Exploring Effectiveness of Explanations for Appropriate Trust: Lessons from Cognitive Psychology

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) requires developers and designers of AI systems to focus on the collaboration between humans and machines. AI explanations of system behavior and reasoning are vital for effective collaboration by fostering appropriate trust, ensuring understanding, and addressing issues of fairness and bias. However, various contextual and subjective factors can influence an AI system explanation's effectiveness. This work draws inspiration from findings in cognitive psychology to understand how effective explanations can be designed. We identify four components to which explanation designers can pay special attention: perception, semantics, intent, and user & context. We illustrate the use of these four explanation components with an example of estimating food calories by combining text with visuals, probabilities with exemplars, and intent communication with both user and context in mind. We propose that the significant challenge for effective AI explanations is an additional step between explanation generation using algorithms not producing interpretable explanations and explanation communication. We believe this extra step will benefit from carefully considering the four explanation components outlined in our work, which can positively affect the explanation's effectiveness.Comment: 2022 IEEE Workshop on TRust and EXpertise in Visual Analytics (TREX

How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness: Identity or Grounding? (2020)

I argue for three claims. First, there is a strong argument for identity physicalism (Lewis, Sider, Dorr) over dualism. It does achieve the physicalist dream of a maximally simple and uniform view of reality. However, there are also strong arguments against identity physicalism concerning the special nature of conscious experiences. Second, although nonidentity "ground" physicalism (Campbell, Johnston, Schaffer) is a possible fallback position, there is no reason to prefer to property dualism. It provides an equally complex and unattractive picture of nature. Third, assuming identity physicalism fails, we also should not much care about which of these options is right. In fact, it becomes difficult to understand the difference. The upshot is that, when it comes to the metaphysics of consciousness, the “big divide” is between identity physicalism (Lewis, Sider, Dorr) and all the rest. This is where the debate should focus

Merleau-Ponty’s implicit critique of the new mechanists

I argue (1) that what (ontic) New Mechanistic philosophers of science call mechanisms would be material Gestalten, and (2) that Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with Gestalt theory can help us frame a standing challenge against ontic conceptions of mechanisms. In short, until the (ontic) New Mechanist can provide us with a plausible account of the organization of mechanisms as an objective feature of mind-independent ontic structures in the world which we might discover – and no ontic Mechanist has done so – it is more conservative to claim that mechanistic organization is instead a mind-dependent aspect of our epistemic strategies of mechanistic explanation

The Road to General Intelligence

Humans have always dreamed of automating laborious physical and intellectual tasks, but the latter has proved more elusive than naively suspected. Seven decades of systematic study of Artificial Intelligence have witnessed cycles of hubris and despair. The successful realization of General Intelligence (evidenced by the kind of cross-domain flexibility enjoyed by humans) will spawn an industry worth billions and transform the range of viable automation tasks.The recent notable successes of Machine Learning has lead to conjecture that it might be the appropriate technology for delivering General Intelligence. In this book, we argue that the framework of machine learning is fundamentally at odds with any reasonable notion of intelligence and that essential insights from previous decades of AI research are being forgotten. We claim that a fundamental change in perspective is required, mirroring that which took place in the philosophy of science in the mid 20th century. We propose a framework for General Intelligence, together with a reference architecture that emphasizes the need for anytime bounded rationality and a situated denotational semantics. We given necessary emphasis to compositional reasoning, with the required compositionality being provided via principled symbolic-numeric inference mechanisms based on universal constructions from category theory. • Details the pragmatic requirements for real-world General Intelligence. • Describes how machine learning fails to meet these requirements. • Provides a philosophical basis for the proposed approach. • Provides mathematical detail for a reference architecture. • Describes a research program intended to address issues of concern in contemporary AI. The book includes an extensive bibliography, with ~400 entries covering the history of AI and many related areas of computer science and mathematics.The target audience is the entire gamut of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning researchers and industrial practitioners. There are a mixture of descriptive and rigorous sections, according to the nature of the topic. Undergraduate mathematics is in general sufficient. Familiarity with category theory is advantageous for a complete understanding of the more advanced sections, but these may be skipped by the reader who desires an overall picture of the essential concepts This is an open access book

The active inference approach to ecological perception: general information dynamics for natural and artificial embodied cognition

The emerging neurocomputational vision of humans as embodied, ecologically embedded, social agents—who shape and are shaped by their environment—offers a golden opportunity to revisit and revise ideas about the physical and information-theoretic underpinnings of life, mind, and consciousness itself. In particular, the active inference framework (AIF) makes it possible to bridge connections from computational neuroscience and robotics/AI to ecological psychology and phenomenology, revealing common underpinnings and overcoming key limitations. AIF opposes the mechanistic to the reductive, while staying fully grounded in a naturalistic and information-theoretic foundation, using the principle of free energy minimization. The latter provides a theoretical basis for a unified treatment of particles, organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the inorganic to organic, non-life to life, and natural to artificial agents. We provide a brief introduction to AIF, then explore its implications for evolutionary theory, ecological psychology, embodied phenomenology, and robotics/AI research. We conclude the paper by considering implications for machine consciousness

Irreversible Noise: The Rationalisation of Randomness and the Fetishisation of Indeterminacy

This thesis aims to elaborate the theoretical and practical significance of the concept of noise with regard to current debates concerning realism, materialism, and rationality. The scientific conception of noise follows from the developments of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and dynamic systems theory; hence its qualification as irreversible. It is argued that this conceptualization of noise is entangled in several polemics that cross the arts and sciences, and that it is crucial to an understanding of their contemporary condition. This thesis draws on contemporary scientific theories to argue that randomness is an intrinsic functional aspect at all levels of complex dynamic systems, including higher cognition and reason. However, taking randomness or noise as given, or failing to distinguish between different descriptive levels, has led to misunderstanding and ideology. After surveying the scientific and philosophical context, the practical understanding of randomness in terms of probability theory is elaborated through a history of its development in the field of economics, where its idealization has had its most pernicious effects. Moving from the suppression of noise in economics to its glorification in aesthetics, the experience of noise in the sonic sense is first given a naturalistic neuro-phenomenological explanation. Finally, the theoretical tools developed over the course of the inquiry are applied to the use of noise in music. The rational explanation of randomness in various specified contexts, and the active manipulation of probability that this enables, is opposed to the political and aesthetic tendencies to fetishize indeterminacy. This multi-level account of constrained randomness contributes to the debate by demystifying noise, showing it to be an intrinsic and functionally necessary condition of reason and consequently of freedom

Explaining historical conflict, with illustrations from 'emergent' Scottish Jacobitism

The connecting premise of this study is that the explanation of human action, much of which involves conflict in various forms, is distinctive. It must address the singularity of actions (their attachment to specific moments) and its contingency (that different actions could plausibly have been taken instead). Both stem from the involvement of time in human action, such that its explanation must adopt the form of historiography. Part One argues that the authority of explanation in the physical sciences does not extend to human action as it derives from successful physical demonstration in experiment or industrial replication, not from special epistemological warrant, processes inapplicable to human action; that the distinguishing involvement of human consciousness and the will to act introduces a particular awareness of the passage of time that confers timeliness to actions, while precluding full knowledge of the consequences of actions; that the social nature of human action involves the emergence of diverse groups that generate complex divisions between ‘we’ and ‘they’ that form the basis for conflict over the consequences of action; that resolving the conflict of warfare produces collective agreements to avoid future conflict; that this conflict can reach considerable levels of brutality and lethality even outside warfare; and that moral codes that might constrain such conflict have limited effectiveness. Part Two illustrates the relevance of perspectives in reducing the complexities of reality to facilitate action, referring to categories appropriate to the emergence of Scottish Jacobitism in the late seventeenth and early eighteen centuries: dynastic, religious, economic and military. It also suggests how contingency could be addressed through conjectures about the actions that might have been taken but were not. Part Three suggests a basis in the role of expectations for the tendency of human perspectives on their context of action to change radically, and for actions to change accordingly as situations are seen ‘in a different light’. At various points in the study use is made of an analogy drawn between the adversarial advocacies presented at a trial by jury and the general explanation of human action. This illuminates both the fact that different perspectives on the same evidence can yield contrary explanations and that all explanation of human action necessarily confronts a problem of reflexivity: the perspectives of agents have to be represented through the perspectives of those seeking to explain their actions

Themes in linguistic understanding. Cognition and epistemology

[eng] In this thesis, I have presented and defended a series of claims regarding the nature and epistemic role of linguistic understanding. Firstly, I have argued that, besides the state- and disposition-sense of “linguistic under- standing,” quite commonly discussed in the philosophical debate, there is yet another, often overlooked, process-sense. I have argued that characterizing linguistic understanding as a process is not only justified from the philosophical point of view (linguistic understanding, just like other processes, unfolds over time) but also is very much in line with the current state of the art in empirical language sciences. Secondly, I have outlined a novel model of the representational structure of linguistic understanding. I have argued that this structure consists of at least three types of interdependent representations generated by a dual-stream process. The model I have offered establishes a middle ground between two popular accounts of the relation between comprehension and acceptance: Cartesian, on which we are free to either accept or reject comprehended information, and Spinozan, on which we automatically accept everything we comprehend. On my account, we automatically accept everything that passes the content-oriented filter (so-called validation ), i.e., everything that is not in obvious tension with our easily accessible background knowledge. Thirdly, I discussed the justification of comprehension-based beliefs, i.e., the beliefs about what other people say. I have argued that this justification is non-inferential, i.e., that it does not depend on the justification of other beliefs, such as the beliefs about what words the speaker uttered or what sounds they produced. Instead of defending the most common version of non-inferentialism about the justification of comprehension-based beliefs, i.e., a view on which these beliefs are prima facie justified by seemings that the speaker said so and so, I have offered a competitive account. On my account, which I call teleological comprehension-process reliabilism : (i) beliefs are prima facie justified if they are produced by a process that has forming true beliefs reliably as a function, and (ii) language comprehension is a process that has forming true comprehension-based beliefs reliably as a function. Fourthly, I have argued that despite what is assumed by many participants in the debate, we are not equipped with a mechanism that allows us to react discriminately to particular instances of untrustworthy testimony, i.e., to prevent the formation of beliefs based on such testimony. However, the fact that all, at least all adult members of our linguistic community are vigilant towards the signs of untrustworthiness, and that liars meet social retribution, brings the long-term benefit of decreasing the number of falsehoods and lies we encounter. This account of the psychosocial mechanisms involved in filtering of the comprehended content provides support for the strong anti-reductionism about testimonial entitlement, i.e., the view that we are prima facie entitled to believe whatever we are being told. Finally, together with the coauthors of Chapter 5: J. Adam Carter and Emma C. Gordon, I have argued that understanding a proposition, commonly identified with linguistic understanding, is a distinct phenomenon. More specifically, it is a type of objectual understanding, which is gradable, consistent with epistemic luck, and based on a subject’s grasping of the coherence-making relation between the elements of a given subject matter. Nevertheless, both linguistic understanding and understanding a proposition play an important role in our everyday communication. In typical cases of successful linguistic communication, we understand communicated thought, i.e., we understand both what proposition has been expressed by the use of a given utterance (linguistic understanding), and this proposition itself