Handouts

Philosophy 355: Contemporary Philosophy

Hamilton College, Fall 2008

Possible Papers for the Course

1. Conditions for Evolution by Natural Selection, Peter Godfrey-Smith, JPhil, October 2007

2. Safety, Content, Apriority, Self-Knowledge, David Manley, JPhil, August 2007

3. Self-Bias, Time-Bias, and the Metaphysics of Self and Time, Caspar Hare, JPhil, July 2007

4. The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Pete Mandik and Andrew Brook, Analyse & Kritik 29(1): 382-397.

A movement dedicated to applying neuroscience to traditional philosophical problems and using philosophical methods to illuminate issues in neuroscience began about twenty-five years ago. Results in neuroscience have affected how we see traditional areas of philosophical concern such as perception, belief-formation, and consciousness. There is an interesting interaction between some of the distinctive features of neuroscience and important general issues in the philosophy of science. And recent neuroscience has thrown up a few conceptual issues that philosophers are perhaps best trained to deal with. After sketching the history of the movement, we explore the relationships between neuroscience and philosophy and introduce some of the specific issues that have arisen.

5. “Color Constancy as Counterfactual”, Jonathan Cohen, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 86(1): 61–92, 2008.

6. Implicational Paradoxes and the Meaning of Logical Constants, Francesco Paoli, AJP 2007.4

7. Non-Reductionism and Special Concern, Author: Jens Johansson, AJP 2007.4

8. Twin-earth externalism and concept possession, Derek Ball , AJP 2007.3

9. What is the significance of the intuition that laws of nature govern?Susan SchneiderAJP 2007.2

10. "Computational modelling vs. Computational explanation: Is everything a Turing Machine, and does it matter to the philosophy of mind?" Gualtiero Piccinini AJP 2007.1

11. "On Linking Dispositions and Conditionals." David Manley and Ryan Wasserman, Mind 2008 117: 59-84;

Analyses of dispositional ascriptions in terms of conditional statements famously confront the problems of finks and masks. We argue that conditional analyses of dispositions, even those tailored to avoid.nks and masks, face five further problems. These are the problems of: (i) Achilles' heels, (ii) accidental closeness, (iii) comparatives, (iv) explaining context sensitivity, and (v) absent stimulus conditions. We conclude by offering a proposal that avoids all seven of these problems.

12. "A Tale of Two Envelopes," Bernard D. Katz and Doris Olin, Mind 2007 116: 903-926;

This paper deals with the two-envelope paradox. Two main formulations of the paradoxical reasoning are distinguished, which differ according to the partition of possibilities employed. We argue that in the first formulation the conditionals required for the utility assignment are problematic; the error is identified as a fallacy of conditional reasoning. We go on to consider the second formulation, where the epistemic status of certain singular propositions becomes relevant; our diagnosis is that the states considered do not exhaust the possibilities. Thus, on our approach to the paradox, the fallacy, in each formulation, is found in the reasoning underlying the relevant utility matrix; in both cases, the paradoxical argument goes astray before one gets to questions of probability or calculations of expected utility.

13. "Infinitism Regained," Jeanne Peijnenburg, Mind 2007 116: 597-602

Consider the following process of epistemic justification: proposition E0 is made probable by E1, which in turn is made probable by E2, which is made probable by E3, and so on. Can this process go on indefinitely? Foundationalists, coherentists, and sceptics claim that it cannot. I argue that it can: there are many infinite regresses of probabilistic reasoning that can be completed. This leads to a new form of epistemic infinitism.

14. Stuart M. Shieber (2007) The Turing Test as Interactive Proof
Nous 41 (4) , 686–713

In 1950, Alan Turing proposed his eponymous test based on indistinguishability of verbal behavior as a replacement for the question "Can machines think?" Since then, two mutually contradictory but well-founded attitudes towards the Turing Test have arisen in the philosophical literature. On the one hand is the attitude that has become philosophical conventional wisdom, viz., that the Turing Test is hopelessly flawed as a sufficient condition for intelligence, while on the other hand is the overwhelming sense that were a machine to pass a real live full-fledged Turing Test, it would be a sign of nothing but our orneriness to deny it the attribution of intelligence. The arguments against the sufficiency of the Turing Test for determining intelligence rely on showing that some extra conditions are logically necessary for intelligence beyond the behavioral properties exhibited by an agent under a Turing Test. Therefore, it cannot follow logically from passing a Turing Test that the agent is intelligent. I argue that these extra conditions can be revealed by the Turing Test, so long as we allow a very slight weakening of the criterion from one of logical proof to one of statistical proof under weak realizability assumptions. The argument depends on the notion of interactive proof developed in theoretical computer science, along with some simple physical facts that constrain the information capacity of agents. Crucially, the weakening is so slight as to make no conceivable difference from a practical standpoint. Thus, the Gordian knot between the two opposing views of the sufficiency of the Turing Test can be cut.