Showing papers in "Philosophical Investigations in 2018"

An Attitude Towards an Artificial Soul? Responses to the “Nazi Chatbot”

Abstract: The article discusses the case of Microsoft's Twitter chatbot Tay that “turned into a Nazi” after less than 24 hours from its release on the Internet. The first section presents a brief recapitulation of Alan Turing's proposal for a test for artificial intelligence and the way it influenced subsequent discussions in the philosophy of mind. In the second section, I offer a few arguments appealing for caution regarding the identification of an accomplished chatbot as a thinking being. These are motivated principally by Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussions of mind and soul and by some Wittgensteinian philosophers' criticisms of AI endeavours. I will try to show that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of AIs such as chatbots as thinking beings, rather independently of their technical perfection and accomplishment. In the third section, the case of the “Nazi chatbot” Tay will offer me material for some light to be shed on the peculiar (primitive) character of our interconnected concepts of thinking, soul and person and on the importance of their further ramified connections.

Wittgenstein's Impact on the Philosophy of Education

Abstract: Clarifying the nature of the philosophy of education, this paper offers a critical overview of Wittgenstein’s impact on the field. The focus is then narrowed to give attention to Wittgenstein’s claim that “Nothing is hidden” (Philosophical Investigations, #435) in relation to current concerns with transparency. The discussion extends and challenges familiar readings of this passage, making connections with Wittgenstein’s late writings on psychology. Imagination and pretence are, thus, shown to be essential to the development of mind and world, from the child’s first entry into language. This reaffirms the significance of the humanities, suggesting particular importance for drama and film.

Kantian Schemata: A Critique Consistent with the Critique

Abstract: Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third-man regress. Siding with those who think that the mid-way posit of the Critique of Pure Reason’s schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant’s transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyse a form/ matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity. The early modern empiricist tradition had depicted the mind as a blank slate awaiting experience, but Kant added elements of rationalism to depict the mind as a chest of drawers awaiting experience. The broad strokes of this Kantian picture of the mind remain a starting point for many debates in analytic epistemology (e.g. Davidson 1973–74; McDowell 1996). One mainstay is Kant’s distinction between the “receptivity of impressions” and the “spontaneity of concepts” (Kant 1998, B75; whenever possible, I will quote from the B edition of the Critique). Kant insisted that, although these two faculties “cannot exchange their functions,” they must function together, since “[o]nly from their unification can cognition arise” (B75). So, despite the fact that lived experience is seamless, philosophical analysis can reveal how “[o]ur cognition arises from two fundamental sources in the mind” (B74), one innate, the other acquired. Yet, as influential as this account is, it seems to leave behind a problem: how do the two faculties unite, exactly? Because the pure concepts that govern the understanding range over any conceivable experience, they are radically unlike the empirical concepts that we acquire through learning. Kant proposes to bridge this “heterogeneity” (B177) by adding the notion of schema. Schemata are meant to be hybrids that are both general and particular. There are supposedly 12 “transcendental schemata,” one for each category (B182– 184). History thus has a tendency to forget that “Kant’s original division © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd DOI: 10.1111/phin.12199 Philosophical Investigations 41:4 October 2018 ISSN 0190-0536 of our representations into intuitions and concepts is not exhaustive, for there is a third class, about which we can say very little, other than that it is dependent on and somehow derivative from the others” (Gardner 1999, p. 170). Although Kant was convinced that schemata are essential, these posits play a “disputed role” (Caygill 1995, p. 360) in Kantian scholarship and philosophy generally. It has even been said that “[t]he chapter on Schematism probably presents more difficulty to the uncommitted but sympathetic reader than any other part of the Critique of Pure Reason” (Walsh 1957, p. 95). Indeed, “it is the only chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason that is not treated separately in the Cambridge Companion to the Critique of Pure Reason” (De Boer 2016, p. 441fn2). Arthur Schopenhauer, who was in the habit of praising Kant, considered the whole topic to be a non-starter. As Schopenhauer explained, “a pure understanding corresponded symmetrically to a pure sensibility. After this, there occurred to [Kant] yet another consideration that offered him a means of increasing the plausibility of the thing, by assuming the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding. But precisely in this way is his method of procedure, to him unconscious, most clearly betrayed” (1966; p. 449; see Kelly 1909). Schopenhauer was not the last commentator to think that Kant’s schemata conflict with the rest of the Critique. The conclusion Kant draws from his consideration of the requirements of schematism is not, as we might expect, that a schema is neither a concept nor an intuition but rather that it is both. This is an immediate consequence of his demand that a schema be both intellectual and sensuous. This inference is plainly suspect. [. . .] That theory is still embarrassed by both a philosophical and a textual difficulty. The philosophical difficulty, badly put, is that the view is self-contradictory. For Kant clearly regards “. . .is a particular” and “. . .is a universal” as mutually exclusive predicates. True, when he talks about a schema as a third thing, he does not say that it is both universal and particular but only that it is both intellectual and sensuous. This is not enough, however, to rescue the third-thing view of schema from contradiction (Gram 1968, pp. 93–94). In the light of these difficulties, one must “decide whether, in this particular instance, Kant is making some genuine point in peculiar language, or whether his peculiar language has lured him into nonsense” (Warnock 1949, p. 77). I want to defend the latter option. However, as I shall explain later, I actually think that my criticism is in line with the bulk of what Kant urges in the Critique. To see this, it might help to briefly retrace the reasoning that prompts Kant to posit schemata. The root tension is that sense impressions are particular, whereas the categories of the understanding are general. Were we to count experiential episodes with a clicker, witnessing two © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Marc Champagne 437

Instructions for Climbing the Ladder (The Minimalism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus)

Abstract: I aim to present a solution to the apparent paradox of the Tractatus by means of a minimalist reading grounded in the idea that the correct logical symbolism alone “finally solves” in essentials the philosophical problems. I argue that although the sentences of the Tractatus are nonsensical, rules presented in its symbolism are not. The symbolism itself expresses only a priori rules of logic through schematic variables that do not say anything. I argue that this reading correctly expresses the ladder structure of the book, and that it can account for Wittgenstein’s critique of the Tractatus in Some Remarks on Logical Form. The first footholds are always the most difficult, until acquiring the necessary coordination. The coincidence of the name between the foot and the foot makes the explanation more difficult. Be especially careful to not raise, at the same time, the foot and the foot. (Cort azar)

The Moral Depth of Human Dignity

Abstract: In 1971, Herbert Spiegelberg challenged philosophers to refine and deepen the vivid idea of human dignity to prevent its degeneration. Although philosophers, including Michael Rosen and Jeremy Waldron, have responded with valuable insights, the full moral depth of dignity has remained philosophically elusive. Furthermore, many philosophers still think human dignity a limited ethical concept. By integrating important alienable and inalienable dimensions of human dignity, this essay attempts to do justice to our vivid contemporary experience of dignity's moral depth. It seeks to illuminate the profound, universal worth of all humans, and the ethical force of human rights protections.

Wittgenstein and Communication Technology – A Conversation between Richard Harper and Constantine Sandis

Abstract: Special Issue: PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH WITTGENSTEIN SOCIETY 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE: WITTGENSTEIN IN THE 21ST CENTURY © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The Asymmetry of Causality: A Realist Solution

Abstract: How do we distinguish between cause and effect? The main argument of this paper is that if a realist account of the meaning of causal statements is adopted, then two clear distinctions between cause and effect emerge. By realist account is meant conceiving a cause as something with a power to act. Since a realist approach to causality is not widely accepted among philosophers, two arguments against a realist approach to causality are countered. The asymmetry of causality is defended against the claim that physics, in the main, describes a symmetrical universe.