Synthese最新文献

This article applies the thesis of the extended mind to ambient smart environments. These systems are characterised by an environment, such as a home or classroom, infused with multiple, highly networked streams of smart technology working in the background, learning about the user and operating without an explicit interface or any intentional sensorimotor engagement from the user. We analyse these systems in the context of work on the "classical" extended mind, characterised by conditions such as "trust and glue" and phenomenal transparency, and find that these conditions are ill-suited to describing our engagement with ambient smart environments. We then draw from the active inference framework, a theory of brain function which casts cognition as a process of embodied uncertainty minimisation, to develop a version of the extended mind grounded in a process ontology, where the boundaries of mind are understood to be multiple and always shifting. Given this more fluid account of the extended mind, we argue that ambient smart environments should be thought of as extended allostatic control systems, operating more or less invisibly to support an agent's biological capacity for minimising uncertainty over multiple, interlocking timescales. Thus, we account for the functionality of ambient smart environments as extended systems, and in so doing, utilise a markedly different version of the classical thesis of extended mind.

Against mathematical platonism, it is sometimes objected that mathematical objects are mysterious. One possible elaboration of this objection is that the individuation of mathematical objects cannot be adequately explained. This suggests that facts about the numerical identity and distinctness of mathematical objects require an explanation, but that their supposed nature precludes us from providing one. In this paper, we evaluate this nominalist objection by exploring three ways in which mathematical objects may be individuated: by the intrinsic properties they possess, by the relations they stand in, and by their underlying 'substance'. We argue that only the third mode of individuation raises metaphysical problems that could substantiate the claim that mathematical objects are somehow mysterious. Since the platonist is under no obligation to accept this thesis over the alternatives, we conclude that, at least as far as individuation is concerned, the nominalist objection has no bite.

This paper explores the idea that deep disagreements essentially involve disputes about what counts as good reasoning, whether it is theoretical or practical reasoning. My central claim is that deep disagreements involve radically different paradigms of some principle or notion that is constitutively basic to reasoning-I refer to these as "basic concepts". To defend this claim, I show how we can understand deep disagreements by accepting the indeterminacy of concept-formation: concepts are not set in stone but are responsive to human needs, and differences in individuating and ordering concepts lead to clashes in paradigms of reasoning. These clashes can be difficult to resolve because linguistic concepts, especially basic concepts, impose a normative structure onto thought to make reasoning possible at all. This, I also argue, is an authentically Wittgensteinian account of the nature of reasoning. While deep disagreements involving theoretical and practical reasoning both stem from the same root problem of clashing paradigms of basic concepts, I will also draw attention to the particularly radical indeterminacy of moral concept-formation, which makes moral deep disagreements more difficult to resolve. Over the course of the paper, I will discuss two examples of deep disagreements to illustrate and defend my central claim: deep disagreements over vaccines and the concept of "evidence" (theoretical reasoning) and deep disagreements over affirmative action and the concept of "fairness" (practical reasoning). I conclude by suggesting how my account of reasoning does not lead to moral relativism.