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Category Archives: Philosophy
Necessity as a source of law
Note: this is the third of five posts on the law and morality of necessity. My wife and I have been watching season 2 of Narcos on Netflix this Labor Day weekend. Narcos revolves mostly around Pablo Escobar, a notorious … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Philosophy
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Necessity as an ex post exception
Note: this is the second in a series of five posts on the common law doctrine of necessity. In our previous post (9/1), we presented three general theories of the legal doctrine of necessity. Here, we consider the first of … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Uncategorized
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The Law of the Trolley Problem
We recently rediscovered and reread Lon Fuller’s classic “Case of the Speluncean Explorers” (via Peter Suber), and in the process of writing up our own response to Fuller, we noticed a possible parallel between this hypothetical case and the famous … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Philosophy
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Lon Fuller’s Speluncean Explorers
In our previous post, we mentioned Peter Suber’s beautiful book on Lon Fuller’s fictional “Case of the Speluncean Explorers.” By way of background, this hypothetical case occurs in the year 4300 A.D. in the Commonwealth of Newgarth. The relevant facts … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Probability, Uncategorized
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Two questions about degrees of belief
Previously, we saw how the Bayesian notion of “degrees of belief” offers a possible solution to the preface paradox. Here, we shall consider some philosophical or epistemic objections to this idea of “degrees of belief.” In his thought-provoking and beautiful … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Mathematics, Philosophy, Uncategorized
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The Bayesian solution to the preface paradox
In our previous post, we presented Kenny Easwaran’s vivid description of the paradox of the preface. Briefly, the paradox is this: when a scholar writes up an academic paper, he would like to believe that every claim or proposition in … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Paradoxes, Philosophy, Truth
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The Paradox of the Preface
Kenny Easwaran, a philosopher at Texas A&M, recently published in the journal Nous this beautiful paper on Bayesian probabilities (hat tip: Brian Leiter). Among other things, Easwaran’s paper contains the best and most succinct explanation of the “paradox of the … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Paradoxes, Philosophy, Truth
3 Comments
Ethical machines (part 3 of 3)
In our previous posts, we presented Brett Frischmann’s novel idea of a Reverse Turing Test, i.e. the idea of testing the ability of humans to think like a machine or a computer. But, how would we create such a test? … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Philosophy, Science
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Thinking like a machine (part 2 of 3)
In our previous post, we mentioned John Danaher’s excellent review of Brett Frischmann’s 2014 paper exploring the possibility of a Reverse Turing Test. One of the insightful contributions Frischmann makes to this voluminous literature is his idea of a Turing … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Philosophy, Science
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Reverse Turing Tests and Ethical Machines (part 1 of 3)
Our colleague John Danaher recently pondered the possibility of a “Reverse Turing Test” in this intriguing blog post dated 21 July 2016. That is, instead of testing for a machine’s ability to think like a human, what if we tested for a … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Philosophy, Science, Science Fiction
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prior probability 