Introduces the use of Lego Robots for use in research and teaching in philosophy. Potential uses include using the machines as pedagogical tools for teaching introductory ideas in cognitive robotics, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Describes the strength and potential pitfalls of introducing this technology to the classroom.

In this paper Sullins argues that in certain circumstances robots can be seen as real moral agents. A distinction is made between persons and moral agents such that, it is not necessary for a robot to have personhood in order to be a moral agent. I detail three requirements for a robot to be seen as a moral agent. The first is achieved when the robot is significantly autonomous from any programmers or operators of the machine. The second is (...) when one can analyze or explain the robot's behavior only by ascribing to it some predisposition or 'intention' to do good or harm. And finally, robot moral agency requires the robot to behave in a way that shows and understanding of responsibility to some other moral agent. Robots with all of these criteria will have moral rights as well as responsibilities regardless of their status as persons. (shrink)

Roboethics is the recent offshoot of computer ethics that pays special attention to the alterations that need to be made to computer ethics when we give the computer mobility and a means to interact directly in the human environment. The closely related field of machine morality explores how ethical systems and behaviors may be programmed into social robotics applications. As robots move from the factory floor into our homes and work lives, they stand to change key aspects of the way (...) our lives are lived. In order to be successful, these machines must be programmed with the ability to navigate the human life world without committing ethical faux pas or moral outrage. Thus, the roboethicist is tasked not only with critiquing the attempts of robots engineers to achieve the integration of these machines into our life world, but also, and more importantly, with suggesting means of achieving better results than what is presently on offer. (shrink)

A review with commentary on Mark A. Bedau and Emily C. Parke (eds): The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory (Basic Bioethics series) MIT Press, Cambridge,MA, 2009, 365 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-01262-1, ISBN 978-0-262-51269-5.

In this essay I discuss how I built a cognitive‐robotics lab using inexpensive LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ robot kits. The lab has provided pedagogical and research opportunities for a number of philosophy courses, and I briefly describe the results of those efforts. I also describe how one might build a similar lab. Philosophers need to be more directly involved in the field of robotics. There is much work to do in tidying up the philosophical debris left by the last wave of robotics (...) research, which the researchers have been unwilling or unable to do themselves. The major barriers to participation have been hardware costs and a lack of technical expertise among most philosophers. In recent years, though, these barriers have become less of a problem. At the end, I present some ideas about the kinds of experiments that such kits make possible and how to expand beyond the limitations of the basic LEGO® hardware. (shrink)

Book review of "Killing by remote Control," Bradley Jay Strawser (Ed), Oxford university Press.

In this paper I discuss whether Gödel's incompleteness theorems have any implications for studies in Artificial Life (AL). Since Gödel's incompleteness theorems have been used to argue against certain mechanistic theories of the mind, it seems natural to attempt to apply the theorems to certain strong mechanistic arguments postulated by some AL theorists. -/- We find that an argument using the incompleteness theorems can not be constructed that will block the hard AL claim, specifically in the field of robotics. However, (...) we will see that the beginnings of an argument casting doubt on our ability to create living systems entirely resident in a computer environment might be suggested by looking at the incompleteness theorems from the point of view of Gödel's belief in mathematical realism. (shrink)

A review with commentary on the book, Understanding Beliefs, Nils J. Nilsson, MIT Press, 2014.

Telerobotically operated and semiautonomous machines have become a major component in the arsenals of industrial nations around the world. By the year 2015 the United States military plans to have one-third of their combat aircraft and ground vehicles robotically controlled. Although there are many reasons for the use of robots on the battlefield, perhaps one of the most interesting assertions are that these machines, if properly designed and used, will result in a more just and ethical implementation of warfare. This (...) paper will focus on these claims by looking at what has been discovered about the capability of humans to behave ethically on the battlefield, and then comparing those findings with the claims made by robotics researchers that their machines are able to behave more ethically on the battlefield than human soldiers. Throughout the paper we will explore the philosophical critique of this claim and also look at how the robots of today are impacting our ability to fight wars in a just manner. (shrink)

Artificial Life has two goals. One attempts to describe fundamental qualities of living systems through agent based computer models. And the second studies whether or not we can artificially create living things in computational mediums that can be realized either, virtually in software, or through biotechnology. The study of ALife has recently branched into two further subdivisions, one is “dry” ALife, which is the study of living systems “in silico” through the use of computer simulations, and the other is “wet” (...) ALife that uses biological material to realize what has only been simulated on computers, effectively wet ALife uses biological material as a kind of computer. This is challenging to the field of computer ethics as it points towards a future in which computer and bioethics might have shared concerns. The emerging studies into wet ALife are likely to provide strong empirical evidence for ALife’s most challenging hypothesis: that life is a certain set of computable functions that can be duplicated in any medium. I believe this will propel ALife into the midst of the mother of all cultural battles that has been gathering around the emergence of biotechnology. Philosophers need to pay close attention to this debate and can serve a vital role in clarifying and resolving the dispute. But even if ALife is merely a computer modeling technique that sheds light on living systems, it still has a number of significant ethical implications such as its use in the modeling of moral and ethical systems, as well as in the creation of artificial moral agents. (shrink)

Book review of "“P. W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century," Penguin books.

A review and commentary on Killing By Remote Control: the Ethics of an Unmanned Military, edited by Bradley Jay Strawser (forward by Jeff McMahan), (Oxford University Press). -/- .

We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems.

This book surveys and examines the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence. From claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, rationality, and meaning, to arguments about cognitive architecture, the book presents a vivid history of the clash between the philosophy and AI. Tellingly, the AI Wars are mostly quiet now. Explaining this crucial fact opens new paths to understanding the current resurgence AI (especially, deep learning AI and robotics), what happens when philosophy meets (...) science, and the role of philosophy in the culture in which it is embedded. -/- Organising the arguments into four core topics - 'Is AI possible', 'Architectures of the Mind', 'Mental Semantics and Mental Symbols' and 'Rationality and Creativity' - this book shows the debate that played out between the philosophers on both sides of the question, and, as well, the debate between philosophers and AI scientists and engineers building AI systems. Up-to-date and forward-looking, the book is packed with fresh insights and supporting material, including: -/- - Accessible introductions to each war, explaining the background behind the main arguments against AI - Each chapter details what happened in the AI wars, the legacy of the attacks, and what new controversies are on the horizon. - Extensive bibliography of key readings. (shrink)

Numbers and other mathematical objects are exceptional in having no locations in space or time or relations of cause and effect. This makes it difficult to account for the possibility of the knowledge of such objects, leading many philosophers to embrace nominalism, the doctrine that there are no such objects, and to embark on ambitious projects for interpreting mathematics so as to preserve the subject while eliminating its objects. This book cuts through a host of technicalities that have obscured previous (...) discussions of these projects, and presents clear, concise accounts of a dozen strategies for nominalistic interpretation of mathematics, thus equipping the reader to evaluate each and to compare different ones. The authors also offer critical discussion, rare in the literature, of the aims and claims of nominalistic interpretation, suggesting that it is significant in a very different way from that usually assumed. (shrink)

Aristotle said that induction (epagōgē) is a proceeding from particulars to a universal, and the definition has been conventional ever since. But there is an ambiguity here. Induction in the Scholastic and the (so-called) Humean tradition has presumed that Aristotle meant going from particular statements to universal statements. But the alternate view, namely that Aristotle meant going from particular things to universal ideas, prevailed all through antiquity and then again from the time of Francis Bacon until the mid-nineteenth century. Recent (...) scholarship is so steeped in the first-mentioned tradition that we have virtually forgotten the other. In this essay McCaskey seeks to recover that alternate tradition, a tradition whose leading theoreticians were William Whewell, Francis Bacon, Socrates, and in fact Aristotle himself. The examination is both historical and philosophical. The first part of the essay fills out the history. The latter part examines the most mature of the philosophies in the Socratic tradition, specifically Bacon’s and Whewell’s. After tracing out this tradition, McCaskey shows how this alternate view of induction is indeed employed in science, as exemplified by several instances taken from actual scientific practice. In this manner, McCaskey proposes to us that the Humean problem of induction is merely an artifact of a bad conception of induction and that a return to the Socratic conception might be warranted. (shrink)

This rich volume is sure to attract scholarly attention in a variety of fields. There is nothing else like it in print.

This is the first in-depth critical appraisal in English of the political, legal, and cultural writings of Carl Schmitt, perhaps this century's most brilliant critic of liberalism. It offers an assessment of this most sophisticated of fascist theorists without attempting either to apologise for or demonise him. Schmitt's Weimar writings confront the role of technology as it finds expression through the principles and practices of liberalism. Contemporary political conditions such as disaffection with liberalism and the rise of extremist political organizations (...) have rendered Schmitt's work both relevant and insightful. John McCormick examines why technology becomes a rallying cry for both right- and left-wing intellectuals at times when liberalism appears anachronistic, and shows the continuities between Weimar's ideological debates and those of our own age. (shrink)

It will engage bioethicists and philosophers as well as inform policy and law regarding issues at the beginning and end of life.

While we are commonly told that the distinctive method of mathematics is rigorous proof, and that the special topic of mathematics is abstract structure, there has been no agreement among mathematicians, logicians, or philosophers as to just what either of these assertions means. John P. Burgess clarifies the nature of mathematical rigor and of mathematical structure, and above all of the relation between the two, taking into account some of the latest developments in mathematics, including the rise of experimental (...) mathematics on the one hand and computerized formal proofs on the other hand. Along the way, a great many historical developments in mathematics, philosophy, and logic are surveyed. Yet very little in the way of background knowledge on the part of the reader is presupposed. (shrink)

This book surveys the assortment of methods put forth for fixing Frege's system, in an attempt to determine just how much of mathematics can be reconstructed in ...

Philosophical Logic is a clear and concise critical survey of nonclassical logics of philosophical interest written by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject. After giving an overview of classical logic, John Burgess introduces five central branches of nonclassical logic, focusing on the sometimes problematic relationship between formal apparatus and intuitive motivation. Requiring minimal background and arranged to make the more technical material optional, the book offers a choice between an overview and in-depth study, and it balances (...) the philosophical and technical aspects of the subject.The book emphasizes the relationship between models and the traditional goal of logic, the evaluation of arguments, and critically examines apparatus and assumptions that often are taken for granted. Philosophical Logic provides an unusually thorough treatment of conditional logic, unifying probabilistic and model-theoretic approaches. It underscores the variety of approaches that have been taken to relevantistic and related logics, and it stresses the problem of connecting formal systems to the motivating ideas behind intuitionistic mathematics. Each chapter ends with a brief guide to further reading.Philosophical Logic addresses students new to logic, philosophers working in other areas, and specialists in logic, providing both a sophisticated introduction and a new synthesis. (shrink)

By utilizing new information from both clinical and experimental (lesion, electrophysiological, and gene-activation) studies with animals, the anatomy underlying anterograde amnesia has been reformulated. The distinction between temporal lobe and diencephalic amnesia is of limited value in that a common feature of anterograde amnesia is damage to part of an comprising the hippocampus, the fornix, the mamillary bodies, and the anterior thalamic nuclei. This view, which can be traced back to Delay and Brion (1969), differs from other recent models in (...) placing critical importance on the efferents from the hippocampus via the fornix to the diencephalon. These are necessary for the encoding and, hence, the effective subsequent recall of episodic memory. An additional feature of this hippocampalanterior thalamic and the perirhinal–medial dorsal thalamic systems are compromised, leading to severe deficits in both recall and recognition. (shrink)

The great logician Gottlob Frege attempted to provide a purely logical foundation for mathematics. His system collapsed when Bertrand Russell discovered a contradiction in it. Thereafter, mathematicians and logicians, beginning with Russell himself, turned in other directions to look for a framework for modern abstract mathematics. Over the past couple of decades, however, logicians and philosophers have discovered that much more is salvageable from the rubble of Frege's system than had previously been assumed. A variety of repaired systems have been (...) proposed, each a consistent theory permitting the development of a significant portion of mathematics. This book surveys the assortment of methods put forth for fixing Frege's system, in an attempt to determine just how much of mathematics can be reconstructed in each. John Burgess considers every proposed fix, each with its distinctive philosophical advantages and drawbacks. These systems range from those barely able to reconstruct the rudiments of arithmetic to those that go well beyond the generally accepted axioms of set theory into the speculative realm of large cardinals. For the most part, Burgess finds that attempts to fix Frege do less than advertised to revive his system. This book will be the benchmark against which future analyses of the revival of Frege will be measured. (shrink)

How induction was understood took a substantial turn during the Renaissance. At the beginning, induction was understood as it had been throughout the medieval period, as a kind of propositional inference that is stronger the more it approximates deduction. During the Renaissance, an older understanding, one prevalent in antiquity, was rediscovered and adopted. By this understanding, induction identifies defining characteristics using a process of comparing and contrasting. Important participants in the change were Jean Buridan, humanists such as Lorenzo Valla and (...) Rudolph Agricola, Paduan Aristotelians such as Agostino Nifo, Jacopo Zabarella, and members of the medical faculty, writers on philosophy of mind such as the Englishman John Case, writers of reasoning handbooks, and Francis Bacon. (shrink)

Computability and Logic has become a classic because of its accessibility to students without a mathematical background and because it covers not simply the staple topics of an intermediate logic course, such as Godel's incompleteness theorems, but also a large number of optional topics, from Turing's theory of computability to Ramsey's theorem. This 2007 fifth edition has been thoroughly revised by John Burgess. Including a selection of exercises, adjusted for this edition, at the end of each chapter, it offers (...) a simpler treatment of the representability of recursive functions, a traditional stumbling block for students on the way to the Godel incompleteness theorems. This updated edition is also accompanied by a website as well as an instructor's manual. (shrink)

In this original work of psychoanalytic theory, John Muller explores the formative power of signs and their impact on the mind, the body and subjectivity, giving special attention to work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Muller explores how Lacan's way of understanding experience through three dimensions--the real, the imaginary and the symbolic--can be useful both for thinking about cultural phenomena and for understanding the complexities involved in treating psychotic patients. Muller develops (...) Lacan's perspective gradually, presenting it as distinctive approaches to data from a variety of sources, such as cognitive, social and developmental psychology, literature, history, art, and psychoanalytic treatment. The book's first four chapters present Muller's reading of selected data from child development research, psychology and linguistics, approximating a semiotic model of "normal" development. The following three chapters examine in a Lacanian framework the structural basis of psychotic stages as indicative of massive semiotic failure in development. The final chapters on human narcissism suggest reasons that "normal" development may be impossible. (shrink)

This volume reprints a dozen of the author’s papers, most with substantial postscripts, and adds one new one. The bulk of the material is on topics in philosophy of language, but there are also two papers on philosophy of mathematics written after the appearance of the author’s collected papers on that subject, and one on epistemology. As to the substance of Field’s contributions, limitations of space preclude doing much more below than indicating the range of issues addressed, and the general (...) orientation taken towards them. As to the style of his writing, it well exhibits the first of the two virtues, clarity and conciseness, that one looks for in philosophical prose. (shrink)

The source, status, and significance of the derivation of the necessity of identity at the beginning of Kripke’s lecture “Identity and Necessity” is discussed from a logical, philosophical, and historical point of view.

The complexity of the set of truths of arithmetic is determined for various theories of truth deriving from Kripke and from Gupta and Herzberger.

A new axiomatization of set theory, to be called Bernays-Boolos set theory, is introduced. Its background logic is the plural logic of Boolos, and its only positive set-theoretic existence axiom is a reflection principle of Bernays. It is a very simple system of axioms sufficient to obtain the usual axioms of ZFC, plus some large cardinals, and to reduce every question of plural logic to a question of set theory.

The Darvishes is an invaluable contribution to the study of the Belief and spiritual principles of the Darvish Orders and is one of the most accurate reference works on the subject. Drawn exclusively from the original Oriental works, and from Turkish, Arabic and Persian manuscripts the originality and authenticity of the work is beyond doubt. As well as discussing Darvish doctrines and history, the volume also examines the spiritual and metaphysical significance of Sufism as a living tradition.

The author argues that the core of Hume’s Academic skepticism lies in his commitment to an external world and objective causal powers that are cognitively opaque to human understanding. Three central topics of Hume’s theory of the understanding are discussed—the existence of absolute space, the existence of a world external to our senses, and the existence of objective causal powers. In each case, Hume draws a Pyrrhonian opposition between judgments based on his “Copy Principle” and the “fictions” or “illusions” formed (...) through association of ideas. While he suspends judgment concerning the existence of absolute space, he argues that the association-based beliefs in an external world and objective causal powers are necessary for human life and indispensible in science. In adopting such beliefs about external reality, while at the same time denying their intelligibility, Hume was following ancient Academic skepticism. (shrink)

"The Treatise on the Origin of Humanity (Yuanren lun) by the Huayan patriarch Zongmi classifies various teachings of Buddhism on a scale of relative profundity, and specifically critiques the weaknesses of the teachings of Confucianism and Daoism, which he regards as inferior to Buddhism. This work formed the basis for some of the arguments in later East Asian history on the relationship of the three teachings." --.

IN examining Herodotos' account of the Samian tyranny, historians have long been disturbed by two considerations. First, it seems strange that the period of settled tyranny should have begun no earlier than the rise of Polykrates and his two brothers c. 533 B.C., even though Samos was among the most advanced cities in Ionia. Yet it seems equally impossible to revise this accession date in an upward direction, at least by any significant margin. Furthermore, there had been at work in (...) Samos from c. 600 or earlier many of the factors which elsewhere in Ionia did in fact lead to a comparatively stable period of tyranny at that date, for instance at Miletos and Ephesos. Secondly, though Herodotos knows of no tyrant before Polykrates, it has been observed that the policies ascribed to him as characteristic were very largely the continuation of policies initiated a generation or more previously. (shrink)

The increasingly pervasive practice of veiling among Muslim women has stimulated a great deal of scholarly investigation and debate. This study brings empirical evidence to bear on current debates about the meaning of the veil in Islam. This article first examines the conflicting meanings of the veil among Muslim religious elites and Islamic feminists. Although the dominant gender discourse among Muslim elites strongly favors this cultural practice, an antiveiling discourse promulgated by Islamic feminists has gained ground within recent years. This (...) study then examines how these discursive disputes affect gender identity negotiation among veiled and unveiled Muslim women living in Austin, Texas. Interviews with these women highlight how their gender identities reproduce and reformulate existing Muslim gender discourses. Special attention is paid to the subjective disparities and points of congruence between both groups of respondents. This study concludes by suggesting avenues for future research on the intersection of gender, religion, and cultural difference. (shrink)

This fourth edition of one of the classic logic textbooks has been thoroughly revised by John Burgess. The aim is to increase the pedagogical value of the book for the core market of students of philosophy and for students of mathematics and computer science as well. This book has become a classic because of its accessibility to students without a mathematical background, and because it covers not simply the staple topics of an intermediate logic course such as Godel's Incompleteness (...) Theorems, but also a large number of optional topics from Turing's theory of computability to Ramsey's theorem. John Burgess has now enhanced the book by adding a selection of problems at the end of each chapter, and by reorganising and rewriting chapters to make them more independent of each other and thus to increase the range of options available to instructors as to what to cover and what to defer. (shrink)