Search results for "Piste"

Ex Machina: Is Ava a Person?

2021

What does it mean to be a person? Is it possible to create an artificial person? In this essay, I consider the case of Ava, an advanced artificial general intelligence from the movie Ex Machina. I suggest we should interpret the movie as testing whether Ava is a person. I start out by discussing what it means to be a person, before I discuss whether Ava is such a person. I end by briefly looking at the ethics of the case of Ava and artificial personhood. I conclude, among some other things, that consciousness is a necessary requirement for personhood, and that one of the main obstacles for artificial personhood is artificial consciousness.

Questions in Cognitive Mimetics

2021

Human thinking advances through questions and answers. Any field of human endeavor is permeated by the presence of questions, answers and presuppositions. Questions have a kind of universality, whereby one can place the question marks on anything, including questions themselves. The process of asking the right questions about the right things and in the right way are key for the explication of an approach. Recently, we have begun thinking about an approach to the design of intelligent technology: Cognitive mimetics. In brief, the idea is to take inspiration of empirical human thinking in specific contexts to develop AI solutions. The purpose of this article is to question this approach from…

Conceptual foundations and validation of the Pseudoscientific Belief Scale

2019

Awareness and Partitional Informational Structures

1997

We begin with an example to motivate the introduction of the concept of unawareness in models of information. There are a subject and two possible states of the world, σ and τ. At σ a certain fact p happens — it is true — and the subject sees it or hears it or anyhow perceives it, so that he knows it is true (in Geanakoplos [5] the subject is Sherlock Holmes’ assistant and fact p is ‘the dog barks’). At state τ fact p does not occur (it is false), and the subject not only does not see it or hear it etc.; but what is more, he does not even think of the possibility that it might: fact p is not present to the subject’s mind. What is an appropriate formal model for this story?

Boghossian's Reductio of Compatibilism

1998

Según Boghossian, la compatibilidad entre el externismo respecto del contenido y el autoconocimiento implica el absurdo según el cual es posible conocer a priori verdades substantivas sobre el mundo, como que existe agua. El argumento de Boghossian descansa crucialmente en dos supuestos: en primer lugar, que el carácter composicional o atómico son propiedades internas de los conceptos; en segundo lugar, que el externalismo no puede dar cuenta de conceptos atómicos con extensión vacía. Ambos supuestos se ponen en cuestión en este artículo. Por una parte, el externismo puede concebir plausiblemente el carácter composicional o atómico de los conceptos como dependiente de la naturaleza real de …

Creating Attractive Places for Whom? A Discourse-Theoretical Approach to Knowledge and Planning

2013

We aim to find a way to produce knowledge of attractiveness of place that is representative of the variety and complexity of what attractiveness entails and the same time productive for place development and planning. On the basis of a study of an INTERREG IV A-project in Norway, we question how and by whom the discourse regarding what is attractive about places is constructed and how the implicit or explicit knowledge is treated in local planning. We find that planning must produce knowledge in which the different narratives about place confront each other, and highlight differences and mutual debate between adversaries. We conclude by arguing the case for applying a model of agonistic plu…

Beyond Evidentiality. The epistemic function of the suffix -wa in Aymara

2021

In contrast to the specialized literature (Hardman 1986, 2001; Martinez-Vera 2020), this paper questions the direct evidential function of the sentence-type suffix -wa in «Northern Aymara» (Cerrón-Palomino 2000), an understudied Andean language spoken in the area around Lake Titicaca. By taking a narrow perspective on evidentiality, it proposes that -wa is a modal epistemic marker that indicates the speaker’s high commitment to information. Semantic considerations that support this proposal focus on both the interplay of -wa with other grammatical categories and its distribution within the sentence. Additionally, considerations on the scope properties of the suffix, as applied by Hengeveld …

Neuroética: ¿Las bases cerebrales de una ética universal con relevancia política?

2010

At the beginning of the XXI century neuroethics was born as a part of bioethics and also as a new kind of knowledge, capable of discovering the neural basis of the human behaviour. From that basis some neuroscientists intend to outline the foundations for a universal ethics. The article 1) analyses critically the process of foundation of such universal ethics, 2) takes into account the human cooperation paradox in order to complete the process, 3) tries to evaluate the contributions of neuroethics to ethics and its suitability to outline the foundations of a universal ethics.<br><br>En el siglo XXI nace la neurociencia de la ética con la pretensión de ser un nuevo saber (la neur…

BOOK REVIEW: MARQUES, T. & WIKFORSS, Å (EDS.), Shifting Concepts (Oxford University Press, 2020, 284 Pages).

2021

Abstract In this review I provide a brief analysis of the main features of the collective volume Shifting Concepts (Oxford University Press, 2020), edited by Teresa Marques and Asa Wikforss. The volume addresses several related topics, and it contains contributions from psychologists and philosophers. It deals with the topic of concept variation understood in a broad sense, for it tackles diachronic, contextual, interpersonal and even intrapersonal variation; besides, the second part of the book is devoted to the topic of concept revision and amelioration. I provide a brief description of the book and then I critically assess each of the contributions.

WHY IS IT NOT SO EASY FOR A PRESENT-DAY PHYSICIST TO BE GENUINELY A CHRISTIAN?

2021

A short description of the relationship between Physics, Philosophy and Theology is: Physics neglects or passes by Natural Realism, which is the origin of Philosophy. In turn, Natural Realism is backed up by Judeo-Christian revelation. Therefore, Physics neglects or passes by Theology. That relationship between Physics and Theology is widely used as a background for exercising an intense pressure on Theology. The defence of Theology should begin by pointing out certain shortcomings of Physics and formulating a philosophical control of these shortcomings. This is tantamount to turning Physics instead of Theology into a “site under construction”. Only a “controlled” Physics and Theology are a…