"Toward Modeling
and Automating Ethical Decision Making: Design, Implementation,
Limitations, and Responsibilities" (with Gregory S. Reed),
forthcoming in Topoi [Abstract]
One recent priority
of the
U.S. government is developing autonomous robotic systems. The U.S. Army
has funded research to design a metric of evil to support military
commanders with ethical decision-making and, in the future, allow
robotic military systems to make autonomous ethical judgments. We use
this particular project as a case study for efforts that seek to frame
morality in quantitative terms. We report preliminary results from this
research, describing the assumptions and limitations of a program that
assesses the relative evil of two courses of action. We compare this
program to other attempts to simulate ethical decision-making, assess
possibilities for overcoming the trade-off between input simplification
and output reliability, and discuss the responsibilities of users and
designers in implementing such programs. We conclude by discussing the
implications that this project highlights for the successes and
challenges of developing automated mechanisms for ethical decision
making.
"Diagrams
as Locality Aids for Explanation and
Model Construction in Cell Biology" (with Olaf
Wolkenhauer),
forthcoming in Biology and Philosophy. [Abstract]
We argue that diagrams in biology can provide functional explanations
and facilitate the construction of mathematical models. Extending
beyond prior analyses, we also show how diagrams facilitate the
construction of mathematical models, we argue that the diagrams permit
nomological explanations of the cell cycle, and we argue that what
makes diagrams integral and indispensible for explanation and model
construction is their nature as locality aids: they group together
information that is to be used together in a way that sentential
representations do not.
"General
Relativity and the Standard Model: Why Evidence for One Does Not
Disconfirm the Other", Studies in History and Philosophy of
Modern Physics 40 (May 2009). [Abstract]
I develop a program for understanding why General Relativity and the
Standard Model of particle physics are not disconfirmed by evidence
about phenomena for which, respectively, quantum effects and gravity
matter.
"Is
All Abstracting
Idealizing?", The Reasoner 2:4 (April 2008): 4-5. [Abstract] I propose a necessary condition
for a substantial distinction between abstracting from a property of a
physical system and idealizing that property.
"Fazang: Hermeneutics,
Mereology, and Causation", forthcoming in Dao Companion to
Chinese Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Sandra A. Wawrytko
(Springer). [Abstract] This chapter
surveys Fazang's hermeneutics, accompanying theories of causation, and
the teaching of the six characteristics that results from his preferred
theory of causation. The chapter shows how Fazang's commitment to an
ideal of inclusivity motivates these views, it evaluates extant
proposals about what justifies his views, and it compares those views
to those of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The chapter concludes with
a brief discussion of whether Fazang's metaphysics is paradoxical.
"Mereological
Heuristics
for Huayan Buddhism", Philosophy
East & West 60:3 (July 2010). [Abstract]
This paper attempts to explain, in a way familiar to contemporary ways
of thinking about mereology and in a way that does not violate the
principle of non-contradiction, why someone might accept some
prima-facie puzzling remarks by the Chinese Buddhist philosopher
Fazang, such as his claims that the eye of a lion is its ear and that a
rafter of a building is identical to the building itself.
"Nyaya-Vaisesika
Inherence, Buddhist Reduction, and Huayan Total Power", Journal
of Chinese Philosophy 37:s1
(June 2010). [Abstract] Huayan
Buddhism offers a solution to the Problem of the One over the Many that
preserves the reality of wholes without treating the whole-part
relation as eternal. I reconstruct the details of this solution, and
contrast it with competitors from Nyāya-Vaisheshika and Indian
Buddhism.
"Fazang's
Total Power
Mereology: An Interpretive Analytic Reconstruction", Asian
Philosophy 19:3 (November 2009). [Abstract]
This paper interprets some of Fazang's mereological remarks--that
wholes are in each of their parts and that each part of a whole is
every other part of the whole--and reconstructs his arguments for these
remarks. In the interpretation I favor, Fazang means that the presence
of a whole's part suffices for the presence of the whole and that the
presence of any such part is both necessary and sufficient for the
presence of any other part.
"The
Logic of Soku
in the Kyoto School", Philosophy East & West 54:3 (July
2004). [Abstract] This paper presents
a formal system for the logic of soku that relies upon a distinction
between internal and external negation and preserves the principle of
non-contradiction.
"Civility,
Sincerity, and Ambiguity", Alabama Humanities Review 1:1
(2011). [Abstract] Winner, 2011
Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award
"An
Arrovian Impossibility Theorem for the Epistemology of Disagreement",
Logos & Episteme 3:1 (2012): 97-115. [Abstract]
According to conciliatory views about the epistemology of disagreement,
when epistemic peers have conflicting doxastic attitudes toward a
proposition and fully disclose to one another the reasons for their
attitudes toward that proposition, each peer should always change his
attitude to one that is closer to the attitudes of his disagreeing
peers. According to pure higher-order evidence views, higher-order
evidencealways suffices to determine the rational response to
disagreement among epistemic peers. Using an analogue of Arrow's
Impossibility Theorem, I argue that no conciliatory and pure
higher-order evidence view can provide a true and general answer to the
question of what disagreeing peers should do after fully disclosing to
each other the (first-order) reasons for their conflicting doxastic
attitudes.
"Idealizing,
Abstracting,
and Semantic Dispositionalism" (with Adam Podlaskowski), European
Journal of Philosophy 20:1 (2012): 145-165. [Abstract]
According to certain dispositional accounts of meaning, an agent's
meaning is determined by the dispositions that an idealized version of
this agent has in optimal conditions. We argue that such attempts
cannot properly fix meaning. For even if there is a way to determine
which features of an agent should be idealized without appealing to
what the agent means, there is no non-circular way to determine how
those features should be idealized. We sketch an alternative
dispositional account that avoids this problem, according to whichan
agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an abstract
version of this agent has in optimal conditions.
"Unreliable
Informant
Testimony" (with Jeffrey Neuschatz), in Conviction of the
Innocent: Lessons from Psychological Research, ed. Brian Cutler
(Washington, D.C.: APA Press, 2012): 213-238. [Abstract]
The goals of this
chapter are fourfold. First, we outline the problems associated with
jailhouse informant testimony by giving a brief history of the practice
of using informants and reviewing the relevant data on wrongful
convictions, major cases, and infamous informants. Second, we identify
the foundations for the research on informant testimony. Third, we
review the current psychological research on informant testimony.
Finally, we discuss suggested legal reforms pertaining to informant
testimony and their likely efficacy in light of the psychological
research.
"Is
Theology Respectable
As Metaphysics?", Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science
42:3 (September 2008): 579-592. [Abstract]
I discuss theology's intellectual standing as a metaphysical discipline
in light of the criteria that make modern science reputable. I conclude
that, barring the development of an epistemology of modern science that
is amenable to theology, theology as metaphysics is intellectually
disreputable.
"Evidence
and Falsification: Challenges to Gregory Peterson", Zygon:
Journal of Religion & Science 42:3 (September 2008): 599-604. [Abstract] This is a reply to Gregory
Peterson's "Maintaining Respectability," which itself is a response to
my "Is Theology Respectable as Metaphysics?" Here I elaborate upon the
claims, in the latter article, that theology treats God's existence as
an absolute certitude immune to refutation and that modern science
constitutes the canons of respectable reasoning for metaphysical
disciplines.
Ineliminable
Idealizations, Phase Transitions, and Irreversible Behavior,
Ph.D Dissertation, The Ohio State University (2006). [Abstract] This is my dissertation. It
focuses on how to best interpret certain idealizations that occur in
scientific explanations of phase transitions and irreversible behavior.
