Is Functionalism Inconsistent?
Seminar
Throughout analytic philosophy, appeals are often made to formal methods for deriving philosophical conclusions. In this paper, I examine a particular instance of this phenomenon according to which it is possible to prove an inconsistency in functionalism --- one of the most popular and well…
The Ethics of Prediction Markets: A Proposal for Expanding on Existing Moral Limits to Markets Frameworks
Seminar
This article offers a systematic account of the ethics of prediction markets: markets for the trade of financial claims conditional on the occurrence of specified events. Having recently gained prominence, prediction markets remain controversial and their regulation constitutes an urgent policy…
Parity Under Risk
Seminar
Ruth Chang has introduced a fourth evaluative relation, distinct from being better or worse or equally good. I shall present a proposal for making decisions under risk when items are in her sense on a par.Kit Fine (B.A., Oxford; Ph.D., Warwick) specializes in Metaphysics, Logic, and Philosophy…
Artificial Intelligence and Value Alignment
Lecture
“Value alignment”—the challenge of ensuring that the outputs of artificial intelligence and other machine systems reflect and respect human values—has emerged as an urgent concern as computational technologies increasingly encroach upon central domains of human decision-making. Existing strategies…
Skepticism about Pure Moral Deference: Deflate, Debunk, or Defend?
Seminar
Suppose that moral knowledge is unexceptional in the following way: any source of non-moral knowledge can also be a source of moral knowledge. What, then, explains skepticism about pure moral deference—the sense that something is amiss with the agent who outsources her moral judgments? The…
Three Things Reasons Do: Transmission, Aggregation, and Difference-Making
Seminar
Reasons for action can do many things. They can give rise to further reasons, combine to provide stronger support, and favour one option over another. Each of these phenomena has received considerable attention in the literature, but largely in isolation. I argue that they are systematically…
Jack Smart Lecture: Taking Risks for Others
Lecture
We sometimes make choices on behalf of others. If we knew how the options would turn out, making these decisions would require only knowing what’s best for the affected person. But in cases of risk, decisions are more complicated—particularly if we assume that there is a wide range of rational…