PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES最新文献

How should we design AI systems that make moral decisions that affect us? When there is disagreement about which moral decisions should be made and which methods would produce them, we should avoid arbitrary design choices. However, I show that this leads to a regress problem similar to the one metanormativists face involving higher orders of uncertainty. I argue that existing strategies for handling this parallel problem give verdicts about where to stop in the regress that are either too arbitrary or too difficult to implement. I propose a new strategy for AI designers that is better than these alternatives.

The paper critiques two recent suggestions, by Lei Zhong and Thomas Kroedel, about how to apply the interventionist theory of causation to cases where supervenient properties, particularly mental properties, are involved. According to both suggestions, we should hold variables corresponding to supervenient properties fixed when intervening on the subvenient properties with respect to a putative effect variable and vice versa. The paper argues that both suggestions are problematic. Zhong’s suggestion ultimately requires ad hoc exemptions from the holding-fixed requirement. Kroedel’s suggestion entails severe constraints on the construction of causal models. Overall, retaining the holding-fixed requirements of interventionism for cases of supervenient properties comes at a significant price.

The resurgence in antiracist activism and education brought with it the need to better understand what racism is and how it operates in the production of racial injustice. Prevailing theories understand racism as fundamentally structural, essentially cognitive, and requiring political philosophical investigation over moral philosophical investigation. Such theories are useful within limits, but ultimately offer an inaccurate or incomplete view of racism. In what follows, I offer a virtue-based account of racism that begins its genesis story with individuals, yet acknowledges and attends to the reality and severity of institutional and structural racism; is essentially both cognitive and non-cognitive; and, prioritizes moral philosophical investigation. Throughout, I apply my theory of racism to various spheres of human experience and history to demonstrate its ability to accurately and comprehensively capture the relevant entities and phenomena implicated in racism. In improving our understanding of racism, I aim to generate more targeted and comprehensive reform that effectively mitigates racism and promotes human and societal flourishing.

We present a new argument in favor of the Awareness Principle, the principle that one is always aware of one’s concurrent conscious states. Informally, the argument is this: (1) Your conscious states are such that you can attend to them without undertaking any action beyond mere shift of attention; but (2) You cannot come to attend to something without undertaking any action beyond mere shift of attention unless you are already aware of that thing; so, (3) Your conscious states are such that you are aware of them. We open by introducing more fully the Awareness Principle (§ 1) and explicating the crucial notion of “mere shift of attention” (§ 2). We then develop the argument more fully, first in an intuitive form (§ 3) and then more formally (§ 4), before replying to a series of objections (§§ 5–7).

Many authors assume that we are rationally required to be somewhat moved by any recognized reason. This assumption turns out to be unjustified if not false, both in general and under any non-trivial restriction. Even its most plausible forms are contradicted by the possibility of exclusionary reasons. Some have doubted the latter’s possibility. But these doubts are also shown to be unfounded, and exclusionary reasons’ pervasive role in normative theorizing is defended.

This paper explores how self-identity can be impacted upon by the use of digital and social media. In particular, drawing on a narrative account of selfhood, it argues that some forms of activity and interaction on the internet can support the capacity to be oneself, and foster transformative processes that are self-enhancing.

I start by introducing different positions in the philosophical exploration of identity online, critically outlining the arguments of those who hold a “pessimistic” and an “optimistic” stance respectively. I then expand on the narrative identity framework that has been used to support the optimists’ view, arguing that digital and social media use can foster forms of self-understanding that enable us to preserve or develop our identity. More precisely, exploring these dynamics also in relation to the lived experience of mental ill-health, I maintain that internet-enabled technology can support narrative self-constitution in three main ways: (1) by facilitating the processes through which we remember self-defining life-stories; (2) by enabling us to give salience to the stories that we decide should matter the most; and (3) by providing us with opportunities to obtain social uptake for our narratives. I then conclude by dispelling some possible objections to the use of a narrative approach to account for selfhood online.

If a future AI system can enjoy far more well-being than a human per resource, what would be the best way to allocate resources between these future AI and our future descendants? It is obvious that on total utilitarianism, one should give everything to the AI. However, it turns out that every Welfarist axiology on the market also gives this same recommendation, at least if we assume consequentialism. Without resorting to non-consequentialist normative theories that suggest that we ought not always create the world with the most value, or non-welfarist theories that tell us that the best world may not be the world with the most welfare, I propose a new theory that justifies giving some resources to humanity in the face of overwhelming AI well-being. I call this new theory, “Group Prioritarianism".

I argue against elements of Alfred Mele’s picture of the nature of intentions and the triggers of intentional actions. Mele (Philosophical Studies 176:2833–2853, 2019) offers rebuttals to my (Herdova, Philosophical Studies, 173(3), 573–587, 2016; Herdova, Philosophical Explorations, 21(3):364–383, 2018) and Ann Bumpus’s (2001) arguments which limit the scope of proximal intentions as triggers of intentional actions. Here I offer a response to Mele and provide further arguments in favor of my alternative understanding of intentions and the causes of intentional actions. Contra Mele, I argue for the following interrelated theses. First, intentions, including proximal intentions, have an array of functions or dispositions beyond that of triggering intentional actions. Second, states other than proximal intentions can trigger at least some types of intentional actions. Therefore, it is not the case that all intentional actions need to be triggered by proximal intentions.

This paper develops a challenge to standard libertarian views that is based on an imagined neuroscientificdiscovery that is incompatible with satisfaction of a standard libertarian requirement for mainstream free decision making, and it explores potential libertarian responses to this discovery. The requirement at issue may beformulated as follows: In mainstream cases, an agent freely decided at t to A only if, given the past and the laws of nature, the agent was able right up to t to do something else intentionally at t than decide to A. The imagined discovery is about a point of no return for the making of any particular decision in a mainstream scenario.