Nythamar De Oliveira

In this article, I argue that the neuroethics of cognitive enhancement can help us bridge the explanatory gap between metaethics and bioethics (qua normative, applied ethics) and throw light on the classic gap between moral beliefs and neural correlates of brain processes. Insofar as it unveils the irreducibility of first-person propositional attitudes (esp. moral beliefs and judgments), neuroethics allows for justifying cosmetic, pharmacological interventions so as to bring about human enhancement, regardless of descriptive accounts of its neural correlates and independently of the cognitivist, noncognitivist or hybrid inputs of metanormative theories. Precisely because it cannot provide the ultimate grounds for any conservative, libertarian or liberal attitudes towards cognitive enhancement, neuroethics is better conceived in terms of a Rawlsian-like wide reflective equilibrium, procedurally and without any specific substantive commitment to any moral or comprehensive doctrine of sorts.

El rápido auge de la inteligencia artificial (IA) plantea retos éticos, especialmente relacionados con la confianza depositada en esta tecnología y sus implicaciones para diversos grupos demográficos. Este texto adopta un enfoque filosófico fenomenológico y hermenéutico, basado en Husserl y Heidegger, para explorar la seguridad existencial de la IA y su conexión con la confianza. La confianza en la IA se examina no sólo como una cuestión técnica, sino como un fenómeno vinculado a dinámicas sociales complejas, que desafía la reflexión sobre las influencias discriminatorias en los sistemas inteligentes. El marco teórico incorpora contribuciones recientes sobre la confianza en la IA para intensificar la producción de literatura sobre la seguridad de la IA basada en la confianza, e interactúa con el Código Internacional de Conducta para Sistemas Avanzados de IA del Proceso de Hiroshima.

In this paper, which reflects an ongoing interdisciplinary research in Cognitive and Social Sciences, I recast the normative claims of a political constructivism in reflective equilibrium (Rawls) and of a formal, pragmatic reconstruction (Habermas) as instances of a weak social constructionism. I proceed thus to investigate how social, evolutionary processes, in both semantic and normative terms (Brandom), may be said to pursue universalizable, valid normative claims that could be justified from an externalist standpoint, generated through reflective equilibrium without reductionism.

The goal of this paper is to show that the Kantian correlation beween universalizability and humanity addresses the communitarian critique by resorting to the positive identification between human rights and fundamental rights and to the normative conception of moral persons, irreducible in theirhuman dignity. I argue for what may be termed a transcendental-semantic perspectivism that allows for a more reasonable, sustainable defense of cosmopolitanism than previous accounts of universalist and communitarian models.

Counterfactuals have become an important area of interdisciplinary interest, especially in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, decision theory, and even artificial intelligence. In this study, we propose a new form of analysis for counterfactuals: analysis by algorithmic complexity. Inspired by Lewis-Stalnaker's Possible Worlds Semantics, the proposed method allows for a new interpretation of the debate between David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker regarding the Limit and Singularity assumptions. Besides other results, we offer a new way to answer the problems raised by Goodman and Quine regarding vagueness, context-dependence, and the non- monotonicity of counterfactuals. Engaging in a dialogue with literature, this study will seek to bring new insights and tools to this debate. We hope our method of analysis can make counterfactuals more understandable in an intuitively plausible way, and a philosophically justifiable manner, aligned with the way we usually think about counterfactual propositions and our imaginative reasoning.

A concepção habermasiana do papel, do potencial normativo e dos limites da religião na esfera pública se desenvolve, se transforma e evolui ao longo das diferentes etapas do seu profícuo pensamento teórico-crítico. Neste artigo, proponho-me a revisitar tal concepção, partindo de sua autoavaliação enquanto constelação do pensamento pós-metafísico, atendo-me apenas ao seu inacabado programa de reconstrução normativa do mundo da vida (Lebenswelt) pós-secular em democracias pluralistas, à luz de algumas das suas contribuições seminais e interlocuções com a teologia política de Johann Baptist Metz, a ideia de publicidade (Öffentlichkeit) e públicos (publics) de Nancy Fraser e a reformulação do problema das formas de vida social, alienação e reificação em Rahel Jaeggi (Kritik von Lebensformen). Proponho, destarte, situar uma teoria crítica da libertação como um exemplo concreto particular da crítica permanente de formas de vida que nos permitem melhor explicitar os aspectos comunicativos e intersubjetivos da reprodução social e seu potencial normativo emancipatório em práticas cotidianas voltadas para o reconhecimento e o entendimento mútuos em solidariedade com os excluídos, suscetíveis de justificação discursivo-normativa numa esfera pública (Öffentlichkeit) tradicionalmente dominada por interesses oligárquicos, autoritários e elitistas, como tem sido historicamente o caso do ethos social brasileiro.

This study examines Michel Foucault's reading of Kant and Nietzsche, so as to show that critique and genealogy meet at the very locus where a methodological displacement of metaphysics has been operated, particularly in the critical region that was assigned by modernity to the conception of human nature. The "genealogy of modernity" is shown to constitute the major thesis of a Foucauldian "philosophical discourse of modernity" which, contrary to Habermas's criticisms, does not evade questions of truth, normativity, and value, but rather problematizes them. The genealogy of modernity is itself made possible by the articulation of the three axes of truth, power, and ethics that determine the historical a priori of our modern ethos as the condition of who we are, that is, the formation of modern subjectivity with its regimes of veridiction and jurisdiction, modes of subjectivation and practices of freedom. ;Chapter One shows how Kant's critique of metaphysics made possible the birth of "modern man," based upon a conception of morality that follows the practical use of pure reason. As a being endowed with reason which ought to be rational, man is to fulfill in history his moral destination --hence, what Foucault terms the empirico-transcendental doublet. Kant's dualism in anthropology and morality is bridged only by means of a teleology which betrays the historical constitution of its subjectivity. ;Chapter Two examines Nietzsche's critique of Kant's teleology, as genealogy unmasks the truth of modern man in a radical, self-overcoming critique of morality. The knowing subject of Kant's critique is unmasked as the moral subject of a metaphysics that remains bound to the morality of ressentiment, as its will to truth betrays a reactive will to power. The birth of modern man signals the death of God, and the latter entails man's self-overcoming. ;Chapter Three shows how Nietzsche's genealogical critique of Kant is appropriated by Foucault in his aestheticist articulation of truth, power, and ethics, with the important difference that Kant's ontology of the present is also invoked by Foucault's permanent critique of normalization and disciplinary power

By placing John Dewey between John Rawls and Richard Bernstein, I argue for a socialist reading of Dewey’s takes on liberal democracy that moves away both from conservative readings of Dewey of those who claim that his democratic liberalism actually belongs to right-wing or center views, and from left-wing, communitarians who dismiss such views as irrelevant for socialist and radical variants of liberal democracy. Overall, it can be shown that Rawls and Dewey’s different takes on political liberalism could be ultimately reconciled, given their similar takes on democracy, pluralism, and the person. Rawls’ rehabilitation of Kant can itself be shown to be closely related to his reading of Dewey. Furthermore, as Bernstein argues, such a renewal of Dewey’s social and political philosophy in Rawls’s political constructivism and reflective equilibrium was decisive for the great pragmatist turn observed in the second, third, and fourth generations of critical theory, not only in the so-called Frankfurt School (especially Habermas, Honneth, Forst) but also in feminist and decolonial thinkers such as Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Rahel Jaeggi, and Amy Allen. Dewey’s pragmatist turn in political philosophy allows thus for a dynamic, robust correlation between radical democracy and public education, which could be implemented in emerging democracies like Brazil.

In this paper, I argue for a normative reconstruction, from a decolonial perspective of critical theory in Brazil and Latin America, of a democratic ethos that despite its weaknesses and normative deficits is capable of fostering an increasingly deliberative, participatory, and egalitarian democracy by making extensive use of new digital technologies (comprising both AI systems and digital governance). Its argumentative core boils down to the promotion of intersectional egalitarianism (socio-economic, gender, racial-ethnic, environmental) through digital inclusion, which seems only feasible to us from a perspective capable of accommodating the normative claims of a critical decolonial theory combined with a naturalistic view of sustainability, within a research program that I dubbed “mitigated social constructionism” in response to the phenomenological deficit of normative and naturalistic theories (including critical theory and neurophilosophy). If what matters is normativity, then to avoid the divide between naturalism and non-naturalist normativity one nonfoundationalist alternative is to resort to hermeneutical and procedural accounts of normativity as helpful clues to making sense of the naturalism-normativity problem, avoiding reductionist interpretations of both naturalism (Churchland) and normativism (Parfit).

In this paper, we set out to show that the relationships between individuals, including the intersubjectivity inherent to the body politic, are also affective relationships, so as to reconstruct Spinoza’s minimalist theory of tolerance. According to Spinoza’s concept of affectivity and bodily life, affection refers to a state of the affected body and implies the presence of the affecting body, while affect refers to the transition from one state to another, taking into account the correlative variation of affective bodies, that is, the affect is always a passage or variation in the intensity of our power to exist and act — the increase or decrease, the favoring or the restraint of our power to exist and act. We argue that Spinoza’s geometry of affective relations decisively contributes to a political theory of democracy, insofar as it anticipates modern, liberal conceptions of tolerance.

The book contains critical analyses of injustice in connection to law and ethics, and develops normative alternatives linked to justice. It covers the relevant issues from social justice to cyber justice. The chapters address issues and concepts which guideline on social innovations, transformations inherent in democratizing processes, global conflicts and other interactions, including the ultimate danger of escalation to war conflicts, be they conventional wars or new cyberwars.--From publisher's website.

A 4ª Revolução Industrial é o culminar da era digital. Atualmente, tecnologias como robótica, nanotecnologia, genética e inteligência artificial prometem transformar nosso mundo e a maneira como vivemos. O campo da Segurança e da Ética da Inteligência Artificial são áreas de pesquisa emergentes que vêm ganhando popularidade nos últimos anos. Diversas organizações de cunho privado, público e não governamentais têm publicado diretrizes propondo princípios éticos para a regulamentação do uso e desenvolvimento de sistemas inteligentes autônomos. Meta-análises do campo de pesquisa em Ética da IA apontam uma convergência sobre certos princípios éticos que, supostamente, governam a indústria da IA. Entretanto, pouco se sabe sobre a eficiência desta forma de “Ética”. Neste estudo, gostaríamos de realizar uma análise crítica do atual estado da Ética da IA, e sugerir que essa forma de governança baseada em diretrizes éticas principialista não é suficiente para normatizar a indústria da IA e seus desenvolvedores. Acreditamos que drásticas mudanças sejam necessárias, tanto nos processos de formação de profissionais das áreas ligadas ao desenvolvimento de software e sistemas inteligentes quanto no aumento da regulamentação desses profissionais e sua indústria. Para tanto, sugerimos que o Direito se beneficie das contribuições recentes da Bioética, de forma a explicitar em termos legais as contribuições da Ética da IA para a governança.

This work, entitled “Justice and Liberation: A Tribute to John Rawls”, brings together 25 works in Portuguese, Spanish and English presented at the 9th International Symposium on Justice. The articles bring contributions around three major themes: i) analyzes and interpretations of concepts in Rawls' work, such as constructivism, democracy, education, the inclusion of people with disabilities, issues related to genetic inequalities, the environment, public reason, and the role of reconciliation; ii) analysis of criticisms directed at Rawls by Dupuy, Dussel, Fraser, Mouffe, and contemporary continental philosophy; iii) analysis of issues related to justice and liberation based on the debate on themes such as climate injustice and colonialism, social justice and gender, justice and progress, justice and recognition, and critical thinking in Latin America. Edited by Nythamar de Oliveira, Cristina Foroni Consani, and Julia Sichieri Moura.

What does Cyberpunk and AI Ethics have to do with each other? Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that explores the post-human relationships between human experience and technology. One similarity between AI Ethics and Cyberpunk literature is that both seek a dialogue in which the reader may inquire about the future and the ethical and social problems that our technological advance may bring upon society. In recent years, an increasing number of ethical matters involving AI have been pointed and debated, and several ethical principles and guides have been suggested as governance policies for the tech industry. However, would this be the role of AI Ethics? To serve as a soft and ambiguous version of the law? I would like to promote in this article a more Cyberpunk way of doing AI Ethics, whit a more anarchic way of governance. In this study, I will seek to expose some of the deficits of the underlying power structures of our society, and suggest that AI governance be subject to public opinion, so that ‘good AI’ can become ‘good AI for all’.

One of the strands of the Transhumanist movement, Singulitarianism, studies the possibility that high-level artificial intelligence may be created in the future, debating ways to ensure that the interaction between human society and advanced artificial intelligence can occur safely and beneficially. But how can we guarantee this safe interaction? Are there any indications that a Singularity may be on the horizon? In trying to answer these questions, We'll make a small introduction to the area of security research in artificial intelligence. We'll review some of the current paradigms in the development of autonomous intelligent systems and evidence that we can use to prospect the coming of a possible technological Singularity. Finally, we will present a reflection using the COVID-19 pandemic, something that showed that our biggest problem in managing existential risks is our lack of coordination skills as a global society.

How can someone reconcile the desire to eat meat, and a tendency toward vegetarian ideals? How should we reconcile contradictory moral values? How can we aggregate different moral theories? How individual preferences can be fairly aggregated to represent a will, norm, or social decision? Conflict resolution and preference aggregation are tasks that intrigue philosophers, economists, sociologists, decision theorists, and many other scholars, being a rich interdisciplinary area for research. When trying to solve questions about moral uncertainty a meta understanding of the concept of normativity can help us to develop strategies to deal with norms themselves. 2nd-order normativity, or norms about norms, is a hierarchical way to think about how to combine many different normative structures and preferences into a single coherent decision. That is what metanormativity is all about, a way to answer: what should we do when we don’t know what to do? In this study, we will review a decision-making strategy dealing with moral uncertainty, Maximization of Expected Choice-Worthiness. This strategy, proposed by William MacAskill, allows for the aggregation and inter-theoretical comparison of different normative structures, cardinal theories, and ordinal theories. In this study, we will exemplify the metanormative methods proposed by MacAskill, using has an example, a series of vegetarian dilemmas. Given the similarity to this metanormative strategy to expected utility theory, we will also show that it is possible to integrate both models to address decision-making problems in situations of empirical and moral uncertainty. We believe that this kind of ethical-mathematical formalism can be useful to help develop strategies to better aggregate moral preferences and solve conflicts.

Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the dvelopment of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance isn't done with prudence, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area are trying to develop a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of artificial intelligence. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents, and at the same time specifying what we want such systems to do. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop our moral preferences simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic cognitive approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy defends that the human experience of being-in-the-world cannot be represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive methods. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI.

Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the development of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance is not made prudently and critically-reflexively, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area have developed a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of AI for the preservation of humanity and the environment. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents and systems, and at the same time specifying what we really want such systems to do, especially when we look for the possibility of intelligent agents acting in several domains over the long term. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop human moral values simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy shows that the human experience of being-in-the-world in several aspects is not well represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive method, especially in regards to the question of learning values. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI.

Especialistas em desenvolvimento de Inteligência Artificial prevêem que o avanço no desenvolvimento de sistemas e agentes inteligentes irá remodelar áreas vitais em nossa sociedade. Contudo, se tal avanço não for realizado de maneira prudente e crítico-reflexiva, pode resultar em desfechos negativos para a humanidade. Por este motivo, diversos pesquisadores na área têm desenvolvido uma concepção de IA robusta, benéfica e segura para a preservação da humanidade e do meio-ambiente. Atualmente, diversos dos problemas em aberto no campo de pesquisa em IA advêm da dificuldade de evitar comportamentos indesejados de agentes e sistemas inteligentes, e ao mesmo tempo especificar o que realmente queremos que tais sistemas façam, especialmente quando prospectamos a possibilidade de agentes inteligentes atuarem em vários domínios ao longo prazo. É de suma importância que agentes inteligentes artificiais tenham seus valores alinhados com os valores humanos, dado ao fato de que não podemos esperar que uma IA desenvolva valores morais humanos por conta de sua inteligência, conforme é discutido na Tese da Ortogonalidade. Talvez tal dificuldade venha da maneira que estamos abordando o problema de expressar objetivos, valores e metas, utilizando de métodos cognitivos representacionais. Uma solução para este problema seria a abordagem dinâmica proposta por Dreyfus, que com base na filosofia fenomenológica mostra que a experiência humana do ser-no-mundo em diversos aspectos não é bem representada pelo método cognitivo simbólico ou conexionista, especialmente na questão de aprendizagem de valores. Uma possível abordagem para esse problema seria a utilização de modelos téoricos como SED para abordar o porblema de aprendizagem de valores em IA.