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.

Dept Search Committee Meeting

A Philosophy Department Search Committee meets Friday, September 25th at 12:50 PM (ET). The Committee will draft the advertisement for a new lecturer position in the Department. This meeting will take place on Zoom. Meeting ID: 937 5307 9545. Interested parties should email the Chair, Molly Gardner (mollygardner@ufl.edu) to obtain a passcode.

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.

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.

Greg Ray. “A Return to Right Intention in the Just War.” Journal of Military Ethics.

It has been argued that the criterion of right intention adds nothing in just war theory — that it is subsumed by other conditions on just war. Greg Ray gives an action-theoretic analysis of the criterion and uses it to examine arguments that have been offered for the strong negative claims above. He shows that none of these arguments succeed, bringing welcome clarity and understanding to our own ideas about the criterion.

Molly Gardner, “Suffering and Meaning in the Lives of Wild Animals.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy.

Molly Gardner advances some considerations that undermine the overall justification for what she calls “beneficent interventions,” or interventions aimed at reducing the suffering of wild animals. She argues that the meaning in animals’ lives can offset their suffering, making their lives overall more worth living.

Phillip H. Kieval and Cameron Buckner. “‘Captured’ by Centaur: Opaque Predictions or Process Insights?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition.

Binz et al. (2025) recently developed Centaur—a new large language model that is fine-tuned on a massive dataset of human behavioral data and which can be used to predict the responses of humans to behavioral experiments in psychology. In this commentary, Phillip H. Kieval and Cameron Buckner evaluate whether Centaur is merely imitating patterns in previously observed human behavior, or can play more ambitious roles in facilitating the discovery of a new explanatory theory of human behavior.

Jan Maximilian Robitzsch. “Zeno of Sidon and the Status of Women in Epicureanism.” Classical Quarterly.

Jan Maximilian Robitzsch argues that the later Zeno of Sidon, in contrast to early Epicurean authors, was much more dismissive of women.

Jeanine Grenberg and Matthew Vinton. “Kant on Humanity.” In Oxford Handbook of Kant (ed. Gomes and Stephenson).

Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative appeals to the humanity in our persons as an unconditional end-in-itself that may never be used merely as a means. Jeanine Grenberg and Matthew Vinton argue for a teleological reading of “humanity” as the capacity for morality, broadly conceived as autonomous self-legislation of categorical moral demands, extending to both the choice of maxims and the setting of obligatory ends.

Gene Witmer. “Review of Ross P. Cameron, Chains of Being: Infinite Regress, Circularity, and Metaphysical Explanation.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

Ross Cameron’s book Chains of Being argues against some widely held theses about metaphysical grounding, including the popular foundationalist claim that anything grounded in something else is ultimately grounded in something fundamental. Gene Witmer provides an overview of the main arguments in the book and some doubts about the central argument against this foundationalist claim.

Charles Goldhaber. “Kant’s Offer to the Skeptical Empiricisit.” Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Chuck Goldhaber argues that Kant’s transcendental deduction offers an alternative to skeptical empiricism, rather than a refutation of it. According to Goldhaber, this alternative can appeal to skeptical empiricists in virtue of their dissatisfaction with their own position.

Jan Maximilian Robitzsch. “Why Epicurean Happiness Is Not for Everyone.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

Jan Maximilian Robitzsch argues against the common consensus that not everyone can achieve happiness on the Epicurean view.