1. 37031.82896
    In his discussion of the cognitive character and epistemic value of art, philosopher Nelson Goodman suggests that artworks have the capacity to “inform what we encounter later and elsewhere” (Goodman, 1968, p. 260). Indeed, for Goodman, if art has cognitive value, it lies, at least partly, in its ability to change how we experience the world. “What a Manet or Monet or Cézanne does to our subsequent seeing of the world,” Goodman writes, “is as pertinent to their appraisal as is any direct confrontation” (ibid.).
    Found 10 hours, 17 minutes ago on Andreas Elpidorou's site
  2. 206550.829216
    The overall point of the target article is to criticise the idea that any theory of intentionality must answer the ‘question of aboutness’: what makes it that case that any mental state can represent anything at all? I took the question as usually coming with two further conditions: first, that the answer to this question must be wholly general; and second, that the answer must not use any intentional or representational notions. Let’s call these the ‘generality condition’ and the ‘non-intentional condition’.
    Found 2 days, 9 hours ago on Tim Crane's site
  3. 226666.829239
    We distinguish between beliefs, the paradigm doxastic state, and the conscious episodes in which we acknowledge, judge or express our beliefs. Beliefs are mental states that govern our actions and are appropriately related to their conscious manifestations. When things go well, there is a kind of harmony between the underlying unconscious state and its conscious manifestations. What we consciously acknowledge or judge conforms to how we behave, and our underlying dispositions to behave and speak change as our interaction with the world changes.
    Found 2 days, 14 hours ago on Tim Crane's site
  4. 226694.829258
    The stream of our consciousness includes many kinds of episodes. There are perceptual experiences and sensations, images and daydreams, sudden flashes of memories, feelings, and emotions. All of this seems very real: as we are going through these experiences, it’s hard to doubt that they exist. Of course, it’s a further and difficult question what their nature is, how we should grasp their tangible presence to our mind, but that is not our concern here. We will just note that at least prima facie, episodes in the stream of consciousness have a manifest character of reality, or (as we might say) factuality. Conscious episodes also include conscious thoughts, for example musing, reasoning, deliberations – often mixed with other kinds of episodes like emotions. Some philosophers think that the conscious character of thoughts is different from the conscious character of other kinds of episodes, because thought doesn’t have a phenomenal character. But that again is not our concern here. We just note that conscious thought, insofar as it is present to the mind, also seems to be manifestly real, or factual.
    Found 2 days, 14 hours ago on Tim Crane's site
  5. 226716.829277
    Theorists commonly postulate unconscious mental states and processes but are unable to articulate what it means to be unconscious. We dispute the standard view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious mentality, and with it, the standard view of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. The second is to lay out several options for replacing the standard view, ones that allow for substantive differences between conscious and unconscious mentality. The third is to sketch the foundations of a unifying conception of the unconscious across the various disciplines which study the mind, focusing on the nature of interpretation and representation. Along the way, we apply these conjectures to examples of implicit cognition.
    Found 2 days, 14 hours ago on Tim Crane's site
  6. 226760.829301
    It is a commonplace view in contemporary philosophy that commonsense psychology consists in explaining people’s behaviour in terms of their beliefs and desires. Familiar examples typically involve people going to the kitchen and getting something from the fridge, because they desired water (Zalabardo 2019), beer (Kriegel 2019, Smithies and Weiss 2019), wine (Crane 2003:186), yellow mango (Schroeder 2020) or something to eat (Fiebich and Michael 2015), and they believed that it was in the fridge.
    Found 2 days, 14 hours ago on Tim Crane's site
  7. 230061.82932
    We would like to have a wide range of explanations for the behaviour of machine learning systems. However, how should we understand these explanations? Typically, attempts to clarify what an explanations for questions such as ’why am I getting this output for these inputs?’ have been approached from the philosophy of science, through an analogy with scientific (and often causal) explanations. I show that ML systems are best thought of as noncausal, specifically mathematical objects. We should therefore interpret these explanations differently, through analogy with mathematical explanations. I show that this still allows us to use much of the same theoretical apparatus, and argue that the asymmetry of many of the standard ML explanations can be accounted for in virtue of the link these systems have with concrete implementations.
    Found 2 days, 15 hours ago on PhilSci Archive
  8. 301295.829338
    The Turing test for machine thought has an interrogator communicate (by typing) with a human and a machine both of which try to convince the interrogator that they are human. The interrogator then guesses which is human. …
    Found 3 days, 11 hours ago on Alexander Pruss's Blog
  9. 325248.829354
    (See all posts in this series here.) I conclude with Chapters 6 and 7 of the book, which apply the theory to reasoning and introspecting consciousness. Investigating these as forms of attending, mental actions, illuminates. …
    Found 3 days, 18 hours ago on The Brains Blog
  10. 391601.829374
    In what sense does a large language model (LLM) have knowledge? We answer by granting LLMs ‘instrumental knowledge’: knowledge gained by using next-word generation as an instrument. We then ask how instrumental knowledge is related to the ordinary, ‘worldly knowledge’ exhibited by humans, and explore this question in terms of the degree to which instrumental knowledge can be said to incorporate the structured world models of cognitive science. We discuss ways LLMs could recover degrees of worldly knowledge and suggest that such recovery will be governed by an implicit, resource-rational tradeoff between world models and tasks. Our answer to this question extends beyond the capabilities of a particular AI system and challenges assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence.
    Found 4 days, 12 hours ago on L.A. Paul's site
  11. 395237.829391
    According to what Birch (2022) calls the theory-heavy approach to investigating nonhuman-animal consciousness, we select one of the well-developed theories of consciousness currently debated within contemporary cognitive science and investigate whether animals exhibit the neural structures or cognitive abilities posited by that theory as sufficient for consciousness. Birch argues, however, that this approach is in general problematic because it faces what he dubs the dilemma of demandingness— roughly, that we cannot use theories that are based on the human case to assess consciousness in nonhuman animals and vice versa. We argue here that, though this dilemma may problematize the application of many current accounts of consciousness to nonhuman animals, it does not challenge the use of standard versions of the higher-order thought theory (“HOTT”) of consciousness, according to which a creature is in a conscious mental state just in case it is aware of being in that state via a suitable higher-order thought (“HOT”). We show this in two ways. First, we argue that, unlike many extant theories of consciousness, HOTT is typically motivated by a commonsense, and more importantly, neutral condition on consciousness that applies to humans and animals alike. Second, we offer new empirical and theoretical reasons to think that many nonhuman animals possess the relevant HOTs necessary for consciousness. Considering these issues not only reveals the explanatory power of HOTT and some of its advantages over rival accounts, but also enables us to further extend and clarify the theory.
    Found 4 days, 13 hours ago on PhilPapers
  12. 483198.829406
    Here’s a fun variant of the black-and-white Mary thought experiment. Mary has been brought up in a black-and-white environment, but knows all the microphysics of the universe from a big book. One day she sees a flash of green light. …
    Found 5 days, 14 hours ago on Alexander Pruss's Blog
  13. 576587.829422
    Despite its short historical moment in the sun, behaviorism has become something akin to a theoria non grata, a position that dare not be explicitly endorsed . The reasons for this are complex, of course, and they include sociological factors which we cannot consider here, but to put it briefly: many have doubted the ambition to establish law-like relationships between mental states and behavior that dispense with any sort of mentalistic or intentional idiom, judging that explanations of intelligent behavior require reference to qualia and/or mental events . Today, when behaviorism is discussed at all, it is usually in a negative manner, either as an attempt to discredit an opponent’s view via a reductio, or by enabling a position to distinguish its identity and positive claims by reference to what it is (allegedly) not.
    Found 6 days, 16 hours ago on PhilSci Archive
  14. 908627.829441
    Ontology and theology cannot be combined if ontology excludes non physical causes. This paper examines some possibilities for ontology to be combined with theology in so far as non physical causes are permitted. The paper builds on metaphysical findings that shows that separate ontological domains can interact causally indirectly via interfaces. As interfaces are not universes a first universe is allowed to be caused by an interface without violating the principle of causal closure of any universe. Formal theology can therefore be based on the assumption that the (first) universe is caused by God if God is defined as the first cause. Given this, formal theology and science can have the same ontological base.
    Found 1 week, 3 days ago on PhilPapers
  15. 922368.82946
    According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if a subject S has an appearance that P, in the absence of defeaters, S has justification for believing P by virtue of her appearance’s inherent justifying power. McCain and Moretti (2021) have argued that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness: if a subject S becomes reflectively aware of an appearance, the appearance loses its inherent justifying power. This limits the explanatory power of PC and reduces its anti-sceptical bite. This article provides a novel argument to the same conclusion and contends that it does not apply to Phenomenal Explanationism, the appearance-based account of justification alternative to PC defended by McCain and Moretti (2021).
    Found 1 week, 3 days ago on Kevin McCain's site
  16. 966445.829475
    Human emotional expressions can communicate the emotional state of the expresser, but they can also communicate appeals to perceivers. For example, sadness expressions such as crying request perceivers to aid and support, and anger expressions such as shouting urge perceivers to back off. Some contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) systems can mimic human emotional expressions in a (more or less) realistic way, and they are progressively being integrated into our daily lives. How should we respond to them? Do we have reasons to reply to the appeals made by AI emotional expressions? In this paper, we examine the conditions under which AI emotional expressions could give us prudential or even moral reasons to change our behavior. We argue that these conditions do not depend on whether the emotional expression is genuine or not, but rather on the presence of features some of which can be implemented in emotive AI given our current level of technological development. We extract recommendations and warnings for the development of emotive AI.
    Found 1 week, 4 days ago on PhilPapers
  17. 1024169.829493
    More philosophical effort is spent articulating evolutionary rationales for the development of belief-like capacities than for precursors of desires or preferences. Nobody, though, seriously expects naturally evolved minds to be disinterested epistemologists. We agree that world-representing states won’t pay their way without supporting capacities that prioritise from an organism’s available repertoire of activities in light of stored (and occurrent) information. Some concede that desire-like states would be one way of solving this problem. Taking preferences as my starting point instead of belief-like states, I defend two conclusions. First, psychologically real preference states, which approximately token expected utilities, have a quite general evolutionary rationale. They are a solution to the problem of efficiently allocating capacities with incompatible uses. This argument is a version of the Environmental Complexity Thesis. Second, preferences can plausibly function and naturally evolve without belief-like states, even though the converse claim is incredible. Preferences, that is, can mediate between discriminations of occurrent states (‘internal’ or ‘external’) and the processes selecting activity without mediation by stored indicative representations. By tokening expected utilities of actions conditional on discriminated state, they can increase the rate at which the ‘right thing’ is done at appropriate times, and they can do this without the support of belief-like, world-representing states.
    Found 1 week, 4 days ago on PhilPapers
  18. 1131304.829511
    Which creatures have moral standing? Precisely those that are conscious, says nearly everyone . In this paper I shall argue that this is wrong. The concept conscious is ill-suited to delimit the class of moral patients—that is, creatures with moral standing, creatures with moral interests.
    Found 1 week, 6 days ago on David Papineau's site
  19. 1139672.82953
    In light of recent breakneck pace in machine learning, questions about whether near-future artificial systems might be conscious and possess moral status are increasingly pressing. This paper argues that as matters stand these debates lack any clear criteria for resolution via the science of consciousness. Instead, insofar as they are settled at all, it is likely to be via shifts in public attitudes brought about by the increasingly close relationships between humans and AI users. Section 1 of the paper I briefly lays out the current state of the science of consciousness and its limitations insofar as these pertain to machine consciousness, and claims that there are no obvious consensus frameworks to inform public opinion on AI consciousness. Section 2 examines the rise of conversational chatbots or Social AI, and argues that in many cases, these elicit strong and sincere attributions of consciousness, mentality, and moral status from users, a trend likely to become more widespread. Section 3 presents an inconsistent triad for theories that attempt to link consciousness, behaviour, and moral status, noting that the trends in Social AI systems will likely make the inconsistency of these three premises more pressing. Finally, Section 4 presents some limited suggestions for how consciousness and AI research communities should respond to the gap between expert opinion and folk judgment.
    Found 1 week, 6 days ago on PhilPapers
  20. 1139761.829545
    While reading Explaining Imagination, I can’t help but imagine that imagination is on trial. I see Peter Langland-Hassan as presenting a compelling case against those who regard imagination as a sui generis mental state. His strategy is to demonstrate the possibility of reducing imagination to basic folk psychological states, such as belief, judgment, decision, intention, and desire, much in the way that suspecting, being thankful, or regretting can be reduced. Through a meticulous analysis of various activities associated with imagination, such as daydreaming, conditional reasoning, pretense, consuming fiction, and creativity, he illustrates that these activities can be explained without invoking a primitive mental state of imagining. Instead, they can be attributed to other, more general, folk psychological notions.
    Found 1 week, 6 days ago on PhilPapers
  21. 1486206.82956
    We explore the role of episodic imagining in explaining why people both differentially report that it seems to them in experience as though time robustly passes, and why they differentially report that they believe that time does in fact robustly pass. We empirically investigate two hypotheses, the differential vividness hypothesis, and the mental time travel hypothesis. According to each of these, the degree to which people vividly episodically imagine past/future states of affairs influences their tendency to report that it seems to them as though time robustly passes and to judge that time does robustly pass. According to the former, a greater degree of vividness will tend to increase the extent to which people make such reports, while according to the latter, it will tend to decrease the extent to which people make such reports. We found weak evidence in favour of the former hypothesis. We reflect on the implications of this finding for theorising about such reports.
    Found 2 weeks, 3 days ago on PhilPapers
  22. 1580047.829578
    An important question for the causal modeling approach is how to integrate non-causal dependence relations such as asymmetric supervenience into the approach. The most prominent proposal to that effect (due to Gebharter) is to treat those dependence relationships as formally analogous to causal relationships. We argue that this proposal neglects some crucial differences between causal and non-causal dependencies, and that in the context of causal modeling non-causal dependence relationships should be represented as mutual dependence relationships. We develop a new kind of model – “hybrid models” - based on this suggestion, and formulate a set of axioms for those models. Our formalism has important implications for Kim’s exclusion problem: whereas Gebharter’s framework vindicates Kim’s causal exclusion objection against nonreductive physicalism, our framework has no such implication, and can help non-reductive physicalists vindicate the efficacy of high-level properties. A further benefit of our formalism is that it yields a natural and plausible way of thinking about interventions in multi-level contexts.
    Found 2 weeks, 4 days ago on Thomas Blanchard's site
  23. 1586841.8296
    Are subjects ever morally responsible for their dreams? In this paper I argue that if, as some theories of dreams entail, dreaming subjects sometimes express agency while they dream, then they are sometimes morally responsible for what they do and are potentially worthy of praise and blame while they dream and after they have awoken. I end by noting the practical and theoretical implications of my argument.
    Found 2 weeks, 4 days ago on Ergo
  24. 1601626.829617
    In an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume distinguishes between two approaches to psychology: first, an attempt at what he calls ‘mental geography’ and, second, an approach which he compares to Newton’s project in astronomy. I explain the Hume’s vision of Newtonian psychology, and then I explain its application to Hume’s psychological theory in the first Enquiry. Hume’s attempt to explain causal inference in Part 2 of Section 5 is shown to be an attempt at Newtonian psychology: it’s speculative, explanatory, and attempts to enunciate a psychological law. The paper closes by asking whether Hume succeeded in his attempt to put psychology on Newtonian foundations.
    Found 2 weeks, 4 days ago on PhilPapers
  25. 1601672.829632
    In the s, the Bengali philosopher K. C. Bhattacharyya proposed a new theory of rasa, or aesthetic emotion, according to which aesthetic emotions are feelings that have other feelings as their intentional objects. This paper articulates how Bhattacharyya’s theory offers a novel solution to the puzzle of how it is both possible and rational to enjoy the kind of negative emotions that are inspired by tragic and sorrowful tales. The new solution is distinct from the conversion and compensation views that dominate the existing literature, and it derives its significance from how it ties aesthetic experience to self-awareness.
    Found 2 weeks, 4 days ago on PhilPapers
  26. 1601806.829656
    Margaret Cavendish’s views about the nature of bodies and perception leave her with a potentially problematic implication: that light has no role in visual perception. For her, perception occurs through the self-motion of animate matter, not through a mechanical system that appeals to local motions and collisions of contiguous bodies. This means that motion is not transferred from external objects with light playing a mediating role; the matter of our eyes simply moves itself to copy the sensible qualities of external bodies. However, Cavendish cannot ignore the simple empirical fact that we appear to have visual perceptions in the presence of light but not in the presence of darkness. Light must play some role. I argue that light for Cavendish plays an intermediary role but does not transfer motions as the mechanical model suggests. Rather, light behaves like our eyes by moving itself to form copies of external objects. Our eyes then see these copies. For Cavendish, we are directly acquainted with a “veil of light” rather than the objects themselves.
    Found 2 weeks, 4 days ago on PhilPapers
  27. 1775239.829673
    This is a conceptual attempt to integrate the major current psychotherapeutic methods via the introduction ofMacro Psychology. The idea is fully philosophical, and the aim is to spur debate. Clinically, we land in the following picture: Scenarios with a maltreated dog, its owner, and a therapist. Conditioning: The therapist takes the dog to a safe environment. Behavioral therapy: The therapist instructs the owner to take regular long walks with the dog, to feed it regularly, to let it have access to fresh water, and to stop hitting it. Cognitive behavioral therapy: The therapist instructs the owner to take regular long walks with the dog, to feed it regularly, to let it have access to fresh water, and to stop hitting it. The therapist also tells the owner why. Psychodynamically oriented therapy: The therapist tries to help the owner to reconnect to repressed parts that care for the dog.
    Found 2 weeks, 6 days ago on PhilPapers
  28. 1833100.829691
    Philosophers of mind (from eliminative materialists to psychofunctionalists to interpretivists) generally assume that a normative ideal delimits which mental phenomena exist (though they disagree about how to characterize the ideal in question). This assumption is dubious. A comprehensive ontology of mind includes some mental phenomena that are neither (a) explanatorily fecund posits in any branch of cognitive science that aims to unveil the mechanistic structure of cognitive systems nor (b) ideal (nor even progressively closer to ideal) posits in any given folk psychological practice. Indeed, one major function of scientific psychology has been (and will be) to introduce just such (normatively suboptimal but real) mental phenomena into folk psychological taxonomies. The development and public dissemination of IQ research over the course of the 20th Century is a case in point.
    Found 3 weeks ago on PhilPapers
  29. 1884589.829709
    Department of Philosophy, University of Graz, Austria Experiences are our points of contact with the world. They constitute the ineluctable starting point and epistemological foundation of any scientific investigation. …
    Found 3 weeks ago on The Brains Blog
  30. 2121462.829731
    I introduce and discuss an underappreciated form of motivated cognition: motivational pessimism, which involves the biasing of beliefs for the sake of self-motivation. I illustrate how motivational pessimism avoids explanatory issues that plague other (putative) forms of motivated cognition and discuss distinctions within the category, related to awareness, aetiology, and proximal goals.
    Found 3 weeks, 3 days ago on PhilPapers