2027 APA Eastern Division Meeting: Poster Session

Session Posters:

The Durated Instant: In Defense of Relativistically Compatible Presentism

By: Breck Elliott

Abstract: "One of the most significant inhibitors of presentism is the theory of relativity, particularly in its implication that there is no universal present on account of a lack of absolute simultaneity. By permitting the instant to hold a duration that varies to account for the influences of relativity throughout the universe, we can reasonably solve this issue in a way that keeps the good faith of relativity, causality, and the intuitive nature of presentism."

Can “Human-in-the-Loop” Approaches Ensure the Ethical Use of Machine Learning Clinical Decision Support Systems?

By: Amanda Favia

Abstract: "An often-proposed solution to ensure the ethical use of Machine Learning Clinical Decision Support Systems (ML_CDSS), is the “human-in-the-loop” (HITL) approach. HITL requires that humans participate in a meaningful way, providing input, feedback, oversight, and expertise, during the development and deployment of ML_CDSS to ensure both that AI tools are ethical and used ethically. This poster will provide an overview of Salloch and Eriksen’s argument from their article “What Are Humans Doing in the Loop? Co-Reasoning and Practical Judgment When Using Machine Learning-Driven Decision Aids”, which implements HITL within a Neo-Kantian framework of collaborative reasoning. It will then show that although this collaborative decision-making approach has its merits, it presents several problems: (1) it may place an undue epistemic burden on patients; (2) it is insufficient to ensure the ethical use of ML_CDSS in the clinical encounter and (3) it is too broad (i.e., it’s not necessary for all ML_CDSS)."

Supervenience and the Metaphysics of Health

By: Shadi Heidarifar, Lida Sarafraz

Abstract: "Is health metaphysically messy? Recent work in health metaphysics argues that because health spans biological, social, political, and phenomenological dimensions, it resists coherent definition. Elizabeth Barnes (2023) develops this skeptical position, claiming that health lacks a stable metaphysical structure capable of unifying the facts we track. We argue that this conclusion rests on conflating explanatory plurality with the absence of structured dependence. We introduce Local Supervenience, according to which health-properties weakly emerge from context-sensitive configurations of biological and socio-political base properties within specific space-time domains. On this view, dependence is domain-relative and modally constrained rather than global. Health can therefore be explained pluralistically without forfeiting metaphysical structure. It is a context-bound but systematically dependent property whose unity is local rather than universal.The poster visually models these dependence relations to clarify how local supervenience structures health across contexts."

Hyperdimensional Neutral Monism and the Proto-Panpsychist Collapse

By: Kali Killingsworth

Abstract: "Jason Frenkel’s Hyperdimensional Neutral Monism (HNM), offers a novel attempt to move beyond the mind-body impasse by positing consciousness as a subject’s spatio-temporal protrusion into a proposed fifth “consciouth” dimension. I argue that the view’s priority-monist dependency structure nonetheless commits itself to a form of proto-panpsychism despite Frenkel’s resistance to a cosmopsychist or panpsychist label. This poster will examine three candidate structural accounts available to HNM: 1.) The first-order, dual-aspect identity account; 2.) The first-order compound view; and 3.) The second-order, dual-aspect without identity account of powerful qualities. I argue all three positions face a dilemma by either inflating into a dual-property ontology or deflating into a nominalist position by divorcing aspects from causal relevance. While HNM's aim is to preserve monism while avoiding reductive materialism and “spooky” dualism, I argue that HNM’s commitments present an internal friction which results in a more radical view than Frenkel's intended functionalist bent."