John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument purports to demonstrate that syntax is not sufficient for semantics, and, hence, because computation cannot yield understanding, the computational theory of mind, which equates the mind to an information processing system based on formal computations, fails. In this paper, we use the CRA, and the debate that emerged from it, to develop a philosophical critique of recent advances in robotics and neuroscience. We describe results from a body of work that contributes to blurring the divide (...) between biological and artificial systems; so-called animats, autonomous robots that are controlled by biological neural tissue and what may be described as remote-controlled rodents, living animals endowed with augmented abilities provided by external controllers. We argue that, even though at first sight, these chimeric systems may seem to escape the CRA, on closer analysis, they do not. We conclude by discussing the role of the body–brain dynamics in the processes that give rise to genuine understanding of the world, in line with recent proposals from enactive cognitive science. (shrink)

The Chinese Room Argument purports to show that‘ syntax is not sufficient for semantics’; an argument which led John Searle to conclude that ‘programs are not minds’ and hence that no computational device can ever exhibit true understanding. Yet, although this controversial argument has received a series of criticisms, it has withstood all attempts at decisive rebuttal so far. One of the classical responses to CRA has been based on equipping a purely computational device with a physical robot body. This (...) response, although partially addressed in one of Searle’s original contra arguments - the ‘robot reply’ - more recently gained friction with the development of embodiment and enactivism1, two novel approaches to cognitive science that have been exciting roboticists and philosophers alike. Furthermore, recent technological advances - blending biological beings with computational systems - have started to be developed which superficially suggest that mind may be instantiated in computing devices after all. This paper will argue that (a) embodiment alone does not provide any leverage for cognitive robotics wrt the CRA, when based on a weak form of embodiment and that (b) unless they take the body into account seriously, hybrid bio-computer devices will also share the fate of their disembodied or robotic predecessors in failing to escape from Searle’s Chinese room. (shrink)

Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning (...) by relying on Statistical Prediction Rules. They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy. (shrink)

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: -/- The main aim of this review will be to assess the effects of changing practitioner empathy or patient expectations for all conditions. The main objective is to conduct a systematic review of randomised trials where the intervention involves manipulating either (a) practitioner empathy or (b) patient expectations, or (c) both.

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George (...) Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George (...) Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

This piece presents the work of academics and architects in a collaborative venture. It provides an architectural design and a series of statements towards the hypothetical creation of an unconventional city centre in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The idea is to create a linear university that would run the 20-kilometer length of the Shenzhen Strip: the 20K university. The contributors outline, in the diversity of their idioms, a complex spatial condition fundamental to life, and demonstrate new relationships between knowledge (...) and the city. The design of the proposed ‘open university space’ responds to two simultaneous and interrelated challenges: that posed to architecture, and that posed to science. The university would embody the meeting of these at the intersection of the urban infrastructure and the knowledge infrastructure. The purpose is thus also to develop the notion of knowledge, embodied in institutions, as urban infrastructure. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis is fraught with important philosophical and conceptual problems. This chapter focuses on some epistemological issues and moral issues that arise in contemporary psychiatric practice. It examines various clinical and actuarial techniques for psychiatric diagnosis, ordered very loosely in terms of how "structured" or "automated" they are. The chapter makes the case for assessing psychiatric treatments with controlled experiments, raises several epistemological dangers that arise from relying on uncontrolled investigations, and considers some of the unique methodological and (...) ethical issues that arise when trying to assess talk therapy. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to bring the woefully neglected literature on predictive modeling to bear on some central questions in the philosophy of science. The lesson of this literature is straightforward: For a very wide range of prediction problems, statistical prediction rules (SPRs), often rules that are very easy to implement, make predictions than are as reliable as, and typically more reliable than, human experts. We will argue that the success of SPRs forces us to reconsider our views (...) about what is involved in understanding, explanation, good reasoning, and about how we ought to do philosophy of science. (shrink)

Strategic Reliabilism is a framework that yields relative epistemic evaluations of belief-producing cognitive processes. It is a theory of cognitive excellence, or more colloquially, a theory of reasoning excellence (where 'reasoning' is understood very broadly as any sort of cognitive process for coming to judgments or beliefs). First introduced in our book, Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (henceforth EPHJ), the basic idea behind SR is that epistemically excellent reasoning is efficient reasoning that leads in a robustly reliable fashion (...) to significant, true beliefs. It differs from most contemporary epistemological theories in two ways. First, it is not a theory of justification or knowledge – a theory of epistemically worthy belief. Strategic Reliabilism is a theory of epistemically worthy ways of forming beliefs. And second, Strategic Reliabilism does not attempt to account for an epistemological property that is assumed to be faithfully reflected in the epistemic judgments and intuitions of philosophers. If SR makes recommendations that accord with our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions, great. If not, then so much the worse for our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions. (shrink)

Of Goals and Goods and Floundering About: A Dissensus Report on Clinical Ethics Consultation Content Type Journal Article Pages 275-291 DOI 10.1007/s10730-009-9101-1 Authors Jeffrey P. Bishop, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Joseph B. Fanning, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Mark J. Bliton, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society 2525 West End Avenue, (...) Suite 400 Nashville Tennessee 37203 USA Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737 Journal Volume Volume 21 Journal Issue Volume 21, Number 3. (shrink)

Voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about living and dying will be lostIn the first of this two part series, I unpack the historical philosophical distinction between killing and allowing a patient to die in order to clear up the confusion that exists. Historically speaking the two kinds of actions are morally distinct because of older notions of causality and human agency. We no longer understand that distinction primarily because (...) we have shifted our notions of causality from a traditional formulation to a modern formulation of causality and thus of moral assessment that focuses on the effects of an action. In this essay, I prepare the ground for a companion essay by showing that the traditional formulation allows us to maintain notions of meaning and purpose to human living and dying that are precluded in the efficiency paradigm of modernity. Taken together with the companion essay, I am claiming that voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about dying and living will be lost.TWO LIESIt would be naïve to think that euthanasia, in either the VAE sense, or in the more passive sense of PAS, does not happen. It would even be naïve to think that it does not occur in a non-voluntary form. It would be equally naïve, however, to think it could be controlled through governmental regulation. The real question with regard to PAS/VAE, put so eloquently by Martha Minow, is which lie do you countenance: the lie that euthanasia does not already happen, or the lie that it can be controlled without having repercussions well beyond the limits of procedural mastery?1 With this two part paper series, I will argue that the …. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 42-43, November 2011.

Death cannot be mastered through a metaphysics of efficiency that interprets all actions in terms only of cause and effect, but it can be transcended if we leave the frame open to death’s ambiguityIn the second of this two part series, I describe how in shifting our frames from one of human purpose and meaning to one of efficiency, we shift the possible answers we get to our questions about voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide . Thus, by placing (...) VAE/PAS within the frame of efficiency, we narrow our focus to the final effect in the world of cause and effect—namely death. Thus, in ensconcing euthanasia within a legal framework meant to instrumentally and efficiently control euthanasia, we are in fact narrowing our focus on death. Thus, in legalising VAE/PAS we are not just adding one choice to a panoply of other choices, we are in fact changing the nature of all choices, for each choice conditions all others. We should therefore live with the lie that VAE/PAS do not happen as opposed to living with the lie that through efficient legal control we protect patients from medical dominance.AN ANECDOTESeveral years ago an acquaintance told me about a terrible situation in which he found himself during the Vietnam war. He was Green Beret—one of the elite special forces corps of the US army. He was in an area that was officially off limits to the US. His unit came under heavy fire and a buddy was shot in several places but was still alive. His comrade was in serious pain, but what scared him the most was that he might die in the jungle, be eaten by a wild animal, or be captured by the enemy. There was no way to get him out. The wounded soldier …. (shrink)

Artificial Neural Networks have reached “grandmaster” and even “super-human” performance across a variety of games, from those involving perfect information, such as Go, to those involving imperfect information, such as “Starcraft”. Such technological developments from artificial intelligence (AI) labs have ushered concomitant applications across the world of business, where an “AI” brand-tag is quickly becoming ubiquitous. A corollary of such widespread commercial deployment is that when AI gets things wrong—an autonomous vehicle crashes, a chatbot exhibits “racist” behavior, automated credit-scoring processes (...) “discriminate” on gender, etc.—there are often significant financial, legal, and brand consequences, and the incident becomes major news. As Judea Pearl sees it, the underlying reason for such mistakes is that “... all the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.” The key, as Pearl suggests, is to replace “reasoning by association” with “causal reasoning” —the ability to infer causes from observed phenomena. It is a point that was echoed by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis in a recent piece for theNew York Times: “we need to stop building computer systems that merely get better and better at detecting statistical patterns in data sets—often using an approach known as ‘Deep Learning’—and start building computer systems that from the moment of their assembly innately grasp three basic concepts: time, space, and causality.” In this paper, foregrounding what in 1949 Gilbert Ryle termed “a category mistake”, I will offer an alternative explanation for AI errors; it is not so much that AI machinery cannot “grasp” causality, but that AI machinery (qua computation) cannot understand anything at all. (shrink)

In cognitive neuroscience and in philosophy of mind, causation is a notion that is immensely important but usually not defined precisely enough to afford careful application. A widespread basic flaw is the confusion of causation with correlation. All empirical knowledge in the sciences is based on observing correlations; assigning causal relations to them or interpreting them causally always requires a theoretical background that is implicitly or (better) explicitly stated. This entails that differing theoretical approaches might lead to different interpretations of (...) correlations. In this special volume we attempt to contribute to an improved understanding of causation, in general, and its relationship to consciousness studies, specifically. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 333-348, May 2022.

Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) names a contingently clustered class of methods and theses that have dominated English-speaking epistemology for about the past half-century. The major contemporary theories of SAE include versions of foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and contextualism. While proponents of SAE don’t agree about how to define naturalized epistemology, most agree that a thoroughgoing naturalism in epistemology can’t work. For the purposes of this paper, we will suppose that a naturalistic theory of epistemology takes as its core, as its starting-point, (...) an empirical theory. The standard argument against naturalistic approaches to epistemology is that empirical theories are essentially descriptive, while epistemology is essentially prescriptive, and a descriptive theory cannot yield normative, evaluative prescriptions. In short, naturalistic theories cannot overcome the is-ought divide. Our main goal in this paper is to show that the standard argument against naturalized epistemology has it almost exactly backwards. (shrink)

After describing Heidegger's critique of metaphysics as ontotheology, I unpack the metaphysical assumptions of several transhumanist philosophers. I claim that they deploy an ontology of power and that they also deploy a kind of theology, as Heidegger meant it. I also describe the way in which this metaphysics begets its own politics and ethics. In order to transcend the human condition, they must transgress the human.

This essay places Foucault's work into a philosophical context, recognizing that Foucault is difficult to place and demonstrates that Foucault remains in the Kantian tradition of philosophy, even if he sits at the margins of that tradition. For Kant, the forms of intuition—space and time—are the a priori conditions of the possibility of human experience and knowledge. For Foucault, the a priori conditions are political space and historical time. Foucault sees political space as central to understanding both the subject and (...) objects of medicine, psychiatry, and the social sciences. Through this analysis one can see that medicine's metaphysics is a metaphysics of efficient causation, where medicine's objects are subjected to mechanisms of efficient control. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s, the biomedical model of medicine gave way to the biopsychosocial model of medicine; it was billed as a more comprehensive and compassionate model of medicine. After more than a century of disentangling medicine from religion, the medicine and spirituality movement is attempting to bring religion and spirituality back into medicine. It is doing so under a biopsychosociospiritual model. I unpack one model for allowing religion back into medicine called the RCOPE. RCOPE is an instrument designed to categorize (...) religion and spirituality as psychological coping mechanisms. I explore how such instruments are related to the history of statistical measurement and demonstrate the political impetus that governs such enterprises. The biopsychosociospiritual medicine is billed as a more holistic and comprehensive model. This new model of medicine offers total care. However, I demonstrate how this total care becomes totalizing, indeed totalitarian, admitting religion and spirituality back into the fold of medicine under a new secularized medical control. (shrink)

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (Foucault, 1984, 85)In this essay, I take a note from Michel Foucault regarding the notion of biopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics has both repressive and constitutive properties. Foucault's claim is that with the rise of modern government, the state became exceedingly (...) concerned about the body politic, the bodies that make up the polis, including the health of those bodies. However, Giorgio Agamben claims that Foucault and all western political philosophy misses the relationship between power and Sovereignty, with disastrous results and totalizing tendencies. I explore the case of Terri Schiavo claiming that the social conservatives have attempted to politicize bare life in its legal maneuverings, but I also show how the social liberals open an uncontrollable space between life and death. Both the left and the right miss the aporia at the heart of western political philosophy, and bioethics is complicit in the totalizing effects of contemporary medicine. (shrink)

In the fourteenth chapter of The Philosophy of Information, Luciano Floridi puts forth a criticism of ‘digital ontology’ as a step toward the articulation of an ‘informational structural realism’. Based on the claims made in the chapter, the present paper seeks to evaluate the distinctly Kantian scope of the chapter from a rather unconventional viewpoint: while in sympathy with the author’s doubts ‘against’ digital philosophy, we follow a different route. We turn our attention to the concept of construction as used (...) in the book with the hope of raising some additional questions that might contribute to a better understanding of what is at stake in Floridi’s experimental epistemological response to digital ontology. (shrink)

The doctrine of the mature minor began as an emergency exception to the rule of parental consent. Over time, the doctrine crept into cases that were non-emergent. In this essay, we show how the doctrine also developed in the context of the latter part of the 20th century, at the same time that the sexual revolution, the pill, and sexual liberation came to be seen as important symbols of female liberation—liberation that required that female minors be granted the status of (...) a mature minor. To do so moves sexual morality out of the domain of the family, where it had always been situated, and into the domain of the state. We also show how a phenomenological account of the care of the body in the family conforms to the latest in neuroscientific understandings of adolescent brain development. The family attenuates the dependency of adolescents and provides an important social contextualization for the care of the body, including the inculcation of sexual mores in adolescence. We conclude that the drive to push sexual decision making as a matter of state concern further undermines the foundations of the moral meanings of sex and sexuality. (shrink)

In a reflective and richly entertaining piece from 1979, Doug Hofstadter playfully imagined a conversation between ‘Achilles’ and an anthill (the eponymous ‘Aunt Hillary’), in which he famously explored many ideas and themes related to cognition and consciousness. For Hofstadter, the anthill is able to carry on a conversation because the ants that compose it play roughly the same role that neurons play in human languaging; unfortunately, Hofstadter’s work is notably short on detail suggesting how this magic might be achieved1. (...) Conversely in this paper - finally reifying Hofstadter’s imagination - we demonstrate how populations of simple ant-like creatures can be organised to solve complex problems; problems that involve the use of forward planning and strategy. Specifically we will demonstrate that populations of such creatures can be configured to play a strategically strong - though tactically weak - game of HeX (a complex strategic game).We subsequently demonstrate how tactical play can be improved by introducing a form of forward planning instantiated via multiple populations of agents; a technique that can be compared to the dynamics of interacting populations of social insects via the concept of meta-population. In this way although, pace Hofstadter, we do not establish that a meta-population of ants could actually hold a conversation with Achilles, we do successfully introduce Aunt Hillary to the complex, seductive charms of HeX. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

Professor Richmond's reply t o m y article on Palatine Apollo is argued with his usual enthusiasm and cogency. This reply to him, which has been delayed by my departure for Australia, must begin with an expression of the respect that I feel for an antagonist far more able and experienced than I can claim to be. Indeed, it was while lecturing on Ovid, Tristia 3 that I first met Professor Richmond's masterly article on the Augustan Palatium . From this (...) article my enthusiasm for the subject began, and I know that Professor Richmond has always welcomed discussion and argument about the famous Augustan temple of Apollo on the Palatine. I can but join him in urging any who may have been interested by our discussion to study his original article which contains much more besides a discussion of the site of Apollo's temple. (shrink)

Professor Richmond's reply t o m y article on Palatine Apollo is argued with his usual enthusiasm and cogency. This reply to him, which has been delayed by my departure for Australia, must begin with an expression of the respect that I feel for an antagonist far more able and experienced than I can claim to be. Indeed, it was while lecturing on Ovid, Tristia 3 that I first met Professor Richmond's masterly article on the Augustan Palatium. From this article (...) my enthusiasm for the subject began, and I know that Professor Richmond has always welcomed discussion and argument about the famous Augustan temple of Apollo on the Palatine. I can but join him in urging any who may have been interested by our discussion to study his original article which contains much more besides a discussion of the site of Apollo's temple. (shrink)

Recognition that it is both possible and important to teach secondary school students about bioethics issues and theory has grown slowly within the field of bioethics. In the late 1970s and 1980s, a few first-generation pioneers recognized the teaching and learning opportunities inherent in bioethics and obtained pilot grants to educate high school teachers about bioethics issues. In the 1990s and 2000s, second-generation efforts explored the possibilities of bioethics in secondary schools using a range of approaches, models, and funding sources. (...) A third generation of programs that are now emerging benefits from more stable funding and offers materials that may be accessed by teachers across a country or around the world; a number of these programs are endorsed by national entities. An historical overview of these efforts to teach bioethics in high schools highlights some essential steps that must be taken to meet the challenge of teaching bioethics in pre-college settings. (shrink)

Violence is spoken of in several senses but its most basic definition, as a force exerted by one thing on another, harbors serious problems, especially when it comes to a consideration of its source or cause. We begin this article by identifying some of the aporias of violence with reference to philosophical and religious discourses and then we go on to analyze how violence problematizes concepts of law and justice in world historical contexts. We examine several traditions including Indo-European mythology, (...) as well as Hindu, Taoist, and ancient Greek philosophy, before addressing the concept of violence in modern thought, as a revision of Christianity. We conclude with some discussion of epistemological violence and its critics. (shrink)

Summary Coursework is an integral part of the GCSE framework, valued for its motivational qualities and its curricular validity. It is a common perception, widely reported in the national press and educational media, that coursework can be held at least partly accountable for differential performances at GCSE; coursework, it is argued, advantages girls. This article reports on an analysis of data arising from a project which offered an opportunity to study current and post-GCSE students’ perceptions of coursework. The outcomes indicate (...) that, when categorised by their relative levels of attainment, girls’ and boys’ perceptions show limited evidence of homogeneity. In other words, to suggest that girls’ and boys’ perceptions of coursework are a function of gender is a gross over-simplification. Other factors are at play and further, more specific and tailored research is essential if we are to understand how best to optimise the benefits that are claimed for coursework. (shrink)

Compelled by recent public and politicized cases in which withdrawal of nutrition and hydration were at issue, this essay examines recent Church statements and argues that the distinction between private and public forms of human life is being lost. Effacing the distinction between the sphere of the home (oikos), where the maintenance of life (zoē) occurs, and the city (polis), where political and public life (bios) occurs, may have unforeseen and unwanted consequences. Through their well-intentioned efforts to preserve the sanctity (...) of life, certain bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have unfortunately brought political considerations into the home, taking decision-making authority away from those most intimately related to the patient. Thus, the question of removing nutrition and hydration in the case of patients such as Schiavo and Englaro becomes politicized and abstract, in contrast with the Church's previous positions on the importance of proportionate means in the maintenance of life, local decision making, and its recognition of life as a penultimate end. (shrink)