Tomas Hribek

"A runaway trolley is speeding down a track" So begins what is perhaps the most fecund thought experiment of the past several decades since its invention by Philippa Foot. Since then, moral philosophers have applied the "trolley problem" as a thought experiment to study many different ethical conflicts - and chief among them is the programming of autonomous vehicles. Nowadays, however, very few philosophers accept that the trolley problem is a perfect analogy for driverless cars or that the situations autonomous vehicles face will resemble the forced choice of the unlucky bystander in the original thought experiment. This book represents a substantial and purposeful effort to move the academic discussion beyond the trolley problem to the broader ethical, legal, and social implications that autonomous vehicles present. There are still urgent questions waiting to be addressed, for example: how AVs might interact with human drivers in mixed or "hybrid" traffic environments; how AVs might reshape our urban landscapes; what unique security or privacy concerns are raised by AVs as connected devices in the "Internet of Things"; how the benefits and burdens of this new technology, including mobility, traffic congestion, and pollution, will be distributed throughout society; and more. An attempt to map the landscape of these next-generation questions and to suggest preliminary answers, this volume draws on the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, economics, urban planning and transportation engineering, business ethics and more, and represents a global range of perspectives.

The chapter discusses the rejuvenation of an interest in Mach in the recent metaphysics and philosophy of mind. In the early twentieth century, Mach had been interpreted as a phenomenalist, but phenomenalism fell out of favor in the 1950s. In the later decades, he received praise for his naturalism, but his contributions to metaphysics or philosophy of mind were regarded as misbegotten or irrelevant. With the search for a monistic alternative to both materialism and dualism in the recent philosophy of consciousness, however, Mach attracts a fresh attention. For example, the contemporary philosopher Sam Coleman develops a version of a monistic metaphysic called “panqualityism,” which resembles Mach’s view to a large extent. Like most contemporary monists, however, Coleman works much more closely from Russell’s The Analysis of Matter, than Mach’s The Analysis of Sensations. The chapter details the circumstances that have led to the recent rise of monism; the varieties of Russellian monism; Coleman’s panqualityism; and the similarities and differerences between panqualityism and Machian monism.

[Replies to My Friends] This is an answer to the critics of my book WHAT IT'S LIKE, OR WHAT IT'S ABOUT? THE PLACE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD (2017). I proceed from the least to the most serious objections. I start with Jakub Mihálik’s defense of Russellian Monism against my claim that it is not a genuine alternative to standard dualism and materialism. In reply, I claim this is a side issue to the central aim of my book, which is to undermine the concept of phenomenal consciousness assumed by Russellian Monism as much as by every other standard theory. One of these standard theories is reductive materialism, pursued by Michal Polák and Tomáš Marvan. Both Polák and Marvan are worried by Dennett’s alleged eliminativism, even though their arguments somewhat differ. Polák believes in a deflationary concept of consciousness, which I am afraid lacks a definite content. Marvan offers an “innocent” concept of consciousness, on which there is supposed to be a general consensus, but I think he just assumes that the concept of phenomenal property is part of the definition of consciousness. Curiously, while Polák and Marvan take me as to be a Dennettian, Stefanie Dach argues that I misinterpret Dennett. Conversely, I believe that she overlooks weak points in Dennett’s theory.

[Précis of What It’s Like, or What It’s About? The Place of Consciousness in the Material World] The paper provides a summary of my recent Czech-language book, WHAT IT'S LIKE, OR WHAT IT'S ABOUT? THE PLACE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD (2017). As suggested by the subtitle, the topic of the book is philosophy of consciousness. In the contemporary literature, most participants have in mind the so-called phenomenal characters, and the main issue debated between dualists and materialists is whether these characters are material properties. Even the Russellian monists, who otherwise present themselves as an alternative to both dualism and materialism, accept the concept of phenomenal character. I express doubts about this concept in chapter six of my book; accordingly, I allot most space in the paper to the material from this chapter. Despite the majority opinion, I believe that no agreement has in fact been reached concerning the content of this concept. Similarly to Daniel Dennett, I recommend trying to develop a philosophy of consciousness without the concept of phenomenal character. As is well known, Dennett – to some extent similarly to the aforementioned materialists – proposes a reduction of consciousness in terms of representation. However, I wound up rather more skeptical than Dennett, since following up on my previous book, THE METAPHYSICS OF ANTI-INDIVIDUALISMU (2008), I claim that a naturalistic theory of representation is incoherent.

[Filip Tvrdý on Naturalizing Philosophy] The paper distinguishes several versions of contemporary naturalism: revisionary, constructive, and non-representational. Revisionary naturalism pleads substituting the traditional philosophical inquiry into the nature of things by a genetic inquiry into the origin of our – often faulty – beliefs about the nature of things. Constructive naturalism accepts the program of traditional philosophy, yet hoping that its questions could be answered by broadly scientific methods. Non-representational naturalism is an extension of metaethical expressivism, claiming that philosophical claims should not be understood as descriptive in nature. These distinctions can help us classify the most self-consciously naturalistic project in the recent Czech philosophy, Filip Tvrdý’s TROUBLES OF INTROSPECTION (2015). Tvrdý is officially pursuing a genetic, revisionary project, which does not coincide with nonrepresentational naturalism. However, there are also traces of constructive naturalism in Tvrdý’s book.

[A Defence of Assisted Death: Philosophical Arguments for Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide] Kniha Tomáše Hříbka je první monografií v českém jazyce, jež nabízí filozofickou obhajobu eutanazie a sebeusmrcení za asistence lékaře. Autor vysvětluje zdroje současné diskuse, definuje základní pojmy a analyzuje argumenty pro asistované sebeusmrcení a eutanazii i proti nim. Odpovídá mimo jiné na tyto zásadní otázky: Co je smrt, a jak poznáme, že nastala? Je smrt vždy újmou, nebo může i prospět? Může být rozhodnutí zabít se rozumné i morální? Je apel k morální autonomii pacienta přesvědčivý? Má utrpení na konci života smysl? Pokud jsou eticky přijatelné nezahájení nebo ukončení léčby či paliativní péče, tak proč ne i eutanazie a asistovaná smrt? Lze ospravedlnit eutanazii pacientů, kteří s ní nemohou vyslovit souhlas? Je možné eutanazii a asistované sebeusmrcení odmítnout s odkazem na etiku medicíny nebo svědomí lékařů? Neocitneme se legalizací eutanazie na kluzkém svahu, po němž sklouzneme k nemorální praxi? A jsou podobné metody asistované smrti morálně přijatelné jen za předpokladu, že zůstanou výjimečné?

[Are We Necessarily Embodied?] The author concentrates on the relation between person and body in phenomenology and analytical philosophy. Both of these traditions are, in their own way, critical towards the Cartesian dualism. While phenomenology tries to overcome this dualism through the description of the experience of our corporeality from the first person point of view, analytic philosophy examines the metaphysical problem of the relation between person and body from the third person perspective and usually proposes a materialist answer in the sense of an identity of person and body. The central part of the paper is a detailed analysis of Kripke's challenge to contemporary materialism. The author argues that it is possible to accept Kripke's modal and temporal arguments in favour of the dualism of person and body without being forced to accept the idea of dualism itself. It is the metaphysics of constitution that represents an alternative: the person is constituted by her body, but she is not identical with it. Surprisingly, it is the idea of the living body that is rediscovered in thsi solution -- the idea which, in a sense, is a part of the phenomenological heritage, even though it is devoid of phenomenological anti-scientism and idealism

[On the Ethics of Euthanasia Again: A Reply to Critics] The article is a reply to three critics of a previous piece on the ethics of euthanasia in which I defended physician-assisted suicide. According to Ingrid Strobachová it is necessary to give a greater attention to the significance of pain, which, she claims, may benefit from a phenomenological description. According to Marta Vlasáková my argument is not valid because two principles on which it is founded – i.e. the conception of life as of fundamental value and the autonomy of the patient – are not in mutual harmony. Jakub Jirsa criticises the very concept of assisted suicide and the moral legitimacy and need for the legalisation of assisted suicide. To Dr Strobachová I reply that phenomenological description is as acceptable a method as any other – as long, that is, as it is not only a verbal game, but constitutes a real source of knowledge. To Dr. Vlasáková I argue that a more charitable reading of my argument is possible. The arguments of Dr. Jirsa against assisted suicide are beset with various inconsistencies, including the fact that he himself allows that doctors should tolerate suicide by the refusal of food and drink. Such an act does not, however, differ in any relevant way from doctor-assisted suicide.

[Descartes, Davidson, and the Causal Impotence of Mind] [Descartes, Davidson, and the Causal Impotence of Mind] The paper deals with the mind-body problem understood as the problem of mental causation. The paper has three parts. In the first part, the author discusses the origins of the problem in Descartes. Three alternative interpretations of his notion of causal efficiency are proposed: strong dualism, moderate dualism, and eliminativism. It is argued that strong dualism makes causal efficiency of the mental mysterious; moderate dualism makes the mental epiphenomenal; and eliminativism wipes it out. The remaining two parts of the paper examine those current theories that want to avoid both dualism and eliminativist materialism. The most important among them is Davidson's anomalous monism which is examined in the second part. In accordance with McLaughlin's objection, a residual epiphenomenalism is found in anomalous monism; it is type-epiphenomenalism rather than Descartes's token-epiphenomenalism. The third part sorts out various attempts to deal with this problem according to their relation to Davidson's notion of "strict causality." The theories discussed (those of Horgan, McLaughlin, Fodor etc.) are criticized as collapsing either to dualism or eliminativism. Finally, Searle's construal of mental causation is applauded for indicating how to avoid epiphenomenalism. However, this proposal has a different shortcoming: internalism.