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4811.019479
In the world of literary non-fiction, John McPhee is a god. Through his New Yorker essays, and prize-winning books McPhee has mastered the art of narrative non-fiction. In fact, he pretty much invented the genre. …
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5943.019762
This paper explores the connection between the feelings that arise in grief and two kinds of “grief tech” that we use to regulate these feelings: music and AI-driven chatbots. “Grief tech” covers a broad range of practices, rituals, and artefacts that shape how we experience and express our grief. Music and AI might seem to have little in common with one another. However, I argue that both afford something not all forms of grief tech do – collaborative possibilities for world-making – and therefore can help the bereaved reconstruct “habits of intimacy” lost when a loved one dies. This (re)constructive impact is part of their world-making potency. And it is a crucial part of grief work. In this way, both music and AI potentially have a deep effect on our emotions, agency, and self-regulative capacities. This is why both are particularly powerful forms of grief tech.
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9540.019783
Chapter 12 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is called “The Resolution of Revolutions”. It deals with the post-revolutionary period in which a rival paradigm has been proposed and now the proponents of the new paradigm must persuade the holdouts supporting the dominant paradigm. Kuhn is frank that the skeptics may never be persuaded. What follows is an interpretation of his account of the resolution of revolutions in Chapter 12. Kuhn’s position begins from the claim that experimental falsification is not the motivation for the proposal of a new paradigm. Instead, novel paradigms are developed to solve new problems in cases where doing so requires a new way of looking at and understanding the phenomena: an interlocked set of non-empirical assumptions (SSR, 147) all change at once. As a result, persuading adherents to the former paradigm is not a matter of presenting evidence, but of changing how they see and understand science. It may even mean persuading them to adopt new ways of doing and understanding science itself.
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9592.019795
In the Preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn (1922-1996) provides some useful background to understanding what he sought to accomplish in the book. Kuhn begins by explaining his own starting point for writing the book. He explains that his exposure to the history of science “radically undermined some of [his] basic conceptions about the nature of science” (Kuhn 1962/2012, xxxix). In fact, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a presentation of the new conception of science that he developed in light of this experience. Ultimately, as Kuhn makes clear, he is interested in developing a philosophy of science. In his words, in Structure he is addressing “the more philosophical concerns that had initially led [him] to history” (Kuhn 1962/2012, xxxix-xl). Indeed, his principal concerns are epistemological: understanding the relationship between data and theory, understanding how scientific knowledge grows, and understanding the nature of progress in science. The history of science functions as a source of data about science.
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29559.019814
The news these days feels apocalyptic to me—as if we’re living through, if not the last days of humanity, then surely the last days of liberal democracy on earth. All the more reason to ignore all of that, then, and blog instead about the notorious Busy Beaver function! …
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32325.019824
The idea that diverse groups of ordinary citizens will “outperform” expert panels has become something of a totemic conviction in democratic theory. The “diversity trumps ability” (DTA) theorem, first formulated by the economists Lu Hong and Scott E. Page (2004), asserts that under certain conditions, diverse assemblies will find better solutions to complex problems than homogeneous groups of the best experts. This result has been taken up with much enthusiasm by political theorists, some of whom have taken it to prove the epistemic supremacy of democratic decision-making over its competitors (Landemore 2013). In debates with defenders of expertocratic and epistocratic, let alone autocratic, modes of decision-making,
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51755.019835
The fields of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics have experienced rapid growth over the past decade, yet little research has focused on issues related to midlife or older age. In light of the profound demographic changes occurring in our society, this is an important research gap. The past century witnessed a near doubling of life expectancy, and it is projected that in <50 years, there will be close to 90 million Americans aged 65 years (Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics, 2010). We are on the brink of profound demographic changes both in the USA and the world at large (see: http://www.prb.org/Articles/2011/agingpopulationclocks.aspx).
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74734.019846
Assume naturalism and suppose that digital electronic systems can be significantly conscious. Suppose Alice is a deterministic significantly conscious digital electronic system. Imagine we duplicated Alice to make another such system, Bob, and fed them both the same inputs. …
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237405.019856
Being low status is unpleasant. Sometimes it’s only that, and barely so: when it comes to sports, my athletic abilities mark me as inferior, and won’t get me attention from professional recruiters, but I don’t care. …
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240249.019867
This chapter examines the history of philosophy of psychology and philosophy of psychiatry as subfields of philosophy of science that emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The chapter also surveys related literatures that developed in psychology and psychiatry. Philosophy of psychology (or philosophy of cognitive science) has been a well-established subfield of philosophy of mind since the 1990s and 2000s. This field of philosophy of psychology is narrowly focused on issues in cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Compared to the thriving subfield of philosophy of cognitive science, there has been a lack of corresponding interest among philosophers of science in broader methodological questions about different paradigms and fields of study in psychology. These broader methodological questions about psychology have been addressed in the field of theoretical psychology, which is a subfield of psychology that materialized in the 1980s and 1990s. Philosophy of psychiatry emerged as a subfield of philosophy of science in the mid-2000s. Compared to philosophy of psychology, the philosophy of psychiatry literature in philosophy of science engaged with issues examined in an older and more interdisciplinary tradition of philosophy of psychiatry that developed after the 1960s. The participation of philosophers of science in the literature on theoretical psychology, by contrast, has been limited.
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288443.019879
One of my recurring themes is that people underrate epistemic discipline: doing the most basic legwork of good thinking. Both critical thinking books and rationalist writings often focus on fallacies involving subtleties like the Monty Hall problem and Bayes’ Theorem. …
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413493.01989
Niche construction theory (NCT) aims to transform and unite evolutionary biology and ecology. Much of the debate about NCT has focused on construction. Less attention has been accorded to the niche: what is it, exactly, that organisms are constructing? In this paper I compare and contrast the definition of the niche used in NCT with ecological niche definitions. NCT’s concept of the evolutionary niche is defined as the sum of selection pressures affecting a population. So defined, the evolutionary niche is narrower than the ecological niche. Moreover, when contrasted with a more restricted ecological niche concept, it has a slightly different extension. I point out three kinds of cases in which the evolutionary niche does not coincide with realized ecological niches: extreme habitat degradation, commensalism, and non-limiting or super-abundant resources. These conceptual differences affect the role of NCT in unifying ecology and evolutionary biology.
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413514.019902
Adrian Bardon has produced a new version of his historical introduction to the philosophy of time. Originally published in 2013, the second edition of 2024 is partly rewritten and supplemented with a more extensive discussion on our disposition to project the passage of time. The historical exposition contains standard figures in Western philosophy, covering antiquity, the early modern era, and the 20th century. This edition also references some schools and figures not typically included in the canon, such as very early Indian sources, Émilie du Châtelet and al-Ghazali. Although the book’s title emphasizes history, most of the chapters are directed at issues in systematic philosophy of time: the realism/antirealism debate, temporal passage, temporal experience, spacetime, direction, time travel, time and free will, and the temporal boundaries of the universe. The book is pedagogically well-designed. The chosen topics are well-balanced and the text flows smoothly from beginning to end. The perennial questions about time are presented to the reader in an accessible way.
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466792.019913
from our empathy for the dead. Much needs to be done to give a satisfying defense of this proposal — beginning with a defense of the suggestion that empathy can extend, beyond the living, to those who experience nothing. But the very suggestion that empathy plays even some role in grief may itself come as a surprise. In fact, the suggestion goes against the grain of much recent theorizing in philosophical discussions of grief. One of the major divides in this literature is between “agent-centered” views of grief, which claim that the loss to be grieved is a loss from the perspective of the bereaved person’s life, and “object-centered” views, which claim that the loss to be grieved is an objective loss of life, not, primarily, a loss to the griever. Empathy disappears from view in this setting because it straddles the divide between self (the grieving agent) and other (the objective loss); in empathizing, it is said that one feels for another.
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466818.019924
Despite persistent misunderstandings to the contrary, standpoint theorists are not committed to an automatic privilege thesis (Wylie 2003, 27). According to an automatic privilege thesis, those who occupy marginalized social positions automatically know more, or know better, by virtue of their social location. The issues with this thesis are obvious: it is implausible; it offers no explanation of the connection between marginalized social location and epistemic advantage; and it cannot explain how it is that some marginalized individuals seem to (genuinely) buy into oppressive ideologies.
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466845.019935
Thoughts are like Pancakes, and the Brain is the Pan wherein they are tossed and turned by the several Objects, as several Hands.
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586768.019946
An aesthetic sense—a taste for the creation and/or appreciation of that which strikes one as, e.g., attractive or awesome—is often assumed to be a distinctively H. sapiens phenomenon. However, recent paleoanthropological research is revealing its archaeologically visible, deeper roots. The sensorimotor/perceptual and cognitive capacities underpinning aesthetic activities are a major focus of evolutionary aesthetics. Here we take a diachronic, evolutionary perspective and assess ongoing scepticism regarding whether, and to what extent, aesthetic capacity extends to our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals. The goal of this article is twofold. First, it serves as a defence of the attribution of Neanderthal aesthetic capacity by marshalling archaeological data best explained by positing a Neanderthal aesthetic sense. Second, it offers an opportunity to make progress on understanding some epistemically relevant features of the wider debate in evolutionary aesthetics.
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649675.019957
On the occasion of the 7th International Conference on Economic Philosophy that we organized last month in Reims, we had two book sessions on recently published books dealing with the main topic of the conference, “market(s) and democracy.” One of the sessions was about Petr Špecián’s (Charles University) Behavioral Political Economy and Democratic Theory (Routledge, 2022) and the other discussed Lisa Herzog’s (University of Groningen) Citizen Knowledge. …
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656098.019968
Episodic memory gives us the ability to mentally travel back in time to revisit and relive past experiences. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the function of episodic memory. According to the orthodox view, episodic memory should be considered a part of a constructive system that simulates the future for sophisticated foresight and flexible planning. In this paper, I offer a novel alternative view. I argue that episodic memory provides invaluable information about the past behavior of others, allowing us to identify reliable and trustworthy partners while avoiding dealing with cheaters. Theoretical models demonstrate that cooperation in groups can be maintained if potential partners use information about an individual’s past behavior to guide their behavior toward that individual. In these reputation-based models of human cooperation, individuals with a history of cheating are ostracized, whereas those with a history of cooperative behavior flourish. Against this theoretical background, it is possible to see a function of episodic memory in facilitating information exchange about others, helping group members make effective partner choices, and avoiding the risk of interacting with cheaters. If correct, episodic memory may have played a significant role in the evolution of human cooperation.
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680275.019978
Vices are often attributed to corporations. We hear that casinos are ‘greedy,’ mining companies are ‘ruthless,’ or tobacco companies are ‘dishonest.’ This chapter addresses two questions. First, are such corporate vices reducible to the vices of individual role-bearers? Second, which traits of corporations are properly labelled ‘vices’? The chapter argues that corporate vice is sometimes irreducible to the vices of role-bearers: corporations can be vicious ‘over and above’ the traits of role-bearers. It further argues that different corporations should be held to different standards: what it means for a casino to be ‘vicious’ is different from what it means for a mining company to be ‘vicious,’ for example.
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760093.019989
Kuhn’s analysis of the structure and function of the scientific community has been recently re-interpreted as a seminal contribution to the so-called social epistemology of science. Kuhn’s social epistemology should be considered as part of a normative-descriptive philosophical framework in which epistemological, historical, sociological, and psychological elements are interconnected. In this chapter, I will compare Kuhn’s seminal insights with two contemporary approaches to the social epistemology of science, namely: the development of idealised formal models of the scientific community and the use of qualitative studies for philosophical purposes. On the one hand, these contemporary approaches to social epistemology may be regarded as developing some of Kuhn’s views in new and exciting ways. On the other hand, however, it is still not entirely clear which kind of general philosophical ‘image of science’ they are contributing to. This chapter, therefore, aims at illuminating how analysing some of the contemporary debates in social epistemology through the lenses of Kuhn’s philosophy may recast under a new light the issue of the value of the study of the social dimension of scientific research for general philosophy of science.
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817228.020002
This paper analyses the phenomenology and epistemology of chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard. The computational architecture underpinning these chatbots are large language models (LLMs), which are generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on a massive dataset of text extracted from the Web. We conceptualise these LLMs as multifunctional computational cognitive artifacts, used for various cognitive tasks such as translating, summarizing, answering questions, information-seeking, and much more. Phenomenologically, LLMs can be experienced as a “quasi-other”; when that happens, users anthropomorphise them. For most users, current LLMs are black boxes, i.e., for the most part, they lack data transparency and algorithmic transparency. They can, however, be phenomenologically and informationally transparent, in which case there is an interactional flow. Anthropomorphising and interactional flow can, in some users, create an attitude of (unwarranted) trust towards the output LLMs generate. We conclude this paper by drawing on the epistemology of trust and testimony to examine the epistemic implications of these dimensions. Whilst LLMs generally generate accurate responses, we observe two epistemic pitfalls. Ideally, users should be able to match the level of trust that they place in LLMs to the degree that LLMs are trustworthy. However, both their data and algorithmic opacity and their phenomenological and informational transparency can make it difficult for users to calibrate their trust correctly. The effects of these limitations are twofold: users may adopt unwarranted attitudes of trust towards the outputs of LLMs (which is particularly problematic when LLMs hallucinate), and the trustworthiness of LLMs may be undermined.
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933051.020012
Recent advances in stem cell-derived human brain organoids and microelectrode array (MEA) technology raise profound questions about the potential for these systems to give rise to sentience. Brain organoids are 3D tissue constructs that recapitulate key aspects of brain development and function, while MEAs enable bidirectional communication with neuronal cultures. As brain organoids become more sophisticated and integrated with MEAs, the question arises: Could such a system support not only intelligent computation, but subjective experience? This paper explores the philosophical implications of this thought experiment, considering scenarios in which brain organoids exhibit signs of sensory awareness, distress, preference, and other hallmarks of sentience. It examines the ethical quandaries that would arise if compelling evidence of sentience were found in brain organoids, such as the moral status of these entities and the permissibility of different types of research. The paper also explores how the phenomenon of organoid sentience might shed light on the nature of consciousness and the plausibility of artificial sentience. While acknowledging the speculative nature of these reflections, the paper argues that the possibility of sentient brain organoids deserves serious consideration given the rapid pace of advances in this field. Grappling with these questions proactively could help set important ethical boundaries for future research and highlight critical avenues of scientific and philosophical inquiry. The thought experiment of sentient brain organoids thus serves as a valuable lens for examining deep issues at the intersection of neuroscience, ethics, and the philosophy of mind.
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933083.020023
This paper attempts to revive the epistemological discussion of scientific articles. What are their epistemic aims, and how are they achieved? We argue that scientific experimental articles are best understood as a particular kind of narrative: i.e., modernist narratives (think: Woolf, Joyce), at least in the sense that they employ many of the same techniques, including colligation and the juxtaposition of multiple perspectives. We suggest that this way of writing is necessary given the nature of modern science, but it also has specific epistemic benefits: it provides readers with an effective way to grasp the content of scientific articles which increases their understanding. On the other hand, modernist writing is vulnerable to certain kinds of epistemic abuses, which can be found instantiated in modern scientific writing as well.
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990784.020035
Scientists have the epistemic responsibility of producing knowledge. They also have the social responsibility of aligning their research with the needs and values of various societal stakeholders. Individual scientists may be left with no guidance on how to prioritise and carry these different responsibilities. As I will argue, however, the responsibilities of science can be harmonised at the collective level. Drawing from debates in moral philosophy, I will propose a theory of the collective responsibilities of science that accounts for the internal diversity of research groups and for their different responsibilities.
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990930.020047
Among biologists and philosophers, there is an ongoing debate over the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Some argue that our current evolutionary biology is in need of (at least) some substantial revision or nontrivial extension, while others maintain that the Modern Synthesis remains the foundational framework for evolutionary biology. It has been widely debated whether the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis provides a more promising framework than the Modern Synthesis. The nature and methodological implications of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis were also examined. This paper offers an integrated historical and philosophical examination of the debate over the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. It reviews the development of evolutionary biology of the twentieth century. It argues that there are substantial conceptual and theoretical differences between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, but they are not incommensurable paradigms in the Kuhnian sense. It also argues for a functional approach to the debate over these two frameworks of evolutionary theory.
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1205798.020083
It’s a cliché about philosophers that they ponder the meaning of life. But, by and large, they don’t. Philosophers rarely consider the question and when they do, they often dismiss it as nonsense. Among those who take life’s meaning seriously, many do so only to proclaim that it has none: life is meaningless or absurd.
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1221914.020094
By focusing on biorobotics, this article explores the epistemological foundations necessary to support the transition from biological models to technological artifacts. To address this transition, I analyze the position of the German philosopher Thomas Fuchs, who represents one possible approach to the problem of the relationship between bio-inspired technology and biology. While Fuchs defends the idea of a unique ontological space for humans, this article contends that his categorical distinctions face challenges in establishing a robust epistemic foundation necessary to ground the transition from biology to technology.
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1381698.020104
Eating is a fundamental behavior in which all organisms must engage in order to procure the material and energy from their environment that they need to maintain themselves. Since controlling eating requires procuring, processing, and assessing information, it constitutes a cognitive activity that provides a productive domain for pursuing cognitive biology as proposed by Ladislav Kováč. In agreement with Kováč, we argue that cognition is fundamentally grounded in chemical signaling and processing. To support this thesis, we adopt Cisek’s strategy of phylogenetic refinement, focusing on two animal phyla, Porifera and Placozoa, organisms that do not have neurons, muscles, or an alimentary canal, but nonetheless need to coordinate the activity of cells of multiple types in order to eat. We review what research has revealed so far about how these animals gather and process information to control their eating behavior.
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1515752.020115
The name “capitalism” derives from Marx’s false analogy between medieval land ownership and the “ownership of the means of production.” However, unlike medieval land, capital goods can be rented out, e.g., by Frank Knight’s entrepreneur, and then the capital owner does not hold those management or product rights. What then is the characteristic institution in our civilization? It is the voluntary renting of workers. What then is the relationship between Classical Liberalism, the dominant philosophy behind Economics, and a lifetime labour contract? Frank Knight had plenty to say about the doctrine of inalienable rights which disallows such contracts.