Ethics of Abortion Workshop

Twelve scholars over two days presented and discussed issues in the ethics of abortion. Hosted by Drs. Molly Gardner and Perry Hendricks. Keynote speakers were Christopher Kaczor (Loyola-Marymount) and Alastair Norcross (Colorado, Boulder).

AI Spurs Increased Demand for Philosophers

“Artificial intelligence is raising existential questions about knowledge and humanity—and creating exploding demand for philosophy professors equipped to investigate them.” —Inside Higher Ed

Weinberg on Philosophical Progress

The Undergraduate Philosophy Society hosted a virtual presentation by Dr. Jonathan Weinberg (University of Arizona) on the topic of philosophical progress. Professor Weinberg is the author, most recently, of Standing Up for Philosophy: Armchairs, Experiments, and the Case for Methodological Reform.

Gene Witmer and Micah Edvenson. The Near Miss Modal Ontological Argument for Atheism. International Journal of Philosophy of Religion.

Gene Witmer and Micah Edvenson (UF MA 2026) present a new and improved version of the modal argument from evil. The standard argument from evil for atheism claims that there exist actual evils that could not be allowed by an all-good and all-powerful God. The standard modal argument from evil claims that there are possible evils of that sort, and this is inconsistent with God’s actual existence because his actual existence is thought to require his necessary existence. That argument can be attacked by claiming that the mere conceivability of such possibilities is not enough to establish the genuine possibility of such horrible events. Witmer and Edvenson’s improved version aims to use claims about what nearly did happen to establish more securely the possibility of evils that are inconsistent with theism.

Branden Fitelson on 2D Argument Strength

Dr. Branden Fitelson, Distinguished Professor of Formal Epistemology at Northeastern University, gave a colloquium presentation in which he argued for a two-dimensional measure of argument strength as the appropriate basis for inductive logic. He showed how this approach gave fresh insight into some noted puzzles in logic (“paradoxes of entailment”), cognitive science (“base rate fallacy”, “conjunction fallacy”), and epistemology (“principle of indifference”). He also reported on some early results about the behavior of this measure of argument strength as seen in LLMs as they scale.

Cameron Buckner. The Talking of the Bot with Itself. In: Communicating with AI.

Inner speech is an internal, linguistically vehicled coordinator and scaffold for diverse other processes. Dr. Buckner argues that LLMs could perform some of the roles that inner speech plays in human cognitive development and adult problem-solving.

Researchers are currently exploring many questions of the form: can an LLM (such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or AnthropicAI’s Claude) have such-and0such cognitive/mental property? But if we instead try to use LLMs to play the role in the developmental process of acquiring X played by inner speech, the significance of research on LLMs as a path towards AI deserves fresh re-evaluation, and a different research agenda for philosophically motivated, deep-learning-based AI comes into focus.

Cameron Buckner. The Philosophy of Language Models. Philosophy Compass.

The success of large language models (LLMs) across many domains of AI research has generated intense debate. Some attribute their impressive performance on complex tasks to human-like linguistic and cognitive capacities, whereas others ascribe it to shallow pattern matching. These disputes stem from deep-seated philosophical disagreements about the nature of language and cognition.

Drs. Buckner and Milière offer an opinionated survey of these disagreements across core topics in the philosophy of mind and language. They contend that progress requires not only clarity about background philosophical commitments but also, in many cases, close engagement with emerging empirical evidence.

Φilm Series: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

After a lively screening of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dr. Jon Rick hosted an open discussion of philosophical issues raised by the film.

Graduate Student Research

In just the last few months, philosophy graduate students have presented at meetings of the American Philosophical Association, Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Florida Philosophical Association, and more.

Bob Beddor. Reliabilism and its Rivals. Cambridge University Press.

According to reliabilists, justification depends on reliability.  While reliabilism holds many explanatory advantages, it also faces well-known problems. In this Element, Bob Beddor offers an opinionated survey of the prospects for reliabilist epistemology, with a focus on whether reliabilists can solve their problems by taking on board elements from views that have been traditionally regarded as rivals, such as evidentialism.

Greg Ray. “Analytic Satisfaction.” Erkenntnis.

We gain new insight by returning to Quine’s first objection to quantified modal logic, due to Ruth Marcus. After noting that much of Quine’s objection does not actually apply, Greg Ray establishes that there was always an easy answer to Quine’s interpretive challenge of just the sort he called for and that he probably should have seen. This helps us pinpoint the underlying mistake Quine was making — a mistake still being made today.

Charles Goldhaber. “Layered Irony in Sor Juana and Hume’s Compositions on Skepticism.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.

Charles Goldhaber compares a 1689 ballad by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Let Us Pretend I am Happy,” with David Hume’s 1742 essay, “The Sceptic.” Goldhaber argues that each composition conveys competing messages: Their surface-level skepticism about the value of learning is countered by ironic optimism, leading finally to a more balanced position. Both composition’s use of a literary device called ‘layered irony’ helps them play philosophy’s traditional role as a kind of therapy.

Alexander Einarsson, Duncan Purves, et al. “A Debiasing Technique for Place-based Algorithmic Patrol Management.” Criminal Justice Ethics.

As police departments have come to rely on algorithmic patrol management systems to assign patrols, community groups and academics have raised concerns about demographic bias in the data used to train these systems. Duncan Purves et al introduce a technique for eliminating demographically correlated features from a place-based algorithmic patrol management system. Application of this technique to the real-world algorithmic patrol management suggests that demographically correlated features can be removed from the system without reducing accuracy.

John Basl and David G. Grant. “Explainability in Algorithmic Decision Systems.” In A Companion to Applied Philosophy of AI (eds M. Hähnel and R. Müller).

This chapter examines the ongoing debate over whether AI decision systems must be explainable to those affected by their outputs, addressing both proponents and skeptics of explainability requirements. John Basl and David Grant articulate an account that grounds explainability requirements in what they call “duties of consideration”—obligations decision makers have to reason appropriately about those subject to their decisions—and argue that this account helps address explainability skepticism and orient our thinking about how decision makers ought to integrate AI-based tools.

Jack Madock. “Sturdy Beliefs.” Synthese.

Necessary conditions on knowledge often come in the form of counterfactuals. Sensitivity and safety have received the lion’s share of attention. This paper explores and defends sturdiness, that p would be false were one not to believe it (~ Bp→ ~ p), as a plausible necessary condition on knowledge. The paper motivates a certain reading of the counterfactual and demonstrates how sturdiness handles difficult Gettier-style cases before responding to objections.

Skilled Social Interactions in the Age of AI

Eleven scholars over three days presented and discussed issues in artificial joint intentionality. Hosted by Drs. Cameron Buckner (UF) and Kirk Ludwig (Indiana).

Chris Dorst and Marc Lange, “The Necessity of Accidents.” Journal of Philosophy.

It has recently been suggested that the laws of nature alone could determine everything that happens in the entire history of the universe. Chris Dorst and Marc Lange disagree, arguing that in such a scenario, the so-called “laws” could not play various central roles characteristic of laws, and thus, they conclude, they are not laws at all. In short, if there are laws of nature, there must also be accidents (i.e. facts not determined by the laws alone).

Bob Beddor and Finnur Dellsén. “Inclusive Inquiry.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Recent discussions of inquiry have an individualistic flavor: they characterize the aims and norms of inquiry exclusively in terms of the epistemic states of the inquirer. Bob Beddor and Finnur Dellsén argue that this individualistic approach struggles to account for some central features of scientific inquiry. Attending to these features paves the way for an “inclusive” conception of inquiry, according to which many inquiries aim to confer epistemic benefits on others.

Duncan Purves. “Should Algorithms that Predict Recidivism Have Access to Race?” American Philosophical Quarterly.

Duncan Purves argues that recidivism risk assessment algorithms engage in disparate treatment when they use race to determine risk scores. Despite this significant legal and ethical hurdle, deploying these algorithms can be justified when doing so is expected to benefit all protected groups.

Charles Goldhaber. “Hume’s Skeptical Philosophy and the Moderation of Pride.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Hume states that skeptical philosophy has desirable effects on our belief formation by first diminishing our pride. Charles Goldhaber gives a Humean reconstruction of the mechanisms involved: Skeptical philosophy diminishes pride by removing our tendency to view ourselves as better than others and this, in turn, removes a cause of pride-driven, belief reinforcement loops.