-
825Bibliography of the writings by Hilary Putnam: 16 books, 198 articles, 10 translations into German (up to 1994).
-
451What 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?
-
537Challenges for artificial cognitive systemsJournal of Cognitive Science 13 (4): 452-469. 2012.The declared goal of this paper is to fill this gap: “... cognitive systems research needs questions or challenges that define progress. The challenges are not (yet more) predictions of the future, but a guideline to what are the aims and what would constitute progress.” – the quotation being from the project description of EUCogII, the project for the European Network for Cognitive Systems within which this formulation of the ‘challenges’ was originally developed (http://www.eucognition.org). S…Read more
-
651Review of Mark Sainsbury, Paradoxes (review)European Review of Philosophy 1 182-184. 1994.Review of Mark Sainsbury, Paradoxes.
-
897The phenomenal content of experienceMind and Language 21 (2): 187-219. 2006.We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. Th…Read more
-
730Killer robots: Regulate, don’t banIn University of Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government Policy Memo, Blavatnik School of Government. pp. 1-4. 2014.Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems are here. Technological development will see them become widespread in the near future. This is in a matter of years rather than decades. When the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meets on 10-14th November 2014, well-considered guidance for a decision on the general policy direction for LAWS is clearly needed. While there is widespread opposition to LAWS—or ‘killer robots’, as they are popularly called—and a growing campaign advocates banning them ou…Read more
-
561Revisiting Turing and His Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World (edited book)AISB. 2012.Proceedings of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Revisiting Turing and his Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World" at the 2012 AISB and IACAP Symposium that was held in the Turing year 2012, 2–6 July at the University of Birmingham, UK. Ten papers. - http://www.pt-ai.org/turing-test --- Daniel Devatman Hromada: From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents - Michael Zillich: My Robot is Sma…Read more
-
373Hilary 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
-
1107Editorial: Risks of general artificial intelligenceJournal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 26 (3): 297-301. 2014.This is the editorial for a special volume of JETAI, featuring papers by Omohundro, Armstrong/Sotala/O’Heigeartaigh, T Goertzel, Brundage, Yampolskiy, B. Goertzel, Potapov/Rodinov, Kornai and Sandberg. - If the general intelligence of artificial systems were to surpass that of humans significantly, this would constitute a significant risk for humanity – so even if we estimate the probability of this event to be fairly low, it is necessary to think about it now. We need to estimate what progress …Read more
-
758Hume über Übel [Hume on evil]In Christoph Jäger (ed.), Analytische Religionsphilosophie, Ferdinand Schöningh. pp. 227-244. 1998.In den Abschnitten X und XI der Dialoge über Natürliche Religion legt Hume seine Ansichten zum traditionellen theologischen Problem des Übels dar. Humes Anmerkungen zu diesem Thema scheinen mir eine reichhaltige Mischung aus Einsichten und Irrtümern zu enthalten. Mein Ziel in diesem Aufsatz besteht darin, diese entgegengesetzten Elemente seiner Diskussion zu entwirren.
-
372Should 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
-
673Theory and philosophy of AI (Minds and Machines, 22/2 - Special volume) (edited book)Springer. 2012.Invited papers from PT-AI 2011. - Vincent C. Müller: Introduction: Theory and Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence - Nick Bostrom: The Superintelligent Will: Motivation and Instrumental Rationality in Advanced Artificial Agents - Hubert L. Dreyfus: A History of First Step Fallacies - Antoni Gomila, David Travieso and Lorena Lobo: Wherein is Human Cognition Systematic - J. Kevin O'Regan: How to Build a Robot that Is Conscious and Feels - Oron Shagrir: Computation, Implementation, Cognition.
-
1010Representation in digital systemsIn P. Brey, A. Briggle & K. Waelbers (eds.), Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, Ios Press. pp. 116-121. 2008.Cognition is commonly taken to be computational manipulation of representations. These representations are assumed to be digital, but it is not usually specified what that means and what relevance it has for the theory. I propose a specification for being a digital state in a digital system, especially a digital computational system. The specification shows that identification of digital states requires functional directedness, either for someone or for the system of which it is a part. In the c…Read more
-
3017Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence (edited book)Springer. 2016.[Müller, Vincent C. (ed.), (2016), Fundamental issues of artificial intelligence (Synthese Library, 377; Berlin: Springer). 570 pp.] -- This volume offers a look at the fundamental issues of present and future AI, especially from cognitive science, computer science, neuroscience and philosophy. This work examines the conditions for artificial intelligence, how these relate to the conditions for intelligence in humans and other natural agents, as well as ethical and societal problems that artific…Read more
-
3954Future progress in artificial intelligence: A poll among expertsAI Matters 1 (1): 9-11. 2014.[This is the short version of: Müller, Vincent C. and Bostrom, Nick (forthcoming 2016), ‘Future progress in artificial intelligence: A survey of expert opinion’, in Vincent C. Müller (ed.), Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence (Synthese Library 377; Berlin: Springer).] - - - In some quarters, there is intense concern about high–level machine intelligence and superintelligent AI coming up in a few dec- ades, bringing with it significant risks for human- ity; in other quarters, these is…Read more
-
765Margaret A. Boden, mind as machine: A history of cognitive science , 2 vols (review)Minds and Machines 18 (1): 121-125. 2008.Review of: Margaret A. Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, 2 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, xlvii+1631, cloth $225, ISBN 0-19-924144-9. - Mind as Machine is Margaret Boden’s opus magnum. For one thing, it comes in two massive volumes of nearly 1700 pages, ... But it is not just the opus magnum in simple terms of size, but also a truly crowning achievement of half a century’s career in cognitive science.
-
894Towards autonomous, adaptive, and context-aware multimodal interfaces: Theoretical and practical issues (edited book)Springer. 2011.This volume brings together the advanced research results obtained by the European COST Action 2102: “Cross Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication”. The research published in this book was discussed at the 3rd joint EUCOGII-COST 2102 International Training School entitled “Toward Autonomous, Adaptive, and Context-Aware Multimodal Interfaces: Theoretical and Practical Issues ” and held in Caserta, Italy, on March 15-19, 2010.
-
230Communicating 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
-
1779What is a digital state?In Mark J. Bishop & Yasemin Erden (eds.), The Scandal of Computation - What is Computation? - AISB Convention 2013, Aisb. pp. 11-16. 2013.There is much discussion about whether the human mind is a computer, whether the human brain could be emulated on a computer, and whether at all physical entities are computers (pancomputationalism). These discussions, and others, require criteria for what is digital. I propose that a state is digital if and only if it is a token of a type that serves a particular function - typically a representational function for the system. This proposal is made on a syntactic level, assuming three levels of…Read more
-
705Συμφραστικός πίνακας λέξεων στο ποιητικό έργο του Γιώργου Σεφέρη [Concordance to the poems of Georgios Seferis] (edited book)Centre for the Greek Language. 2003.Concordance of the poetic works of Giorgos Seferis which presents all the principal “words” of the texts in an alphabetical list, stating how often each word occurs, giving a precise location and a relevant piece of text for each occurrence. We found ca. 9500 different Greek words in 39000 different occurrences, so our concordance has 50.000 lines of text. The technical procedure required four main steps: text entry and tagging, production of the concordance, correction of the contexts, formatti…Read more
-
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
-
1585Just war and robots’ killingsPhilosophical Quarterly 66 (263): 302-22. 2016.May lethal autonomous weapons systems—‘killer robots ’—be used in war? The majority of writers argue against their use, and those who have argued in favour have done so on a consequentialist basis. We defend the moral permissibility of killer robots, but on the basis of the non-aggregative structure of right assumed by Just War theory. This is necessary because the most important argument against killer robots, the responsibility trilemma proposed by Rob Sparrow, makes the same assumptions. We s…Read more
-
2237New developments in the philosophy of AIIn Vincent C. Müller (ed.), Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence, Springer. 2016.The philosophy of AI has seen some changes, in particular: 1) AI moves away from cognitive science, and 2) the long term risks of AI now appear to be a worthy concern. In this context, the classical central concerns – such as the relation of cognition and computation, embodiment, intelligence & rationality, and information – will regain urgency.
-
972Symbol grounding in computational systems: A paradox of intentionsMinds and Machines 19 (4): 529-541. 2009.The paper presents a paradoxical feature of computational systems that suggests that computationalism cannot explain symbol grounding. If the mind is a digital computer, as computationalism claims, then it can be computing either over meaningful symbols or over meaningless symbols. If it is computing over meaningful symbols its functioning presupposes the existence of meaningful symbols in the system, i.e. it implies semantic nativism. If the mind is computing over meaningless symbols, no intent…Read more
-
1210Introduction: Philosophy and Theory of Artificial IntelligenceMinds and Machines 22 (2): 67-69. 2012.The theory and philosophy of artificial intelligence has come to a crucial point where the agenda for the forthcoming years is in the air. This special volume of Minds and Machines presents leading invited papers from a conference on the “Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence” that was held in October 2011 in Thessaloniki. Artificial Intelligence is perhaps unique among engineering subjects in that it has raised very basic questions about the nature of computing, perception, reasoning…Read more
-
6762Editorial: Risks of artificial intelligenceIn Risks of general intelligence, Crc Press - Chapman & Hall. pp. 1-8. 2015.If the intelligence of artificial systems were to surpass that of humans significantly, this would constitute a significant risk for humanity. Time has come to consider these issues, and this consideration must include progress in AI as much as insights from the theory of AI. The papers in this volume try to make cautious headway in setting the problem, evaluating predictions on the future of AI, proposing ways to ensure that AI systems will be beneficial to humans – and critically evaluating su…Read more
Erlangen, Bayern, Germany
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
European Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Robot Ethics |