The truly philosophical issue in machine conscioiusness is whether machines can have 'hard consciounsess'. Criteria for hard consciousness are higher than for phenomenal consciousness, since the latter incorporates first-person functional consciousness.

Why is there something rather than nothing? This question, formulated by Leibniz, constitutes the basis of modern European ontology. In many ways this can be termed the main question of philosophy; but if so, a similar but less attended to question comes to mind, which I shall call the second best question of philosophy. The second best question of philosophy: Why is it better that there is something rather than nothing? seems to constitute a natural basis for moral theory. The (...) latter question often appears in philosophy of religion, in arguments leading to the thesis that God the Creator is good. Yet, modern moral philosophy tended to shy away from such a direct grounding in metaphysics. Not anymore. Luciano Floridi’s ethics based on anti-entropy is still a new and somewhat understated theory; having originated from information ethics it seems to have a hard time establishing itself as a general moral theory. But the potential of becoming a major alternative to the main positions in moral theory is there. It is my goal in this paper to highlight the promise, as well as certain difficulties, of Floridi’s theory. I will also undertake to move the work on anti-entropy ethics one step further, towards becoming a general moral theory. (shrink)

I argue here that consciousness can be engineered. The claim that functional consciousness can be engineered has been persuasively put forth in regards to first-person functional consciousness; robots, for instance, can recognize colors, though there is still much debate about details of this sort of consciousness. Such consciousness has now become one of the meanings of the term phenomenal consciousness (e.g., as used by Franklin and Baars). Yet, we extend the argument beyond the tradition of behaviorist or functional reductive views (...) on consciousness that still predominate within cognitive science. If Nagel-Chalmers-Block-style non-reductive naturalism about first-person consciousness (h-consciousness) holds true, then, eventually we should be able to understand how such consciousness operates and how it gets produced (this is not the same as bridging the explanatory gap or solving Chalmers’s hard problem of consciousness). If so, the consciousness it involves can in principle be engineered. (shrink)

The trend to engage in online education becomes global allowing for truly international courses and degrees taught by faculty and attended by students from various universities, countries and continents. The traditional worries about quality of online education, and its applicability to the humanities, are the song of the past. Yet, philosophers are reluctant to join online education. This presents a danger to the professions since many potential philosophy classes will be delivered online in other related disciplines. Instead of lamenting the (...) situation I present some achievements in online learning of the University of Illinois at Springfield. (shrink)

Reiterative coordination games in large groups demonstrate that social norms, once attained, create stable equilibria. This shows that thin social capital is stable, and in some cases preferable to thick SC since it lowers transacting costs. This finding, supported indirectly by R. Putnam’s own early research, runs counter to his claim that the loss of thick social capital is detrimental to the modern society and to Coleman’s argument that closure is required for maintaining social capital.

We can define all political theories pertinent in contemporary modern societies using a model based on only two variables. The first variable can be characterized as a spectrum between economic right and left wing theories. The spectrum can be easily defined by a strictly economic tradeoff of the desired level of taxation juxtaposed to the desired level of social services. The second variable can be defined as a distinction between liberal-individualisticand communitarian conception of persons.This leads to four positions, the four (...) pillars of contemporary political philosophy: left wing liberalism (popular liberalism), right win liberalism (popular libertarianism), left wing communitarianism (popular socialist communitarianism) and right wing communitarianism (thetraditionalist stripe of conservatism). The problem is that the last of those positions has not been well presented in philosophical literature. (shrink)

Electronic technologies, from the internet to virtual reality and advanced robotics, are transforming the world we live in, and especially our methods of learning, far more radically than any factors since the invention of the printing press. The process is at its beginnings; it is largely unavoidable; it also presents an opportunity for learning and research. We academics ought to meet this educational and civilizational challenge and make it our own. Otherwise, the process may be appropriated by bureaucratic and narrow (...) business interests, largely to the detriment of academic learning. We have a chance to enjoy shared knowledge as never before, which I call opening the doors to the true Library of Alexandria.Structural changes are necessitated by this new paradigm. Those incorporate three aspects: First, integration of the web into our lives; second, the use of such integration in research and education, which highly increases the opportunities but is unforgiving of excessive individualism and other inefficiencies; third the philosophically broad perspective of non-reductive naturalism facilitated by this global integration. (shrink)

In this paper I present my thesis stated numerous times at APA and NACAP meetings, that the current shortage of online programs in philosophy presents adanger to the profession. I also show how this danger could be averted. I give a snapshot of what teaching philosophy online, and doing it well, looks like. I am a very partial spectator in this debate since the example I am referring to is the program at UIS which I designed and, with my colleagues, (...) led to successful implementation. Finally, I draw a broad brush picture of what an inter-campus, international online program in philosophy may look like (as well as some implications for online learning in Poland). (shrink)

In this paper I present my thesis stated numerous times at APA and NACAP meetings, that the current shortage of online programs in philosophy presents adanger to the profession. I also show how this danger could be averted. I give a snapshot of what teaching philosophy online, and doing it well, looks like. I am a very partial spectator in this debate since the example I am referring to is the program at UIS which I designed and, with my colleagues, (...) led to successful implementation. Finally, I draw a broad brush picture of what an inter-campus, international online program in philosophy may look like (as well as some implications for online learning in Poland). (shrink)

Electronic technologies, from the internet to virtual reality and advanced robotics, are transforming the world we live in, and especially our methods of learning, far more radically than any factors since the invention of the printing press. The process is at its beginnings; it is largely unavoidable; it also presents an opportunity for learning and research. We academics ought to meet this educational and civilizational challenge and make it our own. Otherwise, the process may be appropriated by bureaucratic and narrow (...) business interests, largely to the detriment of academic learning. We have a chance to enjoy shared knowledge as never before, which I call opening the doors to the true Library of Alexandria.Structural changes are necessitated by this new paradigm. Those incorporate three aspects: First, integration of the web into our lives; second, the use of such integration in research and education, which highly increases the opportunities but is unforgiving of excessive individualism and other inefficiencies; third the philosophically broad perspective of non-reductive naturalism facilitated by this global integration. (shrink)

Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness. I argue that non-reductive consciousness is not about phenomenal qualia ; it is about the stream of awareness that makes any objects of perception epistemically available and ontologically present. This kind of consciousness is central, internally to one’s awareness. Externally, the feel about one’s significant other’s that “there is someone home” is quite important too. This is not substance dualism since creature consciousness and functional consciousness are both at different generality (...) levels of physicalism. Surprisingly, pre-Hegel philosophy of pure subject is more fitting with the current engineering approach than analytical phenomenalism. The complementary view of subject- and object-related perspectives, may come from Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre; but here it is placed, securely within the physicalist paradigm. It is essential to the Engineering Thesis in Machine Consciousness, which helps us understand under what general conditions a machine would be first-person conscious, but when it is merely functionally conscious. (shrink)

Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness. I argue that non-reductive consciousness is not about phenomenal qualia ; it is about the stream of awareness that makes any objects of perception epistemically available and ontologically present. This kind of consciousness is central, internally to one’s awareness. Externally, the feel about one’s significant other’s that “there is someone home” is quite important too. This is not substance dualism since creature consciousness and functional consciousness are both at different generality (...) levels of physicalism. Surprisingly, pre-Hegel philosophy of pure subject is more fitting with the current engineering approach than analytical phenomenalism. The complementary view of subject- and object-related perspectives, may come from Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre; but here it is placed, securely within the physicalist paradigm. It is essential to the Engineering Thesis in Machine Consciousness, which helps us understand under what general conditions a machine would be first-person conscious, but when it is merely functionally conscious. (shrink)

Electronic technologies, from the internet to virtual reality and advanced robotics, are transforming the world we live in, and especially our methods of learning, far more radically than any factors since the invention of the printing press. The process is at its beginnings; it is largely unavoidable; it also presents an opportunity for learning and research. We academics ought to meet this educational and civilizational challenge and make it our own. Otherwise, the process may be appropriated by bureaucratic and narrow (...) business interests, largely to the detriment of academic learning. We have a chance to enjoy shared knowledge as never before, which I call opening the doors to the true Library of Alexandria.Structural changes are necessitated by this new paradigm. Those incorporate three aspects: First, integration of the web into our lives; second, the use of such integration in research and education, which highly increases the opportunities but is unforgiving of excessive individualism and other inefficiencies; third the philosophically broad perspective of non-reductive naturalism facilitated by this global integration. (shrink)

The so-called Common Sense Morality (C) is any moral theory that allows, or requires, an agent to accept special, non-instrumental reasons to give advantage to certain other persons, usually the agent’s friends or kin, over the interests of others. Opponents charge C with violating the requirement of impartiality defined as independence on positional characteristics of moral agents and moral patients. Advocates of C claim that C is impartial, but only in a positional manner in which every moral agent would acquire (...) the same relational characteristics if that agent was in a certain relationship to the given moral patient. The opponents of C reply that a theory that allows for positional characteristics is self-defeating; it violates the requirement of prescriptivity due to its inability to provide moral recommendations what should happen all things considered. Advocates of C retort that a moral theory should be prescriptive by telling every agent what to do, not what should the joint outcome of those activities be. In this paper I analyze the last two moves of this debate: the objection that C is self-defeating and the reply that there is a plausible moral theory (C) that accommodates positional characteristics of special moral reasons. I argue that the last move wins. In the process I sketch out a theory able to accommodate agent-relative moral reason. (shrink)

It is argued that important information on the emergence of space is hidden at the quark/hadron level. The arguments follow from the acceptance of the conception that space is an attribute of matter. They involve in particular the discussion of possibly relevant mass and distance scales, the generalization of the concept of mass as suggested by the phase-space-based explanation of the rishon model, and the phenomenological conclusions on the structure of excited baryons that are implied by baryon spectroscopy. A counterpart (...) of the Eddington–Weinberg relation concerning Regge towers of hadronic resonances is noted. (shrink)

Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Instead of offering explanations that refer to the same set of (...) principles, we observe systematic equivocations in PP‐based models, or outright contradictions with its avowed principles. To make matters worse, PP‐based models are seldom empirically validated, and they are frequently offered as mere just‐so stories. The large number of PP‐based models is thus not evidence of theoretical progress in unifying perception, action, and cognition. On the contrary, we maintain that the gap between theory and its biological and computational bases contributes to the arrested development of PP as a unificatory theory. Thus, we urge the defenders of PP to focus on its critical problems instead of offering mere re‐descriptions of known phenomena, and to validate their models against possible alternative explanations that stem from different theoretical assumptions. Otherwise, PP will ultimately fail as a unified theory of cognition. (shrink)

The article presents a thought experiment aimed at indicating a possibility for thinking education beyond the logic of progress. In its first part, the argument reconstructs the entanglement of the modern idea of progress (as found in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the specific coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Through such an analysis a link between the ideas of progress and of emancipation is determined, which leads to the acknowledgement of the difficulty of the (...) task of imagining education outside of the logic of progress. In the second part an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis of the practices involved in studying with a teacher points to a specific way of living together that such a collective study involves. This way of living together is formed by continual exercises in the humble equality realized through shared attention to something worthy of study: this stems from attentiveness to what exists, and it develops an attitude of care and respect for being as such. (shrink)

Topic modeling—a text‐mining technique often used to uncover thematic structures in large collections of texts—has been increasingly frequently used in the context of the analysis of scholarly output. In this study, we construct a corpus of 19,488 texts published since 1971 in seven leading journals in the field of bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and we use a machine learning algorithm to identify almost 100 topics representing distinct themes of interest in the field. On the basis of intertopic correlations, we (...) group the content‐based topics into eight clusters, thus providing a novel, fine‐grained intellectual map of bioethics and philosophy of medicine. Moreover, we conduct a number of diachronic analyses, examining how the “prominence” of different topics has changed across time. In this way, we are able to observe the distinct patterns in which bioethics and philosophy of medicine have evolved and changed their focus over the past half a century. (shrink)

This theoretical paper is offered in the spirit of advancing the debate on the socioemotional wealth construct and its impact on how family firms conceptualize and practise corporate social responsibility. The study builds on Kellermanns et al.’s :1175–1182, 2012) claim that the SEW dimensions can be positively and negatively valenced as well as makes a distinction between the selective and instrumental approach to CSR and the holistic and normative one. Drawing on these considerations, it provides a theoretical underpinning in favour (...) of the view that SEW has ambivalent nature and therefore can produce detrimental outcomes for stakeholders of family companies. In this way, the study challenges the implicit assumption prevalent in the literature that SEW is “a prosocial and positive stimulus”. Crucially, it expands on the SEW construct by arguing that, given its ambivalent nature, SEW, as such, is at odds with the “strategic, whole-business view of responsibility”. Consequently, it posits that family firms—because of their concern with SEW—may be more likely to adopt the instrumental and selective rather than strategic and normative approach. Hence, it also makes the case for regarding the latter as a reference point to investigate the family company’s attitude towards social responsibility. It concludes by summarising the argument and offering future research avenues. (shrink)

Author: Bogusz-Bołtuć Ewa Title: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ’S DISJUNCTIVE DEFINITION OF ART. IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF ART (Władysława Tatarkiewicza alternatywna definicja sztuki a analityczna filozofia sztuki) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 591-600 Keywords: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ, ALTERNATIVE DEFINITION OF ART, DISJUNCTIVE DEFINITION OF ART, BERYS GAUT Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:As a historian of ideas, Władysław Tatarkiewicz sought to introduce order to the meanders of philosophical debates of the past, (...) but as a philosopher, he tried to determine what a given thing is. In this essay I will attempt to show that the voice of Tatarkiewicz was significant for the philosophical debate about ‘what art is?’. In the fifties of the twentieth century, Morris Weitz concluded that defining art through describing the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a work of art, is unfounded. His thesis not only began the anti-essentialist trend in analytic aesthetics, but also prompted attempts to define art by drawing attention to its relational properties. In the disjunctive definition of art, which he formulated in the late 1960s, Władysław Tatarkiewicz opened a new option, where to get something regarded as a work; it is enough to set certain minimal sufficient conditions. What’s more, this way of defining art seems to be one of the more promising projects. The latest version of the disjunctive definition of art, the cluster definition of art by Berys Gaut, is also part of a trend set by the Tatarkiewicz’s definition. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the influence of cultural familiarity on getting the most out of an e-negotiation for merger or acquisition based on subjective and objective negotiation behaviors. We examined if cultural awareness could increase the rate of negotiation self-efficacy, shorten the length of negotiation and optimize deal closure results. To do so, firstly we investigate the concept of e-negotiation and its development in the last two decades. Then a series of systematic reviews is performed on the parameters influencing the (...) success in offline and online merger or acquisition negotiations. We also considered the main traits of Western and Middle Eastern Arab cultures on negotiations. The results show that many of the requirements of successful collaboration, or negotiations, with Arab managers can currently happen only through face-to-face meetings. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

Arthur Danto is the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and the most influential philosopher of art in the last half century. As an art critic for The Nation for 25 years and frequent contributor to other widely read outlets such as the New York Review of Books, Danto also has become one of the most respected public intellectuals of his generation. He is the author of some two dozen important books, along with hundreds of articles and reviews (...) which have been the center of both controversy and discussion. In this volume Danto offers his intellectual autobiography and responds to essays by 27 of the keenest critics of his thought from the worlds of philosophy and the arts. The book includes 16 pages of color art reproductions. Danto is the author dozens of books on art, philosophy, the philosophy of art, and art criticism. He is a rare philosopher who is also a public intellectual. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Circularity and the Micro-Macro-Difference” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: We join Füllsack in his effort to untangle the concepts of circular causation, macro states, and observation by reanalyzing one of our own simulations in the light of these concepts. This simulation presents an example agent that keeps track of its own macro states. We examine how human observers can consider such an agent as an observing agent on its own.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

Research background: To a limited extent, modern researchers are interested in ordoliberalism, as a theory of the socio-economic system, which is confirmed by the results of the bibliometric analysis. In conducted studies, the assumptions of ordoliberalism are used partially, for example, for research on: the role of the state in the economy, the antitrust law, the theoretical assumptions of the SME, the determinants of German economic policy after World War II. Purpose of the article: The aim of this article is (...) to present the possibilities offered by the ordoliberal theory that predispose it to determine a socio-economic order which makes it possible to tackle the dysfunctions and crises that afflict today’s economy. Methods: The research methodology involves a critical analysis of the works of the most essential representatives of ordoliberal thought, particularly Walter Eucken and others, from the perspective of the above-mentioned purpose of the study. This requires examining German-, Polish- and English-language publications by authors recognised as representatives of mainstream ordoliberalism. Findings & Value added: As a result of the conducted analysis, the hypothesis about the existence of the elements of ordoliberal theory that allow it to respond to the challenges of the modern world, including economic, social, environmental and climate crises and pandemic threats has been confirmed. Research of this kind implies a return of thinking in terms of economic order, and thus contributes to the theories that seek to overcome the crisis in both the real economy and the theory of economics. (shrink)