Georg Henrik von Wright on Actions as State Transformations

G. H. von Wright desarrolló, en varias publicaciones, lógicas deónticas de la acción en las que analizó las acciones como transformaciones del estado del mundo. Este trabajo es una discusión del modelo de transformación de estado de von Wright y las variantes desarrolladas por otros filósofos.G. H. von Wright developed in several publications deontic logics of action in which he analyzed actions as world-state transformations. This paper is a discussion of von Wright’s state transformation model and its variants developed by other philosophers

A Deontic Logic Analysis of Autonomous Systems' Safety

We consider the pressing question of how to model, verify, and ensure that autonomous systems meet certain \textit{obligations} (like the obligation to respect traffic laws), and refrain from impermissible behavior (like recklessly changing lanes). Temporal logics are heavily used in autonomous system design; however, as we illustrate here, temporal (alethic) logics alone are inappropriate for reasoning about obligations of autonomous systems. This paper proposes the use of Dominance Act Utilitarianism (DAU), a deontic logic of agency, to encode and reason about obligations of autonomous systems. We use DAU to analyze Intel's Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) proposal as a real-world case study. We demonstrate that DAU can express well-posed RSS rules, formally derive undesirable consequences of these rules, illustrate how DAU could help design systems that have specific obligations, and how to model-check DAU obligations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, In 23rd ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Contro

Tra il foglio vuoto e lo schermo. Type e token alla prova dell’arte post-mediale

What kind of entities are works of art from an ontological point of view? This question has become canonical in the framework of analytic philosophy. One way of answering the puzzle seemed to be conclusive. It is the hypothesis that all, or the majority of artworks can be identified with types embedded into tokens. To begin with, I will survey how the type-token distinction transitioned from semiotics to ontology. Secondly, I will consider how some contemporary art forms contributed to questioning this approach to the ontology of artworks. Lastly, I will suggest how the nature of types and tokens should be reassessed in order to properly describe artworks in their historical and socially construed nature

2012 Presidential Address: Types and Tokens: On the Identity and Meaning of Names and Other Words

C. S. Peirce illustrates the distinction between types and their tokens by using words as an example. The length of a manuscript is measured by counting word tokens, but a person's vocabulary can be measured by counting word types. According to Peirce, a word type is not an existing object but a "“significant form"” of a token; thus he seems to make a distinction between the orthographic or phonological character of a word and its individual occurrences (inscriptions or utterances). However, there is more to words than their character and their individual occurrences. This paper examines different interpretations of the concept of type, distinguishes four different ways of individuating names and other words, and discusses the relevance of the ontology of words to questions about the sense and reference of names

Sed ubi Socrates currit? On the Gettier Problem before Gettier

Medieval philosophers presented Gettier-type objections to the commonly accepted view of knowledge as firmly held true belief, and formulated additional conditions that meet the objections or analyzed knowledge in a way that is immune to the Gettier-type objections. The proposed conditions can be divided into two kinds: backward-looking conditions and forward-looking conditions. The former concern an inquirer’s current belief system and the way the inquirer acquired her beliefs, the latter refer to what the inquirer may come to learn in the future and how she can respond to objections. Some conditions of knowledge proposed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century epistemology can be regarded as variants of the conditions put forward by medieval authors

Remarks on Personal and Impersonal Knowledge

In his paper ‘Knowledge and Reasons’ B. A. O. Williams remarks: “That there should be radically impersonal knowledge seems, on the face of it, impossible: ifpis known, then somebody must surely know it”. Williams points out, however, that this “apparent platitude” has strongly counter-intuitive consequences. let ‘Kp’stand for ‘it is known thatp',and’Kap’for’ a knows thatp'.</jats:p