Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind is an elegant survey of
Stoic and Epicurean ideas about the soul-an introduction to two
ancient schools whose belief in the soul's physicality offer
compelling ...parallels to modern approaches in the philosophy of
mind. Annas incorporates recent thinking on Hellenistic philosophy
of mind so lucidly and authoritatively that specialists and
nonspecialists alike will find her book rewarding. In part, the
Hellenistic epoch was a "scientific" period that broke with
tradition in ways that have an affinity with the modern shift from
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the present day.
Hellenistic philosophy of the soul, Annas argues, is in fact a
philosophy of mind, especially in the treatment of such topics as
perception, thought, and action.
Identity of Dynamic Meanings Arazim, Pavel
Croatian journal of philosophy,
2022, Volume:
XXII, Issue:
64
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Inferentialism has brought important insights into the nature of meanings. It breaks with the representationalist tradition that sees meanings as constituted primarily by representing some ...extra-linguistic reality. Yet the break with tradition should be pursued further. Inferentialists still regard meanings as static, and they still do not entirely abandon the idea of fully determined meaning. Following Davidon’s ideas about meanings as constituted only in the course of a specific conversation, I propose a dynamic account of what meanings are. They are described as entities belonging to the dynamic realm of Henri Bergson’s duration. The inhabitants of this realm live in constant movement and development which is more essential to them than the stages that this development goes through. My account brings about a rejection of the notion of strict literal meaning and therewith also of the contrasting notions such as ambiguity. Meaning is understood as a dynamic entity that is characterized rather by its history than by its nature.
According to higher order (HO) theories of consciousness, a mental state is conscious when there is a HO state about it. However, some HO states do not seem to be about other existing mental states. ...It is possible to resolve this problem since targetless HO states resemble HO states that misrepresent but the assumption that HO states always target other existing mental states is at odds with the theory since HO states are not only necessary but also sufficient for phenomenal consciousness according to the theory. Given the sufficiency of the HO states for consciousness, there is a need to understand the emergence of HO states as a non-random phenomenon to avoid the difficulties caused by targetless HO states. I suggest it is possible to develop such an understanding by thinking of HO states as predictive states in accordance with the predictive processing theory of the mind.
Radicalizing enactivism Hutto, Daniel D; Myin, Erik
2013, 20121214, 2012, 2013-06-26
eBook, Book
A book that promotes the thesis that basic forms of mentality—intentionally directed cognition and perceptual experience—are best understood as embodied yet contentless.
Most of what humans do and ...experience is best understood in terms of dynamically unfolding interactions with the environment. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists now acknowledge the critical importance of situated, environment-involving embodied engagements as a means of understanding basic minds—including basic forms of human mentality. Yet many of these same theorists hold fast to the view that basic minds are necessarily or essentially contentful—that they represent conditions the world might be in. In this book, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin promote the cause of a radically enactive, embodied approach to cognition that holds that some kinds of minds—basic minds—are neither best explained by processes involving the manipulation of contents nor inherently contentful. Hutto and Myin oppose the widely endorsed thesis that cognition always and everywhere involves content. They defend the counter-thesis that there can be intentionality and phenomenal experience without content, and demonstrate the advantages of their approach for thinking about scaffolded minds and consciousness.
This article reports the findings of AI4People, an Atomium—EISMD initiative designed to lay the foundations for a “Good AI Society”. We introduce the core opportunities and risks of AI for society; ...present a synthesis of five ethical principles that should undergird its development and adoption; and offer 20 concrete recommendations—to assess, to develop, to incentivise, and to support good AI—which in some cases may be undertaken directly by national or supranational policy makers, while in others may be led by other stakeholders. If adopted, these recommendations would serve as a firm foundation for the establishment of a Good AI Society.
In this commentary, we discuss the nature of reversible and irreversible questions, that is, questions that may enable one to identify the nature of the source of their answers. We then introduce ...GPT-3, a third-generation, autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like texts, and use the previous distinction to analyse it. We expand the analysis to present three tests based on mathematical, semantic (that is, the Turing Test), and ethical questions and show that GPT-3 is not designed to pass any of them. This is a reminder that GPT-3 does not do what it is not supposed to do, and that any interpretation of GPT-3 as the beginning of the emergence of a general form of artificial intelligence is merely uninformed science fiction. We conclude by outlining some of the significant consequences of the industrialisation of automatic and cheap production of good, semantic artefacts.
Current advances in research, development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) systems have yielded a far-reaching discourse on AI ethics. In consequence, a number of ethics guidelines ...have been released in recent years. These guidelines comprise normative principles and recommendations aimed to harness the “disruptive” potentials of new AI technologies. Designed as a semi-systematic evaluation, this paper analyzes and compares 22 guidelines, highlighting overlaps but also omissions. As a result, I give a detailed overview of the field of AI ethics. Finally, I also examine to what extent the respective ethical principles and values are implemented in the practice of research, development and application of AI systems—and how the effectiveness in the demands of AI ethics can be improved.
Vincent Descombes brings together an astonishingly large body of
philosophical and anthropological thought to present a
thoroughgoing critique of contemporary cognitivism and to develop a
powerful ...new philosophy of the mind. Beginning with a critical
examination of American cognitivism and French structuralism,
Descombes launches a more general critique of all philosophies that
view the mind in strictly causal terms and suppose that the
brain--and not the person--thinks. Providing a broad historical
perspective, Descombes draws surprising links between cognitivism
and earlier anthropological projects, such as Lévi-Strauss's work
on the symbolic status of myths. He identifies as incoherent both
the belief that mental states are detached from the world and the
idea that states of mind are brain states; these assumptions beg
the question of the relation between mind and brain. In place of
cognitivism, Descombes offers an anthropologically based theory of
mind that emphasizes the mind's collective nature. Drawing on
Wittgenstein, he maintains that mental acts are properly attributed
to the person, not the brain, and that states of mind, far from
being detached from the world, require a historical and cultural
context for their very intelligibility. Available in English for
the first time, this is the most outstanding work of one of
France's finest contemporary philosophers. It provides a
much-needed link between the continental and Anglo-American
traditions, and its impact will extend beyond philosophy to
anthropology, psychology, critical theory, and French studies.
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