Posthumanist Solidarity: The Political and Ethical Imaginations of Artificial Intelligence from Battlestar Galactica to Raised by Wolves

A number of twenty-first century television series explore the irruption of AI devices into our daily lives, highlighting not only human interaction with AI, but posing disturbing and new ontological considerations: humans wondering how they are different from machines, or those of machines being unaware that they are machines and only discovering so belatedly. Within these series, the emergence of these thoughts is accompanied by the staging of interspecies friendship and romance: the metaphysical question of freedom gives way to the question of attachment, and then the problem of autonomy gives way to that of interdependence. It is this passage from metaphysical speculation to political reflection that I would like to demonstrate.

What Is Death?

This chapter discusses how the line between life and death has been blurred by advances in science and technology. For much of human history, determining death was a straightforward process. When illness or injury caused the irreversible loss of heart, lung, or brain function, their mutual interdependence meant that the other vital functions would inevitably cease within a matter of minutes. A physician could declare a patient dead simply by showing the absence of a heartbeat, breathing, or reaction of the eye to light. The introduction of new medical procedures in the 1950s, including mechanical ventilation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), meant that a person whose heart had stopped beating, or lungs had stopped breathing, could be kept alive. These patients presented a problem for the traditional understanding of death because they had irreversibly lost some vital functions, but not others. To understand the nature of human death, one must begin by defining the concept: what is it for any living thing to die? Having answered this metaphysical question, one can move to an epistemological one: what is the appropriate standard for judging that something has met the definition of death? Finally, one requires criteria and tests to affirm that the epistemological standard has been met: when can we confidently say that someone is dead?

The failures of functionalism (for memory)

In Memory: A Self-Referential Account, Fernández offers a functionalist account of the metaphysics of memory, which is portrayed as presenting significant advantages over causal and narrative theories of memory. In this paper, I present a series of challenges for Fernández’s functionalism. There are issues with both the particulars of the account and the use of functionalism more generally. First, in characterizing the mnemonic role of episodic remembering, Fernández fails to make clear how the mental image type that plays this role should be identified. Second, I argue that a functionalist approach, which appeals to the overall structure of the memory system and tendencies of mental state types, is ill-suited to the metaphysical question about episodic remembering that is of interest to the causal and narrative theorists with which Fernandez engages. Fernández’s self-referential account of memory has many other virtues, but functionalism is a poor fit for episodic remembering.

An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysics

According to naturalized metaphysics, metaphysics should be informed by our current best science and not rely on a priori reasoning. Consequently, naturalized metaphysics tends to dismiss metaphysicians’ attempts to quarrel with science. This paper argues that naturalized metaphysics should instead welcome such conflicts between metaphysics and science. Naturalized metaphysics is not (and should not be) eliminative of metaphysics. So, if such conflicts are driven by the immediate absence in science of an answer to a metaphysical question, then the conflict should not be dismissed, but instead be received as an occasion to do (more) naturalized metaphysics. That conflicts between metaphysics and science might be beneficial for naturalized metaphysics is exemplified by the case of non-spatial theories of quantum gravity. These theories are criticized by metaphysicians who, often following David Lewis, argue that spatial distance is an indispensable fundamental element in any coherent metaphysics due to its role as the world-making relation. The resulting conflict, however, is found to be well-motivated since the non-spatial theories of quantum gravity offer no alternative world-making relation to spatial distance. Rather than dismissing this conflict, naturalized metaphysics should therefore receive the Lewisians’ resistance as a call to search for one. How this plays out as a negotiation between the scientific theory and the metaphysical question is exemplified in the last part of the paper where entanglement is proposed as an alternative world-making relation in loop quantum gravity.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF ULTIMATE REALITY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF VIVEKANANDA

Vivekananda is one of the Neo-Vedantin or contemporary Indian Philosophers who has got influenced by the Vedānta philosophy and used its philosophy in practical life for human welfare. Vivekananda considers the metaphysical question regarding the status of the Ultimate Reality as an important matter of discussion without which human life would be purposeless. Such metaphysical knowledge comes to man when he goes beyond the circle of reason or physical plane. Vivekananda’s Neo-Vedanta is a discussion of such metaphysical views. The concept of Ultimate Reality is here understood in the sense of both nirguṇa and saguṇa Brahman i.e., God without name and form and with name and form. However, in the present paper, the aim is to focus on the concept of Ultimate Reality both from the transcendental and empirical standpoint and to check whether the status of the nirguṇa Brahman and saguṇa Brahman are identical or different.

A pragmatic approach to the ontology of models

What are scientific models? Philosophers of science have been trying to answer this question during the last three decades by putting forward a number of different proposals. Some say that models are best understood as abstract Platonic objects or fictional entities akin to Sherlock Holmes, while others focus on their mathematical nature and see them as set theoretical structures. Although each account has its own strengths in offering various insights on the nature of models, several objections have been raised against these views which still remain unanswered, making the debate on the ontology of models seem unresolvable. The primary aim of this paper is to show that a large part of these difficulties stems from an inappropriate reading of the main question on the ontology of models as a purely metaphysical question. Building on Carnap, it is argued that the question of the ontology of scientific models is either (i) an internal theoretical question within an already accepted linguistic framework or (ii) an external practical question regarding the choice of the most appropriate form of language in order to describe and explain the practice of scientific modelling. The main implication of this view is that the question of the ontology of models becomes a means of probing other related questions regarding the overall practice of scientific modelling, such as questions on the capacity of models to provide knowledge and the relation of models with background theories.

Interpretations of Probability

If you check the weather prediction on your phone, you might read that there is a 30 percent chance of rain at 4:00 in the afternoon. What does this mean? More precisely, what is the fraction 30/100 a measure of? Probability is a concept that is widespread both in everyday life and in science. Ordinary speakers of English utter and have some understanding of sentences such as “I will probably be late for the meeting,” or “it’s unlikely that Luxembourg will win the next World Cup.” Various sciences make explicit probabilistic claims: “the probability that a radium atom will decay in 1620 years is 0.5”; “the probability that a house mouse whose father is heterozygous for the t haplotype will inherit that trait is 0.9.” Other claims implicitly invoke probability: “the life expectancy of a child born in Japan today is 85.3 years.” Probability theory is also a major branch of mathematics, and it was given its modern formulation by Kolmogorov in 1933. Kolmogorov’s formalism presents a function P that satisfies a set of axioms: it is non-negative, normalized, and additive. These axioms entail a rich set of theorems concerning the behavior of P; together they make up the probability calculus. While the resulting theory is a formal theory in its own right, it is also natural to interpret P—to attach meanings, or truth conditions to claims involving it. ‘What is P?’, one may ask. This may be understood as a metaphysical question about what kinds of things are probabilities, or more generally as a question about what makes probability statements true or false. The various interpretations of probability attempt to answer this question, one way or another. This article surveys the literature on the interpretations of probability, due to mathematicians and especially philosophers. It divides the interpretations into two broad categories. Epistemological interpretations understand probability in terms of an agent’s beliefs, the strength of evidence in support of a statement, or other epistemological categories. Physical interpretations view probability as a feature of the world that would exist regardless of what evidence exists or what agents believe. This is a natural taxonomy, but others could be adopted, and its sub-categories are also somewhat pliable. The authors would like to thank Kim Border, Chris Bottomley, Kenny Easwaran, Hanti Lin, Charles Sebens, Glenn Shafer, Julia Staffel, Jeremy Strasser, and an anonymous referee for many helpful suggestions.

Fenomenología y literatura según Julia Iribarne

La relación entre filosofía y literatura ha sido una cuestión central de la reflexión de Julia Iribarne. El análisis de la conjunción de las obras de J. L. Borges y E. Husserl es, entre otras, una de las formas en las cuales ella exploró dicha relación. Esta exploración consiste esencialmente en desarrollar, como una forma de método filosófico, un enfoque conjetural de la cuestión del sentido de la vida. Para presentar su propia posición al respecto investiga cómo debemos conducir nuestro obrar sobre un trasfondo de incertidumbre. El resultado de su análisis antropológico y metafísico se puede enunciar sintéticamente en términos de que el sentido de nuestra vida reside en asumir una responsabilidad por los otros. The relationship between philosophy and literature has been a central issue in Julia Iribarne’s reflection. The analysis of the conjunction between the works of J. L. Borges and E. Husserl is a distinctive way in which she explores the theme. This exploration chiefly consists in developing, as a kind of philosophical method, a conjectural approach to the metaphysical question of the meaning of life. In order to state her position on this problem she investigates how we should conduct our lives against a background of uncertainty. The outcome of her anthropological and metaphysical analysis can be stated briefly in terms that the meaning of our life lies in assuming responsibility for the others.

What Is Neo-Positivism and How Could We Argue for It?

Chapter 7 explains how the non-factualist views established in the first part of this book fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism. This chapter formulates neo-positivism, explains why neo-positivism isn’t self-refuting, and explains how we could argue for neo-positivism. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view is that every metaphysical question decomposes into subquestions, and in connection with each of these subquestions, we can endorse one of the following three anti-metaphysical views: non-factualism, scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense captured by the Chapter-6 view modal nothingism.

Introduction

Chapter 1 provides a synopsis of the entire book. Roughly speaking, the book does two things. First, it introduces a novel kind of non-factualist view and argues that we should endorse views of this kind in connection with a wide class of metaphysical questions—most notably, the question of whether there are any abstract objects and the question of whether there are any composite objects. Second, the book explains how these non-factualist views fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism, and it explains how we could argue that neo-positivism is true. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view that every metaphysical question decomposes into subquestions, and in connection with each of these subquestions, we can endorse one of the following three anti-metaphysical views: non-factualism, or scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense that it doesn’t say anything about reality and, if it’s true, isn’t made true by reality.