[PhilPhys] Upcoming Lunchtime Talks: 10/14 - Oron Shagrir, 10/17 - Amanda Evans, 10/21 - Margaret Farrell, and 10/24 - Melinda Fagan

[Center for Phil Sci]

The Center for Philosophy of Science invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talks.  Attend in person, Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.    

Oron Shagrir

Tuesday, October 14 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom:  https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97226295421

Title: The mathematical objection to artificial (machine) intelligence

Abstract: 

Alan Turing develops the idea of machine intelligence in a series of lectures and papers between 1947 and 1952. In some of them he addresses the mathematical objection (his term) whose gist is the claim that humans can assert some mathematical truths that exceed the abilities of computing machines. We first ask why Turing took so seriously the mathematical objection. After all, even if some humans surpass machines in their mathematical abilities, this by itself does not undermine the project of machine intelligence. Our answer is that the mathematical objection raises a dilemma with respect to Turing’s core claims about machine intelligence and forces him to relinquish at least one of them. We then clarify and discuss Turing’s reply to the mathematical objection, namely, that the machine that plays against the human in the Turing test is not a static machine but an enhanced machine.

(Joint work with Ben Gershon)

Amanda Evans

Friday, October 17 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/95825689559

Title: Psychiatric Deep Brain Stimulation and the Ethics of Mechanistic Recovery

Abstract: 

Direct brain interventions like deep brain stimulation (DBS) raise unique ethical questions when applied to psychiatric disorders. While frameworks like the ethical parity principle suggest that functionally equivalent processes are ethically on par, I argue this view is mistaken in the psychiatric context precisely because it overlooks a crucial distinction: that between agential recovery, guided by the patient’s reasons and values, and mechanistic recovery, which works via a process that bypasses those values. I analyze a spectrum of treatments, using DBS for Parkinson’s disease as a baseline for an agency-restoring intervention, to demonstrate how the ethical stakes shift from case to case. I argue that these stakes become highest in the decision to consent to treatments designed to compel behaviors that bypass the patient’s endorsed values, a choice at the heart of disorders of profound ambivalence such as anorexia nervosa. Ultimately, this presents a fundamental challenge to informed consent that can only be properly understood by foregrounding the ethical difference between agential and mechanistic recovery.

Margaret Farrell

Tuesday, October 21 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97520433778

Title: What would imaginary ancestors do?

Abstract: 

In recent work on human cognitive evolution, several biologists and philosophers have proposed broad, synthetic hypotheses in which they attempt to bring together knowledge from a wide range of disciplines into comprehensive narratives. These hypotheses are historically focused and phylogenetically constrained, their temporal scope makes them well-suited to tracing gradual changes in selective pressures over time, and their sequential causal structure means they need not commit to one sort of cause over another and so can easily incorporate adaptive hypotheses as well as environmental events or developmental constraints.

But human evolutionary theorists interested in building broad, comprehensive histories face a challenge: an explanatory standard of high causal detail in an area where the ideal sorts of evidence are relatively scarce. Their first response is to cast their net widely: they generally use a wide variety of evidential sources. Then, to maximize detail in the face of limited evidence, theorists employ various epistemic strategies to make the most of the evidence they have. In this talk, I will describe one kind of strategy that theorists use and argue that there is a persistent challenge to making this kind of strategy.

The strategy is connecting, either functionally within the same organisms or evolutionarily over generations, putative cognitive capacities of ancestral hominins to other cognitive capacities for which material evidence is available. Making these connections involves what I call a close-enough judgment, which, though not formally problematic, constitutes a potential weak point in the construction of human cognitive evolutionary narratives. Sometimes, theorists take certain connections among cognitive capacities to be intuitively plausible – so much so that they accept and include them in their hypotheses. I argue that when they make these plausibility judgments, they are actually attempting (explicitly or implicitly) to reason from the perspective of an ancestral hominin. They reason about whether some inference would be easy, natural, or obvious for a hominin with only a hypothesized set of ancestral capacities. When they do this, they invoke their intuitive sense of ease or obviousness as evidence for the association among cognitive capacities. But such intuitions are systematically misleading, because they are influenced by the very cognitive capacity whose evolution the theorist seeks to explain.

Melinda Fagan

Friday, October 24 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92610452383

Title: Explanatory particularism in scientific practice

Abstract: 

I introduce a new approach to studying explanation across the sciences, which I term “explanatory particularism” (EP). EP differs from other philosophical accounts of explanation in taking social aspects of science as primary. Alongside recent defenses of pluralism about explanation, EP rejects the traditional idea that there is one kind of explanation common to all sciences (and everyday life). Instead, multiple styles of explanation flourish in local contexts, intersecting with one another in diverse ways. More radical than other forms of explanatory pluralism, my particularist approach directs philosophers’ attention to often overlooked aspects of scientific practice: interdisciplinary collaboration and conflict, interlinked aspects of understanding, and a pro-social image of science as diverse yet unified. After introducing the particularist approach, I’ll discuss some of its main implications and applications.

This talk will be available online (it will not be recorded): Zoom https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92610452383

[Center for Phil Sci]

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[Center for Phil Sci via spsp-members]

The Center for Philosophy of Science invites you to join us for our
Lunch Time Talks. Attend in person, Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the
Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh or visit our live

stream on YouTube at *https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg>*.

*Oron Shagrir*

Tuesday, October 14 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
This talk will be available online: Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97226295421
Title: The mathematical objection to artificial (machine) intelligence
Abstract:
Alan Turing develops the idea of machine intelligence in a series of
lectures and papers between 1947 and 1952. In some of them he addresses the
mathematical objection (his term) whose gist is the claim that humans can
assert some mathematical truths that exceed the abilities of computing
machines. We first ask why Turing took so seriously the mathematical
objection. After all, even if some humans surpass machines in their
mathematical abilities, this by itself does not undermine the project of
machine intelligence. Our answer is that the mathematical objection raises
a dilemma with respect to Turing’s core claims about machine intelligence
and forces him to relinquish at least one of them. We then clarify and
discuss Turing’s reply to the mathematical objection, namely, that the
machine that plays against the human in the Turing test is not a static
machine but an enhanced machine.
(Joint work with Ben Gershon)

*Amanda Evans*

Friday, October 17 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
This talk will be available online: Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/95825689559

*Title: *Psychiatric Deep Brain Stimulation and the Ethics of Mechanistic
Recovery
*Abstract: *

Direct brain interventions like deep brain stimulation (DBS) raise unique
ethical questions when applied to psychiatric disorders. While frameworks
like the ethical parity principle suggest that functionally equivalent
processes are ethically on par, I argue this view is mistaken in the
psychiatric context precisely because it overlooks a crucial distinction:
that between agential recovery, guided by the patient’s reasons and values,
and mechanistic recovery, which works via a process that bypasses those
values. I analyze a spectrum of treatments, using DBS for Parkinson’s
disease as a baseline for an agency-restoring intervention, to demonstrate
how the ethical stakes shift from case to case. I argue that these stakes
become highest in the decision to consent to treatments designed to compel
behaviors that bypass the patient’s endorsed values, a choice at the heart
of disorders of profound ambivalence such as anorexia nervosa. Ultimately,
this presents a fundamental challenge to informed consent that can only be
properly understood by foregrounding the ethical difference between
agential and mechanistic recovery.

*Margaret Farrell*

*close-enough
judgment*, which, though not formally problematic, constitutes a potential

weak point in the construction of human cognitive evolutionary narratives.
Sometimes, theorists take certain connections among cognitive capacities to
be intuitively plausible – so much so that they accept and include them in
their hypotheses. I argue that when they make these plausibility judgments,
they are actually attempting (explicitly or implicitly) to reason from the
perspective of an ancestral hominin. They reason about whether some
inference would be easy, natural, or obvious for a hominin with only a
hypothesized set of ancestral capacities. When they do this, they invoke
their intuitive sense of ease or obviousness as evidence for the
association among cognitive capacities. But such intuitions are
systematically misleading, because they are influenced by the very
cognitive capacity whose evolution the theorist seeks to explain.

*Melinda Fagan*

Friday, October 24 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
This talk will be available online: Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92610452383

*Title: *Explanatory particularism in scientific practice
*Abstract: *

I introduce a new approach to studying explanation across the sciences,
which I term “explanatory particularism” (EP). EP differs from other
philosophical accounts of explanation in taking social aspects of science
as primary. Alongside recent defenses of pluralism about explanation, EP
rejects the traditional idea that there is one kind of explanation common
to all sciences (and everyday life). Instead, multiple styles of
explanation flourish in local contexts, intersecting with one another in
diverse ways. More radical than other forms of explanatory pluralism, my
particularist approach directs philosophers’ attention to often overlooked
aspects of scientific practice: interdisciplinary collaboration and
conflict, interlinked aspects of understanding, and a pro-social image of
science as diverse yet unified. After introducing the particularist
approach, I’ll discuss some of its main implications and applications.

This talk will be available online (*it will not be recorded*): Zoom
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92610452383
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[Center for Phil Sci]

The Center for Philosophy of Science invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talks.  Attend in person, Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.    

Oron Shagrir

Tuesday, October 14 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom:  https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97226295421

Title: The mathematical objection to artificial (machine) intelligence

Abstract: 

Alan Turing develops the idea of machine intelligence in a series of lectures and papers between 1947 and 1952. In some of them he addresses the mathematical objection (his term) whose gist is the claim that humans can assert some mathematical truths that exceed the abilities of computing machines. We first ask why Turing took so seriously the mathematical objection. After all, even if some humans surpass machines in their mathematical abilities, this by itself does not undermine the project of machine intelligence. Our answer is that the mathematical objection raises a dilemma with respect to Turing’s core claims about machine intelligence and forces him to relinquish at least one of them. We then clarify and discuss Turing’s reply to the mathematical objection, namely, that the machine that plays against the human in the Turing test is not a static machine but an enhanced machine.

(Joint work with Ben Gershon)

Amanda Evans

Friday, October 17 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/95825689559

Title: Psychiatric Deep Brain Stimulation and the Ethics of Mechanistic Recovery

Abstract: 

Direct brain interventions like deep brain stimulation (DBS) raise unique ethical questions when applied to psychiatric disorders. While frameworks like the ethical parity principle suggest that functionally equivalent processes are ethically on par, I argue this view is mistaken in the psychiatric context precisely because it overlooks a crucial distinction: that between agential recovery, guided by the patient’s reasons and values, and mechanistic recovery, which works via a process that bypasses those values. I analyze a spectrum of treatments, using DBS for Parkinson’s disease as a baseline for an agency-restoring intervention, to demonstrate how the ethical stakes shift from case to case. I argue that these stakes become highest in the decision to consent to treatments designed to compel behaviors that bypass the patient’s endorsed values, a choice at the heart of disorders of profound ambivalence such as anorexia nervosa. Ultimately, this presents a fundamental challenge to informed consent that can only be properly understood by foregrounding the ethical difference between agential and mechanistic recovery.

Margaret Farrell

Tuesday, October 21 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97520433778

Title: What would imaginary ancestors do?

Abstract: 

In recent work on human cognitive evolution, several biologists and philosophers have proposed broad, synthetic hypotheses in which they attempt to bring together knowledge from a wide range of disciplines into comprehensive narratives. These hypotheses are historically focused and phylogenetically constrained, their temporal scope makes them well-suited to tracing gradual changes in selective pressures over time, and their sequential causal structure means they need not commit to one sort of cause over another and so can easily incorporate adaptive hypotheses as well as environmental events or developmental constraints.

But human evolutionary theorists interested in building broad, comprehensive histories face a challenge: an explanatory standard of high causal detail in an area where the ideal sorts of evidence are relatively scarce. Their first response is to cast their net widely: they generally use a wide variety of evidential sources. Then, to maximize detail in the face of limited evidence, theorists employ various epistemic strategies to make the most of the evidence they have. In this talk, I will describe one kind of strategy that theorists use and argue that there is a persistent challenge to making this kind of strategy.

The strategy is connecting, either functionally within the same organisms or evolutionarily over generations, putative cognitive capacities of ancestral hominins to other cognitive capacities for which material evidence is available. Making these connections involves what I call a close-enough judgment, which, though not formally problematic, constitutes a potential weak point in the construction of human cognitive evolutionary narratives. Sometimes, theorists take certain connections among cognitive capacities to be intuitively plausible – so much so that they accept and include them in their hypotheses. I argue that when they make these plausibility judgments, they are actually attempting (explicitly or implicitly) to reason from the perspective of an ancestral hominin. They reason about whether some inference would be easy, natural, or obvious for a hominin with only a hypothesized set of ancestral capacities. When they do this, they invoke their intuitive sense of ease or obviousness as evidence for the association among cognitive capacities. But such intuitions are systematically misleading, because they are influenced by the very cognitive capacity whose evolution the theorist seeks to explain.

Melinda Fagan

Friday, October 24 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

This talk will be available online:  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92610452383

Title: Explanatory particularism in scientific practice

Abstract: 

I introduce a new approach to studying explanation across the sciences, which I term “explanatory particularism” (EP). EP differs from other philosophical accounts of explanation in taking social aspects of science as primary. Alongside recent defenses of pluralism about explanation, EP rejects the traditional idea that there is one kind of explanation common to all sciences (and everyday life). Instead, multiple styles of explanation flourish in local contexts, intersecting with one another in diverse ways. More radical than other forms of explanatory pluralism, my particularist approach directs philosophers’ attention to often overlooked aspects of scientific practice: interdisciplinary collaboration and conflict, interlinked aspects of understanding, and a pro-social image of science as diverse yet unified. After introducing the particularist approach, I’ll discuss some of its main implications and applications.

This talk will be available online (it will not be recorded): Zoom https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92610452383

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