This paper challenges arguments that systematic patterns of intelligent behavior license the claim that representations must play a role in the cognitive system analogous to that played by syntactical structures in a computer program. In place of traditional computational models, I argue that research inspired by Dynamical Systems theory can support an alternative view of representations. My suggestion is that we treat linguistic and representational structures as providing complex multi-dimensional targets for the development of individual brains. This approach acknowledges the (...) indispensability of the intentional or representational idiom in psychological explanation without locating representations in the brains of intelligent agents. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, Second Edition_ is an invaluable guide and major reference source to the major topics, problems, concepts and debates in philosophy of psychology and is the first companion of its kind. A team of renowned international contributors provide forty-nine chapters organised into six clear parts: Historical background to Philosophy of Psychology Psychological Explanation Cognition and Representation The biological basis of psychology Perceptual Experience Personhood. _The Companion_ covers key topics such as the origins of experimental (...) psychology; folk psychology; behaviorism and functionalism; philosophy, psychology and neuroscience; the language of thought, modularity, nativism and representational theories of mind; consciousness and the senses; dreams emotion and temporality; personal identity and the philosophy of psychopathology. For the_ second edition_ many of the current chapters have been updated, and seven new chapters added on important new topics such predictive processing, comparative cognition, learning, and group cognition, as well as a new introductory chapter by the editors on the demarcation between philosophy and psychology. Essential reading for all students of philosophy of mind, science and psychology, _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology _will also be of interest to anyone studying psychology and its related disciplines. (shrink)

Technologies that deploy data science methods are liable to result in epistemic harms involving the diminution of individuals with respect to their standing as knowers or their credibility as sources of testimony. Not all harms of this kind are unjust but when they are we ought to try to prevent or correct them. Epistemically unjust harms will typically intersect with other more familiar and well-studied kinds of harm that result from the design, development, and use of data science technologies. However, (...) we argue that epistemic injustices can be distinguished conceptually from more familiar kinds of harm. We argue that epistemic harms are morally relevant even in cases where those who suffer them are unharmed in other ways. Via a series of examples from the criminal justice system, workplace hierarchies, and educational contexts we explain the kinds of epistemic injustice that can result from common uses of data science technologies. (shrink)

What does it mean to trust the results of a computer simulation? This paper argues that trust in simulations should be grounded in empirical evidence, good engineering practice, and established theoretical principles. Without these constraints, computer simulation risks becoming little more than speculation. We argue against two prominent positions in the epistemology of computer simulation and defend a conservative view that emphasizes the difference between the norms governing scientific investigation and those governing ordinary epistemic practices.

This paper argues that the difference between contemporary software intensive scientific practice and more traditional non-software intensive varieties results from the characteristically high conditionality of software. We explain why the path complexity of programs with high conditionality imposes limits on standard error correction techniques and why this matters. While it is possible, in general, to characterize the error distribution in inquiry that does not involve high conditionality, we cannot characterize the error distribution in inquiry that depends on software. Software intensive (...) science presents distinctive error and uncertainty modalities that pose new challenges for the epistemology of science. (shrink)

We address some of the epistemological challenges highlighted by the Critical Data Studies literature by reference to some of the key debates in the philosophy of science concerning computational modeling and simulation. We provide a brief overview of these debates focusing particularly on what Paul Humphreys calls epistemic opacity. We argue that debates in Critical Data Studies and philosophy of science have neglected the problem of error management and error detection. This is an especially important feature of the epistemology of (...) Big Data. In “Error” section we explain the main characteristics of error detection and correction along with the relationship between error and path complexity in software. In this section we provide an overview of conventional statistical methods for error detection and review their limitations when faced with the high degree of conditionality inherent to modern software systems. (shrink)

Epistemic logic is the logic of knowledge and belief. It provides insight into the properties of individual knowers, has provided a means to model complicated scenarios involving groups of knowers and has improved our understanding of the dynamics of inquiry.

Scientific modelling is a value-laden process: the decisions involved can seldom be made using ‘scientific’ criteria alone, but rather draw on social and ethical values. In this paper, we draw on a body of philosophical literature to analyze a COVID-19 vaccination model, presenting a case study of social and ethical value judgments in health-oriented modelling. This case study urges us to make value judgments in health-oriented models explicit and interpretable by non-experts and to invite public involvement in making them.

Intuition serves a variety of roles in contemporary philosophy. This paper provides a historical discussion of the revival of intuition in the 1970s, untangling some of the ways that intuition has been used and offering some suggestions concerning its proper place in philosophical investigation. Contrary to some interpretations of the results of experimental philosophy, it is argued that generalized skepticism with respect to intuition is unwarranted. Intuition can continue to play an important role as part of a methodologically conservative stance (...) towards philosophical investigation. I argue that methodological conservatism should be sharply distinguished from the process of evaluating individual propositions. Nevertheless, intuition is not always a reliable guide to truth and experimental philosophy can serve a vital ameliorative role in determining the scope and limits of our intuitive competence with respect to various areas of inquiry. (shrink)

Procedural justifications of democracy emphasize inclusiveness and respect and by doing so come into conflict with instrumental justifications that depend on voters’ competence. This conflict raises questions about jury theorems and makes their standing in democratic theory contested. We show that a type of no-regret learning called meta-induction can help to satisfy the competence assumption without excluding voters or diverse opinion leaders on an a priori basis. Meta-induction assigns weights to opinion leaders based on their past predictive performance to determine (...) the level of their inclusion in recommendations for voters. The weighting minimizes the difference between the performance of meta-induction and the best opinion leader in hindsight. The difference represents the regret of meta-induction whose minimization ensures that the recommendations are optimal in supporting voters’ competence. Meta-induction has optimal truth-tracking properties that support voters’ competence even if it is targeted by mis/disinformation and should be considered a tool for supporting democracy in hyper-plurality. (shrink)

How can we be certain that software is reliable? Is there any method that can verify the correctness of software for all cases of interest? Computer scientists and software engineers have informally assumed that there is no fully general solution to the verification problem. In this paper, we survey approaches to the problem of software verification and offer a new proof for why there can be no general solution.

How can we be certain that software is reliable? Is there any method that can verify the correctness of software for all cases of interest? Computer scientists and software engineers have informally assumed that there is no fully general solution to the verification problem. In this paper, we survey approaches to the problem of software verification and offer a new proof for why there can be no general solution.

In this paper, we argue for the centrality of prediction in the use of computational models in science. We focus on the consequences of the irreversibility of computational models and on the conditional or ceteris paribus, nature of the kinds of their predictions. By irreversibility, we mean the fact that computational models can generally arrive at the same state via many possible sequences of previous states. Thus, while in the natural world, it is generally assumed that physical states have a (...) unique history, representations of those states in a computational model will usually be compatible with more than one possible history in the model. We describe some of the challenges involved in prediction and retrodiction in computational models while arguing that prediction is an essential feature of non-arbitrary decision making. Furthermore, we contend that the non-predictive virtues of computational models are dependent to a significant degree on the predictive success of the models in question. (shrink)

Computational modeling plays an increasingly important explanatory role in cases where we investigate systems or problems that exceed our native epistemic capacities. One clear case where technological enhancement is indispensable involves the study of complex systems.1 However, even in contexts where the number of parameters and interactions that define a problem is small, simple systems sometimes exhibit non-linear features which computational models can illustrate and track. In recent decades, computational models have been proposed as a way to assist us in (...) understanding emergent phenomena. (shrink)

Scientific modelling is a value-laden process: the decisions involved can seldom be made using 'scientific' criteria alone, but rather draw on social and ethical values. In this paper, we draw on a body of philosophical literature to analyze a COVID-19 vaccination model, presenting a case study of social and ethical value judgments in health-oriented modelling. This case study urges us to make value judgments in health-oriented models explicit and interpretable by non-experts and to invite public involvement in making them.

Ethically significant consequences of artificially intelligent artifacts will stem from their effects on existing social relations. Artifacts will serve in a variety of socially important roles—as personal companions, in the service of elderly and infirm people, in commercial, educational, and other socially sensitive contexts. The inevitable disruptions that these technologies will cause to social norms, institutions, and communities warrant careful consideration. As we begin to assess these effects, reflection on degrees and kinds of social agency will be required to make (...) properly informed decisions concerning the deployment of artificially intelligent artifacts in important settings. The social agency of these systems is unlike a human social agency, and this paper provides a methodological framework that is more suited for inquiry into artificial social agents than conventional philosophical treatments of the concept of agency. Separate aspects and dimensions of agency can be studied without assuming that agency must always look like adult human agency. This revised approach to the agency of artifacts is conducive to progress in the topics studied by AI ethics. (shrink)

This paper responds to Jaegwon Kim's powerful objection to the very possibility of genuinely novel emergent properties. Kim argues that the incoherence of reflexive downward causation means that the causal power of an emergent phenomenon is ultimately reducible to the causal powers of its constituents. I offer a simple argument showing how to characterize emergent properties m terms of the effects of structural relations an the causal powers of that. constituents.

Philosophers and cognitive scientists reassess systematicity in the post-connectionist era, offering perspectives from ecological psychology, embodied and distributed cognition, enactivism, and other methodologies.

This paper argues that open-mindedness is a corrective virtue. It serves as a corrective to the epistemic vice of confirmation bias. Specifically, open-mindedness is the epistemically virtuous disposition to resist the negative effects of confirmation bias on our ability to reason well and to evaluate evidence and arguments. As part of the defense and presentation of our account, we explore four discussions of open-mindedness in the recent literature. All four approaches have strengths and shed light on aspects of the virtue (...) of open-mindedness. Each mentions various symptoms of confirmation bias and some explore aspects of the corrective role of open-mindedness. However, ours is the first to explicitly identify open-mindedness as a corrective virtue to the specific epistemic vice of confirmation bias. We show how the corrective account also permits a response to the concern that open-mindedness might not actually count as a virtue. (shrink)

Epistemic logic begins with the recognition that our everyday talk about knowing and believing has some systematic features that we can track and re‡ect upon. Epistemic logicians have studied and extended these glints of systematic structure in fascinating and important ways since the early 1960s. However, for one reason or another, mainstream epistemologists have shown little interest. It is striking to contrast the marginal role of epistemic logic in contemporary epistemology with the centrality of modal logic for metaphysicians. This article (...) is intended to help in correcting this oversight by presenting some important developments in epistemic logic and suggesting ways to understand their applicability to traditional epistemological problems. Obviously, by itself, tweaking the formal apparatus of epistemic logic does not solve traditional epistemological problems. Epistemic logic can help us to navigate through problems in a systematic fashion by unpacking the logic of the problematic concepts, it can also lead us to recognize problems that we had not anticipated. This is basically analogous to the role that modal logic has played in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds, Édouard Machery argues that the results of experimental philosophy should lead us to abandon much of traditional philosophical practice. In its place Machery defends naturalized conceptual analysis as a more modest and pragmatic alternative to standard analytic philosophy. This paper argues that Machery overstates the metaphilosophical significance of x-phi’s results. We can and should keep many of the insights and good methodological habits that come with x-phi. However, if one is not already convinced (...) of pragmatism or naturalism, the discoveries of x-phi are unlikely to make too much difference to one’s metaphilosophical position. (shrink)

This paper introduces the _Global Philosophy_ symposium on Giuseppe Primiero’s book _On the Foundations of Computing_ (2020). The collection gathers commentaries and responses of the author with the aim of engaging with some open questions in the philosophy of computer science. Firstly, this paper introduces the central themes addressed in Primiero’s book; secondly, it highlights some of the main critiques from commentators in order to, finally, pinpoint some conceptual challenges indicating future directions for the philosophy of computer science.

Software-intensive systems are ubiquitous in the industrialized world. The reliability of software has implications for how we understand scientific knowledge produced using software-intensive systems and for our understanding of the ethical and political status of technology. The reliability of a software system is largely determined by the distribution of errors and by the consequences of those errors in the usage of that system. We select a taxonomy of software error types from the literature on empirically observed software errors and compare (...) that taxonomy to Giuseppe Primiero’s Minds and Machines 24: 249–273, (2014) taxonomy of error in information systems. Because Primiero’s taxonomy is articulated in terms of a coherent, explicit model of computation and is more fine-grained than the empirical taxonomy we select, we might expect Primiero’s taxonomy to provide insights into how to reduce the frequency of software error better than the empirical taxonomy. Whether using one software error taxonomy can help to reduce the frequency of software errors better than another taxonomy is ultimately an empirical question. (shrink)

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE! Daniel Dennett has been one of the central voices in the philosophy of mind for at least the past forty years. Unlike most philosophers of his generation, Dennett’s work has resonated far and wide. It has powerfully influenced the development of cognitive science, robotics, developmental psychology, and artificial intelligence. Indeed, his work has led to many new lines of inquiry. For example, he has developed a theory of consciousness which provides an approach to naturalizing mind which circumvents (...) many of the most significant philosophical arguments against the possibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness. The daunting quantity of literature available on Dennett makes it difficult to discriminate the useful from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose. Moreover, because no comparable philosopher has had a profound impact across such a wide range of disciplines and on intellectual culture in general, responses to Dennett’s philosophy are dispersed across a broad range of scientific, philosophical, and cultural domains. That is why this new title in the highly regarded Routledge series, Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, is so urgently needed. Edited by John Symons, this new Routledge Major Work is a four-volume collection of the best scholarship on Dennett; the collected materials have been carefully selected from a wide range of academic journals, edited collections, research monographs, and other sources. The tightly focused organization of this collection allows users quickly and easily to access both established and cutting-edge assessments of Dennett’s work. The set is also made for irresistible browsing. With comprehensive introductions to each volume, providing essential background information and relating the various works to each other, Daniel Dennett is destined to be an indispensable resource for research and study. (shrink)

There are many tangled normative and technical questions involved in evaluating the quality of software used in epidemiological simulations. In this paper we answer some of these questions and offer practical guidance to practitioners, funders, scientific journals, and consumers of epidemiological research. The heart of our paper is a case study of the Imperial College London covid-19 simulator, set in the context of recent work in epistemology of simulation and philosophy of epidemiology.

This paper provides a reply to articles by Nicola Angius and Guiseppe Primiero responding to our paper “Software Intensive Science”.

In this interview, Symons discusses the scope and character of philosophy of biology, including some reflections on the political implications of biological developments. Topics addressed include the nature of biological knowledge; the status of reductionism; and contemporary discussions of Darwinism, biotechnology and cloning.

Meaningfulness is the dimension of importance that exists for beings capable of adjudicating between competing kinds of normative reasons. The way an agent decides to rank competing values in terms of importance reflects that agent’s understanding of what counts as meaningful. We can imagine agents who do not engage in this kind of deliberation. Agents who fail to adjudicate between kinds of normative reasons can still act in ways that are prudentially valuable, aesthetically pleasing, and morally praiseworthy. While the actions (...) of such agents can be good in a variety of ways such actions can also be meaningless. This paper explains how meaningfulness is connected to deliberation, how one can be mistaken in one’s judgments of meaningfulness, and how some lives and practices can be more meaningful than others. (shrink)

Rather than taking the ontological fundamentality of an ideal microphysics as a starting point, this article sketches an approach to the problem of levels that swaps assumptions about ontology for assumptions about inquiry. These assumptions can be implemented formally via computational modeling techniques that will be described below. It is argued that these models offer a way to save some of our prominent commonsense intuitions concerning levels. This strategy offers a way of exploring the individuation of higher level properties in (...) a systematic and formally constrained manner. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Worrell Hall 306, 500 University Avenue, University of Texas, El Paso, TX 79968; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The analytic tradition is sometimes criticized as being narrowly focused on language, logic or conceptual analysis to the detriment of deeper investigations into ontological, metaphysical or moral questions.1 More specifically, analytic philosophy has been associated with a positivist attitude which favored replacing the philosophy’s traditional focus on fundamental questions with an obsequiously deferential relationship to mathematics and the natural sciences. While this line of criticism obscures the historical reality and contemporary diversity of the analytic tradition, it is certainly true that (...) analytic philosophers have generated severe criticisms of traditional metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper responds to Jaegwon Kim's powerful objection to the very possibility of genuinely novel emergent properties Kim argue that the incoherence of reflexive downward causation means that the causal power of an emergent phenomenon is ultimately reducible to the causal powers of its constituents. I offer a a simple argument showing how to characterize emergent properties m terms of the effects of structural relations an the causal powers of that constituents.

This paper responds to Jaegwon Kim's powerful objection to the very possibility of genuinely novel emergent properties Kim argue that the incoherence of reflexive downward causation means that the causal power of an emergent phenomenon is ultimately reducible to the causal powers of its constituents. I offer a a simple argument showing how to characterize emergent properties m terms of the effects of structural relations an the causal powers of that constituents.

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind rests on the claim that mental states are multiply realizable; mental states can be realized by or instantiated in a variety of distinct physical structures. To see them as multiply realizable we take mental states as causal roles rather than particular physical structures. As such, functionalism can be contrasted with metaphysical accounts which treat mental states as instances of a mental substance. Instead of puzzling over the relationship between mental and physical kinds, functionalists understand (...) our talk of minds as a way of describing the functions of bodies. The attraction of a functionalist position is obvious. It seems to solve the traditional problem of mind-body dualism, while simultaneously reconciling the apparent irreducibility of psychological discourse with a broadly physicalistic or materialistic ontology. (shrink)

Shanker & King (S&K) provide a criticism of information-theoretic approaches to language, but the real obstacle to their dynamicist approach is the argument that representations are an indispensable part of any cognitive theory. Since the dynamicist approach has a prima facie anti-representationalist bent, the authors must show why dynamicist views can provide adequate explanations of intelligent behavior.

This brief text assists students in understanding Dennett's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON DENNETT is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers (...) sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)