NO SEMINAR

Karin Kukkonen (University of Oslo)

Creativity, contingency, and ChatGPT

Margaret Boden argues in The Creative Mind that artificial intelligence is a key conceptual tool for working out features of (human) creativity. ChatGPT’s rise to prominence in the previous year, and the public discussions that emerged around whether large language models (LLMs) can be creative or whether this remains the preserve of the human mind, show that the proposal remains highly relevant. In this talk, I will approach the discussion around LLMs and creativity through the perspective of predictive processing and 4E cognition, based on empirical work on literary writing. I posit that creativity can be productively understood as the practices through which writers approach contingency and translate it into form. ChatGPT can clearly produce syntactically correct and semantically coherent language. It can also produce narratives and poetry that follow formal constraints. What about the (embodied) practice of writers and the contingencies of the creative process? It is here, I argue, that an encounter with ChatGPT serves as a conceptual experiment to sharpen these terms for discussions of creativity.

Markus Pantsar (RWTH Aachen University)

The cultural evolution of number concepts

One central problem in explaining the historical development of arithmetic is how numeral words and symbols have evolved culturally. Much work has been done to trace that evolution in different cultures, but one key stage remains controversial: namely, how did some utterances and shapes come to contain numerical content? The nativist answer, proposed by Gelman and Gallistel, contends that numeral words and symbols evolved to express innate number concepts. The problem with the nativist view, however, is that there is no evidence supporting it. All the available evidence suggests that only proto-arithmetical abilities (subitizing, estimating) are innate, and that number concepts are only acquired later in ontogeny. Similar evidence is also present concerning phylogeny. Given the fact that there are many anumeric cultures, it is likely that number concepts themselves are products of a cultural development. But how can such development take place and how is it connected to the evolution of numeral words and symbols? In this talk, I will present an account, influenced by those of Wiese and dos Santos, according to which numeral words and number concepts have co-evolved. The theoretical framework for my account integrates enculturation (Menary, Fabry), cumulative cultural evolution (Boyd and Richerson, Heyes) and material engagement (Malafouris, Overmann). In that framework, I propose a stage-by-stage account of how, based on innate proto-arithmetical abilities, modern natural number concepts have evolved through innovation, cultural learning, and cultural evolution, in tandem with numeral words and symbols.

Cameron Kirk-Giannini (Rutgers University)

A case for AI consciousness: Artificial language agents and global workspace theory

Though philosophers have recently begun to consider whether the kinds of artificial systems produced by the “deep learning revolution” of the past decade might be phenomenally conscious, no work has yet taken up the question of how the rise of agentized language model architectures over the past two years bears on this issue. I draw on Global Workspace Theory and the Global Neuronal Workspace hypothesis, two leading philosophical and neuroscientific theories of consciousness, to assess whether such language-agent architectures might be more likely than other deep learning systems to be phenomenally conscious.

Anna Smajdor (University of Oslo)

Ectogenesis and gestational justice

Shulamith Firestone famously claimed that women could not be fully liberated until they were freed from the burdens of gestation and childbirth. Yet many feminists regard the prospect of ectogenesis with scepticism. Some view the specific reproductive functions of women as a source of power; others fear that in the attempt to throw off these specifically female functions, women are selling out in some respects—attempting to remake themselves in the model of men. Others may view ectogenesis as a dangerous tool in the context of societies that already seek to contain and control women’s reproductive choices. I acknowledge these concerns, and share some of them myself. Nevertheless, I suggest that ectogenesis can and should be harnessed as a means of freeing women from the burdens of gestation and childbirth, insofar as this does in fact further their interests as human beings. In order to ensure that ectogenesis yields the benefits that Firestone hoped for, I argue that we need a new approach to the understanding of gestation and childbirth: a conception of gestational justice. I will show how, on the basis of this concept, societies can make progress in ensuring that the interests of women are furthered, rather than hindered, by the development of ectogenesis.

Stephanie Collins (Monash University)

Attachment and justice (co-authored with Liam Shields)

Attachment is deeply important to human life. When one person becomes ‘attached’ to another, their sense of security turns on their emotional, social, and physical engagement with that person. Yet attachment is almost entirely neglected in analytic social and political theory. In this paper, we conceptualise attachment’s nature and value, addressing when and why attachments produce claims on individuals and institutions. We first characterise attachment and differentiate it from related phenomena (§1). We then explore its value, theorising the connection between attachment, care, and companionship, drawing on the ethics of care (§2). We explain when and why attachment generates claims within liberal theory (§3). Finally, we sketch some implications in three domains: the rights of those who have suffered pregnancy loss, the rights of grandparents vis-à-vis grandchildren, and the rights of attached friends to social and political recognition (§4).

Daniele Fulvi (University of Western Sydney)

Rethinking the human-nature relationship in the face of the climate crisis

As the climate crisis accelerates, philosophy increasingly faces “big picture questions”—such as “what does it mean to be human in the era of climate change?”—that require new conceptual tools to rethink both our place within nature and the meaning and extent of human freedom. This type of investigation explicitly aims at de-centering the human from ethical discourses; namely, against the traditional modern understanding of freedom as unlimited self-affirmation and unrestricted capacity to exercise one’s will, the role of philosophy today is no longer that of investigating the meaning of (human) existence. Rather, philosophy today should challenge the self-proclaimed centrality of human agency within nature—hence fostering an ongoing rethinking of the very notion of limit and of the function of human existence. On these grounds, I also discuss Val Plumwood’s critique of traditional Western anthropocentrism, showing how her thought positively contributes to the abovementioned task, by promoting a conception of the human being as alongside other living and non-living beings and not above them. Finally, I suggest a novel account of the human-nature relationship that is not merely contemplative, but rather a very proactive and practical one.

Valeria Bizzari (KU Leuven)

The Examination of Autistic Intersubjective Experiences (EAIE): A phenomenological interview

[abstract to come]

2 WEEK TEACHING BREAK

Supriya Subramani (University of Sydney)

Possibilities and politics of moral cosmopolitanisms

[abstract to come]

Sam Clarke (University of Southern California)

[abstract to come]

Allan Mackay (University of Sydney)

Neurotechnology and the insanity defence

Whilst there has been significant attention paid to the emerging issues presented by neurotechnologies in the context of human rights, less scholarly work on this emerging technology focusses on criminal responsibility. But developments in neurotechnology may well present challenges to the criminal law’s responsibility practices. This chapter gives an overview of the relevant technological advances and then discusses some issues for criminal law. It focusses on criminal responsibility in the context of the defence of insanity as set out in the common law’s M’Naghten test and in a statutory implementation of something approximating it in the law of New South Wales, Australia. The chapter is a piece of anticipatory legal scholarship that aims to stimulate debate amongst criminal law scholars and theorists about a challenge to law and concepts of criminal responsibility that is likely to become increasingly significant as neurotechnology becomes integrated into more people’s lives.

[open slot]

Christopher Lean (Macquarie University)

Engineered ecocide is morally wrong

Recently a crop of transhumanist longtermist philosophers have argued that genetically engineering predators to become herbivores is a morally viable option (Bramble 2020; Pearce 2015). Others have argued that high fecundity high mortality life strategies should be engineered into low fecundity low mortality breeding life strategies (Johannsen 2017). This is part of a larger movement in philosophy, untethered to the realities of biology or human society which has looked to intervene to remove predators from the wild (Mackaskill and Macaskill 2015; MacMahan 2015; Naussabaum 2022). While Delon and Purves (2018) provide a solid critique of interventions to alleviate animal suffering, focusing on ecological resilience and the uncertainty of the effect of these interventions, their argument is too weak. Uncertainty of the effect is not the issue. These interventions are not acceptable due to the basic structure of population biology and will result in rolling extinctions and animal suffering in different forms. The policies proposed would amount to ecocide, if successful, and even if they are failures the act to try these interventions will undermine the norms of conservation and establish damaging precedents for human society. If we as a field have, hopefully, come around to the idea that genocide is morally wrong, surely, we can muster some effort to reject ecocide.