Traditionally, the manufacturer/operator of a machine is held (morally and legally) responsible for the consequences of its operation. Autonomous, learning machines, based on neural networks, genetic algorithms and agent architectures, create a new situation, where the manufacturer/operator of the machine is in principle not capable of predicting the future machine behaviour any more, and thus cannot be held morally responsible or liable for it. The society must decide between not using this kind of machine any more (which is not a (...) realistic option), or facing a responsibility gap, which cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility ascription. (shrink)

Autonomous robots are increasingly interacting with users who have limited knowledge of robotics and are likely to have an erroneous mental model of the robot’s workings, capabilities, and internal structure. The robot’s real capabilities may diverge from this mental model to the extent that one might accuse the robot’s manufacturer of deceiving the user, especially in cases where the user naturally tends to ascribe exaggerated capabilities to the machine (e.g. conversational systems in elder-care contexts, or toy robots in child care). (...) This poses the question, whether misleading or even actively deceiving the user of an autonomous artifact about the capabilities of the machine is morally bad and why. By analyzing trust, autonomy, and the erosion of trust in communicative acts as consequences of deceptive robot behavior, we formulate four criteria that must be fulfilled in order for robot deception to be morally permissible, and in some cases even morally indicated. (shrink)

We present a model of the distribution of labour in science. Such models tend to rely on the mechanism of the invisible hand . Our analysis starts from the necessity of standards in distributed processes and the possibility of multiple standards in science. Invisible hand models turn out to have only limited scope because they are restricted to describing the atypical single-standard case. Our model is a generalisation of these models to J standards; single-standard models such as Kitcher are a (...) limiting case. We introduce and formalise this model, demonstrate its dynamics and conclude that the conclusions commonly derived from invisible hand models about the distribution of labour in science are not robust against changes in the number of standards. (shrink)

Traditionally, the manufacturer/operator of a machine is held (morally and legally) responsible for the consequences of its operation. Autonomous, learning machines, based on neural networks, genetic algorithms and agent architectures, create a new situation, where the manufacturer/operator of the machine is in principle not capable of predicting the future machine behaviour any more, and thus cannot be held morally responsible or liable for it. The society must decide between not using this kind of machine any more (which is not a (...) realistic option), or facing a responsibility gap, which cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility ascription. (shrink)

Is there a difference between human beings and those based on artificial intelligence that would affect their ability to be subjects of dignity? This paper first examines the philosophical notion of dignity as Immanuel Kant derives it from the moral autonomy of the individual. It then asks whether animals and AI systems can claim Kantian dignity or whether there is a sharp divide between human beings, animals and AI systems regarding their ability to be subjects of dignity. How this question (...) is answered depends crucially on one’s understanding of what constitutes human dignity and autonomy, and what requirements one places upon systems in order for them to be seen as morally autonomous. (shrink)

Concern is growing as research continues to find evidence of academic misconduct among medical students. There is, however, paucity of information on this issue among medical students and medical graduates in Africa. We determined the perceptions and attitude of house officers on academic misconduct within Nigerian medical schools. We conducted 7 focus group discussions among pre-registration house-officers working in a Nigerian Teaching hospital between October and November 2013. A FGD guide containing 7 broad questions related to their perception and attitude (...) on academic misconduct was employed. Ethnographic content analysis and manual coding were adopted in identifying themes, issues and representative quotations. A total of 58 participants out of an eligible pool of 76 PRHOs were recruited. All the groups associated academic misconduct chiefly with cheating in examinations, and perceived it as a commonplace problem. “It is a part of school life”, admitted one PRHO. Copying during exam appeared to be the commonest form of cheating. Another respondent opined that “The lecturers should be more concerned with helping students understand better. They should not make passing an exam a do-or-die affair.” The perception and attitudes towards academic misconduct may be a reflection of the prevailing moral decline in the contemporary Nigerian society. Underlying the reasons adduced by the participants for getting involved in academic misconduct is the fear of failure in examinations. Apart from consolidating formal and informal medical ethics education, the medical schools should ensure that the opportunities and pressures to indulge in academic misconduct are minimized. (shrink)

The exhaustion particles of the Yi languages are sentence-end morphemes with a surprising wealth of possible interpretations. With gradeable states they convey the meaning of superlative, with accomplishments they function as completive particle, and in ungradeable states, activities or achievements they act as all particles, i.e. as universal non-distributive quantifiers, on the first argument. A unified account of the all -, completive - and superlative -meanings is proposed. It is argued that all three notions basically divide their respective domain into (...) three types: a singular domain type, a quantized domain type and a homogeneous domain type. For events there is also a fourth domain type, the bounded domain type, which does not have an analogy with objects and states. Object-denotations Event-denotations State-denotations Singular Individual OD Punctual ED Ungradeable SD Quantized Quantized OD Quantized ED State with quantized comparison class Bounded — Bounded ED — Homogeneous Homogeneous OD Homogeneous ED State with homogeneous comparison class The all -, the completive - and the superlative -meanings of the exhaustion particles have in common that they are incompatible with entities from the singular domain type, pragmatically implausible with entities from the homogeneous domain type, and compatible with entities from the quantized domain type. (shrink)

This year I made an album with Jay Auborn. One of the tracks features a piano, a violin, a bass synthesizer, some vocals and the sound of me hitting two sticks rhythmically on the side of the piano. It is based on a previous piece of music which I wrote with Andrew Prior called Birdsong and is called Songbird. How did this happen? It started with the playing of a piano riff, a piano riff that was being played because we (...) had just performed Birdsong at a performance in London with pianist, Dunstan Belcher. This piano riff was also being played because Jay had just been listening to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and I overlaid some violin because I was thinking about Warren Ellis and Alice Coltrane and the Mixolydian mode and In a Silent Way by Miles Davis. But I was probably thinking about Miles Davis because Jay and I were just doing impressions to each other of Miles Davis, imagining we were him writing his autobiography.... Have you ever read his autobiography? Jesus. I played some bass because I had a conversation in the week previously about how I was frightened of bass. So bass was added. In a riff. A bit like Miles Davis, but I was thinking about ‘Atoms for Peace’ and not being scared of bass... (shrink)

Fathom is a sound installation by Jane Grant and John Matthias, which was commissioned by the River Tamar Project and was premiered at the Factory Cooperage Building in Royal William Yard, Plymouth, UK in September 2013. Visitors entering the installation were able to hear live and edited sound recorded underwater in Plymouth Sound, a large estuarine body of water from which the Plym, Tamar and Hamaoze Rivers flow into the sea. Six-step ladders in the centre of the installation space surrounded (...) by several additional speakers enabled visitors to climb out of the underwater sonic environment, above the fathom, and hear live acoustic sound relayed by microphones above the water. The artists worked with a team including production manager, Simon Honywill and Martin Audio to create a sonic ‘surface’ 6ft above the ground to enable this to happen. This article will describe how Fathom was created and, in particular, will focus on how the creation of the sonic surface affected the way in which the visiting public interacted with the work. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung. Die alte anthropologische Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Leib und Seele, die im Kontext der Ergebnisse der modernen Hirnforschung neu als Gehirn-Seele-Problem gestellt wird, hat erhebliche ethische Konsequenzen für die Beurteilung der Hirnforschung. Ist nämlich die Geist-Seele als dasjenige, was der zu schützenden menschlichen Person zugrunde liegt, eigentlich nichts weiter als ihr Gehirn, so werden invasive Eingriffe an eben diesem Gehirn höchst problematisch. Das Dilemma dieser ethischen Frage ergibt sich aus der ungelösten anthropologischen Diskussion: Die beiden Hauptparadigmen – Monismus (...) und Dualismus – geben diametral entgegengesetzte Antworten. Ein Lösungsvorschlag aus theologischer Sicht ist die Einbeziehung der biblisch-christlichen Anthropologie sowie aktuell das dieser nachfolgende philosophische Konzept der beseelten Leiblichkeit in den anthropologischen Diskurs. Letztere fassen den Menschen immer als eine leib-seelische Einheit und weisen das Gehirn als einen wesentlichen, aber nicht hinreichenden Grund menschlicher Personalität aus. In einer medizinischen Ethik auf der Basis dieser Anthropologie muss jeder Eingriff auf seine potentielle Bedrohung für die integrative Einheit,Mensch’ geprüft werden – vor allem, aber nicht nur in der Hirnforschung. (shrink)

The article considers the relationships among three arguments that purport to establish the intrinsically contradictory or paradoxical nature of the modern project aiming at the equal consideration of all. The claim that the inevitable historical insertion of universal-egalitarian norms leads to always particular and untransparent interpretations of grammatically universal norms may be combined with the claim that the logic of determination of political communities tends to generate exclusions. The combination of these two claims lends specific force to the third argument (...) according to which equal consideration perpetually requires the non-egalitarian project of understanding (excluded) individuals on their own terms. Hence, taking off from a recent debate between Christoph Menke and Jürgen Habermas, I argue that the former is right to diagnose an aporetic self-reflection in egalitarian universalism, while agreeing with the latter about the indispensability of deliberative democratic frameworks for the defence of both egalitarian and non-egalitarian norms. (shrink)

To act or think like a thing is a theme that runs as a red thread through Sartre’s oeuvre, but it is only in his Critique of Dialectical Reason that he would come to a coherent account of reifcation, which underpins what is perhaps his most seminal achievement in this book, the theory of the series. In contrast to Lukács’ account of reification, which has roots in Marx’s notion of social form, Sartre’s theory draws on diferent theoretical resources, such as (...) the notion of inertia and the exteriorisation of internal relations. It underpins his notion of the mass, which he understands as fundamentally ambivalent: the mass is the product of seriality and reification, it is the subject of steering and manipulation, but it can never be fully controlled. In specifc circumstances its internal dynamic can lead to forms of dereification through the interiorisation of number, which underpins the formation of a group, the agent of collective action. (shrink)

En este articulo quiero discutir algunos temas centrales deI tratamiento fregeano de los contextos no extensionales. Limitaré mi discusión al análisis de oraciones de creencia y de la oratio obliqua. En la primera parte, voy a describir dos tipos de teoría dentro deI marco de la semántica de Frege. En particular, compararé y evaluaré los análisis de oraciones no extensionales de primer y segundo nivel que se pueden llevar a cabo en las teorías de ambos tipos. En la segunda parte, (...) examinaré en que medida se puede establecer una jerarquía infinita de sentidos indirectos. En la tercera parte, voy a examinar el principio fregeano de sustitutividad de expresiones coreferenciales salva veritate. Además, haré algunas observaciones críticas sobre artículos de Tyler Burge y Jaakko Hintikka relacionados con esta temática.In this article, I discuss some important aspects of Frege’s treatment of nonextensional contexts. I focus on the analysis of belief sentences and of oratio obliqua. In the first part, I deseribe two types of theory within Fregean semantics and assess the analyses of non-extensional sentences of first and of second level whieh can be carried out in the theories of both types. In the seeond part, I examine to what extent one can establish an infinite hierarehy of indirect senses. In the third and final part, I examine Frege’s principle of substitutivity salva veritate of coreferential terms. I conelude with critieal observationson articles of Tyler Burge and Jaakko Hintikka which deal with this principle. (shrink)

(2013). Critical notice of Aaron James, Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 382-401.