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52The Great Philoosphical Objections to AI: The History and Legacy of the AI WarsBloomsbury Academic. 2021.This book surveys and examines the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence. From claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, rationality, and meaning, to arguments about cognitive architecture, the book presents a vivid history of the clash between the philosophy and AI. Tellingly, the AI Wars are mostly quiet now. Explaining this crucial fact opens new paths to understanding the current resurgence AI (especially, d…Read more
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7The Allure of the Serial KillerIn Fritz Allhoff & S. Waller (eds.), Serial Killers ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010-09-24.This chapter contains sections titled: The Allure of Monsters Explaining the Allure: First Look Stalking the Deeper Reasons Closing in for the Kill Removing Empathy The Prison of Rules Conclusion.
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26Editorial: Epistemic Feelings: Phenomenology, Implementation, and Role in CognitionFrontiers in Psychology 11. 2020.
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371Why Philosophy Makes No ProgressGlobal Philosophy 33 (2): 1-14. 2023.This paper offers an explanation for why some parts of philosophy have made no progress. Philosophy has made no progress because it cannot make progress. And it cannot because of the nature of the phenomena philosophy is tasked with explaining—all of it involves consciousness. Here, it will not be argued directly that consciousness is intractable. Rather, it will be shown that a specific version of the problem of consciousness is unsolvable. This version is the Problem of the Subjective and Obje…Read more
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1664Realism and Anti-Realism Are Both True (and False)Mind and Matter 18 (2): 121-148. 2020.The perennial nature of some of philosophy’s deepest problems is a puzzle. Here, one problem, the realism–anti-realism debate, and one type of explanation for its longevity, are examined. It is argued that realism and anti-realism form a dialetheic pair: While they are in fact each other’s logical opposite, nevertheless, both are true (and both false). First, several reasons why one might think such a thing are presented. These reasons are merely the beginning, however. In the following sections…Read more
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25When Science Confronts Philosophy: Three Case StudiesAxiomathes 30 (5): 479-500. 2020.This paper examines three cases of the clash between science and philosophy: Zeno’s paradoxes, the Frame Problem, and a recent attempt to experimentally refute skepticism. In all three cases, the relevant science claims to have resolved the purported problem. The sciences, construing the term broadly, are mathematics, artificial intelligence, and psychology. The goal of this paper is to show that none of the three scientific solutions work. The three philosophical problems remain as vibrant as e…Read more
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303Equivalence of the Frame and Halting ProblemsAlgorithms 13 (175): 1-9. 2020.The open-domain Frame Problem is the problem of determining what features of an open task environment need to be updated following an action. Here we prove that the open-domain Frame Problem is equivalent to the Halting Problem and is therefore undecidable. We discuss two other open-domain problems closely related to the Frame Problem, the system identification problem and the symbol-grounding problem, and show that they are similarly undecidable. We then reformulate the Frame Problem as a quant…Read more
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8Review of The Death of Philosophy: Reference and Self-Reference in Contemporary Thought, by Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel, trans. Richard A. Lynch (review)Essays in Philosophy 13 (2): 605-610. 2012.
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363When Science Confronts Philosophy: Three Case StudiesAxiomathes 1 1-22. 2020.This paper examines three cases of the clash between science and philosophy: Zeno’s paradoxes, the Frame Problem, and a recent attempt to experimentally refute skepticism. In all three cases, the relevant science claims to have resolved the purported problem. The sciences, construing the term broadly, are mathematics, artificial intelligence, and psychology. The goal of this paper is to show that none of the three scientific solutions work. The three philosophical problems remain as vibrant as e…Read more
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Computer Thought: Propositional Attitudes and Meta-KnowledgeDissertation, The University of Arizona. 1985.Though artificial intelligence scientists frequently use words such as "belief" and "desire" when describing the computational capacities of their programs and computers, they have completely ignored the philosophical and psychological theories of belief and desire. Hence, their explanations of computational capacities which use these terms are frequently little better than folk-psychological explanations. Conversely, though philosophers and psychologists attempt to couch their theories of belie…Read more
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25On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychologyBiology and Philosophy 18 (5): 669-681. 2003.The naturalistic fallacy is mentionedfrequently by evolutionary psychologists as anerroneous way of thinking about the ethicalimplications of evolved behaviors. However,evolutionary psychologists are themselvesconfused about the naturalistic fallacy and useit inappropriately to forestall legitimateethical discussion. We briefly review what thenaturalistic fallacy is and why it is misusedby evolutionary psychologists. Then we attemptto show how the ethical implications of evolvedbehaviors can be …Read more
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16Do Noncassical Worlds Entail Dualism? (review)Constructivist Foundations 12 (3): 275-276. 2017.The vast differences between the objective, classical realm of our everyday lives and any nonclassical realm have worried researchers for almost a century. No attempt at resolving the differences or explaining them away has ever worked. Maybe there are two realms, the classical and the nonclassical, and maybe they are paradoxical.
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46Is Thagard's theory of explanatory coherence the new logical positivism?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (3): 473-474. 1989.
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64Subvert the Dominant Paradigm!J. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 15 (4): 375-382. 2003.We again press the case for computationalism by considering the latest in illconceived attacks on this foundational idea. We briefly but clearly define and delimit computationalism and then consider three authors from a new anticomputationalist collection.
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43In mid-May of 2001, I attended a fascinating workshop at Cold Spring Harbor Labs. The conference was held at the lab's Banbury Center, an elegant mansion and its beautiful surrounding estate, located on Banbury Lane, in the outskirts of Lloyd Harbor, overlooking the north shore of Long Island in New York. The estate was formerly owned by Charles Sammis Robertson. In 1976, Robertson donated his estate, and an endowment for its upkeep, to the Lab. The donation included the Robertson's mansion, now…Read more
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13Toward a book of counter-examples for cognitive science: Dynamic systems theory, emotion, and aardvarksDanish Yearbook of Philosophy 36 (1): 35-48. 2001.
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194Consciousness and the limits of our imaginationsSynthese 126 (3): 361-381. 2001.Chalmers' anti-materialist arguments are an interesting twist on a well-known argument form, and his naturalistic dualism is exciting to contemplate. Nevertheless, we think we can save materialism from the Chalmerian attack. This is what we do in the present paper
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34Toward extending the relational priming model: Six questionsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (4): 383-384. 2008.Six questions are posed that are really specific versions of this question: How can Leech et al.'s system be extended to handle adult-level analogies that frequently combine concepts from semantically distant domains sharing few relational labels and that involve the production of abstractions? It is Leech et al. who stress development; finding such an extension would seem to have to be high on their priority list
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836Science Generates Limit ParadoxesAxiomathes 25 (4): 409-432. 2015.The sciences occasionally generate discoveries that undermine their own assumptions. Two such discoveries are characterized here: the discovery of apophenia by cognitive psychology and the discovery that physical systems cannot be locally bounded within quantum theory. It is shown that such discoveries have a common structure and that this common structure is an instance of Priest’s well-known Inclosure Schema. This demonstrates that science itself is dialetheic: it generates limit paradoxes. Ho…Read more
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457A Counterexample t o All Future Dynamic Systems Theories of CognitionJ. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 12 (2): 377-382. 2000.Years ago, when I was an undergraduate math major at the University of Wyoming, I came across an interesting book in our library. It was a book of counterexamples t o propositions in real analysis (the mathematics of the real numbers). Mathematicians work more or less like the rest of us. They consider propositions. If one seems to them to be plausibly true, then they set about to prove it, to establish the proposition as a theorem. Instead o f setting out to prove propositions, the psychologist…Read more
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1340Role of the Frame Problem in Fodor's Modularity ThesisIn Ken Ford & Zenon Pylyshyn (eds.), The Robot's Dilemma Revisited, . 1996.It is shown that the Fodor's interpretation of the frame problem is the central indication that his version of the Modularity Thesis is incompatible with computationalism. Since computationalism is far more plausible than this thesis, the latter should be rejected.
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266On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychologyBiology and Philosophy 18 (5): 669-81. 2003.The naturalistic fallacy is mentionedfrequently by evolutionary psychologists as anerroneous way of thinking about the ethicalimplications of evolved behaviors. However,evolutionary psychologists are themselvesconfused about the naturalistic fallacy and useit inappropriately to forestall legitimateethical discussion. We briefly review what thenaturalistic fallacy is and why it is misusedby evolutionary psychologists. Then we attemptto show how the ethical implications of evolvedbehaviors can b…Read more
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3939There Is No Progress in PhilosophyEssays in Philosophy 12 (2): 9. 2011.Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a mental co…Read more
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1959Homo sapiens 2.0 Why we should build the better robots of our natureIn M. Anderson S. Anderson (ed.), Machine Ethics, Cambridge Univ. Press. 2011.It is possible to survey humankind and be proud, even to smile, for we accomplish great things. Art and science are two notable worthy human accomplishments. Consonant with art and science are some of the ways we treat each other. Sacrifice and heroism are two admirable human qualities that pervade human interaction. But, as everyone knows, all this goodness is more than balanced by human depravity. Moral corruption infests our being. Why?
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922Whither structured representation?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 626-627. 1999.The perceptual symbol system view assumes that perceptual representations have a role-argument structure. A role-argument structure is often incorporated into amodal symbol systems in order to explain conceptual functions like abstraction and rule use. The power of perceptual symbol systems to support conceptual functions is likewise rooted in its use of structure. On Barsalou's account, this capacity to use structure (in the form of frames) must be innate.
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29Cognitive Science and the Mechanistic Forces of Darkness, or Why the Computational Science of Mind Suffers the Slings and Arrowsof Outrageous FortuneTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 5 (2): 73-82. 2000.
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646AI, Situatedness, Creativity, and Intelligence; or the Evolution of the Little Hearing BonesJ. Of Experimental and Theoretical AI 8 (1): 1-6. 1996.Good sciences have good metaphors. Indeed, good sciences are good because they have good metaphors. AI could use more good metaphors. In this editorial, I would like to propose a new metaphor to help us understand intelligence. Of course, whether the metaphor is any good or not depends on whether it actually does help us. (What I am going to propose is not something opposed to computationalism -- the hypothesis that cognition is computation. Noncomputational metaphors are in vogue these days, an…Read more
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696The Bishop and Priest: Toward a point-of-view based epistemology of true contradictions.Logos Architekton 2 (2). 2008.True contradictions are taken increasingly seriously by philosophers and logicians. Yet, the belief that contradictions are always false remains deeply intuitive. This paper confronts this belief head-on by explaining in detail how one specific contradiction is true. The contradiction in question derives from Priest's reworking of Berkeley's argument for idealism. However, technical aspects of the explanation offered here differ considerably from Priest's derivation. The explanation uses novel…Read more
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650Semantics and the Computational Paradigm in Cognitive PsychologySynthese 79 (1): 119-141. 1989.There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Step…Read more
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