Mark Garron – Temporal Discounting and Temporal Neutrality<\/strong><\/p>\nAbstract:<\/p>\n
In economics, some make the distinction between monetary discounting and pure discounting (Broome 1999, 47).\u00a0 The problem with our money practise is that temporal distance matters in a way that spatial distance does not. \u00a0The big distinction between monetary discounting and pure discounting is that pure discounting implies a temporal discounting function applied to positive and negative experiences whereas monetary discounting only involves commodities and present beliefs about uncertainty and risk.<\/p>\n
The \u2018pure\u2019 as opposed to \u2018monetary\u2019 distinction is a way for economists to sidestep the ethical problem of discounting. One can defend our typical money practice involving monetary discounting and still maintain the normative claim that we should treat all the parts of our conscious lives with equal regards. The intuition that we should treat all the parts of our conscious lives the same underlies what is referred to as the Temporal Neutrality Thesis.<\/p>\n
Temporal neutrality (TN) thesis <\/strong>is the hegemonic view. \u00a0Temporal neutrality implies that, in order to be diachronically rational, one should have some level of cross temporal coherence in terms of preferences and an equal regard for all the parts of one\u2019s conscious life. Temporal neutrality is a normative claim about value and valuing. It is also a prudential claim. As such, the requirement of equal regard requires some kind of valuation distinction between equal and non-equal regard. Temporal discounting (TD)<\/strong> is that criteria for whether an agent fails to adhere to temporal neutrality (TN). On the other hand, the Temporal Discounting thesis disputes the need for equal regard. The TD thesis justifies the presence of TD.<\/p>\nIn this talk I am skeptical of both the TN<\/strong> thesis and the TD<\/strong> thesis. I argue that measuring TD apart from factors such as risk and changing preferences in untenable. Without a clear idea of what constitutes a pure temporal discounting function, we can\u2019t make a sensible claim about what constitutes TN.<\/strong><\/p>\n22 March Brian Kett- Causation \u2013 another facet or more?<\/strong><\/p>\nAbstract:<\/p>\n
Explanations for predictions made by AI are increasingly being sought. Explanations need understanding and a prime route to understanding is through recognising how causal mechanisms and processes occur. To establish causation, Evidential Pluralism argues that both statistical and mechanistic evidence is needed. AI models, built from learning from data provide statistical evidence for causality, but cannot provide mechanistic evidence. To gain evidence of causality it is necessary to have grasp of what causality is and how it works. This is needed as a pre-requisite to determining how we can leverage understanding and explanation from AI models.<\/p>\n
The aim of this exposition is to look at how we currently view causation and what extra is needed to understand what causality is and how it works. It is suggested that existing theories all uncover facets of what causation comprises, but that they do not uncover the commonality of mechanisms of causality in enough detail to recognise what evidence of causality itself is needed to establish it.<\/p>\n
After a brief review of some existing theories we propose a unifying view of causation that may help in underpinning ways to establish the mechanistic evidence for causation we seek.<\/p>\n
29 March Hugh Robertson-Ritchie – ‘Epistemic injustice, values based practice and myalgic encephelomyopathy’<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n5 April Vittorio Serra<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hi colleagues, Vittorio has passed the torch to me to run Phigs. I would like to thank him for his careful stewardship. There are a few things that need to be sorted. First is our annual colloquium. I encourage everyone to submit abstracts. I have not set a date yet as I am still feeling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kentphigs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}