In this article, I will argue in favor of a broad concept of AI that is not restricted to a particular kind of technology. Arguments based on such a concept will stand the test of time and will not become obsolete as technology advances. Arguments concerning the limits and possibilities of technology based solely on steam engine technology, for example, would no longer be relevant today. The same holds for arguments concerning symbolic-logical AI – and will probably be similar in (...) the future with arguments concerning current artificial neural networks. In a second step I develop a technology-independent argument to show that no system – no matter how advanced it may be – can ever fully understand itself. Furthermore, I will show that with a broad concept of AI – which also includes biological systems, for example – AI with human-level capabilities is, at least, possible. However, if artificial intelligence with human-level capabilities is possible, then the fundamental or absolute limitations of AI capabilities would also be fundamental limitations of human capabilities. In other words: what AI can never do, humans can’t do either. (shrink)

Far from considering the phenomenon of disagreement across the board, the peer debate in epistemology solely focuses on cases of disagreements that are at least assumed to be genuine. What counts as a genuine disagreement is most of the times kept on the level of a pre-theoretical intuition according to which the peers disagree insofar as they hold incompatible doxastic attitudes with respect to a proposition P (King, 2012). Yet, the pre-theoretical intuition yields the wrong verdict when the bone of (...) contention is a proposition whose truth is relativized. In order to avoid these counter-intuitive results, the peer debate needs to replace the pre-theoretical intuition of genuine disagreement with a full-fledged account of it. In this essay I firstly put forth a possible candidate for the role coming from an ongoing discussion in philosophy of language. Then, I assess how well such an account fares in both an outright and a credal model of belief. (shrink)

Dummett, Hanks, Künne, and Bobzien have all stated or implied that when Frege wrote ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, Frege believed that the sense of a sentence-question was not a thought. I present the passage of ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ which is relevant to the evaluation of that proposition. I then present and evaluate an argument which I assume to be the best argument based on that passage for that proposition. I argue that the argument is likely to be unsound. I (...) also address the question whether Frege believed that sentence-questions could be true or false and discuss what Frege did say and what he should have said about logical-alternative questions. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle’s account of perception has not become widely known. Moreover, most of the responses to his account have been critical. Ryle’s method was to analyze our everyday use of perception verbs such as ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’, in order to argue that perception is a skill that we learn by doing. His critics concluded that by focusing on the use of perception verbs, Ryle dodged all central problems of perception. The current article aims to rebut this conclusion, by showing how (...) Ryle’s work on perception builds on his logical-geographical method. That method leads Ryle to the conclusion that perceptual skill is a form of knowing how. Perception recipes, defined as shared criteria for correct use of perception verbs, display the normative structure of this knowledge. Although this analysis raises questions of its own, it shows that Ryle was in fact engaging seriously with core philosophical questions about the nature of perception. (shrink)

Vicarious responsibility exists. It is (also) a species of moral responsibility. Nevertheless, it is seldomly discussed or considered as such in the main debates within moral philosophy. This article presents a case for the relevance of vicarious moral responsibility to several of these discussions. It seeks to provide new insights for the debate between historicism and structuralism and presents a further case for distinguishing between various facets of moral responsibility. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that an agent need not enter into (...) the relation of vicarious responsibility freely in order to be responsible. This idea then allows us to present new cases for compatibilism, demonstrating the consistency of moral responsibility with determinism. (shrink)

Linguistic competence is, among other things, the cognitive ability of using words appropriately. Following this notion, being a competent language user cannot be merely simulated because pretending to use words appropriately already is using words appropriately. Since current AI already can use words appropriately it may be that AI already has linguistic competence instead of merely simulating it. However, in this article I argue that there is at least one domain of linguistic competence that can be simulated: grasping lexical effects. (...) Since grasping lexical effects presupposes an ability which AI lacks, namely feeling emotions, I argue that AI can only grasp the cognitive part of words but not their lexical effects. AI can only simulate to grasp lexical effects. Hence, lexical effects are a domain of linguistic competence AI cannot grasp. (shrink)

The present article examines two important challenges raised by Steup for explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The first challenge targets the notion of available explanation which is key to any explanationist account of evidential fit. According to Steup, any plausible construal of the notion of available explanation already presupposes the notion of evidential fit. In response to that challenge, an alternative conception of what it takes for an explanation to be available to a subject is offered and shown to be (...) able to shed better light on the specific role played by that notion in explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The second challenge relies on the claim that the explanatory goodness of competing explanations is determined by their evidential fit, rather than the other way around. In response to that challenge, it is argued that explanationists can concede that the relative explanatory goodness of an explanation is in part dependent on that explanation’s likeliness on the overall evidence possessed by the subject without thereby conceding that Explanationism about justification is circular. (shrink)

In response to Felix Mühlhölzer’s critical discussion of my book Wittgenstein on Mathematics (2021), I argue against his main objections, in particular his view that one shouldn’t even look for coherence in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, and his claim that Wittgenstein’s insistence on the empirical applicability of mathematical concepts need not be taken seriously because in one passage it is prefaced by the words ‘I want to say’. I also correct a number of irksome misunderstandings in Mühlhölzer’s review. Repeatedly he (...) ascribes to me a position that I merely present for discussion – and reject or qualify in the end. In particular, he wrongly ascribes to me the empiricist view that mathematical propositions are derived from experience. Some of Wittgenstein’s remarks seem to express such a view, so I discuss it but conclude that, some exceptions apart, it is untenable and also inconsistent with Wittgenstein’s key ideas about mathematical proof. (shrink)

Those who recognize the type of knowledge acquisition that involves what Peter D. Klein calls ‘a useful false belief’ face the problem of defining appropriate boundaries for such a belief. Klein’s own proposal encounters counterexamples and should be replaced by a definition inspired by a position that may be called ‘circumstantialism,’ which emphasizes certain circumstances belonging to the knower’s situation. The revised definition also offers a solution to ‘The False Lemma Problem’ of distinguishing cases involving useful false beliefs from classic (...) Gettier-type cases involving a false lemma in the reasoning underlying the inferential process. (shrink)

Recently, epistemologists have been much concerned with the question of whether or not we have to revise our beliefs if there are people whose epistemic position is as good as ours and who disagree with us. The results of such considerations, whatever they are, are sometimes said to be restricted to domains in which, unlike in politics or law, the relevant agents are not under any pressure to act in accordance with their beliefs, have no deeply held ideological beliefs, or (...) have no beliefs that stem from their particular aims or desires. In response to this, and with regard to the paradigmatic cases of politics and law, this article argues that there are no genuine political or legal disagreements: what we call a political or legal disagreement is either no disagreement at all but a mere clash of interest, or it is a an empirical, moral, or practical disagreement that is not genuinely political or legal. To the latter, epistemological insights apply; to the former, they do not. (shrink)

Meinongianism takes non-existent objects to actually possess the qualities they are characterised as possessing. But many of these qualities are existence entailing. Priest and Berto’s modal Meinongianism tries to circumvent this problem by taking Pegasus to possess the property of being winged in some nonactual world. I argue that modal Meingongianism’s individuation criterion for fictional and imaginary entities doesn’t allow us to rule out that Emma Woodhouse and Batman are identical. I further argue that depending on the status of the (...) ‘other worlds’ it posits, modal Meinongianism either trivialises Meinongianism’s ‘characterisation principle’ or replaces it with something no less objectionable. Priest and Berto’s view, I conclude, if it is tenable, is not a form of Meinongianism; but arguably it is something better: a structuralist account of non-existent objects. (shrink)

In Francesco Berto’s words, the term “Serious Actualism” is used for the position “that any object must exist in every circumstance in which it has any property – the thesis that predication, or the having of properties as such, entails existence.” (“Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds”, Philosophical Studies 152, 2011, 324f.) Berto agrees with Nathan Salmon that Serious Actualism is “a confused and misguided prejudice” (Salmon, “Nonexistence”, Noûs 32, 1998, 290). The aim of this article is (...) to defend the doctrine of Serious Actualism against this verdict. (shrink)

The topic of fictional objects and their nature is a familiar one, the topic of fictional properties less so. This article focuses on the way artefactualism – now arguably the most popular form of realism about fictional objects – might be extended to give an account of fictional properties. After describing what seems the most developed such extension, the article articulates a serious problem it faces, before showing how artefactualism about fictional properties would benefit from certain insights contained in an (...) alternative abstract-object version of fictional realism. (shrink)

Existence as reflected in natural language is not a univocal notion, but divides into different modes of being, such as existence (as, roughly, endurance) and occurrence. One aim of the paper is to distinguish sharply between abstract artifacts and non-existent objects (e.g., plans vs. planned events that fail to occur); another is to argue for validity as a mode of being distinct from existence, as well as for corresponding distinctions among non-being.

In this article, we argue for the distinction of three different types of predicates: existence entailing, (existence) neutral, and nonexistence entailing predicates. We provide linguistic tests as well as examples to motivate this distinction. After motivating our views on predicates, we show how our theory is able to deal with a multitude of problematic data both known from the literature as well as new. Then, we develop a multi-domain predicate logic inspired by certain versions of free logics in order to (...) represent these entailments in a formal way. (shrink)

In Francesco Berto’s words, the term “Serious Actualism” is used for the position “that any object must exist in every circumstance in which it has any property – the thesis that predication, or the having of properties as such, entails existence.” (“Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds”, Philosophical Studies 152, 2011, 324f.) Berto agrees with Nathan Salmon that Serious Actualism is “a confused and misguided prejudice” (Salmon, “Nonexistence”, Noûs 32, 1998, 290). The aim of this paper is (...) to defend the doctrine of Serious Actualism against this verdict. (shrink)

A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in (...) which the subject term is a name from fiction. I argue that such singular, negative existential statements are false. My account of fictional characters differs significantly from Kripke’s. It is shown that an objection to my account rests on a serious misunderstanding. Finally, a crucial aspect of the account is emphasized. (shrink)

In this article, I want to defend two claims. First, as regards fictional characters (ficta), one must appeal to constitutive properties, i.e., properties that are not only necessary but also essential for a fictum involved by a certain narration; namely, the internal discourse about a fictum. Such properties are indeed the properties that are truly predicated of ficta, either explicitly or implicitly, in that narration. For the appeal to such properties may explain not only i) the truth of important bits (...) of external discourse, i.e., the discourse concerning a fictum outside that narration, but also ii) a fictum’s individuation, i.e., what makes that fictum the object it is. Second, ficta are truly internally predicated such properties, i.e., they possess such properties in a specific, constitutive, mode. For those properties are members of the property sets with which ficta are somehow correlated; indeed, possession of truly internally predicated properties precisely amounts to set-membership. (shrink)

The view that to act is to cause change and that to be an agent is to be the causer of an action’s result has gained traction in the past twenty years or so. This view seems to have two significant corollaries. First, there is no distinction between doing an action and causing its result. Second, any two actions that have the same result will turn out to be identical. Ruben (2018) has recently used the first corollary to challenge the (...) view, and the second corollary raises further problems for the view. This article aims to refine this view and defend it against the challenges that arise out of its two corollaries. It is argued that being the cause of an action’s result is not the same as being its causer and that doing an action is not just causing its result but causing it in a specific way. (shrink)