Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

The AI Ethics Principle of Autonomy in Health Recommender Systems

Issue: • Author/s: Simona Tiribelli
Topics: Epistemology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Medicine, Theoretical philosophy

The application of health recommender systems (HRSs) in the mobile-health (m-health) industry, especially for healthy active aging, has grown exponentially over the past decade. However, no research has been conducted on the ethical implications of HRSs and the ethical principles for their design. This paper aims to fill this gap and claims that an ethically informed re-definition of the AI ethics principle of autonomy is needed to design HRSs that adequately operationalize (that is, respect and promote) individuals’ autonomy over ageing. To achieve this goal, after having clarified the state-of-the-art on…

The Thesis of Revelation in the Philosophy of Mind: A Guide for the Perplexed

Issue: • Author/s: Bruno Cortesi
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

The thesis of experiential revelation—Rev for brevity—in the philosophy of mind claims that to have an experience—i.e., to be acquainted with it—is to know its nature. It is widely agreed that although at least moderate versions of Rev might strike one as plausible and perhaps even appealing, at least up to a certain extent, most of them are nonetheless inconsistent with almost any coherent form of physicalism about the mind. Thus far, the issue of the alleged tension between Rev and physicalism has mostly been put in the relevant literature…

Virtue, Character, and Moral Responsibility: Against the Monolithic View

Issue: • Author/s: Giulia Luvisotto, Johannes Roessler
Topics: Epistemology, Ethics, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of action

A traditional tenet of virtue ethics is that a proper moral assessment of an action needs to be informed by a view of the agent; in particular, a view of their virtues or vices, as exhibited in their action. This picture has been challenged on the grounds that it is revisionary and ill-motivated. The key claim is that we are ordinarily disposed to judge the moral merits of particular actions independently of any view of the character of the agent, and that there is nothing wrong with that practice. In this paper, we identify…

What Galileo Said

Issue: • Author/s: John Biro
Topics: Epistemology, History of Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of language

Pragmatics, modularity and epistemic vigilance [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 02 • Author/s: Diana Mazzarella
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of mind

The cognitive revolution, which from the early ’60s shaped the domains of linguistics, anthropology, psychology and related disciplines, manifested its effect in the field of pragmatics with the seminal work of Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995). Among many other issues, Sperber and Wilson brought to the attention of the pragmatics community the question of the place of pragmatic abilities in the overall architecture of the mind. At that time, Fodor had already suggested that human cognitive architecture is partly modular (Fodor 1983) by introducing the functional and architectural distinction between modular…

Enactivism, Representations and Canonical Neurons [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 02 • Author/s: Gabriele Ferretti, Mario Alai
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of mind

Enactivists often claim that since perception is one with action, it does not involve representations, hence perception is direct. Here we argue that empirical evidence on neural activity in the ventral premotor cortex confirms the enactivist intuitions about the unity of action and perception. But this very unity requires the detection of the action possibilities offered by the objects in the environment, which in turn involves certain representational processes at the neural level. Hence, the enactivist claim that perception is direct is wrong, or at least ambiguous and potentially misleading:…

Naïve Realism and the Explanatory Role of Visual Phenomenology [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 02 • Author/s: Takuya Niikawa
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of mind

This paper argues that naïve realism has an epistemic advantage over other rival views. The argument consists of two steps. First, I argue that the phenomenology of veridical visual experience plays an indispensable role in explaining how we can refer to the experience as a justificatory reason for a demonstrative judgment. Second, I argue that only naïve realism can coherently allow a veridical visual experience to be used as a factive reason.

Externalist Thought Experiments and Directions of Fit

Issue: Issue 03 • Author/s: Casey Woodling
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of mind

The classic thought experiments for Content Externalism have been motivated by consideration of intentional states with a mind-to-world direction of fit. In this paper, I argue that when these experiments are run on intentional states with a world-to-mind direction of fit, the thought experiments actually support Content Internalism. Because of this, I argue that the classic thought experiments alone cannot properly motivate Content Externalism. I do not show that Content Externalism is false in this paper, just that it cannot be motivated by the classic thought experiments alone. I discuss…

Thinking the Impossible [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 04 • Author/s: Graham Priest
Topics: Epistemology, History of Analytic Philosophy, Philosophical logic

The article looks at the structure of impossible worlds, and their deployment in the analysis of some intentional notions. In particular, it is argued that one can, in fact, conceive anything, whether or not it is impossible. Thus a semantics of conceivability requires impossible worlds.

Counterpossibles in Semantics and Metaphysics [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 04 • Author/s: Timothy Williamson
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophical logic

This paper defends from recent objections and misunderstandings the orthodox view that subjunctive conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. It explains apparent counterexamples as cases where a normally reliable suppositional heuristic for assessing conditionals gives incorrect results, which some theorists take at face value.
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