Jörg Volbers

FU Berlin

Our Technological Form of Life. Wittgensteinian Lessons on the Moral Dimensions of AI

28 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy) | School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Technologies with so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI) are a world-wide reality and do already deeply pervade daily life. Yet in contrast to other technologies, AI is employed for a quite distinct type of tasks, such as recognizing faces or diagnosing diseases, all of which involve some kind of judgment. Passing these tasks to machines raises a special kind of moral problem: How can we rely on such an AI-guided process, given that this guidance is made by an automaton which cannot be made accountable for what it decides? In response to that problem, it is often suggested to refer to regulations. A burgeoning industry of AI ethics spends its time devising rules, principles, or ethical frameworks, to which an ethically well-behaved AI should defer. I will argue, however, that we should see this problem as an instance of the so-called “problem of other minds”: The ’reasoning’ of AI machines is constitutively incomprehensible to us (“black box”), and yet we are forced to interact with them. In this view, it is a mistake to believe that ethical rules could somehow turn AI into ethically responsible machines. For this reason, we should be wary of the current attempts to treat AI as a problem of regulation only, nor can we ever hope to solve it by gaining a better epistemical insight into the inner workings of artifi cial mind (so-called “explainable AI”). Rather, it manifests the challenge to understand ethics, and morality, as a practice, or a “form of life,” as Wittgenstein calls it.

Epistemic Akrasia and the Nature of Mental Fragments

João C. Miranda

LanCog, University of Lisbon

24 February 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: An agent S is epistemically akratic if and only if (i) S believes that p and (ii) S believes that they shouldn’t believe that p. The main debate about epistemic akrasia concerns its characterization and explanation: what is needed is an account of what mechanisms make cases of epistemic akrasia possible. Greco (2014) and Kearl (2020) have defended fragmentalist accounts of epistemic akrasia: there is not one unique belief-formation system, and the possibility of epistemic akrasia rests on the possibility of conflict between the different systems. I’ll argue that their versions fail, for their responses to pressing worries about the meta-epistemological theory that underlies them – epistemic expressivism – are unsatisfactory. I will then rescue fragmentalism by proposing a version that focuses, not on the linguistic/non-linguistic nature of the systems, but on the constraints under which beliefs are formed. Doing so will allow me to appeal to well established literature in psychology about a distinction between explicit reasoning and heuristic-based reasoning (Gigerenzer, Todd and the ABC Research Group, 1999; Kanheman, 2011). I’ll argue that, not only is there better empirical support for my version of fragmentalism, but it also avoids the problems that plagued Greco and Kearl’s account.

The Special Composition Question: An Analysis of Carmichael’s Commonsense Account

Marta Campdelacreu

University of Barcelona

17 February 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: This is Peter van Inwagen’s well-known Special Composition Question: when do some things compose something? Recently, Carmichael has proposed and defended an appealing new answer which, unlike the current most popular answers, agrees with common sense regarding composition. Moreover, he claims, it helps to solve the puzzle of The Ship of Theseus and the puzzle of Dion and Theon. In this talk, I will argue that Carmichael’s proposal includes an unjustified and arbitrary distinction between the relation that common sense bears to objects and the relation that it bears to events. Moreover, I will also argue that, against what he claims, his proposal does not help to solve the puzzles mentioned before.

The Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon (CFUL) is interested in receiving proposals from candidates wishing to develop research activities leading to the award of a Doctorate in Philosophy (with particular emphasis on the History of Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy or Practical Philosophy), with the CFUL as the host institution, in the context of the Call for PhD Research Grants – 2023, promoted by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) [opening announcement].

Interested parties are invited to express their interest until March 10, 2023, by sending the following information, in English or Portuguese:

e-mail: c.filosofia@letras.ulisboa.pt

Subject: BID 2023 FCT_ [the applicant’s name]

Send:

1) Research Plan

2) Curriculum Vitae in PDF

3) Name of the supervisor with whom you would like to work / research group where you would like to develop your research.

The decision on which applications the CFUL will accept will be communicated in aprox. one week upon receipt.

The FCT call will be open from March 1 to March 31, 2023, at 17:00 (Lisbon time) and must contain the following elements:

1) Detailed research plan

2) Curriculum Vitae (on the CIÊNCIAVITAE platform)

3) Motivation letter

4) Two recommendation letters

5) In case of academic degrees awarded by foreign higher education institutions, recognition of those degrees and conversion of the respective final classification into the Portuguese classification scale.(*)

(*) The recognition of foreign academic degrees and diplomas as well as the conversion of the final classification into the Portuguese classification scale may be requested in any public higher education institution, or in the Directorate-General for Higher Education (DGES). Regarding this matter, we suggest that you consult the DGES portal at the following address:https://www.dges.gov.pt/en/pagina/degree-and-diploma-recognition

Ferruccio Andolfi

University of Parma

Detractores e defensores da compaixão*

14 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Os filósofos em geral têm sido cautelosos ao tratar da questão da compaixão. Isto é particularmente notório do lado racionalista da filosofia: de Sócrates aos estóicos, de Spinoza a Kant. A virtude terapêutica do conhecimento em relação ao mal, concebido como ignorância, tem sido oposta à sensibilidade incontrolada que se expressaria nesse movimento da alma. A transposição mais conhecida do tema religioso e sapiencial da compaixão para o campo da filosofia moral ocidental deve-se a Schopenhauer, que recorre a fontes tanto cristãs como budistas. A apresentação reconstrói esta posição, mas também denuncia os seus limites: em primeiro lugar o de não considerar a sua ligação com o instinto de felicidade. Além disso, na proposta de Schopenhauer, ela enquadra-se num sistema metafísico que não considera a pertença de cada ser a si próprio como egoísta e, portanto, imoral e está orientado para uma intimidade fusional dos seres. A tese apoiada, com Simmel, é que a compaixão, pelo contrário, só pode ser real na condição de que a distinção entre os seres seja mantida.

* Apresentação em italiano com disponibilização do texto em tradução portuguesa.

Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. University of Lisbon (Lisbon, Portugal)

We invite submissions to the PLEXUS inaugural conference, which will take place on May 24-26 at the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. Submissions can be on any topic related to substructural logics and should be suitable for 45 minutes presentations.

Please send an anonymised abstract of at most 500 words alongside a separate title page, containing the name of the author and the title of the presentation to bdicher@edu.ulisboa.pt before 15 February 2023. Please include the acronym ‘PLEXUS’ in the email’s subject field. Notifications of acceptance will be sent before 15 February 2023.

Submissions from early-stage scholars and postgraduate students, as well as from members of groups currently underrepresented in academia, are strongly encouraged. Some financial support to cover travel and accommodation costs will be available for postgraduate students. Should you wish to be considered for financial support, please state so on the ‘title page’.

Luca Possati

University of Porto

Quantum Technologies and the City: Exploring the Ethical and Social Implications of the Applications of Quantum Technologies to Urban Design

7 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In this presentation I intend to understand the ethical and social impact of quantum technologies (QTs) applied to urban design and in particular to the problem of infrastructure maintenance. Infrastructure maintenance has a highly ethical dimension because there is a moral duty to repair and modify structures that support social life. The ethical consequences of poor maintenance not only affect the life of a society but also have a differential impact on social groups. QTs offer very important resources to improve the maintenance of urban infrastructures. Due to their nature, these technologies can have significant ethical and social impact, both in a positive and negative sense, on the evolution of urban design. For this reason, QTs require a new approach to the ethics of technology that is more sensitive to the differences and identity of the social groups that animate the urban context. In the case of QTs, the ethics of technology must go beyond the distributive paradigm and the ideal of impartiality to instead assume an approach more centered on oppression, violence, domination, and the relationship between social identities.

Filipe Ferreira

PUC-São Paulo

The Death of Man

31 January 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

However strange it may sound initially, I claim that we are currently living the event of the death of man. By man I mean, following Michel Foucault in Les mots et les choses, a particular configuration of Western man, beginning in the end of the eighteenth century, where man appears as the principal actor of a new episteme, the modern one. It is he who I believe is today living the event of his death, even while repressing it violently, or, it seems, especially so. In this research seminar, I will try to detail how I understand this event to have come into being, in these first decades of the twenty-first century. In this sense, I propose to further develop Foucault’s ‘archeology of the human sciences’ into a new one, focused on man, which I call the ‘archeology of man’s death’. I understand, in this second archeology, the twentieth century nouveau roman (Samuel Beckett, in particular) and post-war cinema, as analyzed by Gilles Deleuze in The Time-Image, to be fertile ‘archeological sites’, replete with vestiges of the event of man’s death. My main claim is that the experience of his death is the experience of difference, from which, if man is to regain himself, it will be through his Others, in multiple becomings, becoming-woman, child, black, Arawaté, plant, in becomings where man no longer is. At least in their best versions, the human sciences are understood to play a fundamental epistemic role in the constitution of these becomings. Man’s resistance to his death will also be considered as what gives sense to, defining today, the ‘political’.