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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Probable Causes And The Distinction Between Subjective And Objective Chance, Stuart M. Glennan
Probable Causes And The Distinction Between Subjective And Objective Chance, Stuart M. Glennan
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
In this paper I present both a critical appraisal of Humphreys' probabilistic theory of causality and a sketch of an alternative view of the relationship between the notions of probability and of cause. Though I do not doubt that determinism is false, I claim that the examples used to motivate Humphreys' theory typically refer to subjective rather than objective chance. Additionally, I argue on a number of grounds that Humphreys' suggestion that linear regression models be used as a canonical form for the description of causal relations is untenable. I conclude by exploring the variety of ways in which probabilistic …
Computationalism And The Problem Of Other Minds, Stuart M. Glennan
Computationalism And The Problem Of Other Minds, Stuart M. Glennan
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
In this paper I discuss Searle's claim that the computational properties of a system could never cause a system to be conscious. In the first section of the paper I argue that Searle is correct that, even if a system both behaves in a way that is characteristic of conscious agents (like ourselves) and has a computational structure similar to those agents, one cannot be certain that that system is conscious. On the other hand, I suggest that Searle's intuition that it is “empirically absurd” that such a system could be conscious is unfounded. In the second section I show …