory involves both partial and complete characterizations of preferences over decision spaces in terms of real-valued monotones. With this motivation, and following the recent introduction of new classes of monotones, like injective monotones or strict monotone multi-utilities, we present the classification of preordered spaces in terms of both the existence and cardinality of real-valued monotones and the cardinality of the quotient space. In particular, we take advantage of a characterization of real-valued monotones (...) in terms of separating families of increasing sets to obtain a more complete classification consisting of classes that are strictly different from each other. As a result, we gain new insight into both complexity and optimization, and clarify their interplay in preordered spaces. (shrink)

The present essay aims to respond to one of the most recent empirical challenges posed to an Aristotelian based virtue ethics. In the course of the debate concerning the existence of character traits a second and more recent challenge has emerged, which Jesse Prinz has called The Normativity Challenge. The argument in this case is that the empirical study of happiness undertaken by psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists, reveals that the end which virtues are supposed to support, namely happiness, is so (...) thoroughly culturally specific that an Aristotelian virtue ethics cannot hope to stand as an alternative to other forms of ethics. In response I argue that Prinz’s critique is committed to two presuppositions about Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia that are not supported by a careful reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, one of which is a careful understanding of natural goodness, so that the sociological evidence he produces does not support the conclusion he supposes that it does. (shrink)

Addiction is a widespread problem affecting people from different regions, generations, and classes. It is often analysed as a problem consisting in compulsion or poor choice-making. Recently, however, integrated analyses of compulsion and choice have been called for. In this paper, I argue that the capability approach highlights the well-being loss at stake in cases of addiction, whether they are described as stemming from compulsion, poor choice-making, or some combination thereof. The relevant capabilities obtain when combinations of individual, socio-political, and (...) environmental factors jointly facilitate abstention. On this complementary evaluative analysis, people’s capabilities to abstain are shown to be undermined by how different kinds of factors interact with each other. The upshot is that without committing to an empirical view of the nature of addiction that must capture each case, the capabilitarian analysis helps highlight a central goal of addiction-related well-being policy-work, namely to promote people’s genuine opportunities to abstain. (shrink)

. This paper argues that legal philosophy is a social practice undertaken by participants whose views have primacy over non‐participants. This social practice is dynamic, constructive and based on understanding and explanation, in order to meet normative expectations. Legal Philosophy should include Legal Ontology, Legal Epistemology and a Theory of Justice. It is usually claimed that legal philosophy is a branch of a genus called philosophy, but there is no one single definition of it. In this paper it is argued (...) that as a starting point there is a need to choose between three basic traditions in philosophy. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie 50+1-Regel soll im deutschen Profifußball den beherrschenden Einfluss eines Muttervereins über eine Profifußballabteilung gewährleisten, wodurch historisch geprägte Mitbestimmungsmöglichkeiten von Vereinsmitgliedern bzw. Fans bewahrt werden. Die anhaltende Diskussion um die Zukunft der Regel gibt unter Beachtung des Stakeholder-Ansatzes Grund zum Anlass, die Interessen von Fußballfans zu fokussieren. Erstmalig wurden dazu in den Jahren 2011 (n=3114) und 2017 (n=3739) die Argumente für eine Beibehaltung, die Argumente für eine Aufhebung sowie die Präferenz hinsichtlich der Zukunft der 50+1-Regel empirisch erhoben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen (...) eine zeitunabhängige Befürwortung der Beibehaltung der Regel, wobei ergänzend (a) eine anhaltende Befürwortung partizipativer Argumente für eine Beibehaltung, (b) die zunehmende Befürwortung des Ausschlusses von Multi-Club Ownership durch die 50+1-Regel sowie (c) der Rückgang gesellschaftlicher und von Tradition geprägter Argumente für eine Beibehaltung hervorzuheben sind. (shrink)

A partir de la fórmula revolución pasiva, el artículo aborda teóricamente la cuestión educativa en los Cuadernos de la Cárcel. Central en los nuevos estudios gramscianos, la fórmula revolución pasiva no ha tenido un papel significativo en las indagaciones educativas de los escritos de Gramsci. En lugar de aislar el tópico educativo de la trama conceptual de los Cuadernos, se busca articular la cuestión pedagógica con nudos temáticos centrales del corpus gramsciano a luz del oxímoron revolución pasiva. En esta línea, (...) se asume la revolución pasiva como una fórmula heurística, es decir, como una perspectiva general que organiza (en diferentes sentidos y tiempos) la investigación carcelaria en torno a la crisis de hegemonía y recomposición del orden. Luego de interpretar una serie de conceptos gramscianos, tales como hegemonía, clases subalternas, Estado integral e intelectuales bajo el prisma de la revolución pasiva, se aborda el análisis de la reforma educativa de Giovanni Gentile (1922-23) en los Cuadernos. Se considera, a modo de hipótesis, que en la reflexión gramsciana, esta reforma opera como el capítulo educativo del análisis del fascismo como intento de revolución pasiva. Entre las conclusiones, se esgrime que de la complejidad analítica de la reforma gentiliana en los Cuadernos es posible derivar un criterio de interpretación histórico-educativo de reformas educativas. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos hacer una lectura de Tomás Carrasquilla desde el nacionalismo y el regionalismo, con el objetivo de identificar en su pensamiento las ideas sobre la identidad nacional. Nos basaremos en los ensayos de crítica literaria llamados “Homilías”, publicados por Carrasquilla en 1906 en la revista Alpha, en donde, a través de una crítica a la influencia del modernismo europeo en los escritores de su generación, el autor antioqueño expuso una defensa de los elementos autóctonos o regionales (...) en la confección de una literatura nacional. Dicho propósito lo alcanzaremos a través de dos momentos: el primero, desde la exposición del férreo rechazo al modernismo que profesó Carrasquilla y, el segundo, mediante la definición de los conceptos medio ambiente, región y alma nacional. Concluiremos que en la proclamación de un 20 de julio literario Carrasquilla expone los rasgos de un pensamiento que oscila entre el regionalismo y el nacionalismo. Para esta búsqueda de las bases de la identidad nacional en Carrasquilla, nos apoyaremos en las definiciones canónicas de nacionalismo e identidad nacional de autores como Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Anthony D. Smith, Claudio Lomnitz y Gilberto Freyre. Finalmente, en términos metodológicos, este trabajo se desarrollará como una investigación de tipo documental y de nivel interpretativo. (shrink)

Dies is die erste Untersuchung, die das Gesamtwerk von Hans Jonas in den Blick nimnt. Dabei zeigt sie, warum dessen Religionsphilosophie, Naturphilosophie und Anthropologie die Konsequenzen zeiteigen, die dem Prinzip Verantwortung und besonders seiner Bioethik zu Grunde liegen. Zudem demonstriert der Verfasser,wie eine organische Naturphilosophie ein substantielles Verstandnis vom Menschem schafft, wodurch allein eine tragfahige Bioethik - mit den Problemen, die siehum Lebensbeginn und Lebensende des Menschen gruppieren - begrunder werden kannt. Eine bahnbrechende Arbeit die auf eine eigene Bioethik des (...) Verfassers hoffen lasst. (shrink)

The present article aims to analyze, from literary studies, the aspects of the life of Tomás Carrasquilla that, reflected in his historical novel La marquesa de Yolombó, contributed to the creation of Yolombó as a literary universe that exposes the tensions of creation identity of the Colombian nation. This purpose is achieved through three moments: the first, the identification of bibliographic sources that within literary criticism have addressed the biographical aspects of the author; the second, the exploration of the mining (...) route that led the first Spanish settlers, established in the municipality of Cancán, to migrate to neighboring municipalities such as Yolombó and Santo Domingo and, thirdly, the review of the influences of the oral accounts of the Carrasquilla family in the composition of the novel. It is concluded that the tragic fate that the character of Bárbara Caballero faces in the work may represent a rejection of the author towards the realistic spirit and submission to the Spanish crown of the legendary Marchioness. This hypothesis is based on the fact that the historical Bárbara, the writer's great-great-great aunt, was out of tune in the middle of a family that was favorable to the independence cause, such is the case of José María Córdova, distinguished hero of independence, related to Carrasquilla in the same degree of consanguinity as Bárbara Caballero. Finally, in methodological terms, this work is developed as a documentary investigation whose level is interpretive. (shrink)

In Oneself as Another, Paul Ricoeur proposes a new ethical theory that integrates Aristotle’s eudaemonist virtue ethical outlook with Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethics. The goal is ambitious, and recent discussions in anglophone philosophy have made its undertaking look to be founded on a confusion. The new argument goes that the ethical justification at work in the Aristotelian and Kantian traditions is of opposed kinds. Attempts to integrate them, as a result, are either incoherent, or, in the best case, simply minor (...) variations on one or another predominant ethical outlook. The essay grants the opposed kinds thesis and argues that despite its apparent impossibility, Ricoeur nevertheless does succeed in integrating two ethical approaches, including their different sources of justification, to produce a novel and thus ethically interesting theory. The essay closes, finally, with a reflection on how this method might be developed one step further to include an insight by Emmanuel Levinas on the look of the Other, and so make for an ethics of recognition. (shrink)

Hermeneutic philosophy, and Paul Ricoeur’s formulation of hermeneutics in particular, faces a serious challenge, not from external sources, but from internal proponents of the program. In what might be called the Collapse Challenge, Ricoeur’s understanding of the hermeneutic circle is criticized for making use of structuralist methods that are no longer considered viable. Rather than look to replace Ricoeur’s work with an external model, the present essay draws on his late model of translation to suggest two viable paths forward beyond (...) the Collapse Challenge. To develop these paths, the essay gives two concrete cases, one using Confucian philosophy, which is comparative, another using Aztec philosophy, which is syncretic. (shrink)

De-Kanting Rawls: evolutionary justifcation of the theory of justice by Ken Binmore: The article discusses the criticism of John Rawls’s theory of justice formulated by Ken Binmore. Binmore criticizes Rawls in his work for inadequate justifcation of fairness norms. In his opinion, their proper justifcation requires the rejection of Kant’s “metaphysics” in favor of Hume’s empiricism. To explain how fairness norms actually work, one must frst provide a convincing account of evolutionary processes that could lead to such norms being encoded (...) in our genome. Secondly, it should be explained how this biological mechanism interacts with our cultural heritage and generates a selection of balance points in games that describe our social interactions. (shrink)

We live in extraordinary times for cosmologists. A vast amount of new astronomical data is pushing our model of the universe to its limits. An interest in cosmology is growing. The Little Book of Cosmology by Lyman Page is a concise up-to-date approachable introduction to the topic.