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510Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence, 3–4 October (Report on PT-AI 2011)The Reasoner 5 (11): 192-193. 2011.Report for "The Reasoner" on the conference "Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence", 3 & 4 October 2011, Thessaloniki, Anatolia College/ACT, http://www.pt-ai.org. --- Organization: Vincent C. Müller, Professor of Philosophy at ACT & James Martin Fellow, Oxford http://www.sophia.de --- Sponsors: EUCogII, Oxford-FutureTech, AAAI, ACM-SIGART, IACAP, ECCAI
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485Mittleres Wissen und das Problem des Übels [Middle knowledge and the problem of evil]In Christian Jäger (ed.), Analytische Religionsphilosophie, Ferdinand Schöningh. pp. 253-272. 1998.Wenn Präsident Kennedy nicht erschossen worden wäre, hätte er dann Nordvietnam bombardiert? Das weiß Gott allein. Oder doch nicht? Weiß wenigstens Er, was Kennedy getan hätte? ... Die Jesuiten behaupteten unter anderem, daß viele menschliche Handlungen in dem Sinne frei seien, daß die Ausführenden nicht logisch oder kausal gezwungen seien, sie auszuführen. („Frei“ wird im vorliegenden Aufsatz stets in diesem Sinne verwendet werden.) Wie behält Gott dann die Kontrolle über die menschliche Geschic…Read more
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478Ethical issues for robotics and autonomous systemsUK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Network. 2019.There are unusual challenges in ethics for RAS. Perhaps the issue can best be summarised as needing to consider “technically informed ethics”. The technology of RAS raises issues that have an ethical dimension, and perhaps uniquely so due to the possibility of moving human decision-making which is implicitly ethically informed to computer systems. Further, if seeking solutions to these problems – ethically aligned design, to use the IEEE’s terminology – then the solutions must be technically me…Read more
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461The extended mind thesis is about demarcation and use of wordsReti, Saperi, Linguaggi: Italian Journal of Cognitive Sciences 2 335-348. 2018.The «extended mind thesis» sounds like a substantive thesis, the truth of which we should investigate. But actually the thesis a) turns about to be just a statement on where the demarcations for the «mental» are to be set (internal, external,…), i.e. it is about the «mark of the mental»; and b) the choice about the mark of the mental is a verbal choice, not a matter of scientific discovery. So, the «extended mind thesis » is a remark on how its supporters or opponents want to use the word ‘mind’…Read more
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450Basic issues in AI policyIn Maria Amparo Grau-Ruiz (ed.), Interactive robotics: Legal, ethical, social and economic aspects, Springer. pp. 3-9. 2022.This extended abstract summarises some of the basic points of AI ethics and policy as they present themselves now. We explain the notion of AI, the main ethical issues in AI and the main policy aims and means.
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449What a course on philosophy of computing is notAPA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 8 (1): 36-38. 2008.Immanuel Kant famously defined philosophy to be about three questions: “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?” (KrV, B833). I want to suggest that the three questions of our course on the philosophy of computing are: What is computing? What should we do with computing? What could computing do?
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4191 Οι Αρχές - 2 Η δοκιμασία του Turing - 3 Η κλασική τεχνητή νοημοσύνη - 4 Η τεχνητή νοημοσύνη σήμερα - 5 Η τεχνητή νοημοσύνη του μέλλοντος - Με τις τεχνολογίες του παρόντος μάλλον θα δυσκολευτούμε να φτάσουμε στην κατασκευή μηχανών με τεχνητή νοημοσύνη. Κατά την γνώμη μου, θα δούμε άλλες τεχνικές λύσεις με την κλασική τεχνητή νοημοσύνη και μέθοδο «από κάτω προς τα πάνω», αλλά δεν περιμένω να υπάρξει ριζοσπαστική πρόοδος πριν μάθουμε πολλά παραπάνω για τον εγκέφαλό μας. Υπάρχουν πολύ καλοί λόγοι …Read more
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417Susan Stuart & Gordana Dodig Crnkovic : 'Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the Liminal' (review)Cybernetics and Human Knowing 16 (3-4): 201-203. 2009.Review of: "Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the Liminal", Ed. Susan Stuart & Gordana Dodig Crnkovic, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, September 2007, xxiv+340pp, ISBN: 9781847180902, Hardback: £39.99, $79.99 ---- Are you a computer? Is your cat a computer? A single biological cell in your stomach, perhaps? And your desk? You do not think so? Well, the authors of this book suggest that you think again. They propose a computational turn, a turn towards computational exp…Read more
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409Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2021 (edited book)Springer. 2022.This book gathers contributions from the fourth edition of the Conference on "Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence" (PT-AI), held on 27-28th of September 2021 at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, Sweden. It covers topics at the interface between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing. It discusses advanced theories fostering the understanding of human cognition, human autonomy, dignity and morality, and the development of corresponding artificial cognitiv…Read more
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402Interaction and resistance: The recognition of intentions in new human-computer interactionIn Anna Esposito, Antonietta M. Esposito, Raffaele Martone, Vincent C. Müller & Gaetano Scarpetta (eds.), Towards autonomous, adaptive, and context-aware multimodal interfaces: Theoretical and practical issues, Springer. pp. 1-7. 2011.Just as AI has moved away from classical AI, human-computer interaction (HCI) must move away from what I call ‘good old fashioned HCI’ to ‘new HCI’ – it must become a part of cognitive systems research where HCI is one case of the interaction of intelligent agents (we now know that interaction is essential for intelligent agents anyway). For such interaction, we cannot just ‘analyze the data’, but we must assume intentions in the other, and I suggest these are largely recognized through resistan…Read more
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394AI as IA: The use and abuse of artificial intelligence (AI) for human enhancement through intellectual augmentation (IA)In Fabrice Jotterand & Marcello Ienca (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement, Routledge. pp. 187-199. 2023.This paper offers an overview of the prospects and ethics of using AI to achieve human enhancement, and more broadly what we call intellectual augmentation (IA). After explaining the central notions of human enhancement, IA, and AI, we discuss the state of the art in terms of the main technologies for IA, with or without brain-computer interfaces. Given this picture, we discuss potential ethical problems, namely inadequate performance, safety, coercion and manipulation, privacy, cognitive libert…Read more
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389Blended Cognition (edited book)Springer. 2019.The central concept of this edited volume is "blended cognition", the natural skill of human beings for combining constantly different heuristics during their several task-solving activities. Something that was sometimes observed like a problem as “bad reasoning”, is now the central key for the understanding of the richness, adaptability and creativity of human cognition. The topic of this book connects in a significant way with the disciplines of psychology, neurology, anthropology, philosophy,…Read more
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372Hilary Putnam: Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Schriften zu Sprache und Wirklichkeit (edited book)Rowohlt. 1993.Einleitung - 1 Erklärung und Referenz (1973) - 2 Sprache und Wirklichkeit (1975) - 3 Was ist ‹Realismus›? (1975) - 4 Modelle und Wirklichkeit (1980) - 5 Referenz und Wahrheit (1980) - 6 Wie man zugleich interner Realist und transzendentaler Idealist sein kann (1980) - 7 Warum es keine Fertigwelt gibt (1982) - 8 Wozu die Philosophen? (1986) - 9 Realismus mit menschlichem Antlitz (1988/90) - 10 Irrealismus und Dekonstruktion (1992) - -/- Bibliographie der Schriften von Hilary Putnam - -/- Lite…Read more
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370Should we do speculative cognitive science? - In present day philosophy, I see a fashion that uses empirical facts (data) to support positions that are not philosophical but empirical in nature. The argumentative structure is classical philosophy, saying that ‘this has to be that way because …’ where the ‘this’ refers to some empirical state of affairs. This kind of philosophy speculates about empirical facts in areas where we do not yet know the facts – the arguments are a priori, supported by …Read more
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352Deictic codes, demonstratives, and reference: A step toward solving the grounding problemIn Wayne D. Gray & Christian D. Schunn (eds.), CogSci 2002, 24th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 762-767. 2002.In this paper we address the issue of grounding for experiential concepts. Given that perceptual demonstratives are a basic form of such concepts, we examine ways of fixing the referents of such demonstratives. To avoid ‘encodingism’, that is, relating representations to representations, we postulate that the process of reference fixing must be bottom-up and nonconceptual, so that it can break the circle of conceptual content and touch the world. For that purpose, an appropriate causal relation …Read more
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304There must be encapsulated nonconceptual content in visionIn Athanassios Raftpoulos (ed.), Cognitive penetrability of perception: Attention, action, attention and bottom-up constraints, Nova Science. pp. 157-170. 2005.In this paper I want to propose an argument to support Jerry Fodor’s thesis (Fodor 1983) that input systems are modular and thus informationally encapsulated. The argument starts with the suggestion that there is a “grounding problem” in perception, i. e. that there is a problem in explaining how perception that can yield a visual experience is possible, how sensation can become meaningful perception of something for the subject. Given that visual experience is actually possible, this invites a …Read more
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282From public data to private information: The case of the supermarketIn Bottis Maria (ed.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry, Nomiki Bibliothiki. pp. 500-507. 2009.The background to this paper is that in our world of massively increasing personal digital data any control over the data about me seems illusionary – informational privacy seems a lost cause. On the other hand, the production of this digital data seems a necessary component of our present life in the industrialized world. A framework for a resolution of this apparent dilemma is provided if by the distinction between (meaningless) data and (meaningful) information. I argue that computational dat…Read more
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277Auf der Suche nach den Fundamenten des Theismus [In Search of the Foundations of Theism]In Christoph Jäger (ed.), Analytische Religionsphilosophie, Ferdinand Schöningh. pp. 331-353. 1998.Dieser Aufsatz ist eine kritische und erkundende Diskussion von Plantingas Behauptung, daß bestimmte Aussagen, aus denen evidentermaßen folgt, daß Gott existiert, berechtigterweise basal sein könnten. Im kritischen Abschnitt argumentiere ich dafür, daß es Plantinga nicht gelingt zu zeigen, daß das Kriterium des modernen Fundamentalisten für berechtigte Basalität, dem zufolge solche Aussagen nicht berechtigterweise basal sein können, selbstreferentiell inkohärent oder anderweitig mangelhaft ist. …Read more
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267How do we read a dictionary (as machines and as humans)? Kinds of information in dictionaries constructed and reconstructedIn Evangelos Dermatas (ed.), Proceedings of COMLEX2000: Computational lexicography, Patras University Press. pp. 141-144. 2000.Two large lexicological projects for the Center for the Greek Language, Thessaloniki, were to be published in print and on the WWW, which meant that two conversions were needed: a near-database file had to be converted to fully formatted file for printing and a fully formatted file had to be converted to a database for WWW access. As it turned out, both conversions could make use of existing clues that indicated the kinds of information contained in each particular piece of text, thus separating…Read more
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265Real VaguenessIn Georg Meggle (ed.), Analyomen 2: Perspectives in analytical philosophy, De Gruyter. pp. 398-403. 1997.The nature of vagueness is investigated via a preliminary definition and a discussion of the classical sorites paradox ; this is carried further by asking for the origins of vagueness and a critique of several attempts to remove it from language. It is shown that such attempts are ill motivated and doomed for failure since vagueness is not just a matter of ignorance but firmly grounded in epistemic and metaphysical facts. Finally, the philosophical interest of real vagueness is illustrated by th…Read more
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229Communicating the same information to a human and to a machine: Is there a difference in principle?In Konstantinos Boudouris & Takis Poulakos (eds.), Philosophy of communication: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Greek philosophy (IAGP 13), Ionia. pp. 168-176. 2002.We try to show that there is no difference in principle between communicating a piece of information to a human and to a machine. The argumentation depends on the following theses: Communicating is transfer of information; information has propositional form; propositional form can be modelled as categorization; categorisation can be modelled in a machine; a suitably equipped machine can grasp propositional content designed for human communication. What I suggest is that the discussion should foc…Read more
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225“Der Mann mit Eigenschaften”, review of Joseph LeDoux: Im Netz der Persönlichkeit: Wie unser Selbst entsteht [Synaptic Self], (review)Süddeutsche Zeitung 2014 (14.01.2004): 14. 2004.Review of Joseph LeDoux: Das Netz der Persönlichkeit. Wie unser Selbst entsteht. Walter Verlag, Düsseldorf 2003. 510 Seiten (mit Abbildungen), 39,90 Euro. - Der eine Mensch ist mißtrauisch, der nächste leichtgläubig, diese ist warmherzig, jene kaltschnäuzig. Viele haben Charakter, manche sogar Persönlichkeit. Wie kommt es dazu? In seinem neuen Buch untersucht der Neurowissenschaftler Joseph LeDoux wie unser Selbst entsteht. In dem sehr lesbaren und angenehm übersetzten Werk wird anschaulich…Read more
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193Τι είναι η πατρίδα μας; [What is our fatherland?]Cogito 3 8-10. 2005.Ποια είναι η πατρίδα κάποιων; Ας δούμε το θέμα λίγο σαν πρόβλημα της φιλοσοφίας της γλώσσας: για ένα κατηγόρημα «Άγγλος» «Γάλλος», «Πορτογάλος», «Βέλγος», «Φλαμανδός», πώς να αποφασίσουμε ποια αντικείμενα (ποιοι άνθρωποι) εμπίπτουν σε ποιο κατηγόρημα; Έχουν τελικά νόημα αυτά τα κατηγορήματα; Η χρήση και κατάχρηση αυτών των κατηγορημάτων έχει αποτελέσει μια από τις κυριότερες πηγές δυστυχίας στη διάρκεια των δύο τελευταίων αιώνων και συνεχίζει να είναι στην ημερήσια διάταξη. Συνήθως εμφανίζεται σ…Read more
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18Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence (edited book)Springer. 2013.Can we make machines that think and act like humans or other natural intelligent agents? The answer to this question depends on how we see ourselves and how we see the machines in question. Classical AI and cognitive science had claimed that cognition is computation, and can thus be reproduced on other computing machines, possibly surpassing the abilities of human intelligence. This consensus has now come under threat and the agenda for the philosophy and theory of AI must be set anew, re-defini…Read more
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