Author Archives: kyotophil

CAPEレクチャー(Wen-fang Wang氏)のお知らせ

国立陽明大学からWen-fang Wang氏をお招きにして、CAPEレクチャーを開催いたしますので、奮ってご参加ください。

日時:2月1日(金)16:30-18:00

場所:京都大学総合研究2号館1階第10演習室 (No.34 of this map)

スピーカー:Prof. Wen-fang Wang (National Yang-Ming University)

タイトル:Why Is Weak AI, Let Alone Strong AI, Impossible — R. Penrose vs. S. Russell & P. Norvig?

アブストラクト:

By ‘weak AI’, the authors mean a computational machine whose observable and measurable performances are at least as good as those of an average matured human being in every respect involving intelligence, whereas ‘computational’ refers to a machine that takes series of digital signals as inputs no matter whether it has the ability to learn or not. R. Penrose argues in his The Emperor’s New Mind (1989) and Shadows of the Mind that computational weak AI is impossible (he does not exclude the possibility that some non-computational weak AI may still be possible). Penrose’s argument improves and evolves from that of J. R. Lucas in “Minds, machines, and Godel” (1961) but retains the core part of the latter, i.e., the appeal to Godel’s second incompleteness theorem. Penrose’s argument is no doubt a crucial one, simply in views of the number of citations before and after 1994. However, because of its complexity, Penrose’s argument has not been fully understood even after Penrose had collected 20 objections and responded (quite successfully according to my evaluation) to them in his 1994 book to avoid misunderstanding. For one example, perhaps also under the influence of J. Searle’s Chinese room argument, many philosophers still incline to think that weak AI is certainly possible while the strong one is not. For another example, computer scientists S. Russell and P. Norvig argue confusingly (according to my evaluation) in their influential book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2009) that Penrose’s argument is implausible for at least three objectionable reasons. In this presentation, the authors will (1) reconstruct Penrose’s complex argument in a simple but sensible way, (2) point out the weakness and confusions in Russell & Norvig’s objections, and (3) therefore show the danger and limitation of the philosophical method of thought experiment. Russell & Norvig’s misunderstanding of Penrose’s argument shows especially that there is still a big gap of mutual misunderstanding between philosophers and computer scientists that has to be crossed over in order to get a breakthrough development both in AI science and in AI philosophy.

Keywords: weak AI, Godel’s incompleteness theorem, thought experiment, philosophical argument.

CAPEレクチャー(István Zárdai氏)のお知らせ

1月22日(火)に慶應大学からIstván Zárdai氏をお招きして、京都大学吉田キャンパスにおいてCAPEレクチャーを開催いたしますので、奮ってご参加ください。

また、Zárdai氏は前日の21日(月)にも立命館大学衣笠キャンパスにおいて、行為についての講演をなされますので、こちらにもぜひご参加ください。

日時:1月22日(火)16:30-18:00

場所: 京都大学文学部校舎地下小会議室 (No.8 of this map)

スピーカー:Dr. István Zárdai (Keio University)

タイトル:Is There an Essential Difference Between Actions and Events?

アブストラクト:Some philosophers – notably, John Macmurray and E. J. Lowe – have defended the claim that there is an essential difference between actions and events. The former are agents’ bringing about results and should not be conflated with the latter, which are merely events. In my talk I survey their arguments for this stance and identify its source. My diagnosis is that they are committed to think of persons as special sources of change. I argue that it is plausible to hold that persons have special capacities and abilities and these distinguish some of their actions from other events, nevertheless agents’ doings are still occurrences. These capacities and abilities can be made sense of as powers or dispositions, and their activation as an occurrence. This means that not only human agents can act, and their acts are not essentially different from other occurrences in the world. Hence, other agents – animals and sufficiently complex AIs for example – might be acting in similar ways.

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主催:立命館大学間文化現象学研究センター

共催:立命館大学人文科学研究所

日時:1月21日(月)16:30-18:00

場所: 立命館大学衣笠キャンパス 末川記念会館 第3会議室(http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/accessmap/kinugasa/

スピーカー:Dr. István Zárdai (Keio University)

タイトル:Intentional, Unintentional, Voluntary, Involuntary

アブストラクト:A large number of philosophers working on actions, mind and ethics have accepted since Donald Davidson’s ‘Agency’ that all actions are intentional under at least one of their descriptions. All such actions are rational in the sense that the agent performs them for a reason. They make sense to the agent and we can understand why the agent does them. I argue against this claim, and explore views, inspired by Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s positions, which deny that all action is intentional under at least one of its descriptions. Engaging with the work of Rosalind Hursthouse, Richard Teichman, John Hyman, and Hong Yu Wong, I argue that there are both intentional and unintentional actions, as well as non-intentional actions. Furthermore, actions can be unintentional and also voluntary or involuntary. And there is also a category of non-voluntary, arational actions. Many automatic movements belong into this last category. Hence, what counts as action is much broader than what we do for a reason, and as such, what is rational.

An International Round Table Discussion on Self のお知らせ

以下の要領でInternational Round Table Discussionが開催されます。奮ってご参加ください。

An International Round Table Discussion on Self

日時:1月11日(金) 13:00-14:30

場所:京都大学文学部校舎地下小会議室 (No.8 of this map)

発表者:

Prof. Yumiko INUKAI (University of Massachusetts, Boston) ‘A Self as a Fictitious Agent: Construction of a Self in Hume and James’ 

Prof. Yasuo DEGUCHI (Kyoto University)

Ms. Laÿna Droz (Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University)

ワークショップ ‘Kyoto Workshop on Self I’ のお知らせ

12月18日(火)に京都大学吉田キャンパスにおいて、Denis McManus氏、Hibi Pendleton氏、Graham Priest氏と共に自己に関するワークショップを開催いたしますので、ぜひお越しください。

WSホームページ:https://sites.google.com/view/priestfest2018/related-events?authuser=0

Kyoto Workshop on Self I

日時:12月18日(火) 9:00-17:15

会場:京都大学楽友会館1階会議室(No.96 of this map) 

Program

09:00–10:30 Denis McManus (University of Southampton) ”TBA

10:30–10:45 Coffee

10:45–12:15 Hibi Pendleton (Colgate University) ”Ideals and Self-Clarification: Developing Iris Murdoch’s Concept of Vision

12:15–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:30 Yasuo Deguchi (Kyoto University) ”Self-as-We: From Entrustment of Somatic Agency to a Holistic Self

15:30–15:45 Coffee

15:45–17:15 Graham Priest (CUNY) ”Fictional Objects Fictional Subjects

ワークショップ ‘What’s So Bad about Dialetheism?’ のお知らせ

12月15日から17日までの3日間にかけて、国内外から多数の先生方をお招きして、Dialetheismに関するワークショップを開催いたしますので、ぜひお越しください。

WSホームページ:https://sites.google.com/view/priestfest2018/home?authuser=0

What’s So Bad about Dialetheism? From Historical, Logical and Philosophical Points of View 

1215日:Logic

時間:9:30-18:00

会場:京都大学楽友会館1階会議室(No.96 of this map) 

09:30–09:45 Opening of the conference

09:45–10:00 Anna Malavisi (Western Connecticut State University) “Beyond the limits of dialetheism

10:00–11:30 Zach Weber (University of Otago) Under the Routley Set

11:30–12:30 Luis Estrada-González (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) Dialetheists and other friends of contradictions

12:30–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:00 Colin Caret (Yonsei University) ”Transconsistent Possibilities”

15:00–16:00 Roderic A Girle (University of Queensland)Free logic and dialethic domains”

16:00–16:30 Coffee break

16:30–18:00 Heinrich Wansing (Ruhr University Bochum) ”One heresy and one orthodoxy. On dialetheism and the non-normativity of logic

1216日:Metaphysics

時間:9:00-17:00

会場:京都大学芝蘭会館研修室1(Access information

09:00–10:30 Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University) ”Reading Nagarjuna in New York

10:30–11:30 Paolo Bonardi (University of Geneva)”Dialetheism and Rational Belief

11:30–13:00 Lunch

13:00–14:00 Naoya Fujikawa (Tokyo Metropolitan University) ”Paraempty names and the strengthened paradox of ineffability 

14:00–15:00 Koji Tanaka (Australian National University) ”One or many? 

15:00–15:30 Coffee break

15:30–17:00 Achille Varzi (Columbia University) ”Boundary Contradictions 

1217日:History

時間:9:30-17:00

会場:京都大学芝蘭会館研修室1(Access information

09:30–11:00 Denis McManus (University of Southampton) “Heidegger, dialetheism and all that is: On paradoxes, and questions, of being

11:00–12:00 Francesco Gandellini (University of Turin) ”Heidegger’s Metaphysics between Consistencies and Inconsistencies

12:00–13:45 Lunch

13:45–15:15 Ed Witherspoon (Colgate University) “Later Wittgenstein on the Determinacy of Meaning and the Unity of Thought

15:15–15:30 Coffee break

15:30–17:00 Graham Priest (CUNY) ”A Logue

CAPEレクチャー(Filippo Casati氏)のお知らせ

以下の要領でCAPEレクチャーが開催されます。奮ってご参加ください。

日時:12月14日()18:15-19:45

場所: 京都大学文学部校舎地下大会議室 (No.8 of this map)

スピーカー:Filippo Casati (Visiting Assistant Professor, Lehigh University)

タイトル:Resurrecting the ‘Being and Time Project’

アブストラクト:In his ‘Ontological Pluralism and the Being and Time Project’, Denis McManus has convincingly argued that the philosophical project spelled out in Heidegger’s Being and Time faces an insurmountable difficulty. In my talk, I critically discuss McManus’ ideas. I claim that McManus is fundamentally right, even though his argument could be better off by appealing to some other textual evidences and to the recent debate about infinite regresses. Moreover, I argue that the so-called second Heidegger proposes a dialetheist solution to the problem discussed by McManus.

Kyoto University/UC San Diego Workshop on Selfのお知らせ

12月13日(木)にカリフォルニア大学サンディエゴ校よりJohn Evans氏, Jonathan Cohen氏, Matthew Fulkerson氏、マサチューセッツ・ボストン大学よりYumiko Inukai氏をお招きしてSelfに関するワークショップを開催いたします。事前登録は不要ですので、ぜひお越しください。

Kyoto University/UC San Diego Workshop on Self

Date: December 13, 2018

Time: 12:15-16:00

Venue: 京都大学吉田泉殿 Yoshida-Izumidono, Kyoto University (No.76 of this map)

Program

12:15-12:30   Opening

12:30-13:00   Takuro Onishi (Associate Professor, Kyoto University):

Egocentric Language Revisited

13:00-13:30   Matthew Fulkerson (Associate Professor, UCSD): 

Integrating the Self: Lessons from Peripersonal Space

13:30-14:00   Yumiko Inukai (Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston):

A Constructed Self and Pure Experience in James

14:00-14:20   Break

14:20-14:50   Jonathan Cohen (Professor, UCSD):

Many Molyneux Questions

14:50-15:20   Yasuo Deguchi (Professor, Kyoto University):

Self as We: Its Structure & Ontology

15:20-15:50   John Evans (Professor, UCSD):

The Soul and the Self in Contemporary U.S. Society: William James 100 Years Later

15:50-16:00   Closing

CAPEレクチャーとワークショップのお知らせ

12月11日、12日にカリフォルニア大学サンディエゴ校からJohn Evans, Jonathan Cohen, Matthew Fulkersonの3人の先生方をお招きしてCAPEレクチャーを行いますので、どうぞお越しください。また、13日には3人の先生方とともにワークショップを開催しますので、こちらもお越しをお待ちしております。

CAPE Lecture: John Evans (Professor, University of California San Diego)

Date: 11th December, 2018

Time: 16:30-18:00

Venue: 文学部1階会議室 Meeting Room on the 1st floor of Faculty of Letters (No.8 of this map)

Title:

Human Gene Editing: The American Ethical Debate in Social Context

Abstract:

A few weeks ago a Chinese scientist announced that he had facilitated the creation of two genetically modified girls.  If true, this would be the first instance of both germline human gene editing and the first germline genetic enhancement – two ethical lines that had previously been critical in the American ethical debates about gene editing.  While American scientists and bioethicists were critical of this experiment because safety protocols were not followed, they nonetheless endorsed the goals of the research.  In my talk I explain how an ethical consensus in the 1970s to not engage in either germline or enhancement broke down to allow for endorsement of both acts.  Through a sociological examination of the argumentative structure in this public bioethical debate I also provide predictions for the viability of future moral lines that could be drawn in this debate, such as that between “disease” and “enhancement.”

Biography:

John H. Evans is the Tata Chancellor’s Chair of Social Science and the Co-director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego.  His career has focused on the sociological examination of ethical debates surrounding human biology, including his first book on the history of debates about human genetic modification, a second on the public perception of reproductive genetic technologies and a later book on the definitions of the human implied in biological research.  He was a member of the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Human Gene Editing.

CAPE Lecture: Jonathan Cohen (Professor, University of California San Diego)

Date: 12th December, 2018

Time: 15:00-16:30

Venue: 文学部地下小会議室 Meeting Room on the basement floor of Faculty of Letters (No.8 of this map)

Title:

Coherence and conversation

Abstract:

The sentence “The boss fired the employee who is always late” invites the defeasible inference that the speaker is attempting to convey that the lateness caused the firing (cf. “The boss fired the employee who is from Philadelphia”, which does not invite an analogous inference). We argue that, unlike more familiar processes for conveying extrasemantic content, such inferences do not arise in an attempt to rescue utterances from any kind of linguistic or communicative failure, such as from a violation of communicative norms based on principles of rationality/cooperativity, or the need to complete/expand a proposition so as to appropriately fix truth-conditional content. Rather, we argue that they arise from more basic, general cognitive strategies for building mental models of the world. Attention to such cases suggests that the forms of extrasemantic enrichment that have attracted the most theoretical attention to date (e.g., conversational implicature, impliciture) are in fact special cases of a more general, and more varied, phenomenon.

CAPE Lecture: Matthew Fulkerson (Associate Professor, University of California San Diego)

Date: 12th December, 2018

Time: 16:30-18:00

Venue: 文学部地下小会議室 Meeting Room on the basement floor of Faculty of Letters (No.8 of this map)

Title:

Emotional Perception

Abstract:

Some perceptual experiences seem to have an emotional element that makes both an affective and motivational difference in the content and character of the experience. I offer a novel account of these experiences that is inspired by related work on pain that I call the “Affective-Motivational Account.” Like typical sensory pain, perceptual experience should be understood as a complex state generated by both a sensory-discriminative component and a functionally distinct affective-motivational component. It is this latter system that provides such experiences with their emotional character. Such a view is strongly supported by the available empirical evidence and has the potential to address several longstanding philosophical puzzles about the relation between perception and emotion.

UCSD-Kyoto Workshop on Self

Date: 13th December, 2018

Time: 12:30-16:00

Venue: 吉田泉殿 Yoshida-Izumidono, Kyoto University (No.76 of this map)

Speakers: Jonathan Cohen (UCSD), Yasuo Deguchi (Kyoto), John Evans (UCSD), Matthew Fulkerson (UCSD), Yumiko Inukai (U. Massachusetts Boston), Takuro Onishi (Kyoto)

CAPEレクチャー(Prof. Hoffmann)のお知らせ

以下の要領で二件のCAPEレクチャーが開催されます。奮ってご参加ください。

日時:12月10日(月)17:00-18:30
場所: 京都大学文学部校舎1階会議室 (No.8 of this map)
スピーカー: Aviv Hoffmann  (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
タイトル: Facts As Truth-Makers
アブストラクト: I offer a theory according to which facts are mereological fusions of regions of what I call exemplification space, where each point is either a positive or a negative world-specific fact (such as the fact that Sophia is sad at w and the fact that it is not the case that Sophia is sad at w’, respectively). Then, I define propositional facts: facts which correspond to propositions. The definition refers to basic facts, which I define, and requires closure under Boolean operations of negation and conjunction on facts, which I also define. Thus characterized, facts are hyperintensional: necessarily equivalent facts need not be identical. Their hyperintensionality is grounded in a notion of aboutness which I define. Next, I offer a truth-maker theory that adds a new twist to the familiar view that facts make propositions true: I assign world-specific facts as world-specific truth-makers to propositions. This strategy avoids the pitfalls that beset the orthodox definition of truth-makers. Subsequently, I throw away the world-specific ladder: I define truth-makers that are not world-specific by fusing together world-specific truth-makers. My theory of facts is part of a doctrine I call metaphysical pointillism, which also includes a theory propositions. Taken together, the two theories have the consequence that truth-maker maximalism holds: every truth has a truth-maker.
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日時:12月13日(木)16:30-18:00
場所: Yoshida-Izumidono (No.76 of this map)
スピーカー: Aviv Hoffmann  (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
タイトル: Biregional Propositions
アブストラクト: Consider two fundamental questions in the metaphysics of propositions. What in the nature of a proposition enables it to be true (or false)? What in the nature of a proposition enables it to be about a given thing (especially, what enables necessarily equivalent propositions to be about distinct things)? To answer these questions, I offer the biregional theory of propositions. According to this theory, propositions inhabit what I call exemplification space where each point is a world-specific fact. I propose that propositions are (some) ordered pairs of disjoint regions of exemplification space: the first component of a pair corresponds to the truth of the proposition, and the second component of the pair corresponds to the falsity of the proposition. I answer the questions above as follows. A proposition is true (false) at a possible world iff some fact in the truth (falsity) region of the proposition is specific to that world. A proposition is about a thing iff some fact in either the truth or the falsity region of the proposition is about the thing.