Paolo Valore

Natural Kinds, Similarity, and Individual Cases: Ontological Presuppositions and Ethical Implications

The ethical implications of medical research and clinical practice are addressed by (a) questioning the ontological presuppositions of such notions as kinds and similarity, both object-to-object and object-to-category; (b) applying this strategy to the particular case of medicine and biomedical science, with a focus on the notion of kinds of patients; and (c) suggesting a way for researchers and clinicians to take advantage of the ontological perspective, connecting creative approaches to responsible, ethical choices.

The State of the Art in Advanced Computer Games

Games such as chess and checkers have always been considered an excellent testbed for developments in computer science, particularly artificial intelligence. At the New York City College of Technology (a section of CUNY) in Brooklyn, a Department of Math Center for Logic, Algebra and Computation-sponsored presentation by Dr. Daniel Kopec (an international chess master, author, and computer science professor at Brooklyn College) was held on the 25th of October 2011 on The state of the art in advanced computer games. The meeting was part of the C-LAC Seminar. Kopec started with the case of checkers, mentioning the studies of Arthur Samuel who was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning and who studied about 50 heuristics. Checkers has proven to be a good test for machine learning and Kopec gave a typical standard representation of the board and the possible positions for the analysis, trying to figure out what is the best move among the possible ones. He showed a sophisticated diagram with a tree of combination of possible moves, that represents the moves’ sequence in a MiniMax with Alpha-Beta analysis, that can eliminates about 99% of the possible moves. Jumping to the 1990s, he mentioned the program called CHINOOK developed at the University of Alberta by Jonathan Schaeffer, that was the first computer program to win the world champion title, beating Marion Tinsley. From 1994 to 1996 computer scientists tried to develop a complete solution for checkers. Checkers is about 1010 possible positions, while Chess at good play is 10120 (more than the atoms in the universe). In order to solve the checkers, Schaeffer and his team did what Kopec called a ”sandwich approach” in 3 steps. In the beginning, they tried with 10 pieces and studied what humans did, discovering that some moves were good and others not. Then they chose the openings that quickly reduce the complexity of the problem. The central part of the ”sandwich approach” is the heuristicand the calculation. The final step is building a database.

Kathrin Koslicki on the Roles of Form within the Compound

At the Philosophy Department of Columbia University, New York, a Colloquium was held on the 8th of March 2012 on The Roles of Form within the Compound. Mereologically complex objects, i.e. objects that have proper parts, are structured wholes and structured wholes are hylomorphic compounds, i.e. objects which are in some sense composed of matter and form. If the wholes are unified because they are a compound of matter and form and the form plays the role of the unifying component, the form is, litterally, a proper part. So the mereology considered by the Koslicki is not the classical Extensional mereology. Let’s call the thesis that the form is a proper part the “Neo-Aristotelian Thesis” (NAT). But what are the formal components? Are they themselves objects? And, if so, what kind of objects (properties, relations, tropes, universals, powers, capacities, collections,...)? These are the options that Koslicki considered:

Marcus Giaquinto at NYU on Knowing abstracta. Preliminary Considerations

A philosophical colloquium was held at the Department of Philosophy of the New York University on October 7th 2011: Marcus Giaquinto (University College London, Department of Philosophy) proposed the question: How can we know abstracta (properties, kinds, relations, roles, structures, and so on)? Giaquinto started recalling briefly the marks of abstractness and remarked that the distinction abstract/concrete is probably vague and seems to come in grades (for instance, the symmetries of a rectangle: horizontal and vertical, reflection and 180 ◦ rotation; the group of such symmetries under composition; and the Klein Four group; here it seems that we are going up in level of abstractness). But the main concern seems that abtracta are considered to be causally inert and, if so, how can we have any knowledge of them? The talk was divided into two parts: 1) Is there really a problem? and 2) Russell’s view (focusing on knowledge by acquaintance).