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50101.034072
This paper critically examines Ian Hacking’s account of looping effects and human kinds, focusing on three related arguments defended by Hacking: (1) the looping effects of human science classifications render their objects of classification inherently unstable, (2) looping effects preclude the possibility of generating stable projectable inferences (i.e., reliable predictions) based on human kind terms, and (3) looping effects can demarcate human science classifications from natural science classifications. Contra-Hacking, I argue that: (1) some objects of human science classifications (viz., biological kinds) remain stable despite the feedback generated by their classifications, (2), human science classifications that individuate biological kinds yield stable projectable inferences, and (3) looping effects are a problematic criterion for distinguishing human science classifications from natural science classifications.
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145697.034306
The paper argues for a non-disjunctivist account of reference in episodic memory. Our account provides a uniform theory of reference for episodic memories that root in veridical and non-veridical experiences. It is independent from the particular mechanisms that subserve the respective source experiences. We reject both relationalist and intentionalist analyses of memory and build our approach on Werning and Liefke’s theory of referential parasitism and Werning’s theory of trace minimalism. The motivation for our non-disjunctivist account is the assumption that perceptual and non-perceptual memories with an episodic character share a uniform underlying causal mechanism and thus make up one and the same natural kind.
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214069.034319
Visual illusions provide a means of investigating the rules and principles through which approximate number representations are formed. Here, we investigated the developmental trajectory of an important numerical illusion – the connectedness illusion, wherein connecting pairs of items with thin lines reduces perceived number without altering continuous attributes of the collections. We found that children as young as 5 years of age showed susceptibility to the illusion and that the magnitude of the effect increased into adulthood. Moreover, individuals with greater numerical acuity exhibited stronger connectedness illusions after controlling for age. Overall, these results suggest the approximate number system expects to enumerate over bounded wholes and doing so is a signature of its optimal functioning.
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915342.034336
Bell’s theorem states that no model that respects Local Causality and Statistical Independence can account for the correlations predicted by quantum mechanics via entangled states. This paper proposes a new approach, using backward-in-time conditional probabilities, which relaxes conventional assumptions of temporal ordering while preserving Statistical Independence as a “fine-tuning” condition. It is shown how such models can account for EPR/Bell correlations and, analogously, the GHZ predictions while nevertheless forbidding superluminal signalling.
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964740.034345
The View from Everywhere is now available for those with an Oxford Scholarship Online subscription; hardcopies ship next month (but you can preorder now). I’ll probably write more about it as the print publication date approaches. …
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1064019.034352
An adequate theory of representation should distinguish between the structure of a representation and the structure of what it represents. I argue that the simplest sorts of transformers (the architecture that underlies most familiar Large Language Models) have only a very lightweight structure for their representations: insofar as they work with the structure of language, they represent it but do not use it. In addition to being interesting in its own right, this also shows how we may use high-level invariants at the computational level to place constraints on representational formats at the algorithmic level.
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1203603.034359
I argue that the thoroughly algorithmic nature of current AI systems (such as LLMs) is no obstacle to their being conscious. To this end, I present a picture on which current AI systems comprise dispositional properties which realize categorical phenomenal properties where the laKer, in turn, provide the identity conditions for their dispositional realizers. This mutual ontological dependence, or, symmetrical grounding, at the heart of the proposal yields a novel picture of (AI) consciousness that avoids epiphenomenalism and is more permissive regarding the specific nature/functional organization of conscious systems than has been previously suggested. This, in turn, suggests an epistemology of AI consciousness focused on investigating the high-level behaviours of AI systems rather than their low-level functional organization.
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1533994.034367
With the stock market crash and the big protests across the US, I’m finally feeling a trace of optimism that Trump’s stranglehold on the nation will weaken. Just a trace. I still need to self-medicate to keep from sinking into depression — where ‘self-medicate’, in my case, means studying fun math and physics I don’t need to know. …
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1549659.034374
Pseudo-consciousness bridges the gap between rigid, task-driven AI and the elusive dream of true artificial general intelligence (AGI). While modern AI excels in pattern recognition, strategic reasoning, and multimodal integration, it remains fundamentally devoid of subjective experience. Yet, emerging architectures are displaying behaviors that look intentional—adapting, self-monitoring, and making complex decisions in ways that mimic conscious cognition. If these systems can integrate information globally, reflect on their own processes, and operate with apparent goal-directed behavior, do they qualify as functionally conscious? This paper introduces pseudo-consciousness as a new conceptual category, distinct from both narrow AI and AGI. It presents a five-condition framework that defines AI capable of consciousness-like functionality without true sentience. By drawing on insights from computational theory of mind, functionalism, and neuroscientific models—such as Global Workspace Theory and Recurrent Processing Theory—we argue that intelligence and experience can be decoupled. The implications are profound. As AI systems become more autonomous and embedded in critical domains like healthcare, governance, and warfare, their ability to simulate awareness raises urgent ethical and regulatory concerns. Could a pseudo-conscious AI be trusted? Would it manipulate human perception? How do we prevent society from anthropomorphizing machines that only imitate cognition? By redefining the boundaries of intelligence and agency, this study lays the foundation for evaluating, designing, and governing AI that seems aware—without ever truly being so.
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1552878.034386
This paper argues against the view, proposed in Langland-Hassan (2020), that attitudinal imaginings are reducible to basic folk-psychological attitudes such as judgments, beliefs, desires, decisions, or combinations thereof. The proposed reduction fails because attitudinal imaginings, though similar to basic attitudes in certain respects, function differently than basic attitudes. I demonstrate this by exploring two types of cases: spontaneous imaginings, and imaginings that arise in response to fiction, showing that in these cases, imaginings cannot be identified with basic attitudes. I conclude that imagining is a distinct attitude: it enables us to freely conjure up scenarios without being bound by the restrictions that govern basic folk-psychological attitudes.
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1552894.034393
According to the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare, something is good for me to the extent that I desire it. This theory faces the “scope problem”: many of the things I desire, intuitively, lie beyond the scope of my welfare. Here, I argue that a simple solution to this problem is available. First, I suggest that it is a general feature of desires that they can differ not only in their objects but also in their “targets,” or for the sake of whom one has the desire. For example, I can desire that my child win an award either for their sake or for my own sake. Second, I show that we can use this idea to solve the scope problem by holding that something is good for me to the extent that I desire it for my own sake. Despite first appearances, this solution is not ad hoc, incomplete, or circular.
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1552971.0344
Inphilosophyofscience,constitutive explanation shave attracted much attention sinceCraver’sinfluentialbookExplaining the Brain(2007).HisMutualManipulability(MM)theory of constitution aimed to explicate constitution as anon-causal explanatory relation and to demarcate between constituent sand non-constituents. But MM received decisive criticism.Inresponse,Craveretal.(2021)haverecently proposedanewtheory,called Matched Inter level Experiments(MIE),whichis currently gaining traction in various fields. The authors claim that MIE retains “the spirit of MM without conceptual confusion.”Our paper argues that this claim isnotborneout:neitherdoesMIEmeetMM’sob jectivesnorisit free of conceptual confusion.Atthesametime,we show that it is possible to meet MM’sobjectivesin aconceptuallysoundmanner—byadoptingtheso-calledNoDe-Couplingtheory ofconstitution.
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1552998.034408
LOGOS Research Group in Analytic Philosophy, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View.
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1553040.034415
Detecting introspective errors about consciousness presents challenges that are widely supposed to be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. This is a problem for consciousness science because many central questions turn on when and to what extent we should trust subjects’ introspective reports. This has led some authors to suggest that we should abandon introspection as a source of evidence when constructing a science of consciousness. Others have concluded that central questions in consciousness science cannot be answered via empirical investigation. I argue that on closer inspection, the challenges associated with detecting introspective errors can be overcome. I demonstrate how natural kind reasoning—the iterative application of inference to the best explanation to home in on and leverage regularities in nature—can allow us to detect introspective errors even in difficult cases such as judgments about mental imagery, and I conclude that worries about intractable methodological challenges in consciousness science are misguided.
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1656327.034422
Philosophers have struggled to explain the mismatch of emotions and their objects across time, as when we stop grieving or feeling angry despite the persistence of the underlying cause. I argue for a sceptical approach that says that these emotional changes often lack rational fit. The key observation is that our emotions must periodically reset for purely functional reasons that have nothing to do with fit. I compare this account to David Hume’s sceptical approach in matters of belief, and conclude that resistance to it rests on a confusion similar to one that he identifies.
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1780268.034431
This paper explores the implications of the Extended Mind Hypothesis (ExM), as introduced by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998. Focusing on cognitive integration and the Trust and Glue criteria, we have two objectives. First, we examine how ExM reshapes perspectives on human-AI interaction, particularly by challenging the Standard model of AI. We argue that AI, as an active non-organic agent, significantly influences cognitive processes beyond initial expectations. Secondly, we propose the maintainability as a fourth criterion in the Trust and Glue criteria of ExM, in addition to trustworthiness, reliability and accessibility.
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1867265.034438
How is it that individuals who deny experiencing visual imagery nonetheless perform normally on tasks which seem to require it? This puzzle of aphantasia has perplexed philosophers and scientists since the late nineteenth century. Contemporary responses include: (i) idiosyncratic reporting, (ii) faulty introspection, (iii) unconscious imagery, and (iv) complete lack of imagery combined with the use of alternative strategies. None offers a satisfying explanation of the full range of first-person, behavioural and physiological data. Here, I diagnose the puzzle of aphantasia as arising from the mistaken assumption that variation in imagery is well-captured by a single ‘vividness’ scale. Breaking with this assumption, I defend an alternative account which elegantly accommodates all the data. Crucial to this account is a fundamental distinction between visual-object and spatial imagery. Armed with this distinction, I argue that subjective reports and objective measures only testify to the absence of visual-object imagery, whereas imagery task performance is explained by preserved spatial imagery which goes unreported on standard ‘vividness’ questionnaires. More generally, I propose that aphantasia be thought of on analogy with agnosia, as a generic label for a range of imagery deficits with corresponding sparing.
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1953308.034447
Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly produce outputs that resemble introspection, including self-reference, epistemic modulation, and claims about internal states. This study investigates whether such behaviors display consistent patterns across repeated prompts or reflect surface-level generative artifacts. We evaluated five open-weight, stateless LLMs using a structured battery of 21 introspective prompts, each repeated ten times, yielding 1,050 completions. These outputs are analyzed across three behavioral dimensions: surface-level similarity (via token overlap), semantic coherence (via sentence embeddings), and inferential consistency (via natural language inference). Although some models demonstrate localized thematic stability—especially in identity - and consciousness-related prompts—none sustain diachronic coherence.
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2068709.034459
The (dis)continuism debate in the philosophy of memory revolves around the question of whether memory and imagination belong to the same natural kind. Continuism, on the one hand, defends that they belong to the same natural kind. Discontinuism, on the other hand, defends that they do not belong to the same natural kind. By adopting a minimal notion of natural kind, one can recognize that there are different legitimate ways of sorting kinds, which lead to different positions in the debate. In this paper, I interpret continuism as a mechanistic thesis, according to which memory and imagination belong to the same natural kind because they are underpinned by the same constitutive mechanism. I clarify the implications of this thesis and show that most of the discontinuist attacks on continuism do not constitute a challenge to the mechanistic thesis. I also present a possible challenge to mechanistic continuism. This suggests that there may be multiple (dis)continuism debates. Keywords: Continuism. Discontinuism. Natural kinds. Mechanism. Episodic Memory. Episodic Imagination.
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2126384.034468
Theories of consciousness are abundant, yet few directly address the structural conditions necessary for subjectivity itself. This paper defends and develops the QBist constraint: the proposal that any conscious system must implement a first-person, self-updating inferential architecture. Inspired by Quantum Bayesianism (QBism), this constraint specifies that subjectivity arises only in systems capable of self-referential probabilistic updating from an internal perspective. The QBist constraint is not offered as a process theory, but as a metatheoretical adequacy condition: a structural requirement which candidate theories of consciousness must satisfy if they are to explain not merely behaviour or information processing, but genuine subjectivity. I assess five influential frameworks — the Free Energy Principle (FEP), Predictive Processing (PP), Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Workspace Theory (GWT), and Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theory — and consider how each fares when interpreted through the lens of this constraint. I argue that the QBist constraint functions as a litmus test for process theories, forcing a shift in focus: from explaining cognitive capacities to specifying how an architecture might realize first-personal belief updating as a structural feature.
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2373932.034476
Sunwin chính chủ sở hữu bộ core game cùng hệ thống chăm sóc khách hàng vô địch. Sunwin hiện nay giả mạo rất nhiều anh em chú ý check kĩ uy tín đường link để đảm bảo an toàn và trải nghiệm game đỉnh cao duy nhất. …
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2373932.034483
Sunwin chính chủ sở hữu bộ core game cùng hệ thống chăm sóc khách hàng vô địch. Sunwin hiện nay giả mạo rất nhiều anh em chú ý check kĩ uy tín đường link để đảm bảo an toàn và trải nghiệm game đỉnh cao duy nhất. …
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2414742.03449
Philosophers of mind and philosophers of science have markedly different views on the relationship between explanation and understanding. Reflecting on these differences highlights two ways in which explaining consciousness might be uniquely difficult. First, scientific theories may fail to provide a psychologically satisfying sense of understanding—consciousness might still seem mysterious even after we develop a scientific theory of it. Second, our limited epistemic access to consciousness may make it difficult to adjudicate between competing theories. Of course, both challenges may apply. While the first has received extensive philosophical attention, in this paper I aim to draw greater attention to the second. In consciousness science, the two standard methods for advancing understanding—theory testing and refining measurement procedures through epistemic iteration—face serious challenges.
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2472462.034504
This paper proposes a novel constraint on artificial consciousness. The central claim is that no artificial system can be genuinely conscious unless it instantiates a form of self-referential inference that is irreducibly perspectival and non-computable. Drawing on Quantum Bayesianism (QBism), I argue that consciousness should be understood as an anticipatory process grounded in subjective belief revision, not as an emergent product of computational complexity. Classical systems, however sophisticated, lack the architecture required to support this mode of updating. I conclude that artificial consciousness demands more than computation—it demands a subject.
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2532372.034511
The philosopher Joseph S. Ullian died late last year. He is probably best-known for an introduction to epistemology co-authored with W. V. Quine, that is very much of its time. But what caught my eye in the obits was his reputation as a baseball fanatic. …
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2568300.034518
These days, any quantum computing post I write ought to begin with the disclaimer that the armies of Sauron are triumphing around the globe, this is the darkest time for humanity most of us have ever known, and nothing else matters by comparison. …
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2680740.034525
In this paper we provide an ontological analysis of so-called “artifactual functions” by deploying a realizable-centered approach to artifacts which we have recently developed within the framework of the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). We argue that, insofar as material artifacts are concerned, the term “artifactual function” can refer to at least two kinds of realizable entities: novel intentional dispositions and usefactual realized entities. They inhere, respectively, in what we previously called “canonical artifacts” and “usefacts”. We show how this approach can help to clarify functions in BFO, whose current elucidation includes reference to the term “artifact”. In our framework, having an artifactual function implies being an artifact, but not vice versa; in other words, there are artifacts that lack an artifactual function.
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2991692.034544
In operational quantum mechanics two measurements are called operationally equivalent if they yield the same distribution of outcomes in every quantum state and hence are represented by the same operator. In this paper, I will show that the ontological models for quantum mechanics and, more generally, for any operational theory sensitively depend on which measurement we choose from the class of operationally equivalent measurements, or more precisely, which of the chosen measurements can be performed simultaneously. To this goal, I will take first three examples—a classical theory, the EPR-Bell scenario and the Popescu-Rochlich box; then realize each example by two operationally equivalent but different operational theories—one with a trivial and another with a non-trivial compatibility structure; and finally show that the ontological models for the different theories will be different with respect to their causal structure, contextuality, and fine-tuning.
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3107017.034552
In Part 1 the properties of QBism are shown to be natural consequences of taking quantum mechanics at face value, as does Everett in his Relative State Formulation (1957). In Part 2 supporting evidence is presented. Parmenides' (Palmer, 2012) notion that the physical world is static and unchanging is vividly confirmed in the new physics. This means the time evolution of the physical world perceived by observers only occurs at the level of appearances as noted by Davies (2002). In order to generate this appearance of time evolution, a moving frame of reference is required: this is the only possible explanation of the enactment of the dynamics of physics in a static universe.
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3679667.034559
Let us say that a being is omnisubjective if it has a perfect first-person grasp of all subjective states (including belief states). The question of whether God is omnisubjective raises a nest of thorny issues in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics, at least if there are irreducibly subjective states. There are notorious difficulties analyzing the core traditional divine attributes—omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence—but those difficulties are notorious partly because we seem to have a decent pre-theoretic grasp of what it means for something to be all knowing, powerful, and good, and so it is surprising, frustrating, and perplexing that it is so difficult to provide a satisfactory analysis of those notions.