Sebastian Sunday Grève

Research

Since 2020, I have increasingly focused on the philosophy of AI, including ethics as well as metaphysics.

Specialisation

Artificial Intelligence

Epistemology

Philosophy of Language

Philosophy of Mind

Socrates

Wittgenstein

Work in Progress

Fake Plastic Minds
Asian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming

An exploration of artificial consciousness and the authenticity of digital minds.

Wittgenstein, Socrates, Morality, and Science
Cambridge University Press, under contract

A comprehensive analysis of methodological connections between Socratic inquiry and Wittgensteinian philosophy in moral and scientific contexts.

Recent Publications

Method and Morality: Elenchus from Socrates to Wittgenstein
2025
Synthese, Vol. 205, Issue 3, pp. 117

This paper argues that the later Wittgenstein's philosophical practice constitutes an elaboration of the Socratic search for truth by question-and-answer adversary argument, which led Wittgenstein to develop new methods for uncovering and resolving deep disagreements. On a methodological level, it is argued that this Socratic method (known as Socratic elenchus) is essentially a search for deep disagreement and necessarily raises philosophical questions concerning morality.

The Biological Objection against Strong AI
2025
Inquiry, pp. 1-25Routledge

According to the biological objection against strong artificial intelligence (AI), machines cannot have human mindedness – that is, they cannot be conscious, intelligent, sentient, etc. in the precise way that a human being typically is – because this requires being alive, and machines are not alive. Proponents of the objection include John Lucas, Hubert Dreyfus, and John Searle. The present paper explains the nature and significance of the biological objection, before arguing that it currently represents an essentially irrational position.

Cognitivism about Religious Belief in Later Wittgenstein
2025
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 97, Issue 1, pp. 61-76

Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion has traditionally been grounded in non-cognitivism about religious belief. This paper shows that the Wittgensteinian tradition has wrongly neglected a significant movement towards cognitivism in Wittgenstein's later writings. The argument proceeds on the basis of two main claims. First, Wittgenstein's mature philosophy, as expressed in his Philosophical Investigations, clearly favours cognitivism over non-cognitivism with regard to certain linguistic facts about ordinary religious discourse. Second, during the last decade of his life Wittgenstein's view of religious belief actually underwent a significant shift in the direction of cognitivism, which finds its most striking expression in the analogy he draws to the 'honest religious thinker'.