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9016.235131
Democratic theorists and social epistemologists often celebrate the epistemic benefits of diversity. One of the cornerstones is the ‘diversity trumps ability’ result by Hong and Page (2004). Ironically, the interplay between diversity and ability is rarely studied in radically different frameworks. Although diversity has been studied in prediction and search problems, the diversity-expertise tradeoff has not been studied systematically for small, deliberative groups facing binary classification problems. To fill this gap, I will introduce a new evidential sources framework and study whether, when, and (if so) why diversity trumps expertise in binary classification problems.
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9044.23521
Phenomenology of science is supposed to return to the things themselves by getting as close as possible to the level of scientific practice. In doing so, it engages with a broader landscape of scholarship on science—from sociology and STS to analytic philosophy—that likewise seeks to clarify the epistemic structures of scientific practice. What sets phenomenology apart, however, is its aim of faithfully describing the essential structures of expert experience—the very experience scientists undergo as they engage in their research—by means of a first-person perspective. This paper identifies a central methodological difficulty in this regard: the challenge of expert experience, namely the difficulty of accessing and describing experiences that require domain-specific expertise. While introducing qualitative methods into the phenomenological toolbox seems a promising route for addressing this difficulty, it brings with it its own set of challenges. Although, as I will argue, there is no straightforward solution to the challenge, a potential way forward lies in focusing more on the collaborative interactions between phenomenologists and scientists during interview-based inquiry, with the aim of fostering interactional expertise in Harry Collins’s sense of the term.
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31344.235225
Consider Newcomb’s Paradox, and assume the predictor has a high accuracy but is nonetheless fallible. Suppose you have the character of a one-boxer and you know it. Then you also know that the predictor has predicted your choosing one box and hence you know that there is money in both boxes. …
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37329.235235
While there has been much discussion of whether AI systems could function as moral agents or acquire sentience, there has been very little discussion of whether AI systems could have free will. I sketch a framework for thinking about this question, inspired by Daniel Dennett’s work. I argue that, to determine whether an AI system has free will, we should not look for some mysterious property, expect its underlying algorithms to be indeterministic, or ask whether the system is unpredictable. Rather, we should simply ask whether we have good explanatory reasons to view the system as an intentional agent, with the capacity for choice between alternative possibilities and control over the resulting actions. If the answer is “yes”, then the system counts as having free will in a pragmatic and diagnostically useful sense.
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99040.235244
It is hard to overstate how important the topic of modality was for philosophy in the 20th century. Fittingly, a comprehensive discussion of this topic and its role in the development of 20th- century philosophy in a piece this size is impossible, and as such, choices must be made about what to cover. Here is what I plan to do here. First, much of early 20th- century modal theorizing is a response, either direct or indirect, to Kant, and so I begin by outlining some key Kantian claims about modality. Second, I describe two philosophical traditions stemming from this reaction, the phenomenological tradition, with a focus on Husserl and Heidegger, and the analytic tradition, with a focus on Russell and Quine. Next, I turn to the relatively recent history of modality in the analytic tradition, and focus on work by Barcan Marcus
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99062.235253
This chapter presents and critically evaluates the main aspects of the ethical system of Mary Whiton Calkins. Some of these aspects include the claims that to be a good person is to will what is conceived by that person to be the good and that what each of us is morally obligated to do is to will the Good. According to Calkins, there are no objective, mind-independent criteria for being the Good, but nonetheless some conceptions of the Good are better than others; this chapter assesses whether Calkins has an adequate account of how one conception of the Good can be superior to another. Finally, this chapter explores Calkins’s theory of virtues and vices. Among those discussed are the vice of cruelty, and the virtues of thoughtfulness and justice, with a focus on distributive justice. With respect to the latter, Calkins argues for a minimal safety net to ensure an adequate standard of living for all people.
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105179.235262
The current disruption of ecosystems and climate systems can be likened to an increase in entropy within our planet. This concept is often linked to the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts a necessary rise in entropy resulting from all material and energy-related processes, including the intricate organisation of living systems. Consequently, discussions surrounding the ongoing crisis commonly carry an underlying sense of fatalism when referencing thermodynamic principles. In this study, we explore how the understanding of life has been harmonized with thermodynamics to show that entropy production is a consequence of heightened complexity in life rather than its breakdown. Furthermore, it is crucial to perform a thermodynamic analysis of the Earth system as a whole to dispel fatalistic assumptions. The extremum principles linked to thermodynamics do not foretell the precise evolution of complex organisations but rather set the thermodynamic boundaries associated with their development. Ultimately, treating the Earth system as an integrated autonomous entity in which life and human societies play pivotal roles is essential for charting a sustainable path forward for humanity. Understanding how to contribute to thermodynamic states that are more conducive to life, rather than hastening the journey towards chaotic states, is paramount for human survival and well-being in the Anthropocene era.
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105242.23527
In this paper we argue that radically embodied approaches to cognition can be expanded to show that: (a) our sensorimotor engagements with technical objects can be normatively shaped in a direct manner (i.e. not necessarily involving symbolic processes), and that (b) this normativity is not only anchored in the agent but also partially supported by technical objects themselves. We depart from the enactive reinterpretation of Piagetian sensorimotor schemes and his theory of equilibration to establish how both agent-sided and environment-sided support structures (including artefacts) contribute to the autonomous self-maintenance of sensorimotor networks. We will then introduce technical behaviour as a regulatory transformation of the environment enacted to equilibrate certain sensorimotor structures. We will defend that technical objects, as products of technical behaviour, sediment these normative constraints in their material structure. Then, through the dynamics of assimilation and accommodation, we schematize how different scenarios give rise to canonical or alternative uses in the encounter of agents with artefacts. Finally, we will offer a complexification of the normative entanglement of objects and agents by introducing the sociohistorical notion of activity as developed within Activity Theory approaches as collectively articulating individual actions. Based on all of this, we will have offered a picture of technical objects as also radically embodying normative layers, without submitting to an overly-deterministic picture of artefacts as rigidly prescribing behaviour, or to the purely symbolic or culturalist interpretation of them.
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111168.235278
Suppose you have a choice between a course of action that greatly increases your level of physical courage and a course of action that mildly increases your level of loyalty to friends. But there is a catch: you have moral certainty that in the rest of your life you won’t have any occasion to exercise physical courage but you will have occasions to exercise loyalty to friends. …
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120854.235286
You get hungry every day — and feeling hungry hurts. If you’re hungry enough, it’s hard to work, much less enjoy life. If you stay hungry for too long, you collapse. And then you die. But don’t despair. …
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120854.235294
In her 1992 ‘Non-Consequentialism, the Person as an End-in-Itself, and the Significance of Status’, Frances Kamm defends and motivates deontic constraints by appeal to the “moral status” she takes to be associated with “inviolability”:
If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable ones; such a higher status is itself a benefit to us. …
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120855.235302
In my last post, I wrote about all the hate mail I’ve received these past few days. I even shared a Der-Stürmer-like image of a bloodthirsty, hook-nosed Orthodox Jew that some troll emailed me, after he’d repeatedly promised to send me a “diagram” that would improve my understanding of the Middle East. …
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194750.23531
We apply recent ideas about complexity and randomness to the philosophy of laws and chances. We develop two ways to use algorithmic randomness to characterize probabilistic laws of nature. The first, a generative chance law, employs a nonstandard notion of chance. The second, a probabilistic constraining law, impose relative frequency and randomness constraints that every physically possible world must satisfy. The constraining notion removes a major obstacle to a unified governing account of non-Humean laws, on which laws govern by constraining physical possibilities; it also provides independently motivated solutions to familiar problems for the Humean best-system account (the Big Bad Bug and the zero-fit problem). On either approach, probabilistic laws are tied more tightly to corresponding sets of possible worlds: some histories permitted by traditional probabilistic laws are now ruled out as physically impossible. Consequently, the framework avoids one variety of empirical underdetermination while bringing to light others that are typically overlooked.
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197981.235323
Consider this sequence of events:
- Tuesday: Alice’s memory is scanned and saved to a hard drive. - Wednesday: Alice’s head is completely crushed in a car crash. - Thursday: Alice’s scanned memories are put into a fresh brain. …
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293651.235331
In 2004, a team of scientists discovered hydrocarbons called anthracene and pyrene in an amazing structure called the Red Rectangle! Here two stars 2300 light years from us are spinning around each other while pumping out a huge torus of icy dust grains and hydrocarbon molecules. …
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352535.23534
What is it for y to be objectively qualitatively overall at least as similar to x as z is? This paper defends a version of the following answer: it is for y to be at least as similar to x as z is in every qualitative respect. On the version defended in this paper, this analysis arguably entails that it is possible for some things to objectively qualitatively resemble each other more than they do other things. However, it also arguably entails that, given how the world contingently is, many things (if not all things) are incomparable in objective qualitative resemblance, where y and z are so incomparable to x iff: i) it is not the case that y is at least as objectively qualitatively similar to x as z is, and ii) it is not the case that z is at least as objectively qualitatively similar to x as y is.
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355564.235352
Hardly for the first time in my life, this weekend I got floridly denounced every five minutes—on SneerClub, on the blog of Peter Woit, and in my own inbox. The charge this time was that I’m a genocidal Zionist who wants to kill all Palestinian children purely because of his mental illness and raging persecution complex. …
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460079.23536
The levels-of-selection debate is generally taken to be a debate about how natural selection can occur at the various levels of biological organization. In this article, we argue that questions about levels of selection should be analysed separately from questions about levels of organization. In the deflationary proposal we defend, all that is necessary for multilevel selection is that there are cases in which particles are nested in collectives, and that both the collectives and the particles that compose them each separately undergo natural selection. We argue that adopting this deflationary account helps to disentangle the levels of selection and the levels of organization, and thereby contributes to advancing the levels-of-selection debate. ORCIDs: Eronen, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2028-3338; Ramsey, https://orcid.org/0000 -0002-8712-5521.
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460100.235369
The definition of tool use has long been debated, especially when applied beyond humans. Recent work argues that the phenomena included within tool use are so broad and varied that there is little hope of using the category for scientific generalizations, explanations, and predictions about the evolution, ecology, and psychology of tool users. One response to this argument has been the development of tooling as a replacement for tool use. In this article, we analyze the tool use and tooling frameworks. Identifying advantages and limitations in each, we offer a synthetic approach that suggests promising avenues for future research.
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463464.23538
Today I gave $10,000 to Doctors Without Borders, since they’re doing a lot of good work in Gaza. I made this gift in memory of Mariam Abu Dagga, a freelance photographer who was killed in the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip on August 25th this year. …
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529670.235388
[An excerpt from Beyond Right and Wrong.] Some rights can be expected to promote overall well-being. Utilitarianism endorses these. Other rights lack this utilitarian property: they protect people against harmful interventions, but at greater cost to others who miss out on helpful interventions as a result. …
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540682.235396
I discuss the nature of the puzzle about the time-asymmetry of radiation and argue that its most common formulation is flawed. As a result, many proposed solutions fail to solve the real problem. I discuss a recent proposal of Mathias Frisch as an example of the tendency to address the wrong problem. I go on to suggest that the asymmetry of radiation, like the asymmetry of thermodynamics, results from the initial state of the universe. 1. Introduction. There is a puzzle about radiation. In our experience, waves display a clear time-asymmetry. Waves appear to spread outwards after their sources move; they do not converge on sources which then begin to move. Water waves diverge after a pebble is dropped in a pond; they do not travel inwards to a spot from which a pebble is then ejected. We see electromagnetic waves emerge after charges accelerate, not converge on charges which then begin to accelerate. Yet the equations governing wave phenomena are symmetric in time, allowing for both the kinds of waves we see and the time-reversal of these processes. Then where does the observed asymmetry of radiation come from?
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549695.235404
Ugliness is the opposite of beauty. So we may learn what beauty is, by investigating ugliness, and turning the result upside-down. Ugliness is deformity. Two arguments for this thesis may be given: an argument from the dictionary, and an argument from the writings of famous long-dead philosophers. …
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552847.235412
Suppose a man has already murdered most of your family, including several of your children, for no other reason than that he believes your kind doesn’t deserve to exist on earth. The murderer was never seriously punished for this, because most of your hometown actually shared his feelings about your family. …
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623984.23542
What do large language models actually model? Do they tell us something about human capacities, or are they models of the corpus we’ve trained them on? I give a non-deflationary defence of the latter position. Cognitive science tells us that linguistic capabilities in humans rely supralinear formats for computation. The transformer architecture, by contrast, supports at best a linear formats for processing. This argument will rely primarily on certain invariants of the computational architecture of transformers. I then suggest a positive story about what transformers are doing, focusing on Liu et al. (2022)’s intriguing speculations about shortcut automata. I conclude with why I don’t think this is a terribly deflationary story. Language is not (just) a means for expressing inner state but also a kind of ‘discourse machine’ that lets us make new language given appropriate context. We have learned to use this technology in one way; LLMs have also learned to use it too, but via very different means.
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632026.235427
Mental multiplication is an advanced, abstract cognitive task that separates adults from non-human animals, AI systems, and young children. We present a biologically and psycholog- ically plausible spiking neural model of simple mental multipli- cation, expanding on previous work on mental addition [1, 2].
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636258.235435
I specialize in trillion-dollar ideas: policy reforms which, if implemented, would generate trillions of dollars of net social benefits. Ideas like open borders, educational austerity, and by-right construction. …
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639309.235443
You can cut a hole in a cube that’s big enough to slide an identical cube through that hole! Think about that for a minute—it’s kind of weird. Amazingly, nobody could prove any convex polyhedron doesn’t have this property! …
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709903.235451
Suppose there are two opaque boxes, A and B, of which I can choose one. A nearly perfect predictor of my actions put $100 in the box that they thought I would choose. Suppose I find myself with evidence that it’s 75% likely that I will choose box A (maybe in 75% of cases like this, people like me choose A). …
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722650.235461
In 2015, Amy Finkelstein, Nathaniel Hendren, and Erzo Luttmer released an NBER working paper called “The Value of Medicaid: Interpreting Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment.” The paper’s results were a slap in the face of Social Desirability Bias — and the authors boldly advertised them right in the abstract:
Our baseline estimates of Medicaid's welfare benefit to recipients per dollar of government spending range from about $0.2 to $0.4, depending on the framework, with at least two-fifths – and as much as four-fifths – of the value of Medicaid coming from a transfer component, as opposed to its ability to move resources across states of the world. …