When thinking about ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. When thinking about technology, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, not as a source and spring of innovation. In this paper, we argue that ethics can be the source of technological development rather than just a constraint and technological progress can create moral progress rather than just moral problems. We show this by (...) an analysis of how technology can contribute to the solution of so-called moral overload or moral dilemmas. Such dilemmas typically create a moral residue that is the basis of a second-order principle that tells us to reshape the world so that we can meet all our moral obligations. We can do so, among other things, through guided technological innovation. (shrink)

We provide a description and informal analysis of the commonalities in moral discourse concerning issues in the field of information and communications technology, present a logic model (DEAL) of this type of moral discourse that makes use of recent research in deontic, epistemic, and action logic, and indicate – drawing upon recent research in computer implementations of modal logic – how information systems may be developed that implement the proposed formalization.

In 1926, Mally presented the first formal system of deontic logic. His system had several consequences which Mally regarded as surprising but defensible. It also, however, has the consequence that A is obligatory if and only if A is the case, which is unacceptable from the point of view of any reasonable deontic logic. We describe Mally's system and discuss how it might reasonably be repaired.

prevailing view, holding that the contents of our thoughts are mainly the result of external factors. The corollary is that we will never really be able to read a person’s mind.

De mens is in de afgelopen drie eeuwen vaak vergeleken met allerlei soorten machines. In de achttiende eeuw was de klokmetafoor tamelijk populair; psychologische termen als ‘drijfveer’, ‘van slag raken’ en ‘opgewonden zijn’ herinneren hier nog aan [Vroon and Draaisma, 1985]. In de negentiende eeuw overheerste de stoommachine-metafoor. De psychologie van Freud wordt wel als een uitgewerkte versie van deze metafoor beschouwd [Russelmann, 1983]. Ook uitdrukkingen als ‘uitlaatkleppen’, ‘stoom afblazen’ en ‘iemand opstoken’ zijn eraan te danken. De stoommachine-metafoor wordt nog (...) steeds serieus genomen. Zo pleegt men de menselijke geest in de nieuwe ‘dynamische’ school in de cognitieve wetenschappen bij voorkeur te vergelijken met James Watts centrifugale regulateur (1788), het apparaat dat ervoor zorgt dat een stoommachine op een constant snelheid werkt [van Gelder, 1995, 1998]. De laatste vijftig jaar komt men de metafoor van de seri¨ele digitale computer vaak tegen. Een PC is een voorbeeld van zo’n computer. Hij is serieel omdat de centrale processor slechts ´e´en berekening tegelijk kan uitvoeren; hij is digitaal omdat hij alleen met gehele getallen kan omgaan. Het voorbeeld bij uitstek van een seri¨ele digitale computer is de Turing-machine, waarover aanstonds meer. De seri¨ele digitale computer metafoor is op verschillende manieren op mensen toegepast. Zo beschouwen sommigen de gehele mens als een computer van dit type, terwijl anderen menen dat de afzonderlijke zenuwcellen op deze manier beschreven kunnen worden. In het onderstaande zal ik de vraag bespreken in hoeverre men de mens, of onderdelen van de mens, inderdaad als seri¨ele digitale computer mag opvatten. Ik zal laten zien dat deze vergelijking maar een beperkte waarde heeft. Het valt niet uit te sluiten dat de mens in computationeel opzicht een veel sterker of zwakker soort machine is dan de Turing-machine. (shrink)

The paper presents a formal explication of the early Wittgenstein's views on ontology, the syntax and semantics of an ideal logical language, and the propositional attitudes. It will be shown that Wittgenstein gave a "language of thought" analysis of propositional attitude ascriptions, and that his ontological views imply that such ascriptions are truth-functions of (and supervenient upon) elementary sentences. Finally, an axiomatization of a quantified doxastic modal logic corresponding to Tractarian semantics will be given.

This is a report on the 3-day workshop “The Neuroscience of Responsibility” that was held in the Philosophy Department at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands during February 11th–13th, 2010. The workshop had 25 participants from The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, UK, USA, Canada and Australia, with expertise in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry and law. Its aim was to identify current trends in neurolaw research related specifically to the topic of responsibility, and to foster international collaborative research on this topic. (...) The workshop agenda was constructed by the participants at the start of each day by surveying the topics of greatest interest and relevance to participants. In what follows, we summarize (1) the questions which participants identified as most important for future research in this field, (2) the most prominent themes that emerged from the discussions, and (3) the two main international collaborative research project plans that came out of this meeting. (shrink)