Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Classic, influential study of Greek tragedy.

Abduction is reasoning which produces explanatory hypotheses. Models are one basis for such reasoning, and language use can function as a model. I treat children’s early use of mental verbs as a model for dealing with a problem from developmental psychology, namely, how children’s early non-referential use of mental verbs might give children an early grasp of the mental realm. The present paper asks what practical knowledge of mental actions accompanies children’s competent use of mental verbs. I begin with examples (...) of non-referential verb uses and some theories from Diessel and Tomasello as bases for discussion. I argue that in using mental verbs non-referentially children understand several kinds of relations which people have to situations. Children learn how to use mental verbs to request someone to search for a situation in the past or in the physical surroundings; they learn to express hopes so as to affect their future; they learn to vouch strongly or weakly for the existence of a situation. In all of these cases it appears that the children’s main focus is on interactions with people, in which one person’s mental action in relation to a situation described in a COMP-clause is intended to have an effect on the other person. Children do not understand the nature or mechanisms of any of these mental actions, but instead focus on practical matters: how to use the verbs to perform certain actions in relation to other people and various situations. It appears that in these early uses children do not view mind as at all separate from the interactional and physical world. (shrink)

La recepción durante el siglo XX se preguntó si la filosofía nietzscheana era a-, im- o anti-política, es decir, si podía ser asimilada por la democracia, o si era antimoderna, elitista y reaccionaria. El italiano Roberto Esposito ha propuesto leerla como formando e informando el paradigma de la biopolítica. Se discuten cuatro lecturas de esa biopolítica: como formadora del paradigma de la inmunidad, como tanatopolítica, como liberal y neoliberal, y como biopolítica afirmativa. Twentieth-century readers wondered if Nietzschean philosophy was apolitical, (...) impolitic, or anti-political; that is, if it could be assimilated by democracy or if it was antimodern, elitist, and reactionary. The Italian philosopher Robert Esposito has proposed reading Nietzsche's philosophy as forming and informing the biopolitical paradigm. Four readings of these biopolitics are discussed: as part of the paradigm of immunity, as thanatopolitics, as liberal and neoliberal, and as affirmative biopolitics. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study in any language to examine in detail and critically assess the second part of Kant's ethics- -an empirical, impure part, which determines how best to apply pure principles to the human situation. Drawing attention to Kant's under-explored impure ethics, this revealing investigation refutes the common and long-standing misperception that Kants ethics advocates empty formalism. Making detailed use of a variety of Kantian texts never before translated into English, author Robert B. Louden reassesses the (...) strengths and weaknesses of Kantian ethics as a whole, once the second part is re-admitted to its rightful place within Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

"The best book available for non-mathematicians." — Contemporary Psychology. Superb nontechnical introduction to game theory and related disciplines, primarily as applied to the social sciences. Clear, comprehensive coverage of utility theory, 2-person zero-sum games, 2-person non-zero-sum games, n-person games, individual and group decision-making, much more. Appendixes. Bibliography. Graphs and figures.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THREE NOTIONS OF RESOLUTIO AND THE STRUCTURE OF REASONING IN AQUINAS 1 EILEEN c. SWEENEY Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts RESOLUTIO, better known by the English transliteration of its Greek counterpart, "analysis," has been touted as " the conceptual model for some of the most important ideas in the history of philosophy, including the history of the methodology and philosophy of science." 2 But while resolution /analysis may be (...) important in the histories of philosophy and science, its own history is, to say the least, confused. A Renaissance commentator, Jeremias Triverius gives some sense of this when, after giving a list of four methods of dialectic (division, definition, demonstration, and resolution),3 he writes, 1 I have used the following abbreviations for works by Thomas Aquinas. All translations of Aquinas are my own. Commentum in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum (ed. Busa): In Sent; Compendium Theologiae (ed. Busa): Comp Theo!; E:rpositio Super Librum Boethii De Trinitate (ed. Decker): Exp de Trin; In Aristotelis Libros Posterium Analyticorum (ed. Marietti) : In Anal Post; In Duodecem Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis E:rpositio (ed. Marietti): In Meta; In Librum Beati Dionysii De Divinis Nominibus E:rpositio (ed. Marietti): In Div Nom; Sententia Libri Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nichomachum: In Ethic; Sententia Libri Politicormn Aristotelis (ed. Leonine): In Pol; De Substantiis Separatis (ed. Busa): De Sub Sep; Summa Contra Gentiles (ed. Leonine): SCG; Summa Theologiae (ed. Leonine): ST; Questiones Disputatae de Veritate: QDV. 2 Jaakko Hintikka and Unto Remes, The Method of Analysis (Boston: D. Reidel, 1974), p. 1. s These four methods of dialectic are also given by a number of ancient commentators, for example, Ammonius (In Porphyrii Isagogen, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca [hereafter, CAG], ed. Maximilian Wallies [Berlin, 1891], vol. IV, pt. 6, p. 34, 11. 19-20) and a later commentator, David (Davidis Prolegomena et in Porphyrii Isagogen Commentarium, CAG, ed. Adolf Busse [Berlin, 1904], vol. 18, p. 88, 11. 6-10). 197 198 EILEEN C. SWEENEY Now anyone who has some knowledge of dialectical matters knows what Definition, Division, and Demonstration are. There is no general agreement, however, so far as I can see, on Resolution. Some identify it with Division. Others regard it as contrary [to Divi- • ] 4 S!On, ••• Triverius, like many modern commentators, adds to, rather than sorts out, the confusion, continuing, " And since each one is entitled to his opinion, I am now maintaining that Resolution is contrary to Demonstration...." 5 Many centuries before Triverius we find a similar ambiguity in Greek commentators on Aristotle, who outline several types of analysis. Unlike Triverius, however, most seem untroubled by the multiple types; Ammonius and David, without puzzlement, explain carefully that analysis is the opposite of each of the other three methods.6 The lack of 4 Jeremias Triverius, In texnhn [sic] Galeni clarissimi commentarii (Lyon, 1547), p. 14; cited and translated in Nea! Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 106. Galen's opening remarks of the Ars medica, giving three methods of teaching (analysis, synthesis, and definition) is a common locus for the discussion of resolution/ analysis in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Galen's contribution, at least for Aquinas, seems to have been completely mediated by Medieval Arabic commentators. Galen's own discussions are either incomplete, as in the opening passage to the Ars medica (in Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. C. G. Kiihn, [Repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965], vol. I, pp. 305-306), which merely mentions the word, or are unclear accounts of analysis (Cf. Galen's discussion of analysis in De Peccatorum, in Opera Omnia, vol. 5, ch. 5, pp. 80-81). On two of the Arabic commentaries' descriptions of analysis to accompany medieval translations of Galen, see below, nn. 80 & 83. On Galen's supposed contribution to the notion of resolution and method in the development of experimental science, see A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), especially pp. 7680, and Gilbert, Renaissance Method, pp, 13-27, 44-46. 5 Triverius, In texnhn, p. 14; Gilbert, p. 106. 6 For analysis as the opposite of division, definition, and demonstration, see Ammonius, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium, CAG, ed. Maximilian Wallies, (Berlin, 1891... (shrink)

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics.

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics.

In this essay I sketch some vices of virtue ethics, draw on inference about the philosophical source of the vices, and conclude with a recommendation concerning future efforts in moral theory construction. The source of the vices, I argue, lies in a mononomic or single-principle strategy within normative theory construction, a reductionist conceptual scheme which distorts certain integral aspects of our moral experience. My recommendation is that this strategy be abandoned, for the moral field is not unitary -- mononomic methods (...) are not the best tools for moral theorists. (shrink)

As machine learning informs increasingly consequential decisions, different metrics have been proposed for measuring algorithmic bias or unfairness. Two popular “fairness measures” are calibration and equality of false positive rate. Each measure seems intuitively important, but notably, it is usually impossible to satisfy both measures. For this reason, a large literature in machine learning speaks of a “fairness tradeoff” between these two measures. This framing assumes that both measures are, in fact, capturing something important. To date, philosophers have seldom examined (...) this crucial assumption, and examined to what extent each measure actually tracks a normatively important property. This makes this inevitable statistical conflict – between calibration and false positive rate equality – an important topic for ethics. In this paper, I give an ethical framework for thinking about these measures and argue that, contrary to initial appearances, false positive rate equality is in fact morally irrelevant and does not measure fairness. (shrink)

Robert Kane provides a critical overview of debates about free will of the past half century, relating this recent inquiry to the broader history of the free will issue and to vital currents of twentieth century thought. Kane also defends a traditional libertarian or incompatibilist view of free will, employing arguments that are both new to philosophy and that respond to contemporary developments in physics and biology, neuro science, and the cognitive and behavioral sciences.

Contemporary philosophers have grown increasingly skeptical toward both morality and moral theory. Some argue that moral theory is a radically misguided enterprise that does not illuminate moral practice, while others simply deny the value of morality in human life. In this important new book, Louden responds to the arguments of both "anti-morality" and "anti-theory" skeptics. In Part One, he develops and defends an alternative conception of morality, which, he argues, captures more of the central features of both Aristotelian and Kantian (...) ethics than do other contemporary models, and enables the central importance of morality to be convincingly reaffirmed. In Louden's model, morality is primarily a matter of what one does to oneself, rather than what one does or does not do to others. This model eliminates the gulf that many anti-morality critics say exists between morality's demands and the personal point of view. Louden further argues that morality's primary focus should be on agents and their lives, rather than on right actions, and that it is always better to be morally better--i.e. it is impossible to be "too moral." Part Two presents Louden's alternative conception of moral theory. Here again he draws on the work of Aristotle and Kant, showing that their moral theories have far more in common than is usually thought, and that those features that they share can be the basis for a viable moral theory that is immune to the standard anti-theory objections. Louden reaffirms the necessity and importance of moral theory in human life, and shows that moral theories fulfill a variety of genuine and indispensable human needs. (shrink)

Robert Rupert argues against the view that human cognitive processes comprise elements beyond the boundary of the organism, developing a systems-based conception in place of this extended view. He also argues for a conciliatory understanding of the relation between the computational approach to cognition and the embedded and embodied views.

Robert Stalnaker explores the contexts in which speech takes place, the ways we represent them, and the roles they play in explaining the interpretation and dynamics of speech. His central thesis is the autonomy of pragmatics: the independence of theory about structure and function of discourse from theory about mechanisms serving those functions.

In Context and Content Robert Stalnaker develops a philosophical picture of the nature of speech and thought and the relations between them. Two themes in particular run through these collected essays: the role that the context in which speech takes place plays in accounting for the way language is used to express thought, and the role of the external environment in determining the contents of our thoughts. Stalnaker argues against the widespread assumption of the priority of linguistic over mental (...) representation, which he suggests has had a distorting influence on our understanding. The first part of the book develops a framework for representing contexts and the way they interact with the interpretation of what is said in them. This framework is used to help to explain a range of linguistic phenomena concerning presupposition and assertion, conditional statements, the attribution of beliefs, and the use of names, descriptions, and pronouns to refer. Stalnaker then draws out the conception of thought and its content that is implicit in this framework. He defends externalism about thought--the assumption that our thoughts have the contents they have in virtue of the way we are situated in the world--and explores the role of linguistic action and linguistic structure in determining the contents of our thoughts. Context and Content offers philosophers and cognitive scientists a summation of Stalnaker's important and influential work in this area. His new introduction to the volume gives an overview of this work and offers a convenient way in for those who are new to it. The Oxford Cognitive Science series is a new forum for the best contemporary work in this flourishing field, where various disciplines--cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computational theory--join forces in the investigation of thought, awareness, understanding, and associated workings of the mind. Each book constitutes an original contribution to its subject, but will be accessible beyond the ranks of specialists, so as to reach a broad interdisciplinary readership. The series will be carefully shaped and steered with the aim of representing the most important developments in the field and bringing together its constituent disciplines. (shrink)

Kant's anthropological works represent a very different side of his philosophy, one that stands in sharp contrast to the critical philosophy of the three Critiques. For the most part, Kantian anthropology is an empirical, popular, and, above all, pragmatic enterprise. After tracing its origins both within his own writings and within Enlightenment culture, the Element turns next to an analysis of the structure and several key themes of Kantian anthropology, followed by a discussion of two longstanding contested features - viz., (...) moral anthropology and transcendental anthropology. The Element concludes with a defense of the value and importance of Kantian anthropology, along with replies to a variety of criticisms that have been levelled at it over the years. Kantian anthropology, the author argues, is 'the eye of true philosophy'. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of scientific study which is regarded as a social learning process of scientific knowledge creation, revision, application, monitoring and dissemination with the aim of securing good quality, general, objective, testable and complete scientific knowledge of the domain. The theory stipulates the aim of scientific study that forms the basis of its principles. It also makes seven assumptions about scientific study and defines the major participating entities. It extends a recent process model of scientific study into (...) a detailed interaction model as this process model already addresses many issues of philosophy of science. The detailed interaction model of scientific study provides a common template of scientific activities for developing logical models in different scientific disciplines, or alternatively for developing ontologies of different scientific disciplines. Differences between research and scientific studies are discussed, and a possible way to develop a scientific theory of scientific study is described. (shrink)

Life, on a day to day basis, is a sequence of emotional states: hope, disappointment, irritation, anger, affection, envy, pride, embarrassment, joy, sadness and many more. We know intuitively that these states express deep things about our character and our view of the world. But what are emotions and why are they so important to us? In one of the most extensive investigations of the emotions ever published, Robert Roberts develops a novel conception of what emotions are and then (...) applies it to a large range of types of emotion and related phenomena. In so doing he lays the foundations for a deeper understanding of our evaluative judgments, our actions, our personal relationships and our fundamental well-being. Aimed principally at philosophers and psychologists, this book will certainly be accessible to readers in other disciplines such as religion and anthropology. (shrink)

This paper argues that scientific studies distinguish themselves from other studies by a combination of their processes, their (knowledge) elements and the roles of these elements. This is supported by constructing a process model. An illustrative example based on Newtonian mechanics shows how scientific knowledge is structured according to the process model. To distinguish scientific studies from research and scientific research, two additional process models are built for such processes. We apply these process models: (1) to argue that scientific progress (...) should emphasize both the process of change and the content of change; (2) to chart the major stages of scientific study development; and (3) to define “science”. (shrink)

It is relatively easy to state that information retrieval is a scientific discipline but it is rather difficult to understand why it is science because what is science is still under debate in the philosophy of science. To be able to convince others that IR is science, our ability to explain why is crucial. To explain why IR is a scientific discipline, we use a theory and a model of scientific study, which were proposed recently. The explanation involves mapping the (...) knowledge structure of IR to that of well-known scientific disciplines like physics. In addition, the explanation involves identifying the common aim, principles and assumptions in IR and in well-known scientific disciplines like physics, so that they constrain the scientific investigation in IR in a similar way as in physics. Therefore, there are strong similarities in terms of the knowledge structure and the constraints of the scientific investigations between IR and scientific disciplines like physics. Based on such similarities, IR is considered a scientific discipline. (shrink)

Recently, Luk tried to establish a model and a theory of scientific studies. He focused on articulating the theory and the model, but he did not emphasize relating them to some issues in philosophy of science. In addition, they might explain some of the issues in philosophy of science, but such explanation is not articulated in his papers. This paper explores the implications and extensions of Luk’s work in philosophy of science or science in general.

CZF is an intuitionistic set theory that does not contain Power Set, substituting instead a weaker version, Subset Collection. In this paper a Kripke model of CZF is presented in which Power Set is false. In addition, another Kripke model is presented of CZF with Subset Collection replaced by Exponentiation, in which Subset Collection fails.

Renowned scholar Robert Adams explores the relation between religion and ethics through a comprehensive philosophical account of a theistically-based framework for ethics. Adams' framework begins with the good rather than the right, and with excellence rather than usefulness. He argues that loving the excellent, of which adoring God is a clear example, is the most fundamental aspect of a life well lived. Developing his original and detailed theory, Adams contends that devotion, the sacred, grace, martyrdom, worship, vocation, faith, and (...) other concepts drawn from religious ethics have been sorely overlooked in moral philosophy and can enrich the texture of ethical thought. (shrink)

Robert Stalnaker opposes the traditional view that knowledge of one's own current thoughts and feelings is the unproblematic foundation for all knowledge. He argues that we can understand our knowledge of our thoughts and feelings only by viewing ourselves from the outside, by seeing our inner lives as features of the world as it is in itself.

Anthropology, History, and Education, first published in 2007, contains all of Kant's major writings on human nature. Some of these works, which were published over a thirty-nine year period between 1764 and 1803, had never before been translated into English. Kant's question 'What is the human being?' is approached indirectly in his famous works on metaphysics, epistemology, moral and legal philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion, but it is approached directly in his extensive but less well-known writings on physical (...) and cultural anthropology, the philosophy of history, and education which are gathered in the present volume. Kant repeatedly claimed that the question 'What is the human being?' should be philosophy's most fundamental concern, and Anthropology, History, and Education can be seen as effectively presenting his philosophy as a whole in a popular guise. (shrink)

_In Defense of Anarchism_ is a 1970 book by the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, in which the author defends individualist anarchism. He argues that individual autonomy and state authority are mutually exclusive and that, as individual autonomy is inalienable, the moral legitimacy of the state collapses.

Robert C. Roberts first presented his vivid account of emotions as 'concern-based construals' in his book Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. In this new book he extends that account to the moral life. He explores the ways in which emotions can be a basis for moral judgments, how they account for the deeper moral identity of actions we perform, how they are constitutive of morally toned personal relationships like friendship, enmity, collegiality and parenthood, and how pleasant (...) and unpleasant emotions interact with our personal wellbeing. He then sketches how, by means of their moral dimensions, emotions participate in our virtues and vices, and for better or worse, express our moral character. His rich study will interest a wide range of readers working on virtue ethics, moral psychology and emotion theory. (shrink)

What is life? For four centuries, it has been believed that the only possible scientific approach to this question proceeds from the Cartesian metaphor -- organism as machine. Therefore, organisms are to be studied and characterized the same way "machines" are; the same way any inorganic system is. Robert Rosen argues that such a view is neither necessary nor sufficient to answer the question. He asserts that life is not a specialization of mechanism, but rather a sweeping generalization of (...) it. Above all, Rosen argues that renouncing mechanism does not mean abandoning science. A radical alternative is proposed, drawn equally from experience in biology, physics, and mathematics; an alternative which draws attention to a new class of complex systems, which are radically different from mechanism. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Kant remained committed to the necessity and fundamental importance of education throughout his career. Like Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90), Kant holds that a ‘total transformation’ of schools is necessary, and he holds this view not only in the 1770s but in his later years as well. In building my case I try to refute two recent opposing interpretations – Reinhard Brandt’s position that Kant’s early ‘education enthusiasm’ was later replaced by a politics enthusiasm, and (...) Manfred Kuehn’s view that the increasing importance of autonomy in Kant’s mature ethics leads him to de-emphasize education. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg claims that the weakness of evidence for God’s existence is not merely a sign that God is hidden, “it is a revelation that God does not exist.” In Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, Michael J. Murray provides a “soul-making” defense of God’s hiddenness, arguing that if God were not hidden, then some of us would lose what many theists deem a (very) good thing: the ability to develop morally significant characters. In this paper, I argue that Murray’s soul-making (...) defense not only fails to defend God’s hiddenness, it produces (ironically) an argument for the nonexistence of God. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg claims that the weakness of evidence for God’s existence is not merely a sign that God is hidden, “it is a revelation that God does not exist.” In Divine Hiddenness : New Essays, Michael J. Murray provides a “soul-making” defense of God’s hiddenness, arguing that if God were not hidden, then some of us would lose what many theists deem a good thing: the ability to develop morally significant characters. In this paper, I argue that Murray’s soul-making (...) defense not only fails to defend God’s hiddenness, it produces an argument for the nonexistence of God. (shrink)

A crucial aspect of scientific realism is what do we mean by true. In Luk’s theory and model of scientific study, a theory can be believed to be “true” but a model is only accurate. Therefore, what do we mean by a “true” theory in scientific realism? Here, we focus on exploring the notion of truth by some thought experiments and we come up with the idea that truth is related to what we mean by the same. This has repercussion (...) to the repeatability of the experiments and the predictive power of scientific knowledge. Apart from sameness, we also found that truth is related to the granularity of the observation, the limit of detection, the distinguishability of the objects in theory, the simultaneous measurements of objects/processes, the consistencies of the theory and the one-to-one correspondence between terms/events and objects/processes, respectively. While there is no guarantee that we can arrive at the final “true” theory, we have a process/procedure with more and more experiments together with our own ingenuity, to direct us towards such a “true” theory. For quantum mechanics, since a particle is also regarded as a wave, quantum mechanics cannot be considered as a true theory based on the correspondence theory of truth. Failing this, truth may be defined by the coherence theory of truth which is similar to the coherence of beliefs. However, quantum mechanics may not be believed to be a true theory based on the coherence theory of truth because wave properties and particle properties may contradict. Further research is needed to address this problem if we want to regard quantum mechanics as a “true” theory. (shrink)

The distinguished philosopher Robert M. Adams presents a major work on virtue, which is once again a central topic in ethical thought. A Theory of Virtue is a systematic, comprehensive framework for thinking about the moral evaluation of character, proposing that virtue is chiefly a matter of being for what is good, and that virtues must be intrinsically excellent and not just beneficial or useful.

Toward a Genealogy of 'Deontology' ROBERT B. LOUDEN [A]ny choice of a conceptual scheme presupposes values. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History tN Va'HICS AS ELS~.WHEI~, the basic categories used by writers to mark the conceptual terrain of their field profoundly affect readers' understanding of what is important within the field. And in ethics , most writers who habitually employ the currently accepted categories of their discipline have no knowledge of the particular history of these categories -- of who (...) first coined them, of the purposes for which they were originally intended, of how their meanings have shifted over the years, of how ascending categories have displaced descending ones, of who is primarily responsible for their current meanings, etc. As an illustration of this claim, I propose to examine the history of'deontology' in ethics, with an aim to making the recent topographical shifts within the field less "unknown to ourselves. ''~ Who was the first author to employ "the general, ugly, and familiar head- 1Cf. Nietzsche's opening remark in The Genealogy of Morals: "We are unknown to ourselves, we seekers after knowledge [w/r Erkennendon]" . It is perhaps worth noting at the outset that the following exercise in moral genealogy is not terribly Nietzschean -- I myself accept very little of the specifics of his attack on morality. However, I do concur with Nietzsche's general conviction that moral philosophers.. (shrink)

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people (...) who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. (shrink)

Recently, Luk mentioned that scientific knowledge both explains and predicts. Do these two functions of scientific knowledge have equal significance, or is one of the two functions more important than the other? This commentary explains why prediction may be mandatory but explanation may be only desirable and optional.

Historically, the dispute between empiricists and nativists in philosophy and cognitive science has concerned human and animal minds (Margolis and Laurence in Philos Stud: An Int J Philos Anal Tradit 165(2): 693-718, 2013, Ritchie in Synthese 199(Suppl 1): 159–176, 2021, Colombo in Synthese 195: 4817–4838, 2018). But recent progress has highlighted how empiricist and nativist concerns arise in the construction of artificial systems (Buckner in From deep learning to rational machines: What the history of philosophy can teach us about the (...) future of artificial intelligence. Oxford University Press.). This paper uses nativism and empiricism to address questions about the nature of artificial intelligence and its trajectory. It begins by defining the nativism/empiricism debate in terms of the generality of a system. Nativist systems have initial states with domain-specific features; empiricist systems have initial states with only domain-general features. With the debate framed in this way, it then explores a variety of arguments for nativism and empiricism in AI. These arguments revolve around two different questions which must be distinguished: whether nativism the only possible approach to developing human-level AI (HLAI); and whether nativism is the most practical approach to developing HLAI. On the first question, it argues that nativism is quite clearly not the only possible approach to developing HLAI, as is sometimes suggested. It argues that existing arguments for the necessity of nativism are unconvincing, because they analogize from poverty of the stimulus arguments about humans, while AIs often have access to much more data than humans. Then it argues that the case of evolution gives us a compelling argument against nativism. On the second, practical question, the paper argues that there is a tradeoff between the advantages of encoding innate machinery directly, and the advantages of evolving or learning it. However, as the past decade has shown, empiricism is a much more viable path to greater capability levels, given the ‘bitter lesson’ (Sutton in _Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction_. MIT press.) that encoding the ‘correct’ knowledge in AI systems is perennially outperformed by more empiricist methods that leverage large-scale data and computation. (shrink)

In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves 'author' or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this 'argument from autonomy', and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. Rather, it is not value realism but the apparent obligatoriness of morality that really poses a challenge to (...) our autonomy: how can this be accounted for without taking away our freedom? The debate the book focuses on therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves, in others or in God. Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages; he concludes by arguing that the choice between them remains open. (shrink)