We use a theorem from M. J. Schervish to explore the relationship between accuracy and practical success. If an agent is pragmatically rational, she will quantify the expected loss of her credence with a strictly proper scoring rule. Which scoring rule is right for her will depend on the sorts of decisions she expects to face. We relate this pragmatic conception of inaccuracy to the purely epistemic one popular among epistemic utility theorists.

Permissivism about rationality is the view that there is sometimes more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. In this paper I discuss the relationship between permissivism, deference to rationality, and peer disagreement. I begin by arguing that—contrary to popular opinion—permissivism supports at least a moderate version of conciliationism. I then formulate a worry for permissivism. I show that, given a plausible principle of rational deference, permissive rationality seems to become unstable and to collapse into unique rationality. (...) I conclude with a formulation of a way out of this problem on behalf of the permissivist. (shrink)

Leitgeb and Pettigrew argue that (1) agents should minimize the expected inaccuracy of their beliefs and (2) inaccuracy should be measured via the Brier score. They show that in certain diachronic cases, these claims require an alternative to Jeffrey Conditionalization. I claim that this alternative is an irrational updating procedure and that the Brier score, and quadratic scoring rules generally, should be rejected as legitimate measures of inaccuracy.

In this paper, I develop a new kind of conciliatory answer to the problem of peer disagreement. Instead of trying to guide an agent’s updating behaviour in any particular disagreement, I establish constraints on an agent’s expected behaviour and argue that, in the long run, she should tend to be conciliatory toward her peers. I first claim that this macro-approach affords us new conceptual insight on the problem of peer disagreement and provides an important angle complementary to the standard micro-approaches (...) in the literature. I then detail the import of two novel results based on accuracy-considerations that establish the following: An agent should, on average, give her peers equal weight. However, if the agent takes herself and her advisor to be reliable, she should usually give the party with a stronger opinion more weight. In other words, an agent’s response to peer disagreement should over the course of many disagreements average out to equal weight, but in any particular disagreement, her response should tend to deviate from equal weight in a way that systematically depends on the actual credences she and her advisor report. (shrink)

Chance both guides our credences and is an objective feature of the world. How and why we should conform our credences to chance depends on the underlying metaphysical account of what chance is. I use considerations of accuracy (how close your credences come to truth-values) to propose a new way of deferring to chance. The principle I endorse, called the Trust Principle, requires chance to be a good guide to the world, permits modest chances, tells us how to listen to (...) chance even when the chances are modest, and entails but is not entailed by the New Principle. As I show, a rational agent will obey this principle if and only if she expects chance to be at least as accurate as she is on every good way of measuring accuracy. Much of the discussion, and the technical results, extend beyond chance to deference to any kind of expert. Indeed, you will trust someone about a particular question just in case you expect that person to be more accurate than you are about that question. (shrink)

Evidential Decision Theory and Causal Decision Theory are the leading contenders as theories of rational action, but both face counterexamples. We present some new counterexamples, including one in which the optimal action is causally dominated. We also present a novel decision theory, Functional Decision Theory, which simultaneously solves both sets of counterexamples. Instead of considering which physical action of theirs would give rise to the best outcomes, FDT agents consider which output of their decision function would give rise to the (...) best outcome. This theory relies on a notion of subjunctive dependence, where multiple implementations of the same mathematical function are considered to have identical results for logical rather than causal reasons. Taking these subjunctive dependencies into account allows FDT agents to outperform CDT and EDT agents in, for example, the presence of accurate predictors. (shrink)

Some propositions are more epistemically important than others. Further, how important a proposition is is often a contingent matter—some propositions count more in some worlds than in others. Epistemic Utility Theory cannot accommodate this fact, at least not in any standard way. For EUT to be successful, legitimate measures of epistemic utility must be proper, i.e., every probability function must assign itself maximum expected utility. Once we vary the importance of propositions across worlds, however, normal measures of epistemic utility become (...) improper. I argue there isn’t any good way out for EUT. (shrink)

There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to make any decision (...) using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

We consider the questions of whether or not large language models (LLMs) have beliefs, and, if they do, how we might measure them. First, we consider whether or not we should expect LLMs to have something like beliefs in the first place. We consider some recent arguments aiming to show that LLMs cannot have beliefs. We show that these arguments are misguided. We provide a more productive framing of questions surrounding the status of beliefs in LLMs, and highlight the empirical (...) nature of the problem. With this lesson in hand, we evaluate two existing approaches for measuring the beliefs of LLMs, one due to Azaria and Mitchell (The internal state of an llm knows when its lying, 2023) and the other to Burns et al. (Discovering latent knowledge in language models without supervision, 2022). Moving from the armchair to the desk chair, we provide empirical results that show that these methods fail to generalize in very basic ways. We then argue that, even if LLMs have beliefs, these methods are unlikely to be successful for conceptual reasons. Thus, there is still no lie-detector for LLMs. We conclude by suggesting some concrete paths for future work. (shrink)

Considerations of accuracy – the epistemic good of having credences close to truth-values – have led to the justification of a host of epistemic norms. These arguments rely on specific ways of measuring accuracy. In particular, the accuracy measure should be strictly proper. However, the main argument for strict propriety supports only weak propriety. But strict propriety follows from weak propriety given strict truth directedness and additivity. So no further argument is necessary.

Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which demand concern for questions like “What if everybody did that?” Rule consequentialism attempts to incorporate these intuitions by shifting the locus of evaluation from the consequences of acts to those of rules. However, detailed rule-consequentialist theories seem ad hoc or arbitrary compared to act consequentialist ones. We claim that generalizing can be better incorporated into consequentialism by (...) keeping the locus of evaluation on acts but adjusting the decision theory behind act selection. Specifically, we should adjust which types of dependencies the theory takes to be decision-relevant. Using this strategy, we formulate a new theory, generalized act consequentialism, which we argue is more compelling than rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct verdicts. (shrink)

Our decision-theoretic states are not luminous. We are imperfectly reliable at identifying our own credences, utilities and available acts, and thus can never be more than imperfectly reliable at identifying the prescriptions of decision theory. The lack of luminosity affords decision theory a remarkable opportunity — to issue guidance on the basis of epistemically inaccessible facts. We show how a decision theory can guarantee action in accordance with contingent truths about which an agent is arbitrarily uncertain. It may seem that (...) such advantages would require dubiously adverting to externalist facts that go beyond the internalism of traditional decision theory, but this is not so. Using only the standard repertoire of decision-theoretic tools, we show how to modify existing decision theories to take advantage of this opportunity. These improved decision theories require agents to maximize conditional expected utility — expected utility conditional upon an agent’s actual decision situation. We call such modified decision theories ‘self-confident’. These self-confident decision theories have a distinct advantage over standard decision theories: their prescriptions are better. (shrink)

In this paper, we illustrate some serious difficulties involved in conveying information about uncertain risks and securing informed consent for risky interventions in a clinical setting. We argue that in order to secure informed consent for a medical intervention, physicians often need to do more than report a bare, numerical probability value. When probabilities are given, securing informed consent generally requires communicating how probability expressions are to be interpreted and communicating something about the quality and quantity of the evidence for (...) the probabilities reported. Patients may also require guidance on how probability claims may or may not be relevant to their decisions, and physicians should be ready to help patients understand these issues. (shrink)

Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology.

Gerade weil das Bestehen auf Rangordnungen in der heutigen Gesellschaft anstößig und fremd wirkt, ist es lohnenswert, sich ihnen mit Nietzsche neu zu stellen, der sie als sein Problem bezeichnete. Er richtet sie gezielt gegen die Gleichheit, von der er befürchtet, ihr Anspruch auf Universalität verunmögliche Individualität, Anders-Sein und damit auch alle Größe. Den moralischen Wert der Gleichheit kritisieren heißt nicht, sich von demokratischen Grundprinzipien oder Errungenschaften zu verabschieden. Geklärte Rangverhältnisse reduzieren Komplexität, vereinfachen die Kommunikation, machen Verhalten erwartbar und (...) vereinfachen so die Orientierung. So könnte gerade in den modernen Ausprägungen der Demokratie ein offenerer Umgang mit Rangordnungen zu ihrer Stärkung beitragen. Die Nietzsche-Forschung hat eine Beschäftigung mit dem Begriff bisher weitgehend vermieden. Alberts schließt diese Forschungslücke. Er geht persönlichen, philologischen und philosophischen Anhaltspunkten für Nietzsches Denken nach und untersucht die Perspektiven, die dabei auf verschiedenste Lebensbereiche wie Natur, Religion, Moral, Wissenschaft und Interindividualität eröffnet werden. (shrink)

Wie andere aufgeschlossene Fachvertreter seiner Generation hat der kanadische Jesuit Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) dazu beigetragen, die katholische Theologie umfassend zu erneuern. Angesichts der offenkundigen Grenzen der Neuscholastik, die sich im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts als das Modell durchgesetzt hatte, suchte er schon früh nach einer Alternative. Bei aller Skepsis gegenüber dem herrschenden Thomismus schätzte er Thomas von Aquin in hohem Maß. Das betraf insbesondere dessen Bemühen, die damals aktuellen wissenschaftlichen und methodischen Erkenntnisse einzubeziehen. Lonergan wollte dies ebenso tun. Es ging (...) ihm darum, der katholischen Theologie eine neue Richtung zu geben, also von der Neuscholastik abzurücken. Denn diese berücksichtigte weder das erkennende Subjekt noch das zu erkennende Objekt hinreichend. (shrink)

Wie andere aufgeschlossene Fachvertreter seiner Generation hat der kanadische Jesuit Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) dazu beigetragen, die katholische Theologie umfassend zu erneuern. Angesichts der offenkundigen Grenzen der Neuscholastik, die sich im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts als das Modell durchgesetzt hatte, suchte er schon früh nach einer Alternative. Bei aller Skepsis gegenüber dem herrschenden Thomismus schätzte er Thomas von Aquin in hohem Maß. Das betraf insbesondere dessen Bemühen, die damals aktuellen wissenschaftlichen und methodischen Erkenntnisse einzubeziehen. Lonergan wollte dies ebenso tun. Es ging (...) ihm darum, der katholischen Theologie eine neue Richtung zu geben, also von der Neuscholastik abzurücken. Denn diese berücksichtigte weder das erkennende Subjekt noch das zu erkennende Objekt hinreichend. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of Theodor W. Adorno’s comment, in the beginning of ‘The Essay as Form’, that interpretations of essays are over-interpretations. I argue that this statement is programmatic, and should be understood in the light of Adorno’s essayistic ideal of configuration, his notion of truth, and his idea of the enigmatic character of art. In order to reveal how this over-interpreting appears in practice, I turn to Adorno’s essay on Kafka. According to Adorno, the reader of Kafka (...) is caught in an aporia: Kafka’s work cannot be interpreted, yet every single sentence calls for interpretation. This paradox is related to the gestures and images in Kafka’s work: like Walter Benjamin, Adorno means that they contain sedimented, forgotten experiences. Instead of interpreting these images, Adorno visualizes the experiences indirectly by presenting images of his own. His own essay becomes gestural. (shrink)

uber das Programm der kommenden Philosophie. ZUr Kritik der Gewalt. SChicksal und Charakter. GEschichtsphilosophische Thesen. THeologisch-politisches Fragment.

Several recent studies have returned to the famous controversy over the reception of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. By reinterpreting it within the immediate context of Germany in the early 1870s, James Whitman understands this controversy as a Methodenstreit within Classical Philology and James I. Porter claims that, through this controversy, Nietzsche developed an extensive critique of modern culture. I contend that Nietzsche’s reaction to the scholarly rejection of his first publication resulted in no immediate response (...) on his behalf; rather, it led to three years of intense rethinking and strengthening of the position he took in The Birth of Tragedy. This is evidenced in his early published essays and notebooks of 1872–1875. From the first readers of these early notebooks, Karl Schlechta and Anni Anders, to its most recent interpreters, Richard T. Grey and Alexander Nehamas, these scholars are unanimous in understanding them as Nietzsche’s attempt to work through.. (shrink)

Philosophie ist der Versuch, durch überzeugendes und durchsichtiges Argumentieren bestimmte Fragen zu lösen. Philosophische Grundthemen sind Fragen nach dem Verständnis der Welt im Ganzen und unserer Stellung in ihr. Diese Fragen können prinzipiell nur kontrovers beantwortet werden. Die Reihe Grundthemen Philosophie möchte der Diskussion solcher philosophischen Grundthemen einen Ort geben. Anstelle einer umfassenden einführenden Darstellung werden in den einzelnen Bänden in Auseinandersetzung mit ausgewählten historischen Positionen die jeweiligen Probleme analysiert und Lösungsmöglichkeiten diskutiert. Dabei setzt der Verfasser/die Verfasserin eigene Akzente und (...) bezieht Stellung, so dass sich nicht bloß ein Blick auf die Geschichte der Philosophie, sondern zugleich auch ein systematischer Beitrag zur Problemdiskussion ergibt. Zur Zeit sind weitere Bände zu den Themen Beziehungen, Kultur, Wissenschaft und Moralbegründung geplant. Die Bände der Reihe richten sich gleichermaßen an Studierende der Philosophie und anderer Fächer sowie an professionelle Philosophen. Außerdem wendet sich die Reihe an alle, die an Grundthemen der Philosophie interessiert sind. (shrink)

Exploring Textual Action questions how we analyse works of art after the performative turn and shows how the interplay of performativity (textual action), space and topography, and the converging of genres and art forms is essential in modern drama, theatre, prose fiction, poetry and film. The volume also fosters a keen concern for the development of congenial theory. Its 14 detailed essays analyse works of art ranging from Balzac, Melville and George Eliot, to Breton, Kafka, Benjamin, Blixen and Woolf; (...) and from W.C. Williams, Bresson and Scorsese, to Sarraute, Duras, Reygadas, Dumont and Waltz. The approach of these studies discloses the art works as creative and dynamic utterances with active and shaping forces so powerful, and consequential, that they have the potential to transform human perception and blur clear distinctions between art and real life. Using an alternative and dynamic method and suggesting a direction towards the detailed analysis of literature, art, media and culture, Exploring Textual Action addresses current debates within the humanities. (shrink)

Bislang wurde Walter Benjamins Werk nicht auf Staatlichkeit hin gelesen, weist es doch weder eine Staatstheorie noch deren explizite Kritik auf. Der Staat als genuin politische Kategorie wird zwar kaum direkt, dafur aber uber andere Begriffe adressiert, wie Souveranitat und Gewalt, Produktionsverhaltnisse und Warenform oder soziale Kollektive wie Klasse und 'Volk'. Mit Problemen moderner Staatlichkeit beschaftigte sich Benjamin zeitlebens uber die kulturelle Sphare, und sein politisches Denken motivierte sich wesentlich aus Beobachtungen an Alltagsdingen und Konsumgutern sowie der Auseinandersetzung mit (...) neuen kunstlerischen Verfahren und Technologien. Der Band stellt diesen mittelbaren Zugriff heraus und versucht aufzuzeigen, welche Problemfelder von Benjamins politischem Denken je schon auf die Phanomene Staat und Staatlichkeit verweisen, ohne dass diese direkt angesprochen und ausgefuhrt wurden. Mit Beitragen von: Nils Baratella, Christine Blattler, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Wolfram Ette, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Sebastian Jahn, Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Esther Leslie, Daniel Loick, Gerard Raulet, Sven Rucker, Gerhard Scheit, Falko Schmieder, Uwe Steiner, Martin Vialon, Christian Voller, Jannis Wagner. (shrink)

Günther Anders’s poem Du kleiner Fischerman is read here as a text contribution to the irruption that is violence and its enduring (omnipresent) aftermath. The essay includes a discussion of transmedial expression, including dramatization, or television and social media, text and subtext, as well as the inspiration of Anders’s poem as a work of art continuing in our times: the ongoing exclusion(s) of certain names and certain thinkers as of certain musical modes, including electronic musical works, as of (...) voices and of collective memory, or oblivion. Reading Raymond Williams along with Anders and Adorno on television updated in today’s era of screen-being, this essay reads the challenges of on-line music magazines, Leonard Cohen and k.d.lang, between modes of memorialization, including a reading of Anders’s poetic memorial on the violence of Walter Benjamin’s death to conclude with Ivan Illich on the ongoing expropriation of death (and health) today. (shrink)

A book review of Léa Veinstein, Les philosophes lisent Kafka: Benjamin, Arendt, Adorno, Anders.

Gunter Anders' Philosophy of Technology is the first comprehensive exploration of the ground-breaking work of German thinker Gunter Anders. Anders' philosophy has become increasingly prescient in our digitised, technological age as his work predicts the prevalence of social media, ubiquitous surveillance and the turn to big data. Anders' ouevre also explored the technologies of nuclear power and the biotech concerns for the human and transhuman condition which have become so central to current theory. Babette Babich argues (...) that Anders offers important resources on streaming digital media through his writings on radio, television and film and is, unusually, both a comprehensive and profound thinker. Anders' relationship with key philosophers like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin and his thinking on Goethe, Nietzsche and Rilke is also explored with a focus on the deep impact he made on his peers. It reflects specifically on the intersection of Anders' thought Heidegger and the Frankfurt school and how influential a figure he was on the landscape of 20th century philosophy. A compelling rehabilitation of a thinker with profound contemporary relevance. (shrink)

Pettigrew offers new axiomatic constraints on legitimate measures of inaccuracy. His axiom called ‘Decomposition’ stipulates that legitimate measures of inaccuracy evaluate a credence function in part based on its level of calibration at a world. I argue that if calibration is valuable, as Pettigrew claims, then this fact is an explanandum for accuracy-rst epistemologists, not an explanans, for three reasons. First, the intuitive case for the importance of calibration isn’t as strong as Pettigrew believes. Second, calibration is a perniciously global (...) property that both contravenes Pettigrew’s own views about the nature of credence functions themselves and undercuts the achievements and ambitions of accuracy-rst epistemology. Finally, Decomposition introduces a new kind of value compatible with but separate from accuracy-proper in violation of Pettigrew’s alethic monism. introduction. (shrink)

A number of recent arguments purport to show that imprecise credences are incompatible with accuracy-first epistemology. If correct, this conclusion suggests a conflict between evidential a...

Hardly anyone disputes that discrimination can be a grave moral wrong. Yet this consensus masks fundamental disagreements about what makes something discrimination, as well as precisely why acts of discrimination are wrong. Benjamin Eidelson develops systematic answers to those two questions. He claims that discrimination is a form of differential treatment distinguished by its special connection to the differential ascription of some property to different people, and goes on to argue that what makes some cases of discrimination intrinsically wrongful (...) is that they manifest an attitude of disrespect for the personhood of those who are disfavored. He endeavors to specify what this attitude consists in, and to demonstrate how attending to its character can help us to better understand the moral dimensions of different forms of wrongful discrimination. The book concludes with an extended discussion of racial profiling in law enforcement. (shrink)

Anders was a preeminent critic of technology and critic of the atomic bomb as he saw this hermeneutico-phenomenologically in the visceral sense of beingand time: the sheer that of its having been used as well as the bland politics of nuclear proliferation functions as programmatic aggression advanced in the name of defense and deterrence. The tactic ofsheerly technological, automatic, mechanical, aggression is carried out in good conscience. The preemptive strike is, as Baudrillard observed, the opponent’s fault: such are the (...) wages of evil. Violence in good conscience characterizes the postwar, cold war era and the present day with its mushrooming effects ofneo-fascism under the titles of national security and anti-terrorism. Karl Krauss’ 1913 bon mot regarding psychoanalysis as the very insanity it claims to cure [Psychoanalyse ist jene Geisteskrankheit, für deren Therapie sie sich halt] has never been more apt for political translation—straight into the heart of what Lacan called the Real which has ‘always been’ the political register. Where Habermas and heirs have tended to disregard Anders , just as most philosophers of technology have ignored the political as well as theethical in their eagerness to avoid suspicion of technophobia, we continue to require both critical theory and a critical philosophy of technology, a conjunction incorporating Ander’s complicated dialectic less of art in Benjamin’s prescient but still innocent age of technological reproduction but and much rather “on the devastation of life in the age of the third industrial revolution.” Thus rather thanreading Anders’ critique of the bomb as limited to a time we call the Atomic Age—as Anders himself varied Samuel Beckett’s 1957 Endgame asEndzeit that is “Endtime,” here invoking the eschatological language of Jacob Taubes as Anders does—this essay connects his reflections on the bomb with his critique of technology and the obsolescence of humanity as of a piece with our dedication to hurling ourselves against our own mortality. This concern with the violence of technology, this hatred of the vulnerability of having been born and having been set on a path unto death inspires Anders’ engagement with the sons of Eichmann—the heirs of those who designed and executed the Nazi death camps and extermination chambers of the Holocaust—and the sons of Claude Eatherly—the heirs ofboth those who designed and those who as pilots deployed the bombings that exploded nothing the stuff of the sun itself against the Empire of the Sun in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We, embroiled as we are in wartime after wartime, suppressing public protest on a scale like never before, in country after country across the globe, cannot dispense with Anders today. (shrink)

"Der Text ist ein Wald, in dem der Leser der Jäger ist" notierte Benjamin für sein Passagen-Projekt. Das Buch erschließt Benjamins Arbeitsweise erstmals ausgehend von seiner eigenen Lektürepraxis. Als lesender Jäger und Sammler durchforstete Benjamin Texte von Goethe, Marx, Kafka, Freud und vielen weiteren Autoren. Angesichts der Heterogenität seiner Quellen ist erstaunlich, dass sich in der Art seiner Lektüre methodische Eigenheiten wiederholen. Burkhardt Lindner hat diesen Zugriff auf andere Autoren als Entwendung beschrieben, mit der Benjamin "den fremden (...) Text sich anverwandelt oder abstößt und damit in die eigenen Denkerfahrungen einsenkt". Der Band erkundet verschiedene Dimensionen dieses Verfahrens und schärft den Begriff der Entwendung durch Einzelanalysen. So werden Denk- und Schreibweisen sichtbar, die bislang nicht als ein von Benjamin werkübergreifend angewendetes Verfahren aufgearbeitet wurden. "The reader is the hunter in the forest of the text" (Benjamin, Arcades Project). As a reading hunter Benjamin trawled through texts by Marx, Kafka, Freud, and many more. For the first time, the volume Entwendungen. Walter Benjamin und seine Quellen scrutinizes Benjamin ́s method based on his particular reading practice. The volume investigates the various angles of this practice, sharpens the notion of "Entwendung" by means of single case studies. It uncovers ways of thinking and writing that have not been identified as a method traversing the entirety of Benjamin ́s oeuvre. (shrink)

Kiesewetter defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. He provides a defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, an evidence-relative account of reason, and an explanation of structural irrationality in relation to these accounts.

The possibility of enhancing human abilities often raises public concern about equality and social impact. This chapter aims at one particular group of technologies, cognitive enhancement, and one particular fear, that enhancement will create social divisions and possibly expanding inequalities. The chapter argues that cognitive enhancements could offer significant social and economic benefits. The basic forms of internal cognitive enhancement technologies foreseen today are pharmacological modifications, genetic interventions, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and neural implants. Cognitive enhancements can influence the economy through (...) reduction of losses, individual economic benefits, and society‐wide benefits. The strongest objection to the introduction of any enhancement technology is that it will create inequality, injustice, and unfairness. While there are clear economic and social benefits to cognitive enhancement, there exist anumber of obstacles to its development and use. One obstacle is the present system for licensing drugs and medical treatments. (shrink)

According to accuracy-first epistemology, accuracy is the fundamental epistemic good. Epistemic norms — Probabilism, Conditionalization, the Principal Principle, etc. — have their binding force in virtue of helping to secure this good. To make this idea precise, accuracy-firsters invoke Epistemic Decision Theory (EpDT) to determine which epistemic policies are the best means toward the end of accuracy. Hilary Greaves and others have recently challenged the tenability of this programme. Their arguments purport to show that EpDT encourages obviously epistemically irrational behavior. (...) We develop firmer conceptual foundations for EpDT. First, we detail a theory of praxic and epistemic good. Then we show that, in light of their very different good-making features, EpDT will evaluate epistemic states and epistemic acts according to different criteria. So, in general, rational preference over states and acts won’t agree. Finally, we argue that based on direction-of-fit considerations, it’s preferences over the former that matter for normative epistemology, and that EpDT, properly spelt out, arrives at the correct verdicts in a range of putative problem cases. (shrink)

As cognitive neuroscience has advanced, the list of prospective internal, biological enhancements has steadily expanded. Education and training, as well as the use of external information‐processing devices, may be labeled as “conventional” means of cognition enhancement (CE). They are often well established and culturally accepted. By contrast, methods of enhancing cognition through “unconventional” means, such as ones involving deliberately created nootropic drugs, gene therapy, or neural implants, are nearly all to be regarded as experimental at the present time. Transcranial magnetic (...) stimulation (TMS), genetic interventions, brain‐computer interfaces and new senses are highly experimental and unlikely to be important over the next 15 years. Many of the concerns about enhancement are nonspecific to the tools used to achieve it, which means that enhancement–ethic scrutiny should also apply to nonbiological external enhancements. (shrink)

Sometimes our intentions and beliefs exhibit a structure that proves us to be irrational. This dissertation is concerned with the question of whether we ought (or have at least good reason) to avoid such irrationality. The thesis defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. The argument touches upon many other topics in the theory of normativity, such as the form and the content (...) of rational standards or requirements, the preconditions of criti¬cism, and the function of reasons in deliberation and advice. Over and above an exten¬sive assessment of the problems discussed in the literature, the thesis provides a detailed defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, a novel, evidence-relative account of reasons, and an explanation of structural irrationality in terms of these accounts. (shrink)

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing practices, and argue (...) that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

Consider the following 'principles':2(Norm of Belief Schema) Necessarily, a belief of is correct (relative to some scenario) if and only if p (at that scenario) — where 'p' has the aforementioned content .(Generalized Norm of Belief) Necessarily, for all propositions , a belief of is correct (relative to some scenario) if and only if is true (at that scenario).Both 'principles' appear to capture the aim(s) of belief. (NBS) particularizes the aims to beliefs of distinct content-types. (GNB) generalizes these aims of (...) beliefs as truth. Properly understood, the instances of (NBS) appear to be at least approximately true as does (GNB). Of course, one might harbor concerns about whether these are mere .. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, epistemic reasons are normative reasons for belief – much like prudential or moral reasons are normative reasons for action. In recent years, however, an increasing number of authors have questioned the assumption that epistemic reasons are normative. In this article, I discuss an important challenge for anti-normativism about epistemic reasons and present a number of arguments in support of normativism. The challenge for anti-normativism is to say what kind of reasons epistemic reasons are if (...) they are not normative reasons. I discuss various answers to this challenge and find them all wanting. The arguments for normativism each stress a certain analogy between epistemic reasons and normative reasons for action. Just like normative reasons for action, epistemic reasons provide partial justification; they provide premises for correct reasoning; they constitute good bases for the responses they are reasons for; and they are reasons for which agents can show these responses without committing a mistake. In each case, I argue that the relevant condition is plausibly sufficient for the normativity of a reason, and that normativism is in any case in a much better position to explain the analogy than anti-normativism. (shrink)

According to an attractive and widely held view, all practical reasons are explained in terms of the (instrumental or final) value of the action supported by the reason. I argue that this theory is incompatible with plausible assumptions about the practical reasons that correspond to certain moral rights, including the right to a promised action and the right to an exclusive use of one’s property. The argument is an explanatory rather than extensional one: while the actions supported by the relevant (...) reasons (e.g. keeping a valid promise or respecting property) can be argued to have a certain kind of value, I argue that this value presupposes a moral right, and therefore cannot explain the reason. Reflection on such cases suggest the conclusion that reasons that are subject to normative powers are generally not value-based. This also has important implications for the dialectic between ‘value-first’ and ‘reasons-first’ approaches to normativity. (shrink)

If you ought to perform a certain act, and some other action is a necessary means for you to perform that act, then you ought to perform that other action as well – or so it seems plausible to say. This transmission principle is of both practical and theoretical significance. The aim of this paper is to defend this principle against a number of recent objections, which (as I show) are all based on core assumptions of the view called actualism. (...) I reject actualism, provide an alternative explanation of its plausible features, and present an independent argument for the transmission principle. (shrink)

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's views and relationship with the Church, explaining that while Kierkegaard was a frequent churchgoer, he also considered the Church a corrupt and disgraceful business enterprise. It discusses Kierkegaard's criticism on the development of the Church as an institution and analyses various aspects of his ecclesiastical conception of the Church. The chapter also considers Kierkegaard's own experiences in writing and delivering sermons.

As sophisticated artificial intelligence software becomes more ubiquitously and more intimately integrated within domains of traditionally human endeavor, many are raising questions over how responsibility (be it moral, legal, or causal) can be understood for an AI’s actions or influence on an outcome. So called “responsibility gaps” occur whenever there exists an apparent chasm in the ordinary attribution of moral blame or responsibility when an AI automates physical or cognitive labor otherwise performed by human beings and commits an error. Healthcare (...) administration is an industry ripe for responsibility gaps produced by these kinds of AI. The moral stakes of healthcare are often life and death, and the demand for reducing clinical uncertainty while standardizing care incentivizes the development and integration of AI diagnosticians and prognosticators. In this paper, we argue that (1) responsibility gaps are generated by “black box” healthcare AI, (2) the presence of responsibility gaps (if unaddressed) creates serious moral problems, (3) a suitable solution is for relevant stakeholders to voluntarily responsibilize the gaps, taking on some moral responsibility for things they are not, strictly speaking, blameworthy for, and (4) should this solution be taken, black box healthcare AI will be permissible in the provision of healthcare. (shrink)

Inference has long been a concern in epistemology, as an essential means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference is also a key notion in influential psychological or philosophical accounts of mental capacities, from perception via utterance comprehension to problem-solving. Consciousness, on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper understanding of the nature (...) and role of inference. It is commonly suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what ways or senses, can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does this matter? This book brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging theorists that illustrate how several current debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind can benefit from reflections on these and related questions about the significance of consciousness for inference. Contributors include: Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe; Michael Rescorla; Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti; Berit Brogaard; Nicholas Allott; Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric Mandelbaum; Corine Besson; Anders Nes; David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč; Elijah Chudnoff; and Ram Neta. (shrink)