Rationality 3
Explainability through Systematicity: The Hard Systematicity Challenge for Artificial Intelligence
Minds and Machines 35 (35): 1–39. 2025. doi:10.1007/s11023-025-09738-9
Offers a framework for thinking about “the systematicity of thought” that distinguishes four senses of the phrase, defuses the alleged tension between systematicity and connectionism that Fodor and Pylyshyn influentially diagnosed, and identifies a “hard” form of the systematicity challenge that continues to defy connectionist models.
AI, explainable AI, philosophy of AI, rationality, systematicity, conceptual change
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How Genealogies Can Affect the Space of Reasons
Synthese 197 (5): 2005–2027. 2020. doi:10.1007/s11229-018-1777-9
Attempts to derive reasons from claims about the genesis of something are often said to commit the genetic fallacy—they conflate genesis and justification. One way for genealogies to side-step this objection is to focus on the functional origins of practices. But this invites a second objection, which maintains that attempts to derive current from original function suffer from continuity failure—the conditions in response to which something originated no longer obtain. This paper shows how normatively ambitious genealogies can steer clear of both problems.
genealogy, Bernard Williams, Craig, epistemology, normativity, space of reasons
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Wittgenstein on the Chain of Reasons
Wittgenstein-Studien 7 (1): 105–30. 2016. doi:10.1515/witt-2016-0108
This article examines Wittgenstein’s conception of rationality through the central image of the “chain,” arguing that reasons are defined by their relational role in making actions intelligible rather than by intrinsic properties. The author contends that unlike chains of causes, chains of reasons are necessarily finite and anchored in communal reason-giving practices, meaning that justification inevitably ends at the boundaries of a specific language game. Ultimately, the paper suggests that this finite structure liberates agents from the misleading expectation of infinite justification while simultaneously limiting the reach of reasons to the specific practices that sustain them.
action theory, Wittgenstein, reasons and causes, philosophy of mind, explanation, justification
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