Should we believe in Artificial Intelligence? A dialogue for understanding the present 

On 21 January 2025, at 4.30 p.m. in FBK’s Aula grande, there will be a roundtable with Michela Milano, Paolo Traverso, Paolo Costa, Eugenia Lancellotta and Boris Rähme, to discuss the AI Revolution and how society is gearing up for the challenge of the new intelligent machines

Great social, cultural, scientific transformations cannot take place if people simply observe them with skepticism. Of course, it is not enough to believe in something for it to happen, but without beliefs, convictions, trust, sometimes even faith, human beings struggle to accept and actively contribute to the changes taking place around them.

In order to better understand how people today see the emergence and proliferation of increasingly intelligent machines, the Centre for Religious Sciences organizes the roundtable discussion ‘Shall we believe in Artificial Intelligence?’. The meeting, to be held on 21 January 2025, at 4.30 p.m., in FBK’s Aula Grande (via S. Croce, 77, Trento) is the final event of the research project REBE - Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond, funded by the Euregio Science Fund (2022-2024).

Drawing insights from an activity carried out with two classes at the Istituto Artigianelli, the three ISR researchers involved in the investigation, Paolo Costa, Eugenia Lancellotta and Boris Rähme, will discuss with Paolo Traverso (Director of Strategic Planning at FBK) and Michela Milano (Director of FBK’s Digital Society Centre) about deep-seated and strong beliefs revolving around the AI revolution, their connection to – or disconnection from – empirical evidence, and how such beliefs might influence AI development in the near future. 

Innsbruck Workshop: Growth Imperative? A Case Study of Resilient Beliefs in Economics

Friday, 24 January 2025, 14.00 – 17.00, Dekanatssitzungssaal / Theol. Fakultät, Karl-Rahner-Platz 1

Programme

14.00 Welcome address (Katherine Dormandy)

14.10 The Epistemology of Resilient Beliefs:

A Primer for Non-Philosophers (Winfried Löffler)

14.35 Growth Imperative: A Primer for Non-Economists

(Markus Walzl)

15.00 Challenging Growth Imperative: A Reflection

on a Plurality of Approaches (Andreas Exenberger)

15.25 Coffee Break

15.45 Discussion

Guests welcome!

Speakers: Katherine Dormandy is Full Professor at the Department of Christian Philosophy, and head of the Innsbruck Center for Philosophy of Religion (ICPR). – Andreas Exenberger is Associated Professor at the Department of Economic Theory, Policy and History, and member of EPoS. – Winfried Löffler is Associated Professor at the Department of Christian Philosophy and member of the ICPR. – Markus Walzl is Full Professor at the Department of Economic Theory, Policy and History, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Staistics, and member of Innsbruck Decision Science (IDS).

REBE GOES TO SCHOOL

Among the goals of the REBE: Resilient Beliefs - Religion and Beyond project there is also the design and implementation of a series of activities and teaching materials for high school students. To this end, thanks to the collaboration of FBK Junior, Paolo Costa and Eugenia Lancellotta carried out a teaching activity with two classes at the Pavonian Artigianelli Institute of Trento, under the supervision of Professor Giada Saltori.

The activity consisted of six meetings for a total of ten hours in which the idea of “resilient beliefs” was first presented and discussed, and then the students were asked to make their resilient beliefs explicit and test them starting with two case studies. The first one is the today much-discussed AI Revolution. The second is how social media has changed people’s sociability in the last two decades.

The goal was to increase the students’ awareness of the varied sources of their most robust beliefs. For this purpose, a map was used to discriminate between beliefs based on personal experience, those reinforced by expert opinion, views supported by ideologies, faiths or deep moral convictions, beliefs that spread as urban legends or are boosted up by conspiracy theories, beliefs that are product of wishful thinking, and, among the latter, those so idiosyncratic that feel like genuine psychological delusions.

The activity has been useful both on the investigation side and to envision possible spin-offs in civic education of the research project. On this, more to come. 

FINAL CONFERENCE

RESILIENT BELIEFS: RELIGION AND BEYOND

Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali - Aula Grande

Resilient opinions or beliefs are beliefs that people would vehemently defend against objections and counterarguments. Some of these beliefs – such as the belief that one cannot breathe under water – appear completely rational. However, the Corona crisis has shed light on questionable forms of belief resilience, such as those that call into question science as a whole. What is it then that distinguishes “rational” from “irrational,” “good” from “bad” forms of belief resilience? And at which point along the spectrum can extremist, conspiratorial, delusional and religious beliefs be found?

The final conference of project REBE will cast light on these issues by presenting the results of two years of research on the topic and thanks to the participation of international experts.

The conference will focus on three questions:
1) the normative question: Is there such a thing as epistemically good vs. epistemically bad ways of being resiliently committed to a pivotal belief?
2) The social-impact question: What is the social impact of resilient beliefs in societies marked by diversity, religious and non?
3) The difference question:  Is it possible to distinguish religious from non-religious resilient beliefs in a principled and convincing way?

The conference will be held in person. Live-streaming will be available (links to be published soon). 

Programme (download)

Day 1 | 11 April 2024

9.00-9.30 | Intro
Paolo Costa, Winfried Loeffler, Martin Lintner

Innsbruck panel: Fundamental and conspiratorial beliefs
Chair: Winfried Loeffler

9.30-10.30 | Why People Who Believe in God Fear Death
Scott Hill (University of Innsbruck)

10.30-11.30 | Resisting the Evidence of Others
Anna-Maria Asunta Eder (Universität zu Köln)

11.30-12.00 | Break

12.00-13.00 | Epistemology without hinges. The search for fundamental beliefs and the structure of justification
Gerhard Ernst (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen)

Trento panel: Religious beliefs, extremism and delusions
Chair: Boris Rähme

14.15-15.15 | The resiliency of extravagant beliefs: the case of relusion
Eugenia Lancellotta (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)

15.15-16.15 | How to take a person with extreme beliefs seriously
Naomi Kloosterboer (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

16.15-16.45 | Break

16.45-17.45 | How are ‘normal’ resilient beliefs different from extreme resilient beliefs?
Rik Peels (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

17.45-18.00 | Break

18.00-19.30 | The resilience of delusional beliefs and conspiracy beliefs
Keynote: Lisa Bortolotti (University of Birmingham)

Day 2 | 12 April 2024

Brixen panel: Faith and doubt
Chair: Martin Lintner

9.30-10.30 | Varieties of belief in God: From theistic to atheistic faith
Gloria Dell’Eva (PTH Brixen)

10.30-11.30 | Warranted faith despite serious doubt? A re-evaluation
Veronika Hoffmann (Freiburg)

11.30-12.00 | Break

12.00-13.00 | TBD
Bernhard Nitsche (Münster)

13.00-13.15 | Closing remarks

THREE RECENT TALKS BY WINFRIED LÖFFLER

Winfried Löffler gave two guest talks on "The Epistemology of Fake News" at the Newman Institute (Uppsala / Sweden) on 12 February, and at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Social Theology.

On 6 March 2024, he gave a guest talk on "Posthumanism, Transhumanism, and Human Nature. Reflections on some contemporary pop philosophies" at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Social Theology.

NIKOLAS KOMPRIDIS AT THE FBK CENTER FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES

LOSING FAITH: REFLECTIONS ON DEMOCRACY’S CURRENT EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRISIS

19 March 2024 | 11:00 — 13:00

FBK Aula Piccola, Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali - Aula Piccola - Via S. Croce 77, 38122 Trento, Italy

Online

Registration by March 18, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. is required in order to arrange the connection.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Abstract 

The necessary conditions for the exercise, of democracy’s problem-solving capacities do not seem to exist today. Citizens of democratic societies have split up into multiple, apparently incommensurable epistemic communities. This situation of discord between truth and politics was anticipated by H. Arendt, who did not anticipate, however, the emergence of a politics of radical skepticism, which is spreading with little resistance from the democratic institutions.

Traditionally, discussions of radical skepticism have been confined to academic philosophy. However, in the last decades a form of radical epistemological skepticism has unexpectedly acquired a potentially catastrophic political existence within democratic societies.

The loss of faith in the problem-solving powers of democracy is pervasive and growing, due, above all, to two phenomena: 1) the failure of democratic societies to respond to the climate catastrophe; and 2) the failure to constrain and mitigate the destructive effects of capitalism. When democracies arrive at this point, they have to “break existing political forms” and thereby create a new “public” (Dewey). The restoration of our faith in democracy precisely depends on whether we can meet the overwhelming challenges we face today. 

Nikolas Kompridis (Center for Ethics at the University of Toronto) is an interdisciplinary philosopher and critical theorist whose research is focused on rethinking the relation between the human and non-human; revising the theory and practice of critique in light of diverse traditions of critical theory; re-assessing the claims and possibilities of philosophical romanticism; and illuminating the ethical and political insights of the arts, especially literature, cinema, and music. He is the author of Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory Between Past and Future (MIT), Philosophical Romanticism (Routledge), The Aesthetic Turn in Political Thought (Bloomsbury), and Heterotopian Cinema: Spaces of Refuge and Freedom (forthcoming, Northwestern University Press), as well as over 60 articles and book chapters that have appeared in leading journals and notable academic presses. He has taught at universities in Canada, the UK, and most recently as Foundation Director and Research Professor at the Institute for Social Justice in Sydney. 

The event will be held in English.

The event, organized by FBK’s Center for Religious Studies, will be held in English and is part of the activities of the research project IPN 175: “Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond,” funded by the Euregio Science Fund.

The event will be in-person in the FBK Aula Piccola while seats last and online.

HALF-TIME: AN INTERIM OVERVIEW. REBE MAKES A STOP IN INNSBRUCK 

The second workshop of the interregional and interdisciplinary research project REBE – “Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond” (2022-2024), took place at the University of Innsbruck on 12-13 October 2023.

The umbrella concept of resilient belief is bearing fruit and, in the Dekanatssitzungssaal of the Faculty of Theology, the REBE group, gathered and conferred intensively about the events already organized, those yet to be organized (first of all, the final conference scheduled for April 11-12, 2024 at the Aula Grande of the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento) and some key theoretical objects of joint inquiry.

Scott Hill, for example, asked in his talk whether it is correct to argue that conspiracy theorists suffer from testimonial injustice – that is, whether their complaint that they are dismissed more than they deserve is justified or not. Eugenia Lancellotta, then, considered why Insanity defense is so rarely applied in cases of crime-inducing pathological religious delusions. Katherine Dormandy, on the other hand, discussed in her paper on Science Fundamentalism the logic behind the “us-vs-them” polarization that risks turning even advocates of a self-critical and reflexive approach to belief into extremists. In her presentation, Gloria Dell'Eva made use of F.H. Jacobi’s articulated conception of Glaube to explain why the metaphor of a somersault – used by Jacobi himself – can serve to make better sense of the notion of resilient belief. Finally, Winfried Löffler focused his attention on the so-called “heterodox experts,” i.e., the experts who bring grist to the mill of alternative accounts, showing what, in spite of their weaknesses, makes them nonetheless trustworthy in the eyes of proponents of countermajority views (fighting spirit; sense of mission; group dynamics; personal integrity; low direct error costs).

The last part of the workshop was devoted to a comprehensive discussion of the theoretical fruitfulness of the concept of “resilient belief” in the different research areas touched upon by the project and on the further perspectives of inquiry that have emerged so far.

The workshop atmosphere was intense, frank, collaborative and productive. Many new things are in the pipeline for the coming months. Stay tuned and check our website periodically to stay informed about developments in the REBE project.

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE IN LANGUAGE AND LAW.  A WORKSHOP WITH RYAN McKAY AT THE CENTER FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES OF FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER

Swear words have a unique linguistic power. Swearing in public is illegal in many countries and profanity is a major target for censorship in the arts and entertainment industries. What gives swear words their potency?

In the first part of his talk, R. McKay will describe a systematic cross-linguistic investigation of phonetic patterns in profanity and show how the non-arbitrary form of swear words is important for understanding how swear words fulfil their psychological and social functions.

In the second part of the talk, McKay will discuss swearing in a different context – the courtroom. In countries such as Britain and the United States, court witnesses must publicly declare that they will provide truthful evidence, either by swearing an oath or by making an affirmation. McKay will present evidence that people associate choice of the oath with credible testimony.

The real-world implications of these findings will be discussed and it will be suggested that the religious oath is an antiquated legal ritual that needs reform.

Date: 05 June 2023

Time: 02:00 pm - 04:00 pm

Location: Center for Religious Studies, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via S. Croce 77, I-39122 Trento, Aula Piccola

To register, please visit THIS LINK. 

WINFRIED LÖFFLER PRESENTS THE REBE PROJECT AT INNSBRUCK-BRIXEN ACADEMIC MEETING, 21 APRIL 2023  

Winfried Löffler gave a 40min presentation of the project "Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond" at the annual meeting of the professors of the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Innsbruck and the Brixen School of Philosophy and Theology on 21 April 2023, and received valuable interdisciplinary feedback in the discussion. 

EUGENIA LANCELLOTTA TO GIVE A PRESENTATION AT THE EXTREME BELIEF AND RESPONSIBILITY WORKSHOP, VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM, JUNE 29-30 2023 

We are pleased to announce that Eugenia’s abstract “PUTTING THE INSANITY DEFENSE ON TRIAL” has been accepted for presentation at the Extreme Belief and Responsibility Workshop, organized by the  ERC funded Extreme Beliefs project at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, June 29-30 2023. The workshop programme is still in the making, so we will keep you posted on the exact date and time.

The workshop explores the relation between extreme beliefs and extreme behavior on the one hand and responsibility on the other. The first part concerns the issue of who is responsible. For instance, should we target the individual, the community, or none, i.e., are structural factors to blame? The second part concerns what kind of responsibility is at issue. For instance, how do legal, moral, and epistemic responsibility relate to each other with respect to extreme beliefs? The third part concerns when responsibility attributions are appropriate and when not. What are excusing or exculpating conditions of individual or group responsibility for extreme belief?

Abstract

The Insanity Defense is a tool that most Western legal systems employ to account for mental illness as a mitigating condition in assessing culpability. In most of these countries, the Insanity Defense has two major prongs. The first is that a defendant must suffer from a “severe mental disease or defect that affected him or her at the time of the crime”. The second prong is that “a defendant, as a result of this severe mental defect, must have been unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions at the time of the crime”. Wrongfulness must be interpreted with reference to “objective societal or public standards of moral wrongfulness, not the defendant’s subjective personal standards of moral wrongfulness”.

However, the application of the Insanity Defense is particularly problematic when it comes to crimes committed as a consequence of holding extreme religious beliefs. This is because the line between normal and pathological is more blurred in religious beliefs. Whereas in general pathological beliefs such as delusions stand out because they depart from shared norms of rationality and evidence, irrationality and resistance to counterevidence characterize both normal and pathological religious beliefs. Moreover, while pathological, irrational beliefs like delusions are usually not shared by a community of people, a religious belief that is odd for one group could easily be the norm in another. These factors make the task of understanding whether an extreme religious belief is the result of a mental illness or of a non-pathological – though dangerous - process of acquisition extremely daunting.

Some solutions have been proposed to overcome this conundrum and make the Insanity Defense applicable also in the presence of extreme religious beliefs. For example, some have argued that, while non-pathological, extremist religious believers would be able to engage with public standards of moral wrongfulness (though this would not change their end belief), this would not be the case for extremist religious believers affected by mental disorders such as psychosis.

After discussing this and other solutions more in detail, this paper aims to contribute to a fairer understanding and application of the Insanity Defense in cases of extreme religious beliefs and behaviours by envisaging an excusing condition for such beliefs and behaviours so far neglected by Western legal systems. I argue that the Insanity Defense must be fine-tuned to allow for criminal cases where appreciation of moral wrongfulness according to public standards is present, but the extremist religious beliefs and behaviours are the result of an identity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion as found in some sects, cults or other extremist religious organization. To do this, I will rely on the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - that makes room for dissociative disorders brought about by coercive persuasion - and apply it to the legal case of Nebraska vs Michael Ryan, where the culpability of some of the defendants could be overturned if considered under this new light. 

"RESILIENT BELIEFS" PANEL AT EUARE 2023

We are pleased to announce that our closed panel proposal "RESILIENT BELIEFS: CAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE HELP US UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF ROCK-BOTTOM CONVICTIONS?" has been accepted by the organisers of this year's conference of the European Academy of Religion, which will take place in St Andrews, Scotland, UK, from 19 to 23 June. The conference programme is still in the making, so we will keep you posted on the exact date and time.

Panel Abstract

RESILIENT BELIEFS: CAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE HELP US UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF ROCK-BOTTOM CONVICTIONS?

Believing in something and believing that something is the case have some notoriously puzzling aspects. Believing means, on the one hand, having something stored in one’s mind, which one more or less explicitly accepts and, on the other hand, committing oneself to the implications of trusting that belief. Believing that EUARE is the right place to present the results of one’s research is a good example of this dual character of beliefs. If you entertain that belief, then you are more likely to attend the conference, but the nature of this attitude is far from transparent.

Now, these features of believing stand out when a belief is particularly resistant against contrary evidence. In such cases, resistance to change may appear as clear proof of irrationality. The experience of religious faith, however, shows that things are not so simple. Indeed, there are areas of existence in which unconditional faith in a person, an ideal, a certain vision of the future or the causes of our being in the world can reasonably influence people’s beliefs according to eccentric logics that pose genuine epistemic challenges.

Presenting intermediate results of the interdisciplinary research project “Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond” (Euregio Science Fund), the panel will focus on the nature of disbelief, extreme religious beliefs, conspiracy theories, the role of metaphors in Christian faith, and how these boundary cases of the human capacity to believe may appear in different shapes depending on whether one approaches them from an internal (emic) or external (etic) perspective.

Chair: Paolo Costa (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)

Speakers:

Boris Rähme (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Varieties of Non-Belief

Eugenia Lancellotta (Fondazione Bruno Kessler), Putting the Insanity Defense on Trial

Gloria Dell’Eva (PTH Brixen), Religious Faith and Epistemic Belief: An Example from the History of Philosophy

Scott Hill (University of Innsbruck), Was King David a Conspiracy Theorist? 

LISTEN TO CHARLES TAYLOR's LECTURE “DEGENERATIONS OF DEMOCRACY" ON FBK-ISR's YOUTUBE CHANNEL 

The recording of Taylor's lecture is now available on the YouTube channel of the Centre for Religious Studies (FBK) at THIS link.

CHARLES TAYLOR TO GIVE A LECTURE IN TRENTO AS PART OF THE "RESILIENT BELIEFS" PROJECT: “DEGENERATIONS OF DEMOCRACY"

Many have a sense that democracy is in trouble in the West today. But what are the causes of the erosion of the basis of a political regime that seemed to have no alternative until a few years ago? Populism is often blamed for the origin of this degeneration. However, if democracy is not an end state but a process, shouldn’t the root causes of this malaise be sought rather in the crisis of participation, in failures of practices of inclusion and the spread of a paralyzing sense of powerlessness among citizens?

The event, organized by FBK’s Center for Religious Studies in collaboration with the Departments of Sociologia e Ricerca sociale and Lettere e Filosofia of the University of Trento, will be held in English and is part of the activities of the research project IPN 175: “Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond,” funded by the Euregio Science Fund.

The event will be held in-person, but will be recorded and made available later on the YouTube channel of the Center for Religious Studies.

For further information, please visit THIS link.

“RESILIENT BELIEFS: AN OVERVIEW”

STRONG OPINIONS DEBATED IN BRIXEN

The first workshop of the interregional and interdisciplinary research project REBE – “Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond” (2022-2024), was held in Brixen / Bressanone on 18-19 November.

At the heart of the research, as users of this website already know, are those beliefs that, for good or bad reasons, often difficult to make explicit, are particularly resistant to change, sometimes even in the face of glaring contrary evidence. Examples are well known and range from common sense certainties to political opinions, sports partisanship, scientific notions gathered during the school years, and life insights around which people build their own sense of integrity or moral rectitude.

Many of these topics were discussed during the workshop: from conspiracy theories (Scott Hill – Innsbruck) to pathological delusions and their legal implications (Eugenia Lancellotta – Trent), from the role of dogma in Christian faith and theology (Gloria Dell’Eva –  Bressanone) to the distinction between good and bad doxastic resilience (Winfried Löffler – Innsbruck), from the relationship between religion and delusion (Paolo Costa – Trento) to the epistemic relevance of disbelief (Boris Rähme – Trento).

The atmosphere of the discussion was both easygoing and passionate: an ideal context for developing new thoughts and ideas on central contemporary issues such as epistemic pollution of the public sphere, the distinction between conspiracy theories and conspiracies as actual causes of historical events, the similarities and differences between psychological delusions and delusions typical of esoteric cults, the function of theologically bold metaphors such as the womb of the Father in facilitating the adaptation of religious belief to changing historical circumstances, the nature of doxastic resilience in science, meaningful existential change as an example of nondoxastic resilience, faith, trust and commitment as different facets of belief resilience in the religious domain.

Already in the pipeline for the coming months are, in addition to publications, more workshops and a final conference in which the investigation of this enigmatic aspect of human mental life will be further developed. 

The first workshop of the research group REBE - Resilient Beliefs: Religion and Beyond will be held at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule in Brixen/Bressanone on November 19. This is the programme for the day.

Morning Session (9.00 – 12.30)

• Scott Hill (Innsbruck): “Are Conspiratorial Beliefs Bad Beliefs?”

• Eugenia Lancellotta (Trento): “Religious Beliefs, Religious Delusions and Cultic Beliefs: Epistemic and Legal Differences”

• Gloria Dell’Eva (Brixen/Bressanone): “Metaphors and Dogmas: Two Possible Lines of Research”

• Winfried Löffler (Innsbruck): “Good and Bad Belief Resilience: Candidates and Criteria”

• Paolo Costa (Trento): “‘Relusion’: Is There Something Inherently Delusional about Religious Beliefs?”

• Boris Rähme (Trento): “Belief Polarization and Disagreement”

Afternoon Session (14.30 – 16.00)

Resilient Beliefs and Beyond: What’s Next? (Open Discussion) 

Within the framework of the project "Resilient Beliefs", a workshop on Trust, Delusion, and Dissent with Cord Friebe (University of Siegen and Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Religious Studies) and Eugenia Lancellotta (postdoctoral researcher) will be held in the Aula Piccola of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler on Monday 27 June, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

In his paper entitled “Trust in Science, Unfruitful Dissents in Science?”, Friebe will examine the criteria for determining when scientific dissent can become counterproductive and whether the efforts to distinguish fruitful from detrimental dissents may not sometimes foster distrust in science.

Eugenia Lancellotta’s contribution (“Delusions: An Overview”) will instead present the most important theories about the formation and maintenance of delusions and will begin to discuss the similarities and differences with religious beliefs.

More info