Philosophers ought to develop,theorize about,and use philosophically relevant AI

The transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to philosophy—the only question is the degree to which philosophers will harness it. This paper argues that the application of AI tools to philosophy could have an impact on the field comparable to the advent of writing, and that it is likely that philosophical progress will significantly increase as a consequence of AI. The role of philosophers in this story is not merely to use AI but also to help develop it and theorize about it. In fact, the paper argues that philosophers have a prima facie obligation to spend significant effort in doing so, at least insofar as they should spend effort philosophizing.     

The reality of the intuitive

According to current methodological orthodoxy philosophers rely on intuitions about thought experiments to refute general claims about the nature of knowledge, freedom, thought, reference, justice, beauty, etc. Philosophers working under the banner of ‘negative experimental philosophy’ have criticized more traditional philosophers for relying on this method. They argue that intuitions about thought experiments are influenced by factors that are irrelevant to the truth of their contents. Cappelen and Deutsch defend traditional philosophy against this critique by rejecting the picture of philosophical methodology it presupposes: philosophers do not really rely on intuitions. In this paper, I defend methodological orthodoxy by arguing that philosophers must rely on intuitions somewhere and that they do in fact often rely on intuitions about thought experiments. I also argue in favor of a reply to the negative experimental critique that is similar to at least part of Deutsch’s own.     

Ernst Cassirer's Neo-Kantian Philosophy of Geometry

One of the most important philosophical topics in the early twentieth century – and a topic that was seminal in the emergence of analytic philosophy – was the relationship between Kantian philosophy and modern geometry. This paper discusses how this question was tackled by the Neo-Kantian trained philosopher Ernst Cassirer. Surprisingly, Cassirer does not affirm the theses that contemporary philosophers often associate with Kantian philosophy of mathematics. He does not defend the necessary truth of Euclidean geometry but instead develops a kind of logicism modeled on Richard Dedekind's foundations of arithmetic. Further, because he shared with other Neo-Kantians an appreciation of the developmental and historical nature of mathematics, Cassirer developed a philosophical account of the unity and methodology of mathematics over time. With its impressive attention to the detail of contemporary mathematics and its exploration of philosophical questions to which other philosophers paid scant attention, Cassirer's philosophy of mathematics surely deserves a place among the classic works of twentieth century philosophy of mathematics. Though focused on Cassirer's philosophy of geometry, this paper also addresses both Cassirer's general philosophical orientation and his reading of Kant.     

Three Approaches to Doing Philosophy: a Proposal for Grouping Philosophical Exercises in Classroom Teaching

Classroom teaching has two aims: learning philosophy, that is, the great philosophers, and doing philosophy. This article provides an overview of thirty exercises that can be used for doing philosophy, grouped into three approaches. The first approach, doing philosophy as connective truth finding or communicative action, is related to such philosophers as Dewey and Arendt, and is illustrated by the Socratic method. The second, doing philosophy as test‐based truth finding, is related to such philosophers as Popper, and is illustrated by Community of Philosophical Inquiry. The third, doing philosophy as juridical debate, judging truth‐value and making judgment, is related to such philosophers as Foucault, and is illustrated by philosophical debate. The analysis shows that although the classical methods applied by the great philosophers appear to be missing from classroom exercises, they do, in fact, remain at the heart of the matter.     

On the Outskirts of the Canon: The Myth of the Lone Female Philosopher,and What to Do about It

Women philosophers of the past, because they tended not to engage with each other much, are often perceived as isolated from ongoing philosophical dialogues. This has led—directly and indirectly—to their exclusion from courses in the history of philosophy. This article explores three ways in which we could solve this problem. The first is to create a course in early modern philosophy that focuses solely or mostly on female philosophers, using conceptual and thematic ties such as a concern for education and a focus on ethics and politics. The second is to introduce women authors as dialoguing with the usual canonical suspects: Cavendish with Hobbes, Elisabeth of Bohemia with Descartes, Masham and Astell with Locke, Conway with Leibniz, and so on. The article argues that both methods have significant shortcomings, and it suggests a third, consisting in widening the traditional approach to structuring courses in early modern philosophy.     

Metaphilosophy and the Role of Intuitions

The practice of appealing to intuitions as evidence has recently been criticized by experimental philosophers. While some traditional philosophers defend intuitions as a trustworthy source of evidence, others try to undermine the challenge this criticism poses to philosophical methodology. This paper argues that some recent attempts to undermine the challenge from experimental philosophy fail. It concludes that the metaphilosophical question whether intuitions play a role in philosophy cannot be decided by analyzing our use of the word ‘intuition’ or related terms, and what philosophers rely on may not be manifest on the surface of what they write. The question what intuitions are and what their role is in philosophy has to be settled within the wider framework of a theory of knowledge, justification, and philosophical methodology.

     

Phantasies, Neurotic-Beliefs, and Beliefs-Proper

This paper presents a philosophical analysis of three cognitive states familiar and important to psychoanalysts—phantasy, neurotic-belief, and belief-proper. It explores the differences among these three propositional attitudes and finds that the development of secondary process capacities of reality testing and truth directness out of earlier primary process operations (themselves prior to considerations of truth or falsity) plays a crucial role. Difficulties in the proper typing of cognitive states are discussed, as are the consequences of such confounds. This use of a philosophical method serves to sharpen the familiar psychoanalytic clinical concepts of phantasy and neurotic-belief. In addition, these same clinical concepts, once properly specified, have much to offer the philosophy of mind, where current understanding of representational cognitive states is restricted to those that are largely conscious and rational. When psychoanalytic concepts such as phantasy and neurotic-belief can be better integrated within the discipline of philosophy of mind, both philosophers and psychoanalysts will have a more complete and adequate theory of mind.     

Habermas and Dummett: Beyond Dogmatism and Scepticism

In this article I suggest a way of overcoming the traditional dichotomy between analytic and continental philosophy by pointing at some similarities between apparently disparate philosophical approaches, viz. those of Michael Dummett and Jürgen Habermas. The comparison revolves around the so-called 'paradox of analysis', which poses a dilemma concerning philosophical propositions: these are allegedly shown to be either trivial or unsecured. Both Dummett and Habermas offer ways out of the dilemma, through recognition of the intersection of analysis with life. A transcendentally characterized conception of language is conceived by both as the only way to overcome the haunting objective m subjective distinction. Thus they offer fresh insights into the nature of meaning and truth, and the place these occupy within philosophical systems. Both philosophers take the notions of justification and procedural rationality to be primary in the order of philosophical explanation. Meaning is not conceived in terms of representation and truth conditions, but in terms of validity claims. Truth is not viewed as independent and static, but as historically conditioned and constantly unfolding. As a result, even the statements of logic, and certainly those of philosophy, find a place between the alleged emptiness of analyticity and the robust empirical character of science. This common ground represents, I believe, one of the new faces of post-analytic m and hence also post-continental m philosophy. Parts of it are shared by other contemporary philosophers, such as Derrida and Brandom. What marks this new Weltanschauung is the way it surpasses the current eliminativist trends in philosophy.     

DARWINISM: STILL A CHALLENGE TO PHILOSOPHY

Charles Darwin died in 1882—more than a hundred years ago. His doctrine, however, is still alive. Recently there has been particular interest in his ideas among philosophers. These ideas are indeed a challenge to (traditional) philosophy: To take Darwin seriously means to revise—or even to destroy—some positions in (traditional) philosophy. Among the philosophical disciplines which have been affected by Darwin's ideas are epistemology and moral philosophy (ethics). In the present paper I shall discuss the epistemological and ethical consequences of Darwin's doctrine from the point of view of contemporary philosophy of biology; I shall give a brief outline of evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics which both have caused many controversies.     

The Viability of the Philosophical Novel: The Case of Simone de Beauvoir's She Came to Stay

This article begins by asking if the project to write a philosophical novel is not inherently flawed; it would seem that the novelist must either write an ambiguous text, which would not create a strong enough argument to count as philosophy, or she must write a text with a clear argument, which would not be ambiguous enough to count as good fiction. The only other option available would be to exemplify a preexisting abstract philosophical system in the concrete literary world. To move beyond such an impasse, this article turns to the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir's unique aesthetic theory in “Literature and Metaphysics” envisions philosophy as an integral part of the literary text and sees the novel not as an argument but as something called a “philosophical appeal” (Beauvoir 2004b). In her first novel, She Came to Stay, such a concept of the philosophical novel allows Beauvoir to make an original contribution to the philosophical tradition—one in which Beauvoir rethinks the problem of solipsism—while still creating a stunning literary work (Beauvoir 1954). A study of the theory and the novel together thus provides a solid understanding of what philosophers stand to gain from the philosophical novel.     

The value of philosophy: A Canguilhemian perspective

This paper represents a philosophical reflection on the nature and value of philosophy itself. Georges Canguilhem somewhat scandalously argued that the fundamental value of philosophy does not lie in truth. He suggests that truth is a typical value of science because truth is what science says and what is said scientifically. Why would a philosopher depreciate his own discipline? And does he really do so? Or is there a different motivation: to help philosophy to become a much more self-confident voice? And if truth is no longer a value of philosophy, what value fits it better? The article follows Canguilhem in his conception of truth, science, and philosophy. It is against the background of these considerations that the specific revised anthropology of the scientist or philosopher is formed. The main question is what this means for current philosophy and why it could be inspiring for philosophers today.     

Book Reviews

In his famous lecture on Kant's essay 'An Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment' Foucault distinguished between two traditions in modern philosophy coming out of Kant's work: 'an analytic of truth' and 'an ontology of present reality [ actualité ]' or 'a genealogy of ourselves'. The paper presents this distinction as a fruitful displacement of the distinction between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy,which gives the latter precise cultural and philosophical meaning. The paper clarifies the distinction and argues that almost without exception, analytic philosophers are not interested -in their capacity as philosophers - in interpreting and understanding their historical present. Some possible reasons and some possible consequences of this lack of interest are examined briefly. Within the continental tradition itself, two major contemporary forms of 'an ontology of present reality' are distinguished, one exemplified by Habermas and the other by Foucault. The difference between these two forms of 'taking aim at the heart of the present' (to use Habermas' phrase) is explicated as a difference between distinct genres of critical discourse, or forms of critique. The difference is presented in respect to two major aspects: historical time and historicity, and critique's mode of engagement with 'an analytic of truth'. The last point, namely the presence of a crucial analytic moment in the philosophical interpretation of present reality, suggests a possible modification of the initial distinction between the two philosophical traditions.     

From Daily Life to Philosophy

Abstract: This article argues that the little everyday things of life often provide excellent entries into the intellectual problems of academic philosophy. This is illustrated with an analysis of four small stories taken from daily life in which people are in agony because they do not know what to do. It is argued that the crucial question in these stories is a philosophical question—not a closed request for empirical or formal information but an open question about how best to conceive of human experience. A discussion follows of the merits and shortcomings of transcendentalism as an attempt by philosophers to make progress. It is argued that reformulating questions is what philosophers can do to contribute to people's comfort in life. This is illustrated with an argument showing that in the small stories discussed the question of what to do should be reformulated as the question of who to be.     

Behavioral pragmatism: no place for reality and truth

The current article begins by reviewing L. J. Hayes's claim that pragmatism relies on a correspondence-based truth criterion. To evaluate her claim, the concept of the observation sentence, proposed by the pragmatist philosopher W. V. Quine, is examined. The observation sentence appears to remove the issue of correspondence from Quine's pragmatist philosophy. Nevertheless, the issue of correspondence reemerges, as the problem of homology, when Quine appeals to agreement between or among observation sentences as the basis for truth. Quine also argues, however, that the problem of homology (i.e., correspondence) should be ignored on pragmatic grounds. Because the problem is simply ignored, but not resolved, there appears to be some substance to Hayes's claim that pragmatism relies ultimately on correspondence as a truth criterion. Behavioral pragmatism is then introduced to circumvent both Hayes's claim and Quine's implicit appeal to correspondence. Behavioral pragmatism avoids correspondence by appealing to the personal goals (i.e., the behavior) of the scientist or philosopher as the basis for establishing truth. One consequence of this approach, however, is that science and philosophy are robbed of any final or absolute objectives and thus may not be a satisfactory solution to philosophers. On balance, behavioral pragmatism avoids any appeal to correspondence-based truth, and thus it cannot be criticized for generating the same philosophical problems that have come to be associated with this truth criterion.     

Philosophy,Famine Relief,and the Skeptical Challenge From Disagreement

Disagreement has been grist to the mills of sceptics throughout the history of philosophy. Recently, though, some philosophers have argued that widespread philosophical disagreement supports a broad scepticism about philosophy itself. In this paper, I argue that the task for sceptics of philosophy is considerably more complex than commonly thought. The mere fact that philosophical methods fail to generate true majority views is not enough to support the sceptical challenge from disagreement. To avoid demanding something that human reasoning cannot supply, sceptics must show that philosophers have sufficient overlap to resolve their disagreements in particular concrete cases.     

Normativity in the Philosophy of Science

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative.     

Philosophy and the Search for Truth

Philosophy, as it is understood and practiced in the West, is and has been generally considered to be the search for truth. But even if philosophy is the search for truth, it does not automatically follow that those who are identified as ‘philosophers’ are themselves actually engaged in that search. And indeed, in this paper I argue that many philosophers have in fact not been genuinely engaged in the search for truth (in other words, many philosophers have not been doing philosophy) and as such much of what passes for philosophy is in fact not really philosophy at all.     

Two Concepts of Basic Equality

It has become somewhat a commonplace in recent political philosophy to remark that all plausible political theories must share at least one fundamental premise, ‘that all humans are one another's equals’. One single concept of ‘basic equality’, therefore, is cast as the common touchstone of all contemporary political thought. This paper argues that this claim is false. Virtually all do indeed say that all humans are ‘equals’ in some basic sense. However, this is not the same sense. There are not one but (at least) two concepts of basic equality, and they reflect not a grand unity within political philosophy but a deep and striking division. I call these concepts ‘Equal Worth’ and ‘Equal Authority’. The former means that each individual’s good is of equal moral worth. The latter means that no individual is under the natural authority of anyone else. Whilst these two predicates are not in themselves logically inconsistent, I demonstrate that they are inconsistent foundation stones for political theory. A theory that starts from Equal Worth will find it near impossible to justify Equal Authority. And a theory that starts from Equal Authority will find any fact about the true worth of things, including ourselves, irrelevant to justifying legitimate action. This helps us identify the origin of many of our deepest and seemingly intractable disagreements within political philosophy, and directs our attention to the need for a clear debate about the truth and/or relationship between the two concepts. In short, my call to arms can be summed up in the demand that political philosophers never again be allowed to claim ‘that all human beings are equals’ full stop. They must be clear in what dimension they claim that we are equals—Worth or Authority (or perhaps something else).     

Persistent bias in expert judgments about free will and moral responsibility: a test of the expertise defense

Many philosophers appeal to intuitions to support some philosophical views. However, there is reason to be concerned about this practice as scientific evidence has documented systematic bias in philosophically relevant intuitions as a function of seemingly irrelevant features (e.g., personality). One popular defense used to insulate philosophers from these concerns holds that philosophical expertise eliminates the influence of these extraneous factors. Here, we test this assumption. We present data suggesting that verifiable philosophical expertise in the free will debate—as measured by a reliable and validated test of expert knowledge—does not eliminate the influence of one important extraneous feature (i.e., the heritable personality trait extraversion) on judgments concerning freedom and moral responsibility. These results suggest that, in at least some important cases, the expertise defense fails. Implications for the practice of philosophy, experimental philosophy, and applied ethics are discussed.     

Practicing Safe Epistemology

Though most of analytic philosophy is basedupon intuitions, some philosophers arebeginning to question whether intuitions are anappropriate basis for philosophical theory. This paper responds to the arguments of somecontemporary philosophers who hold thatintuitions should not be treated as evidencefor anything other than our contingentpsychological constitution. It begins with ademonstration that skeptical arguments byGilbert Harman and Alvin Goldman are variationson an argument with the potential to underminethe use of intuitions in much philosophicalinquiry. After a demonstration that NicholasSturgeon's response to Harman's argument isinadequate, it argues that all of the instancesof the skeptical argument are unsuccessfulbecause they are epistemically self-defeating.