Jeffrey White

This article begins with Seanna Moran on prosocial purpose, notes a four-step process from Moran et al. describing moral development, then compares other model accounts. These appear similar, so the question becomes why. This article answers that they represent common neurological processes. Sections 2 and 3 survey cognitive science research to describe development of neurological processes associated with prosocial purpose correlated with model accounts introduced in the first section. Evidence for the negative consequences of distracting technologies including AI on processes associated with purpose development is established through the review. Section 4 discusses the results of model comparisons with systems neurology, and implications for AI use in education. The article concludes with a warning against AI in moral education, in favor of human teachers whose purpose in life or ‘calling’ it is to support student purpose development.

Socrates is philosophy’s greatest hero, and a model for the philosophic life. Yet, why did Socrates live the way he did? How did Socrates become Socrates? How can a contemporary philosopher aspire to be like Socrates, even in ways and contexts in which there is no record of a Socratic example? This short paper explores the implications of Socrates’ encounter with Callicles in the Gorgias on the aspiring philosophic life. In this dialogue, we find Socrates’ own testimony as to why he lives the way he does, how he comes to die the way he does, and also discover how it is that we can presently pursue the philosophic life by his recipe.

Through brain-inspired modeling studies, cognitive neurorobotics aims to resolve dynamics essential to different emer- gent phenomena at the level of embodied agency in an object environment shared with human beings. This article is a review of ongoing research focusing on model dynamics associated with human self-consciousness. It introduces the free energy principle and active inference in terms of Bayesian theory and predictive coding, and then discusses how directed inquiry employing analogous models may bring us closer to representing the sense of self in cognitive neurorobots. The first section quickly locates cognitive neurorobotics in the broad field of computational cognitive modeling. The second section introduces principles according to which cognition may be formalized, and reviews cognitive neurorobotics experiments employing such formalizations. The third section interprets the results of these and other experiments in the context of different senses of self, both ‘‘minimal’’ and ‘‘narrative’’ self. The fourth section considers model validity and discusses what we may expect ongoing cognitive neurorobotics studies to contribute to scientific explanation of cognitive phenomena including the senses of minimal and narrative self.

Psychopathy is increasingly in the public eye. However, it is yet to be fully and effectively understood. Within the context of the DSM-IV, for example, it is best regarded as a complex family of disorders. The upside is that this family can be tightly related along common dimensions. Characteristic marks of psychopaths include a lack of guilt and remorse for paradigm case immoral actions, leading to the common conception of psychopathy rooted in affective dysfunctions. An adequate portrait of psychopathy is much more complicated, however. Though some neural regions and corresponding functions are commonly indicated, they range across those responsible for action planning and learning, as well as emotional processes. Accordingly, a complete fine-grained map of all neural mechanisms responsible for psychopathy has not been realized, and even if it were, such a map would have limited utility outside of the context of surgical or chemical intervention. The utility of a neural-level understanding of psychopathy is further limited by the fact that it is only applicable in the clinical identification of individual subjects, and the neuro-chemical/biological correction of those subjects after they are positively identified as psychopaths. On the other hand, an information processing model of moral cognition provides for wider-ranging applications. The theoretical and practical implications for such a feasible working model of psychopathic personalities are assessed. Finally, this chapter raises the possibility of directed modification of social-environmental factors (including at the meta-organizational level) discouraging the development of psychopathic personalities in the first place, modifications which are also open to simulation and testing in terms of the same model of moral cognition.

This chapter follows Lorenzo Magnani's observation that ongoing commercialization of science and academia impoverishes human potential for discovery. The chapter reviews Magnani on affordance, wonders what is accessible when "good" affordances appear absent, and answers self-affordance. Ecologies optimized for discovery should be optimized for self-affordance. The chapter considers the role of oracle as leading vision for discovery, and proposes a naturalized account of self that is essentially propositional, in pursuit of an inner oracle, seeking salvation through routine and religious ritual. This is self-abduction. Variable biological development may motivate religious self-abduction characterized by self-sacrifice for the collective good over the long term. in conclusion, the chapter affirms Magnani's call to optimize cognitive ecologies for discovery, by prioritizing religious self-abduction.

Edward Wilson wrote in Consilience that “Human history can be viewed through the lens of ecology as the accumulation of environmental prostheses” (1999 p 316), with technologies mediating our collective habitation of the Earth and its complex, interdependent ecosystems. Wilson emphasized the defining characteristic of complex systems, that they undergo transformations which are irreversible. His view is now standard, and his central point bears repeated emphasis, today: natural systems can be broken, species—including us—can disappear, ecosystems can fail, and technological prostheses potentiate rather than ameliorate disaster when the fragilities that they introduce into our evolutionary co-dependencies with natural systems, and with each other, are under-appreciated.

Heidegger is perhaps best known for stressing the function of time as temporality on the phenomena of life. There is a sense, however, in which the full significance of these insights can be best understood only through an exploration of the function of space as spatiality in the phenomena of life. At their juxtaposition, there is a privileged perspective on the meaning of life, and most importantly on what is the most meaningful life on the Heideggerian account, thephilosophical life. The following short exploration uncovers this standpoint through an analysis of the word “clearing” as temporally expansive space. Through this device, there is a clear view of the role of philosophy, of truth, and of the meaning of life in Heidegger’s Being and Time.

No question has demanded so much attention from the philosopher of mind as has this one: What is consciousness? One promising answer begins by noting that consciousness is, itself, a conjugate of more basic stuff. For the ethicist, there is a question that seems at least formally related to the question of consciousness: What is conscience? Could it be that a similar approach carries similar promise? The following short paper first examines consciousness as a conjugate, and then pursues the implications of this analysis for a novel understanding of conscience as the grounds for a science of ethics.

Direct neurological and especially imaging-driven investigations into the structures essential to naturally occurring cognitive systems in their development and operation have motivated broadening interest in the potential for artificial consciousness modeled on these systems. This first paper in a series of three begins with a brief review of Boltuc’s (2009) “brain-based” thesis on the prospect of artificial consciousness, focusing on his formulation of h-consciousness. We then explore some of the implications of brain research on the structure of consciousness, finding limitations in biological approaches to the study of consciousness. Looking past these limitations, we introduce research in artificial consciousness designed to test for the emergence of consciousness, a phenomenon beyond the purview of the study of existing biological systems.

Recently in this journal, Jessica Morley and colleagues (AI & SOC 2023 38:411–423) review AI ethics and education, suggesting that a cultural shift is necessary in order to prepare students for their responsibilities in developing technology infrastructure that should shape ways of life for many generations. Current AI ethics guidelines are abstract and difficult to implement as practical moral concerns proliferate. They call for improvements in ethics course design, focusing on real-world cases and perspective-taking tools to immerse students in challenging situations with relatable personal, social and environmental implications. The present paper considers the ACTWith model of moral cognition for use in such training contexts. Morley and colleagues' paper and contemporary literature are reviewed. Whistleblowing as a source for relatable case studies is discussed, and the purpose of ethics education considered. The ACTWith model is introduced, and correlations with contemporaries noted. The ACTWith model has been successfully employed in a broad range of technology ethics courses in the Netherlands and South Korea. Illustrations are offered. Correlations with contemporary efforts are drawn in the context of software engineering. Summary discussion considers strengths and limitations of the ACTWith program. Overall, the paper emphasizes training high-level moral reasoning through guided inquiry education informing lifetime professional practice, and indicates an outstanding need for teachers able to do the job.

Abstract: One approach to alignment with human values in AI and robotics is to engineer artiTicial systems isomorphic with human beings. The idea is that robots so designed may autonomously align with human values through similar developmental processes, to realize project ideal conditions through iterative interaction with social and object environments just as humans do, such as are expressed in narratives and life stories. One persistent problem with human value orientation is that different human beings champion different values as ideal, meaning that the values to which an AI should be aligned are ambiguous. Prior work considered human development of purpose and source of meaning in life in terms of project ideal conditions, in effect establishing lifelong value orientations according to which intermediate situations are evaluated. The present work compares views on motivating values from St. Augustine and from popular cognitive science. These accounts are described as divergent error theories which present to their proponents as mutually exclusive yet accurate accounts of personal experience due to differential development of variable innate potentials. SpeciTically, the hypothesis proposed is that differential development of spindle neural projections establishes enduring connections between prior established relatively immediate routine processes entrained during childhood and prioritized in popular cognitive science, and later developing higher-level social and self-processes entrained during adolescence and emphasized in Augustine's account, with these projections hard-wiring lifelong motivating value orientations more or less inaccessible to modiTication through material interaction. Robot experiments informed by this study may evaluate variable value orientation by design, with for example autonomous robots developing motivating associations with temporally distal project ideal conditions through love for humanity, as described by Augustine, and others pursuing adaptive Tit to passing norms consistent with popular contemporary accounts.

Lorenzo Magnani’s Understanding Violence: The Intertwining of Morality, Religion and Violence is a big 23 book. Not big in the sense of page count or prepublication advertisement, but big in the sense of pregnant 24 with potential application. Professor Magnani is explicit in his intentions, “to show how violence is de facto 25 intertwined with morality, and how much violence is hidden, and invisibly or unintentionally performed" 26 (page 273) while confessing a personal motivation, “warning myself (and every reader) that violence is 27 traceable back to my (our) own door.” (page 66) This is not an easy task, given the slippery expanse of his 28 subject, to drag violence out of the shadows, bringing it home to each personal purveyor. But Magnani 29 succeeds, and fruitfully. Understanding Violence deftly exposes violence in its myriad forms from individual 30 aggression to colliding global-historical narratives. It does this by detailing the processes whereby people act 31 from moralities of their own creation, adopting various moral frameworks including those specific to 32 religions, social and political groups, as well as personal constructs, and in terms of which "they engage and 33 disengage both intentionally and unintentionally, in a strict interplay between morality and violence." (page 34 184) Resolving these complex dynamics through simple models and illustrations, Understanding Violence 35 elevates the reader from the forest-for-the-trees perpetual-crisis-blindness symptomatic of the present era, to 36 a position from which personal moral commitments as practical, as necessary, and as the source of hidden 37 violence are clearly visible. Moreover, due to the practicality of Magnani’s demonstrations, it continues in 38 this work long after the text itself is laid back on the shelf.

Discoverability: the urgent need of an ecology of human creativity from the prolific Lorenzo Magnani is worthy of direct attention. The message may be of special interest to philosophers, ethicists and organizing scientists involved in the development of AI and related technologies which are increasingly directed at reinforcing conditions against which Magnani directly warns, namely the “overcomputationalization” of life marked by the gradual encroachment of technologically “locked strategies” into everyday decision-making until “freedom, responsibility, and ownership of our destinies” are ceded and we, in parallel, build a future fit for artifacts over human beings. Professional educators - teachers and administrators serious about teaching - and policy-makers including the concerned public, parents and social activists concerned about the effects of technologies on development and well-being may benefit, as well.

Recent research into the nature of self in artificial and biological systems raises interest in a uniquely determining immutable sense of self, a “metaphysical ‘I’” associated with inviolable personal values and moral convictions that remain constant in the face of environmental change, distinguished from an object “me” that changes with its environment. Complementary research portrays processes associated with self as multimodal routines selectively enacted on the basis of contextual cues informing predictive self or world models, with the notion of the constant, per-vasive and invariant sense of self associated with a multistable attractor set aiming to ensure personal integrity against threat of disintegrative change. This paper proposes that an immutable sense of self emerges as a global attractor which can be described as a project ideal self-situation embodied in frontal medial processes during more or less normal adolescent development, and that thereafter serves to orient agency in the more or less free development of embodied potentials over the life course in effort to realize project conditions, phenomenally identified with the felt pull towards this end as purpose of and source of meaning in life. So oriented, life-long self-development aims to embody solutions to problems at different timescales depending on this embodied purpose, ultimately in the service of evolutionary processes securing organism populations against threats of disintegrative change over timespans far beyond that of the individual. After characterizing the target sense of self, research circling this target is briefly surveyed. Self as global project and developmental neural correlates are proposed. Then, the paper discusses some implications for research in biological and artificial systems. Building from earlier work in cognitive neurorobotics, discussion affirms the value of reinforcement rituals including prayer in metaphysical self-development, considers implications for value alignment and rights associated with free will in the context of artificial intelligence and robot religion, and concludes by emphasizing the importance of self-development toward project ideals as source of meaning in life in the current social-political environment.

Ryan Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. This series of papers meets this challenge by landscaping traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. The first paper established the challenge and set out autonomy in Aristotelian terms. The present paper interprets Kantian moral theory on the basis of the preceding introduction, argues contra Tonkens that an engineer does not violate the categorical imperative in creating Kantian AMAs, and proposes that a Kantian AMA is not only a possible goal for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one.

Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. Challenges for machine ethicists have also been presented by Anthony Beavers and Wendell Wallach. Beavers pushes for the reinvention of traditional ethics to avoid "ethical nihilism" due to the reduction of morality to mechanical causation. Wallach pushes for redoubled efforts toward a comprehensive account of ethics to guide machine ethicists on the issue of artificial moral agency. Options, thus, present themselves: reinterpret traditional ethics in a way that affords a comprehensive account of moral agency inclusive of both artificial and natural agents, or give up on the possibility and “muddle through” regardless. This series of papers pursues the first option, meets Tonkens' "challenge" and pursues Wallach's ends through Beavers’ proposed means, by "landscaping" traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. This first paper sets out the challenge and establishes the tradition that Kant had inherited from Aristotle, briefly entertains an Aristotelian AMA, fields objections, and ends with unanswered questions. The next paper in this series responds to the challenge in Kantian terms, and argues that a Kantian AMA is not only a possibility for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one.

This paper proposes that existing computational modeling research programs may be combined into platforms for the information of public policy. The main idea is that computational models at select levels of organization may be integrated in natural terms describing biological cognition, thereby normalizing a platform for predictive simulations able to account for both human and environmental costs associated with different action plans and institutional arrangements over short and long time spans while minimizing computational requirements. Building from established research programs, the proposal aims to take advantage of current momentum in the direction of the integration of the cognitive with social and natural sciences, reduce start-up costs and increase speed of development. These are all important upshots given rising unease over the potential for AI and related technologies to shape the world going forward.

We have been left with a big challenge, to articulate consciousness and also to prove it in an artificial agent against a biological standard. After introducing Boltuc’s h-consciousness in the last paper, we briefly reviewed some salient neurology in order to sketch less of a standard than a series of targets for artificial consciousness, “most-consciousness” and “myth-consciousness.” With these targets on the horizon, we began reviewing the research program pursued by Jun Tani and colleagues in the isolation of the formal dynamics essential to either. In this paper, we describe in detail Tani’s research program, in order to make the clearest case for artificial consciousness in these systems. In the next paper, the third in the series, we will return to Boltuc’s naturalistic non-reductionism in light of the neurorobotics models introduced (alongside some others), and evaluate them more completely.

From his preliminary analysis in 1965, Hubert Dreyfus projected a future much different than those with which his contemporaries were practically concerned, tempering their optimism in realizing something like human intelligence through conventional methods. At that time, he advised that there was nothing “directly” to be done toward machines with human-like intelligence, and that practical research should aim at a symbiosis between human beings and computers with computers doing what they do best, processing discrete symbols in formally structured problem domains. Fast-forward five decades, and his emphasis on the difference between two essential modes of processing, the unconscious yet purposeful mode fundamental to situated human cognition, and the “minded” sense of conscious processing characterizing symbolic reasoning that seems to lend itself to explicit programming, continues into the famous Dreyfus–McDowell debate. The present memorial reviews Dreyfus’ early projections, asking if the fears that punctuate current popular commentary on AI are warranted, and in light of these if he would deliver similar practical advice to researchers today.

This work introduces the ACTWith model of moral cognition. This is a model of conscience and conscientious agency, inspired by Socratic philosophy, neurology and artificial intelligence. The ACTWith model is a synthesis across these disciplines, integrating ancient and contemporary insights into the human condition, while distilling this synthesis into a practicable dynamic simplified via architectural paradigms imported from theories of computational models of human learning. It was developed in response to the need in these fields for a clear articulation of conscience. In the world at large, conscience is often referenced, yet hardly understood. This work fills this gap.

Recent developments, both in the cognitive sciences and in world events, bring special emphasis to the study of morality. The cognitive sciences, spanning neurology, psychology, and computational intelligence, offer substantial ad- vances in understanding the origins and purposes of morality. Meanwhile, world events urge the timely synthesis of these insights with traditional ac- counts that can be easily assimilated and practically employed to augment moral judgment, both to solve current problems and to direct future action. The object of the following paper is to present such a synthesis in the form of a model of moral cognition, the ACTWith model of conscience. The purpose of the model is twofold. One, the ACTWith model is intended to shed light on personal moral dispositions, and to provide a tool for actual human moral agents in the refinement of their moral lives. As such, it relies on the power of personal introspection, bolstered by the careful study of moral exemplars available to all persons in all cultures in the form of literary or religious fig- ures, if not in the form of contemporary peers and especially leadership. Two, the ACTWith model is intended as a minimum architecture for fully func- tional artificial morality. As such, it is essentially amodal, implementation non-specific and is developed in the form of an information processing control system. There are given as few hard points in this system as necessary for moral function, and these are themselves taken from review of actual human cognitive processes, thereby intentionally capturing as closely as possible what is expected of moral action and reaction by human beings. Only in satisfying these untutored intuitions should an artificial agent ever be properly regarded as moral, at least in the general population of existing moral agents. Thus, the ACTWith model is intended as a guide both for individual moral develop- ment and for the development of artificial moral agents as future technology permits.

The compass point of Kantian ethics is Kant’s categorical imperative. The compass point of Kantian ethics directs persons to ends of actions. It directs to ends the attainment of which can be universally prescribed. It directs away from those which can not. Most reviews of the demands of the categorical imperative tend torest in an assay of rationality and its demands. I think that this is a mistake. I think that on Kant’s mature view, the conscience, and so the categorical imperative, have nothing necessarily to do with rationality at all. The following work develops this position.

The focus of the following paper is the phenomenon of the collective agent; what constitutes the appearance of a collective agent? I begin by investigating one simple argument for the existence of collective agents. Two critical issues emerge: does it make sense to hold a collective agent blameworthy, and, what is the motivation for doing so, one way or the other? I then dissolve these issues with a distinction, that between blameworthiness and responsibility. In light of this distinction, there appears to be no use for the introduction of collectives as agents in their own right, outside of expedience of reference and deference of blame.

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness.

Readers of Philosophical Psychology may be most familiar with Ron Sun by way of an article recently appearing in this journal on creative composition expressed within his own hybrid computational intelligence model, CLARION (Sun, 2013). That article represents nearly two decades’ work in situated agency stressing the importance of psychologically realistic architectures and processes in the articulation of both functional, and reflectively informative, AI and agent- level social-cultural simulations. Readers may be less familiar with Sun’s 2001 “prolegomena” to related multi-agent (proto-social) research also from this journal. That article argues that “a proper balance between “objective” social reality and individual cognitive processes” is necessary in order to understand “how individual belief systems... and the social/cultural belief system ... interact” (Sun, 2001, pages 10 and 23). This issue remains central in Sun’s 2012 edited volume, Grounding Social Sciences in the Cognitive Sciences, here addressed from within the expanding field of pioneering researchers bent on orchestrating that proper balance, the “cognitive social sciences.” Its fifteen chapters are sectioned according to culture, politics, religion, and economics, and closes with an especially rewarding pair of contributions from Gintis, and McCubbins and Turner, under the heading of “unifying perspectives.” Most entries – but for Sun’s own - are serviceably summarized in the introductory overview. So, rather than follow suit, this review will focus on setting out Sun’s vision, noting how this text helps us to realize it more clearly, with a positive focus on a few entries in particular

Nick Bostrom’s recently patched ‘‘simulation argument’’ (Bostrom in Philos Q 53:243–255, 2003; Bos- trom and Kulczycki in Analysis 71:54–61, 2011) purports to demonstrate the probability that we ‘‘live’’ now in an ‘‘ancestor simulation’’—that is as a simulation of a period prior to that in which a civilization more advanced than our own—‘‘post-human’’—becomes able to simulate such a state of affairs as ours. As such simulations under consid- eration resemble ‘‘brains in vats’’ (BIVs) and may appear open to similar objections, the paper begins by reviewing objections to BIV-type proposals, specifically those due a presumed mad envatter. In counter example, we explore the motivating rationale behind current work in the development of psychologically realistic social simula- tions. Further concerns about rendering human cognition in a computational medium are confronted through review of current dynamic systems models of cognitive agency. In these models, aspects of the human condition are repro- duced that may in other forms be considered incomputable, i.e., political voice, predictive planning, and consciousness. The paper then argues that simulations afford a unique potential to secure a post-human future, and may be nec- essary for a pre-post-human civilization like our own to achieve and to maintain a post-human situation. Long-s- tanding philosophical interest in tools of this nature for Aristotle’s ‘‘statesman’’ and more recently for E.O. Wilson in the 1990s is observed. Self-extinction-level threats from State and individual levels of organization are compared, and a likely dependence on large-scale psychologically realistic simulations to get past self-extinction-level threats is projected. In the end, Bostrom’s basic argument for the conviction that we exist now in a simulation is reaffirmed.

Psychopathy is increasingly in the public eye. However, it is yet to be fully and effectively understood. Within the context of the DSM-IV, for example, it is best regarded as a complex family of disorders. The upside is that this family can be tightly related along common dimensions. Characteristic marks of psychopaths include a lack of guilt and remorse for paradigm case immoral actions, leading to the common conception of psychopathy rooted in affective dysfunctions. An adequate portrait of psychopathy is much more complicated, however. Though some neural regions and corresponding functions are commonly indicated, they range across those responsible for action planning and learning, as well as emotional processes. Accordingly, a complete fine-grained map of all neural mechanisms responsible for psychopathy has not been realized, and even if it were, such a map would have limited utility outside of the context of surgical or chemical intervention. The utility of a neural-level understanding of psychopathy is further limited by the fact that it is only applicable in the clinical identification of individual subjects, and the neuro-chemical/biological correction of those subjects after they are positively identified as psychopaths. On the other hand, an information processing model of moral cognition provides for wider-ranging applications. The theoretical and practical implications for such a feasible working model of psychopathic personalities are assessed. Finally, this chapter raises the possibility of directed modification of social-environmental factors discouraging the development of psychopathic personalities in the first place, modifications which are also open to simulation and testing in terms of the same model of moral cognition.

This paper reviews the complex, overlapping ideas of two prominent Italian philosophers, Lorenzo Magnani and Luciano Floridi, with the aim of facilitating the nonviolent transformation of self and world, and with a focus on information technologies in mediating this process. In Floridi’s information ethics, problems of consistency arise between self-poiesis, anagnorisis, entropy, evil, and the narrative structure of the world. Solutions come from Magnani’s work in distributed morality, moral mediators, moral bubbles and moral disengagement. Finally, two examples of information technology, one ancient and one new, a Socratic narrative and an information processing model of moral cognition, are offered as mediators for the nonviolent transformation of self and world respectively, while avoiding the tragic requirements inherent in Floridi’s proposal.