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  • Luis Rosa 4:13 pm on June 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: philosophy TV, podcasts, videos   

    Philosophy TV – cool website 

    Do you know the Philosophy TV website? It is very cool and interesting – they have lots of videos with professional philosophers talking about recent topics on contemporary philosophy, e.g., deviant logic,moral realism, the problem of causation, epistemological disagreement, etc. Each topic is discussed by a pair of philosophers

    To watch the videos, click here. You also can download the mp3/mp4 files as podcasts, and hear it on your mobile player. Isn’t it cool to hear these philosophers talking while you’re on the bus or walking through the street?

     

  • Tiegue Rodrigues 9:14 pm on May 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

    Out Now!!!! The Book “Ensaios Sobre Epistemologia Contemporânea” 

    Hi Folks,

    Out Now!!!! The Book “Ensaios Sobre Epistemologia Contemporânea” (English Title: Essays in Contemporary Epistemology).

    This is a collection of essays that aim to offer an overview of the contemporary epistemological debate  for speakers and readers of Portuguese language.

    Be Good!

     

    • Tiaraju 11:04 am on July 9, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Table of contents?

    • Luis Rosa 8:09 pm on July 9, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      here it is, Tiaraju:

      • A justificação do conhecimento: duas perspectivas internalistas (Albertinho Luiz Gallina)
      • Indução como inferência à melhor explicação (Alexandre Luís Junges)
      • Ceticismo: justificação e fechamento (Alexandre Meyer Luz)
      • Sobre a viabilidade do fundacionismo moderado (Carlos Augusto Sartori)
      • Figuras ambíguas e a distinção entre ver e ver como (Eros Moreira de Carvalho)
      • Deontologismo: o argumento do involuntarismo doxástico (Felipe de Matos Muller)
      • Episteme e logos no Teeteto de Platão (José Lourenço Pereira da Silva)
      • Fundacionismo clássico e fundacionismo neoclássico (Kátia Martins Etcheverry)
      • O positivismo lógico e o projeto de uma epistemologia exata (Luiz Henrique de Araújo Dutra)
      • Sobre crenças, justificação e aceitabilidade: funderentismo e falibilismo (Remi Schorn)
      • Coerentismo e “trustworthiness” em Keith Lehrer (Rogel Esteves de Oliveira)
      • Matemática e conhecimento no Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Rogério Saucedo Correa)
      • Diferentes abordagens sobre o contextualismo epistemológico (Tiegue Vieira Rodrigues)
      • Infinitismo e justificação epistêmica (Tito Alencar Flores)

  • Luis Rosa 12:50 pm on February 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Adam robot, human mind, mental states, robot scientist, robotics, , scientific discovery   

    What robots can and cannot be? (Part 1) 

    Have you ever heard about a scientist called just “Adam”? As far as I know, he wrote no papers, but at the same time he made a scientific discovery about yeast genes. Adam isn’t human – Adam is a robot designed to do scientific works, such as surveying hypotheses and doing experiments.

    Who tells us is Ross D. King, from the Scientific American. He is concerned with building a robot scientist and with understanding science itself. The robot were developed by computational biology, and is a laboratory robot. Without humans manipulating input data, Adam is able to test hypotheses at the laboratory by means of independent experiments. He is actually working at the Aberystwyth University.

    I think this whole achievement is marvelous and exciting – and that this really can help us understand scientific work and scientific theories themselves. But now we could ask: is it possible for a robot to be a scientist? We will have a major philosophical problem if we take the following thesis as true:

    A) If x is a scientist, then x has mental states

    Why? Because the harder question is answering if it is possible to devise a cognitive mechanism capable of having mental states – we even don’t know exactly what is a mental state! And if (A) is true, prior to answering the question if it is possible for a robot to be a scientist, we must answer if it is possible for a robot to have mental states – or to have a mind. Now, what do you think?

     

    (Comic found here: http://www.bcs-sgai.org/micomp2/2006entries.html)

     

    • Chris 3:45 pm on February 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      I think that (A) is a false statement. If “being a scientist” means “doing scientific research and scientific achievements”, there does not need to be mental states. we can think of the scientist, in the wider sense, as a cognitive system manipulating certain kind of data and verifying hypotheses. This system need not be conscious of his own cognitive activity.

      • CD-4 7:34 pm on February 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        but having mental states is not fully analyzed by “being conscious of his own cognitive activity”. certainly, there are mental states whithout self-consciousness. Now, how do you conceive what it is a ‘cognitive activity’?
        another remark: fsopho said that prior to answering the question if it is possible for a robot to be a scientist, we must answer if it is possible for a robot to have mental states. And I would say that prior to answering the question if it is possible for a robot to have mental states, we must say what is a mental state – we must give a description which all along applies to the same things that ‘being a mental state’ apply.
        let me know your thoughts guys

    • fsopho 10:06 pm on February 28, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      well, I think you’re right CD-4 (are you the same as the CD-R from the previous posts?). The conceptual problem of the mental strikes again. BUT, we need to start from somewhere. Let us all just achieve some agreement with respect to what has been discussed already: we take for granted that having mental states is not fully analyzed by “being conscious of its own cognitive activity’, right?
      Let us just let aside the question of self-consciousness. What is at stake is the truth of (A) – and it seems that Chris suggested that having a certain kind of cognitive activity would be sufficient for an x to be a scientist. Trying to simplify things, we could also take for granted that there is a certain description of this specific cognitive activity. Now, the question is: the properties referred by that description also apply to ADAM (or any other artifficial mechanism supposed to do scientific work)?

      • CD-R 1:55 pm on March 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Where is that descrition? We’re supposed to take it as a general description of the scientific BEHAVIOR or of the scientific REASONING. I think that Fsopho is interested in the second option. So, scientific reasoning involves deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, empirical data gathering, the rising of hypotheses, the testing of hypotheses. Is this cognitive activity supposed to take place in ADAM?

        • CD-R 1:56 pm on March 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply

          Oh, I forgot. Yes, CD-R and CD-4 are the same guy. Sorry for that.
          ; )

      • Chris 2:01 pm on March 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        The cognitive activity you just described, CD-R, is something like what I meant to be sufficient for an individual being a scientist. Of course, this is a very wide description of what it is to be a scientist – and it certainly apply to ADAM.
        So, I insist, we must give up of (A) – it is a false statement.

        • susie 7:23 pm on March 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply

          (A) is certainly true: all the properties described by this very wide description you talk, Chris, supervene on ”having mental states’. try it! What is it for someone, or something, to reason? it is to operate with sentences or any bit of information, doing inferences from certain sentences to another – the conclusion. but it is a mental proccess. a computer isn’t reasoning just because it is processing data by means of an algorithm…
          Another way: what it is for someone, or something, to gather empirical data? it is to have sense data and empirical beliefs based on that data. now, we can only have this kind of data if we have a mind – there’s no other way, sorry…
          so, if the general description of the scientific work encompasses deductive reasoning and gathering data from the external world, I can’t

          • susie 7:23 pm on March 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply

            sorry, continuing:
            I can’t be a scientist if I have no mind !!!

            xx guys

            • Lucas 2:23 am on March 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

              Hello Louis!

              It just seems absurd to claim that a robot like the one described it’s a scientist, at least in any reasonable way. Does the robot thinks? Dos he have toughts of any kind? Does he understands anything at all about the activity he is doing?

              I supose the answer it’s negative to all questions. I also supose tha a scientist must have toughts of some kind, and must have beliefs about something. It must also do some kind of purposeful activity .

              Just think how strange , and how absurd, it would be to say that a robot like that has thoughts or beliefs about anything or even desires to find a solution to some kind of scientific problem .

              To me, the real and harder question it’s not IF they have minds and thoughts, but why they can’t think and reason, and why they don’t have minds.

      • fsopho 3:40 am on March 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Hello man,
        I think we get things right when we say that robots like ADAM don’t have self-awareness – none whatsoever. Now, with respect to a robot having a reasoning process, the question is certainly more doubtfull: we can conceive reasoning as a structural process operating in certain bits of information and producing certain outputs. These outputs can even be practical, In fact, the major concern at the very start of Artificial Intelligence was to design machines capable of planning, of doing something according to a limited input data.
        If we understand the concepts of ‘thinking’ and ‘reasoning’ apart from the mental hue, it turns out not being that absurd to conceive a robot like ADAM thinking or reasoning. BUT, the problem concerning belief and desire is serious. I myself can’t conceive a concept of ‘scientist’ or of ‘doing science’ without involving propositional attitudes as beliefs and suspensions of judgments. Yet, it could be that other states representing the same values as propositional attitudes in our reasoning were functional substitutes of these very propositional attitudes occuring in an artificial device. Let us say that the device can operate with 3 information-values (not to confuse with truth-values): 0, 0.5 and 1, each of them doing the same as disbeliefs, suspensions of judgment and beliefs do in our cognitive system.
        What do you think?

        P.S: (I wouldn’t take for granted the thesis that robots CAN’T think and reason and just ask why this is so. What evidences we have for or against it?)

    • Lucas 4:39 pm on March 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      I think you’re right in your P.S . We shouldn’t take for granted that robot’s can’t reason and think. We must have some strong evidence that this is impossibile ( in any sense of impossibility).

      Your question is interesting. If you conceive reasoing as simply producing certain outpts ( very similar to an inteligent action or the product of conscious thought), in response to information inputs , following an algorithm made by an inteligent and conscious being, you can say ADAM ( or the computer i’m using right now, for that matter) do reason and think. But it would be reasoning ( or even thinking) whith no tought involved, and that’s quite odd. You can’t ask what ADAM is thinking anymore than i can ask what my computer is thinking right now .

      I’m not even sure if we are using ” thinking” and ” reasoning” in the same sense.To me, it sound’s like an analogical use of ” reasoning” and ” thinking”. based on the similarity of results and products. It is similar to claim that a parrot trained to utter some sentences in response to human voice is speaking and engaging itself in a conversation. It is certanly not,!

      PS: i hope you can understand my bad english!

      • fsopho 6:48 pm on March 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Reasoning is a process, right?
        Let us just agree that it is a process. Now, if you agree with me, maybe adding some description of what kind of process is that, we can try to verify the thesis that this process only occur in humans, or in natural cognitive agents with central nervous system. This is true? What the concept of reasoning involves or entail that makes it impossible for an artificial device to have this kind of process?
        Emphasizing: the concept of reasoning, in order to be true the thesis that reasoning doesn’t apply to robots at all, must entail NECESSARILY a property inconsistent with the properties of these artificial devices.
        Maybe we would do better talking only about “reasoning”. “Thinking” is a more ambiguous concept. Some take it to be a process, others take it to be the same as the proposition, the content of reasoning, and still some others take it to be a propositional attitude “I think that P”, etc.

    • lucas 4:07 am on March 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Right, it’s a process. That entails that it’s not a state or an atribute, and it must be temporal : it flows in time .

      Anyway, i’m not claiming that it is impossible that an artificial device could reason. I’m only claiming that there are no one that do reason at the present time, because that would mean that there are artifical devices capable of judging or believing. I would change my mind if anyone could show me someone with these capacities.

      In reasoning, we conclude that something is true because something else is true. Therefore, it’s a process of acquiring new beliefs( or making new judgments) because we judge or beleve that something else it’s true. It’s the opposite of of direct or imediate beliefs, and it’s building blocks are judgments or beliefs, which are ropositional attitudes. Reasoning it’s a way of forming beliefs or making new judgments, and It is also a way of acquiring knowledge.

      That’s not a definition, but it is, at least, a partial caracterization of the concept. Maybe there are other conceptions of reasoning. But that’s a quite plausible conception, and also widespread.

      But what do you think about it? How do you conceive reasoning?

    • elusivethoughts 6:23 pm on March 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      This reminds me a distinction that, in my point of view, can be very insightful here. A distinction between “animal” and “human” (reflexive) Knowledge.

      It seems that if “Adam” is able to perform any sort of reasoning, or having something even close to beliefs these performances are completely distinct from what we humans have, and very distinct from what we are willing to accept as counting for knowledge.

      In this quotation Sosa says something about this:

      “Admittedly, there is a sense in which even a supermarket door ‘‘knows’’ when someone approaches, and in which a heating system ‘‘knows’’ when the temperature in a room rises above a certain setting. Such is ‘‘servo-mechanic’’knowledge. And there is an immense variety of animal knowledge, instinctive or learned, which facilitates survival and flourishing in an astonishingly rich diversity of modes and environments. Human knowledge is on a higher plane of sophistication, however, precisely because of its enhanced coherence and comprehensiveness and its capacity to satisfy self-reflective curiosity. Pure
      reliabilism is questionable as an adequate epistemology for such knowledge”. (SOSA, 1991)

      I can’t see how different ADAM is from the supermarket door. I don’t think that ADAM is able to perform self-reflective actions. Consequently , I don’t think it can have Knowledge as resulting from carefully examining its beliefs in order to determine which, if any, deserve to be maintained or excluded.

      • fsopho 6:32 pm on March 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Hy ElusiveThoughts!
        I have a suggestion: maybe that matter of animal/human knowledge deserver a post of its own. Let us talk about it and go to an epistemological talk, instead of keeping with this endless talk of mind in robots (hahhahahhaah). Can you post it with Sosa’s quotation?

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