-
28The “information age” is often thought in terms of the digital revolution that begins with Turing’s 1937 paper, “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” However, this can only be partially correct. There are two aspects to Turing’s work: one dealing with questions of computation that leads to computer science and another concerned with building computing machines that leads to computer engineering. Here, we emphasize the latter because it shows us a Turing connec…Read more
-
99Luciano Floridi: Information: A Very Short Introduction: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, xv+130, $11.95, ISBN 978-0-19-955137-8 (review)Minds and Machines 21 (1): 97-101. 2011.
-
60El artículo plantea la actualidad y pertinencia de la Filosofía de la información de Luciano Floridi, considerada a la luz de las revoluciones científicas de Occidente y de la instauración de nuevos paradigmas, tanto en las ciencias como en la filosofía. La analogía con el “giro matemático” de la Modernidad permite establecer el alcance revolucionario de la obra de Floridi, cuya aceptación implicará superar el obstáculo epistemológico del escolasticismo, en función del dinamismo histórico inhere…Read more
-
68If we follow a traditional reading of Descartes and throw in some of our favorite German philosophers (Kant, Husserl and Heidegger, for instance) we can isolate a doctrinal current that says that the pure intellect has no immediate access to the extra-mental world. This reduction of experience to reason forces the question of the external world’s existence, leading to Heidegger’s assertion that the scandal of philosophy was not that it had yet to furnish a proof for the external world’s existenc…Read more
-
48Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen: Moral machines: teaching robots right from wrong (review)Ethics and Information Technology 12 (4): 357-358. 2010.
-
84Without a doubt, Levinas' principal concern in philosophy is how the self meets the Other. His magnum opus, Totality and Infinity, bears the subtitle, An Essay on Exterior- ity. Exteriority refers to a region beyond the horizons of the self, that which "is" beyond transcendental subjectivity. If there are such "beings" as other selves, that is, other subjects, they exist out there in the exterior. But if knowledge is confined to the interior—as Levinas says it must be—then the Other cannot be kn…Read more
-
87Passion and Sexual Desire in DescartesPhilosophy and Theology 12 (2): 223-243. 2000.Following a general outline of Descartes’ theory of passions as he presents it in the Passions of the Soul, I offer a critical analysis of his paradigms for love and sexual attraction. This provides the basis (in the third section) for schematizing a general theory of sexuality in Descartes. In closing, I examine the problem of descriptive and prescriptive accounts of love/sex, and some of the issues which relate to the integration of Descartes’ account into his general theory of human nature an…Read more
-
111Moral Machines and the Threat of Ethical NihilismIn Patrick Lin, George Bekey & Keith Abney (eds.), Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implication of Robotics, . 2011.In his famous 1950 paper where he presents what became the benchmark for success in artificial intelligence, Turing notes that "at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted" (Turing 1950, 442). Kurzweil (1990) suggests that Turing's prediction was correct, even if no machine has yet to pass the Turing Test. In the wake of the computer revolution, research …Read more
-
48In the beginning was the word, or grunt, or groan, or signal of some sort. This, however, hardly qualifies as an information revolution, at least in any standard technological sense. Nature is replete with meaningful signs, and we must imagine that our early ancestors noticed natural patterns that helped to determine when to sow and when to reap, which animal tracks to follow, what to eat, and so forth. Spoken words at first must have been meaningful in some similar sense. But in time the word b…Read more
-
22Searching for Philosophy (review)Teaching Philosophy 28 (4): 367-371. 2005.Though the Internet has been around since the 1960s, the World Wide Web is now only ten years old. In that time, it has seen unprecedented growth. This review examines two tools that are part of this revolution, Google Scholar and Google News, and assesses their utility for teaching philosophy. While Google Scholar might at this time have limited classroom use, Google News is immediately useful for a variety of philosophy courses. This is due, in part, to the rich customization that the service …Read more
-
227Noesis and the encyclopedic internet visionSynthese 182 (2). 2011.Noesis is an Internet search engine dedicated to mapping the profession of philosophy online. In this paper, I recount the history of the project's development since 1998 and discuss the role it may play in representing philosophy optimally, adequately, fairly, and accessibly. Unlike many other representations of philosophy, Noesis is dynamic in the sense that it constantly changes and inclusive in the sense that it lets the profession speak for itself about what philosophy is, how it is practic…Read more
-
79Luciano Floridi, philosophy and computing: An introduction (review)Ethics and Information Technology 3 (4): 299-301. 2001.
-
60Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the MindPhilosophical Psychology 26 (4): 625-628. 2013.No abstract
-
96The question of the source of the moral "ought" is no small question, nor is it unimportant. Our own philosophical tradition has dealt with the question in several ways producing a variety of answers. Some of these include locating the "ought" in the structure of reason, in the human being's desire for pleasure, or in the will of God. The reason why the question is so important is because different conceptions of the source of the moral ought ultimately give rise to different conceptions of what…Read more
-
83Philosophy in the Age of Information: A Symposium on Luciano Floridi’s The Philosophy of Information (review)Minds and Machines 24 (1): 1-3. 2014.This special issue of Minds and Machines contains a number of responses to Luciano Floridi’s groundbreaking Philosophy of Information (Oxford 2011). The essays contained here have been grouped by topic; essays 1–5 concern epistemological features of Floridi’s approach, and essays 6–8 address his metaphysics.In “On Floridi’s Method of Levels ofion”, Jan van Leeuwen addresses Floridi’s operational definition of a level of abstraction. Emphasizing the link between Floridi’s notion of abstraction an…Read more
-
48Motion, Mobility, and Method in Aristotle's "Physics": Comments on "Physics" 2.1.192b20-24Review of Metaphysics 42 (2). 1988.
-
32We can discern three types of amoral beings in Kant ’s ethical philosophy, one kind of moral being, the true moral agent, and one kind of immoral being, for five kinds in all: B1) beings that are driven solely by inclination, such as animals. B2) beings that act solely out of reason and, therefore, duty, such as divine intellects
Anthony Beavers
University of Evansville
Uninversity of Evansville
-
-
Uninversity of EvansvilleProfessor
Evansville, Indiana, United States of America