Do philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in the same way? In this article, we argue that they do not and that the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness does not coincide with the folk conception. We first offer experimental support for the hypothesis that philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in markedly different ways. We then explore experimentally the folk conception, proposing that for the folk, subjective experience is closely linked to valence. We conclude by considering (...) the implications of our findings for a central issue in the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

The United States Army’s Future Combat Systems Project, which aims to manufacture a “robot army” to be ready for deployment by 2012, is only the latest and most dramatic example of military interest in the use of artificially intelligent systems in modern warfare. This paper considers the ethics of a decision to send artificially intelligent robots into war, by asking who we should hold responsible when an autonomous weapon system is involved in an atrocity of the sort that would normally (...) be described as a war crime. A number of possible loci of responsibility for robot war crimes are canvassed; the persons who designed or programmed the system, the commanding officer who ordered its use, the machine itself. I argue that in fact none of these are ultimately satisfactory. Yet it is a necessary condition for fighting a just war, under the principle of jus in bellum, that someone can be justly held responsible for deaths that occur in the course of the war. As this condition cannot be met in relation to deaths caused by an autonomous weapon system it would therefore be unethical to deploy such systems in warfare. (shrink)

When people are trying to determine whether an entity is capable of having certain kinds of mental states, they can proceed either by thinking about the entity from a *functional* standpoint or by thinking about the entity from a *physical* standpoint. We conducted a series of studies to determine how each of these standpoints impact people’s mental state ascriptions. The results point to a striking asymmetry. It appears that ascriptions of states involving phenomenal consciousness are sensitive to physical factors in (...) a way that ascriptions of other states are not. (shrink)

In this article, we present evidence of a bidirectional coupling between moral concern and the attribution of properties and states that are associated with experience (e.g., conscious awareness, feelings). This coupling is also shown to be stronger with experience than for the attribution of properties and states more closely associated with agency (e.g., free will, thoughts). We report the results of four studies. In the first two studies, we vary the description of the mental capacities of a creature, and assess (...) the effects of these manipulations on moral concern. The third and fourth studies examine the effects of variations in moral concern on attributions of mindedness. Results from the first two studies indicate that moral concern depends primarily on the attribution of experience, rather than the attribution of agency. The results of the latter two studies demonstrate that moral concern increases attributions of mindedness, and that this effect is stronger for attributions of experience than for attributions of agency. (shrink)

Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, Daniel Dennett asserts in this first full scale presentation of...

Sydney Shoemaker notes that my "avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters" often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless--a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors trapped in the seductively lucid amber of tradition: "obvious truths" that (...) are simply false, broken-backed distinctions, and other cognitive illusions. I want to shift the perspective of philosophy of mind, and for that task using the standard terminology would be counterproductive. Fortunately, the inevitable communication-difficulties my policy provokes are forced into the open by occasions such as this constructive confrontation, permitting me to clarify my shocking message. I am grateful to Shoemaker, and to Michael Tye, Frank Jackson and David Rosenthal, for their vigorous and sympathetic reactions to my book. (shrink)

Are there really beliefs? Or are we learning (from neuroscience and psychology, presumably) that, strictly speaking, beliefs are figments of our imagination, items in a superceded ontology? Philosophers generally regard such ontological questions as admitting just two possible answers: either beliefs exist or they don't. There is no such state as quasi-existence; there are no stable doctrines of semi-realism. Beliefs must either be vindicated along with the viruses or banished along with the banshees. A bracing conviction prevails, then, to the (...) effect that when it comes to beliefs (and other mental items) one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist. (shrink)

There could be no more gratifying response to a philosopher's work than such a bounty of challenging, high-quality essays. I have learned a great deal from them, and hope that other readers will be as delighted as I have been by the insights gathered here. One thing I have learned is just how much hard work I had left for others to do, by underestimating the degree of explicit formulation of theses and arguments that is actually required to bring these (...) issues into optimal focus. These essays cover my work from top to bottom. Just about every nook and cranny is probed and tested in ways I could never do for myself. The essays thus highlight the areas of weakest exposition of my views; they also show the weak points of the views themselves--and suggest repairs, which I am sometimes happy to accept, but not always, since there are a few cases in which one critic deftly disarms another, sight unseen. I will be fascinated to learn how the individual authors react to each other's essays, since they side with me on different points, and disagree about what is still in need of revision or repair. (shrink)

There could be no more gratifying response to a philosopher's work than such a bounty of challenging, high-quality essays. I have learned a great deal from them, and hope that other readers will be as delighted as I have been by the insights gathered here. One thing I have learned is just how much hard work I had left for others to do, by underestimating the degree of explicit formulation of theses and arguments that is actually required to bring these (...) issues into optimal focus. These essays cover my work from top to bottom. Just about every nook and cranny is probed and tested in ways I could never do for myself. The essays thus highlight the areas of weakest exposition of my views; they also show the weak points of the views themselves--and suggest repairs, which I am sometimes happy to accept, but not always, since there are a few cases in which one critic deftly disarms another, sight unseen. I will be fascinated to learn how the individual authors react to each other's essays, since they side with me on different points, and disagree about what is still in need of revision or repair. (shrink)

Let psychologism be the doctrine that whether behavior is intelligent behavior depends on the character of the internal information processing that produces it. More specifically, I mean psychologism to involve the doctrine that two systems could have actual and potential behavior _typical_ of familiar intelligent beings, that the two systems could be exactly alike in their actual and potential behavior, and in their behavioral dispositions and capacities and counterfactual behavioral properties (i.e., what behaviors, behavioral dispositions, and behavioral capacities they would (...) have exhibited had their stimuli differed)--the two systems could be alike in all these ways, yet there could be a difference in the information processing that mediates their stimuli and responses that determines that one is not at all intelligent while the other is fully intelligent. (shrink)

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of (...) our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors argue (...) that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. -/- Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics. (shrink)

Robots today serve in many roles, from entertainer to educator to executioner. As robotics technology advances, ethical concerns become more pressing: Should robots be programmed to follow a code of ethics, if this is even possible? Are there risks in forming emotional bonds with robots? How might society--and ethics--change with robotics? This volume is the first book to bring together prominent scholars and experts from both science and the humanities to explore these and other questions in this emerging field. Starting (...) with an overview of the issues and relevant ethical theories, the topics flow naturally from the possibility of programming robot ethics to the ethical use of military robots in war to legal and policy questions, including liability and privacy concerns. The contributors then turn to human-robot emotional relationships, examining the ethical implications of robots as sexual partners, caregivers, and servants. Finally, they explore the possibility that robots, whether biological-computational hybrids or pure machines, should be given rights or moral consideration. Ethics is often slow to catch up with technological developments. This authoritative and accessible volume fills a gap in both scholarly literature and policy discussion, offering an impressive collection of expert analyses of the most crucial topics in this increasingly important field. (shrink)

The essays in this volume represent the first steps by philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers toward explaining why it is necessary to add an ...

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

I present an argument for panpsychism: the thesis that everything is conscious, or at least that fundamental physical entities are conscious. The argument takes a Hegelian dialectical form. Panpsychism emerges as a synthesis of the thesis of materalism and the antithesis of dualism. In particular, the key premises of the causal argument for materialism and the conceivability argument for dualism are all accommodated by a certain version of panpsychism. This synthesis has its own antithesis in turn: panprotopsychism, the thesis that (...) fundamental physical entities are protoconscious, also accommodates the key premises. Panpsychism and panprotopsychism are synthesized under Russellian monism, and then face an antithesis, the combination problem. The question of whether there is a new synthesis remains open. (shrink)

Over three decades ago, in a brief but provocative essay, Paul Ziff argued for the thesis that robots cannot have feelings because they are "mechanisms, not organisms, not living creatures. There could be a broken-down robot but not a dead one. Only living creatures can literally have feelings."[i] Since machines are not living things they cannot have feelings. In the first half of my paper I review Ziff's arguments against the idea that robots could be conscious, especially his appeal to (...) our linguistic usage. In the second half of the essay I try to provide a deeper ontological understanding of why we ought not attribute minds to nonliving artifacts. I argue that inanimate mechanisms are incapable of genuinely active and purposive behavior. They are importantly different in kind from living human beings and animals. (shrink)

Anti-behaviorist arguments against the validity of the Turing Test as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence are based on a memorizing machine, which has recorded within it responses to every possible Turing Test interaction of up to a fixed length. The mere possibility of such a machine is claimed to be enough to invalidate the Turing Test. I consider the nomological possibility of memorizing machines, and how long a Turing Test they can pass. I replicate my previous analysis of this (...) critical Turing Test length based on the age of the universe, show how considerations of communication time shorten that estimate and allow eliminating the sole remaining contingent assumption, and argue that the bound is so short that it is incompatible with the very notion of the Turing Test. I conclude that the memorizing machine objection to the Turing Test as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence is invalid. (shrink)