About
Résumé
SQL
PhD Dissertation
Philosophy of Agency
Machine Learning (General)
Deep Reinforcement Learning
AI Governance
Personal website
About
Résumé
SQL
PhD Dissertation
Philosophy of Agency
Machine Learning (General)
Deep Reinforcement Learning
AI Governance
Welcome to my personal space on the internet, where I present my philosophical and technical work. The purpose of this website is to share my ongoing projects and explore connections between these two areas.
My professional goal is to establish myself as a specialist in AI governance. My current focus is on developing and demonstrating my skills in data quality and governance, as illustrated by two projects: Project 1: Data Profiling & Quality Evaluation and Project 2: Data Quality Remediation Plan.
This focus reflects my understanding that the reliability of AI systems depends, in part, on the quality of the data they use and the principles governing how that data is managed. Yet evaluating a system requires more than understanding how it functions. It also requires asking what it ought to do, why certain standards should apply, and how those standards can be justified.
Alongside my technical work, I pursue philosophical questions that arise from the development, evaluation, and governance of AI systems. I hope to develop these questions into articles that examine their conceptual foundations and potential implications for AI governance.
Rather than assuming from the outset that my academic research in philosophy connects with AI governance, however, I aim to investigate and establish those connections through practical projects and philosophical reflection.
My doctoral dissertation examines what I consider central to the nature of agency: the potential to have normative practical reasons, or, in more familiar terms, to be a being to whom reasons for acting in certain ways can be attributed. This idea remains central to my intellectual interests and provides one starting point for my continuing philosophical investigations.
Through this website, I aim to bring these different strands of work into an evolving body of research and practical projects.
As the portfolio develops, I hope it will reflect not only the skills and knowledge I acquire, but also the questions, arguments, and insights that emerge along the way.
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Botan Dolun
This dissertation investigates the nature of reason-possession, a topic that has received significant attention in recent philosophical literature. Existing discussions often center on a key puzzle: How can false beliefs appear to provide agents with reasons to act, making them rationally responsible for forming intentions based on these beliefs? This puzzle highlights a potential tension between the objective sense of reasons, understood as facts tied to the rational advisability of actions, and the subjective sense of reasons, grounded in an agent's rational criticizability. I offer a solution to this puzzle by introducing the Multifactorial Account (MA) of having normative practical reasons, developed through critiques of the extant Factoring Account and Two Relations Account. MA describes reason-possession as a state of mind where a person comes under a requirement of rationality—what I call the Practical Entailment Requirement (PER). Unlike the Instrumental Requirement, which has been traditionally invoked to explain normative conditions in instrumental reasoning, PER provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how attitudes generate rational options and determine the reasons agents have in practical reasoning. I argue that coming under an instance of PER explains why propositions— whether true or false—like <the glass is full of gin-and-tonic> or <I will drink gin-and-tonic>, can serve as an agent’s reasons when the agent is in a position to justifiably believe or intend to make them true. Ultimately, this dissertation aims to advance a deeper understanding of the relationship between practical reasoning and rational responsibility. Reason-possession, I contend, must be understood as integral to episodes of practical reasoning, shaped by a person’s attitudes and the normative demands of rationality.
botan.dolun@yahoo.com