Do fictions explain?

Nguyen, James

doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02931-6

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 59 publications

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“…After all, an intentional cognitive effort to understand AI by comparison to similar human abilities may not always be useful. Since anthropomorphist modelling is irrespective of the model's veracity, it will be important to distinguish between contexts in which accurate representation is required (Nguyen, 2020) while other models may benefit from "felicitous falsehoods" (Elgin, 2017). Bos et al (2019) therefore rightly call for more empirical studies testing the factual effectiveness of anthropomorphist modelling in different contexts.…”

Section: Understanding Ai As Misguided Anthropomorphism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Karl Jaspers and artificial neural nets: on the relation of explaining and understanding artificial intelligence in medicine

Starke

Poppe

2022

Ethics Inf Technol

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Assistive systems based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) are bound to reshape decision-making in all areas of society. One of the most intricate challenges arising from their implementation in high-stakes environments such as medicine concerns their frequently unsatisfying levels of explainability, especially in the guise of the so-called black-box problem: highly successful models based on deep learning seem to be inherently opaque, resisting comprehensive explanations. This may explain why some scholars claim that research should focus on rendering AI systems understandable, rather than explainable. Yet, there is a grave lack of agreement concerning these terms in much of the literature on AI. We argue that the seminal distinction made by the philosopher and physician Karl Jaspers between different types of explaining and understanding in psychopathology can be used to promote greater conceptual clarity in the context of Machine Learning (ML). Following Jaspers, we claim that explaining and understanding constitute multi-faceted epistemic approaches that should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but rather as complementary ones as in and of themselves they are necessarily limited. Drawing on the famous example of Watson for Oncology we highlight how Jaspers’ methodology translates to the case of medical AI. Classical considerations from the philosophy of psychiatry can therefore inform a debate at the centre of current AI ethics, which in turn may be crucial for a successful implementation of ethically and legally sound AI in medicine.

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Section: Understanding Ai As Misguided Anthropomorphism?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Karl Jaspers and artificial neural nets: on the relation of explaining and understanding artificial intelligence in medicine

Starke

Poppe

2022

Ethics Inf Technol

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The Puzzle of Fictional Models

Zorzato

2023

J Gen Philos Sci

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Micro-level model explanation and counterfactual constraint

Schindler

2022

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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Relationships of counterfactual dependence have played a major role in recent debates of explanation and understanding in the philosophy of science. Usually, counterfactual dependencies have been viewed as the explanantia of explanation, i.e., the things providing explanation and understanding. Sometimes, however, counterfactual dependencies are themselves the targets of explanations in science. These kinds of explanations are the focus of this paper. I argue that "micro-level model explanations" explain the particular form of the empirical regularity underlying a counterfactual dependency by representing it as a physical necessity on the basis of postulated microscopic entities. By doing so, micro-level models rule out possible forms the regularity (and the associated counterfactual) could have taken. Micro-model explanations, in other words, constrain empirical regularities and their associated counterfactual dependencies. I introduce and illustrate micro-level model explanations in detail, contrast them to other accounts of explanation, and consider potential problems.

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Do fictions explain?

Cited by 6 publications

References 59 publications

Karl Jaspers and artificial neural nets: on the relation of explaining and understanding artificial intelligence in medicine

Karl Jaspers and artificial neural nets: on the relation of explaining and understanding artificial intelligence in medicine

The Puzzle of Fictional Models

Micro-level model explanation and counterfactual constraint

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