This paper provides a series of reflections on making the case to senior leaders for the introduction of clinical ethics support services within a UK hospital Trust at a time when clinical ethics committees are dwindling in the UK. The paper provides key considerations for those building a case for clinical ethics support within hospitals by drawing upon published academic literature, and key reports from governmental and professional bodies. We also include extracts from documents relating to, and annual reports of, (...) existing clinical ethics support within UK hospitals, as well as extracts from our own proposal submitted to the Trust Board. We aim for this paper to support other ethicists and/or health care staff contemplating introducing clinical ethics support into hospitals, to facilitate the process of making the case for clinical ethics support, and to contribute to the key debates in the literature around clinical ethics support. We conclude that there is a real need for investment in clinical ethics in the UK in order to build the evidence base required to support the wider introduction of clinical ethics support into UK hospitals. Furthermore, our perceptions of the purpose of, and perceived needs met through, clinical ethics support needs to shift to one of hospitals investing in their staff. Finally, we raise concerns over the optional nature of clinical ethics support available to practitioners within UK hospitals. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 10, October 2022.

서비스 로봇이나 자율주행자동차처럼 현실의 공간에서 작동하는 기계가 임무를 성공적으로 수행하기 위하여 갖추어야 할 조건은 그것이 처한 환경의 상태를 파악하는 능력, 곧 지각의 능력이다. 이 논문은 이런 기계 지각, 특히 인간을 대행하도록 의도된 기계의 지각이 충족해야 할 조건들을 검토한다. 이러한 시도는 오늘의 사회가 집단적으로 추진하고 있는 공학 프로젝트에서 기술의 지향점을 환기시키면서 그것을 향한 실천을 구체화하는 논의라는 의미를 지닌다. 공학윤리의 원칙에 명시된 최우선의 가치를 고려할 때, 인간을 대행할 인공물은 우리가 아는 범위에서 가장 안전한 방식으로 구성되어야 하고, 이를 위하여 기계 시각을 비롯한 인공물의 (...) 지각은 일차적으로 그것이 대행할 인간의 지각을 닮은 결과를 산출하도록 설계, 제작되어야 한다. 인간의 지각은 자연의 역사가 부여한 여러 흥미로운 속성들을 가지고 있다. 특히 이 논문은 지각의 대상을 개념적 범주들을 적용해 판별하는 방식, 지각에 나타나는 다양한 항등성의 측면들, 인간의 지각에 나타나는 행지주의적 특성에 주목한다. 이 세 요소는 자율주행자동차를 비롯하여 이 논문이 고려한 적용의 영역들에서 모두 뚜렷한 유관성을 드러낸다. 이로부터, 이런 똑똑한 인공물을 설계, 제작하는 과정에서 인간 지각의 이러한 속성들이 실현되거나 아니면 적어도 실질적인 손실 없이 대체되는지를 살펴야 한다는 당위가 도출된다. (shrink)

Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the “machine question” by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes situations where (...) either human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On “relational” views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings. (shrink)

Brain implants, such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which are designed to improve motor, mood and behavioural pathology, present unique challenges to our understanding of identity, agency and free will. This is because these devices can have visible effects on persons' physical and psychological properties yet are essentially undetectable when operating correctly. They can supplement and compensate for one's inherent abilities and faculties when they are compromised by neuropsychiatric disorders. Further, unlike talk therapy or pharmacological treatments, patients need not ‘do’ (...) anything for the treatment to take effect. If one accepts, as we argue here, that brain implants are unique among implantable types of devices, then this can have significant implications for what it means to persist as the same person and be the source of one's thoughts and actions. By examining two of the most common indications for DBS in current use, namely in the motor (Parkinson's Disease) and psychiatric (Major Depression) domains, we further argue that although DBS, as it is currently applied, does not necessarily represent a unique threat to personal identity and agency per se, it introduces an unprecedented ‘third party’ into the debate on these concepts. In this way, DBS can be used as a tool to begin probing, both conceptually and empirically, some of philosophy's most perennial metaphysical questions. (shrink)

As machines take over more tasks previously done by humans, artistic creation is also considered as a candidate to be automated. But, can machines create art? This paper offers a conceptual framework for a philosophical discussion of this question regarding the status of machine art and machine creativity. It breaks the main question down in three sub-questions, and then analyses each question in order to arrive at more precise problems with regard to machine art and machine (...) creativity: What is art creation? What do we mean by art? And, what do we mean by machines create art? This then provides criteria we can use to discuss the main question in relation to particular cases. In the course of the analysis, the paper engages with theory in aesthetics, refers to literature on computational creativity, and contributes to the philosophy of technology and philosophical anthropology by reflecting on the role of technology in art creation. It is shown that the distinctions between process versus outcome criteria and subjective versus objective criteria of creativity are unstable. It is also argued that we should consider non-human forms of creativity, and not only cases where either humans or machines create art but also collaborations between humans and machines, which makes us reflect on human-technology relations. Finally, the paper questions the very approach that seeks criteria and suggests that the artistic status of machines may be shown and revealed in the human/non-human encounter before any theorizing or agreement takes place; an experience which then is presupposed when we theorize. This hints at a more general model of what happens in artistic perception and engagement as a hybrid human-technological and emergent or even poetic process, a model which leaves more room for letting ourselves be surprised by creativity—human and perhaps non-human. (shrink)

En 1517, il y a cinq cents ans, la réforme de Luther fracture l'Europe. La même année, les conquistadores espagnols s'en prennent au Mexique, qu'ils colonisent et christianisent. Ils y introduisent aussi notre façon d'écrire l'histoire. Les vainqueurs ignorent tout des sociétés indigènes. Or pour imposer leur loi, ils doivent impérativement connaître les coutumes et donc le passé des vaincus. Mais que sont l'histoire et le temps dans l'esprit des Indiens? Le temps n'est pas encore une valeur universelle. Comment les (...) Espagnols formatés dans une Europe chrétienne où l'histoire est chronologique et orientée auraient-ils pu concevoir et accepter la cosmologie méso-américaine? Civilisés contre barbares? En quelques décennies, la machine à remonter le temps des envahisseurs s'emploie à capturer les mémoires des sociétés amérindiennes pour leur fabriquer un passé qui puisse être rattaché au patrimoine antique de la chrétienté. Du côté des Indiens, le souvenir de leur monde au sein duquel les êtres, les choses et les dieux étaient liés se dilue avec le passage des générations même si, dans les codex ou dans les mystérieux cantares, subsistent quelques pans secrets de leur mémoire. Serge Gruzinski propose ici une exploration inédite des débuts de l'expansion coloniale et nous explique comment, sur le terrain, religieux et Indiens se mettent à écrire l'histoire du monde. (shrink)

For a long time, emotions have been ignored in the attempt to model intelligent behavior. However, within the last years, evidence has come from neuroscience that emotions are an important facet of intelligent behavior being involved into cognitive problem solving, decision making, the establishment of social behavior, and even conscious experience. Also in research communities like software agents and robotics, an increasing number of researchers start to believe that computational models of emotions will be needed to design intelligent systems. Nevertheless, (...) modeling emotions in technical terms poses many difficulties and has often been accounted as just not feasible. In this article, there are identified the main problems, which occur when attempting to implement emotions into machines. By pointing out these problems, it is aimed to avoid repeating mistakes committed when modeling computational models of emotions in order to speed up future development in this area. The identified issues are not derived from abstract reflections about this topic but from the actual attempt to implement emotions into a technical system based on neuroscientific research findings. It is argued that besides focusing on the cognitive aspects of emotions, a consideration of the bodily aspects of emotions—their grounding into a visceral body—is of crucial importance, especially when a system shall be able to learn correlations between environmental objects and events and their “emotional meaning”. (shrink)

Most philosophers appear to have ignored the distinction between the broad concept of Virtual Machine Functionalism (VMF) described in Sloman&Chrisley (2003) and the better known version of functionalism referred to there as Atomic State Functionalism (ASF), which is often given as an explanation of what Functionalism is, e.g. in Block (1995). -/- One of the main differences is that ASF encourages talk of supervenience of states and properties, whereas VMF requires supervenience of machines that are arbitrarily complex networks of (...) causally interacting (virtual, but real) processes, possibly operating on different time-scales, examples of which include many different procesess usually running concurrently on a modern computer performing various tasks concerned with handling interfaces to physical devices, managing the file system, dealing with security, providing tools, entertainments, and games, and possibly processing research data. Another example of VMF would be the kind of functionalism involved in a large collection of possibly changing socio-economic structures and processes interacting in a complex community, and yet another is illustrated by the kind of virtual machinery involved in the many levels of visual processing of information about spatial structures, processes, and relationships (including percepts of moving shadows, reflections, highlights, optical-flow patterns and changing affordances) as you walk through a crowded car-park on a sunny day: generating a whole zoo of interacting qualia. (Forget solitary red patches, or experiences thereof.) -/- Perhaps VMF should be re-labelled "Virtual MachinERY Functionalism" because the word 'machinery' more readily suggests something complex with interacting parts. VMF is concerned with virtual machines that are made up of interacting concurrently active (but not necessarily synchronised) chunks of virtual machinery which not only interact with one another and with their physical substrates (which may be partly shared, and also frequently modified by garbage collection, metabolism, or whatever) but can also concurrently interact with and refer to various things in the immediate and remote environment (via sensory/motor channels, and possible future technologies also). I.e. virtual machinery can include mechanisms that create and manipulate semantic content, not only syntactic structures or bit patterns as digital virtual machines do. -/- Please note: Click on the title above or the link below to read the paper. I prefer to keep all my papers freely accessible on my web site so that I can correct mistakes and add improvements. -/- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/vm-functionalism.html -/- This is now part of the Meta-Morphogenesis project: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/meta-morphogenesis.html. (shrink)

Table of Contents Foreword .................................................................................................... ......................................... xiv Preface .................................................................................................... .............................................. xv Acknowledgment .................................................................................................... .......................... xxiii Section 1 On the Cusp: Critical Appraisals of a Growing Dependency on Intelligent Machines Chapter 1 Algorithms versus Hive Minds and the Fate of Democracy ................................................................... 1 Rick Searle, IEET, USA Chapter 2 We Can Make Anything: Should We? .................................................................................................. 15 Chris Bateman, University of Bolton, UK Chapter 3 Grounding Machine Ethics within the Natural System ........................................................................ 30 Jared Gassen, JMG Advising, USA Nak Young Seong, Independent Scholar, (...) South Korea Section 2 From the Outside In: Intelligent Machine Technologies as a Window on Human Morality both as Evolved and as Evident in Internet Discourse, Today Chapter 4 The Emergence of Arti cial Autonomy: A View from the Foothills of a Challenging Climb ............. 51 Fernando da Costa Cardoso, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Luís Moniz Pereira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Chapter 5 Semantic Analysis of Bloggers Experiences as a Knowledge Source of Average Human Morality .... 73 Rafal Rzepka, Hokkaido University, Japan Kenji Araki, Hokkaido University, Japan Section 3 From the Inside Out: The Ethics of Human Enhancement from Moral Perception to Competition in the Workplace Chapter 6 Machine Ethics Interfaces: An Ethics of Perception of Nanocognition ............................................... 97 Melanie Swan, Kingston University, UK Chapter 7 Ethical Concerns in Human Enhancement: Advantages in Corporate/Organizational Settings ......... 124 Ben Tran, Alliant International University, USA Section 4 From Far to Near and Near to Far: The Ethics of Distancing Technologies in Education and Warfare Chapter 8 Responsibility and War Machines: Toward a Forward-Looking and Functional Account ................. 152 Jai Galliott, Macquarie University, Australia Chapter 9 Ethical Responsibilities of Preserving Academicians in an Age of Mechanized Learning: Balancing the Demands of Educating at Capacity and Preserving Human Interactivity ................... 166 James E. Willis III, Indiana University, USA Viktoria Alane Strunk, Independent Scholar, USA Section 5 Wrapping Things Up, then Unwrapping Them Again: Integral Visions of Morality in a Technological World, Over Evolutionary Time, with Revolutionary Means, and with Open Questions about the Final Purpose of It All Chapter 10 Bridging Two Realms of Machine Ethics ........................................................................................... 197 Luís Moniz Pereira, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Ari Saptawijaya, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal & Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia Chapter 11 Robots in Warfare and the Occultation of the Existential Nature of Violence ................................... 225 Rick Searle, IEET, USA Chapter 12 Self-Referential Complex Systems and Aristotle’s Four Causes ........................................................ 239 Aleksandar Malecic, University of Nis, Serbia Related References .................................................................................................... ........................ 261 Compilation of References .................................................................................................... ........... 292 About the Contributors .................................................................................................... ................ 325 Index .................................................................................................... ............................................... 329 . (shrink)

Harun Farocki's films make use of a category of images the director calls “operational”, a term describing images, either photographic or computer-generated, that perform or participate in tasks, usually in military or industrial settings. Treatments of Farocki's films have frequently used the notion of the operational image uncritically, and without comparing Farocki's definition of these images with existing semiotic categories. This article seeks to situate Farocki's operational imagery within a theory of visual communication, and to explore the implications of automated (...) and instrumental imagery for theories of communication in general. Abandoning the focus in much Farocki scholarship on the representative properties of operational imagery, this article focuses on the world-shaping abilities of images that are integral to war and labour. Drawing primarily on Farocki's Eye / Machine I–III series ( Auge / Maschine, 2000–2003) the article then elaborates on the ways in which the world-shaping capacity of operational images conditions human perception and action. In particular, the limitations imposed by operational images upon human actors who interact with them, or live in environments orchestrated by them, reduce the essential role played by indeterminacy and interpretation in communication. (shrink)

Within biology and in society, living creatures have long been described using metaphors of machinery and computation: ‘bioengineering’, ‘genes as code’ or ‘biological chassis’. This paper builds on Lakoff and Johnson’s argument that such language mechanisms shape how we understand the world. I argue that the living machines metaphor builds upon a certain perception of life entailing an idea of radical human control of the living world, looking back at the historical preconditions for this metaphor. I discuss how design (...) is perceived to enable us to shape natural beings to our will, and consider ethical, epistemological and ontological implications of the prevalence of this metaphor, focusing on its use within synthetic biology. I argue that we urgently need counter-images to the dominant metaphor of living machines and its implied control and propose that artworks can provide such counter-images through upsetting the perception of life as controllable. This is argued through discussion of artworks by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, by Tarsh Bates and by Ai Hasegawa, which in different ways challenge mechanistic assumptions through open-ended engagement with the strangeness and messiness of life. (shrink)

Algorithms increasingly make managerial decisions that people used to make. Perceptions of algorithms, regardless of the algorithms' actual performance, can significantly influence their adoption, yet we do not fully understand how people perceive decisions made by algorithms as compared with decisions made by humans. To explore perceptions of algorithmic management, we conducted an online experiment using four managerial decisions that required either mechanical or human skills. We manipulated the decision-maker, and measured perceived fairness, trust, and emotional response. With the mechanical (...) tasks, algorithmic and human-made decisions were perceived as equally fair and trustworthy and evoked similar emotions; however, human managers' fairness and trustworthiness were attributed to the manager's authority, whereas algorithms' fairness and trustworthiness were attributed to their perceived efficiency and objectivity. Human decisions evoked some positive emotion due to the possibility of social recognition, whereas algorithmic decisions generated a more mixed response – algorithms were seen as helpful tools but also possible tracking mechanisms. With the human tasks, algorithmic decisions were perceived as less fair and trustworthy and evoked more negative emotion than human decisions. Algorithms' perceived lack of intuition and subjective judgment capabilities contributed to the lower fairness and trustworthiness judgments. Positive emotion from human decisions was attributed to social recognition, while negative emotion from algorithmic decisions was attributed to the dehumanizing experience of being evaluated by machines. This work reveals people's lay concepts of algorithmic versus human decisions in a management context and suggests that task characteristics matter in understanding people's experiences with algorithmic technologies. (shrink)

Perception can’t have disjunctive content. Whereas you can think that a box is blue or red, you can’t see a box as being blue or red. Based on this fact, I develop a new problem for the ambitious predictive processing theory, on which the brain is a machine for minimizing prediction error, which approximately implements Bayesian inference. I describe a simple case of updating a disjunctive belief given perceptual experience of one of the disjuncts, in which Bayesian inference (...) and predictive coding pull in opposite directions, with the former implying that one’s confidence in the belief should increase, and the latter implying that it should decrease. Thus, predictive coding fails to approximately implement Bayesian inference across the interface between belief and perception. (shrink)

Our fascination with artificial intelligence (AI), robots and sentient machines has a long history, and references to such humanoids are present even in ancient myths and folklore. The advancements in digital and computational technology have turned this fascination into apprehension, with the machines often being depicted as a binary to the human. However, the recent domains of academic enquiry such as transhumanism and posthumanism have produced many a literature in the genre of science fiction (SF) that endeavours to alter this (...) antagonistic notion of AI. In his novel Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro explores this notion of AI as a caring machine capable of nursing an ailing young girl back to health. Through this portrayal of AI as a sentient being capable of empathy and cognition, Ishiguro is attempting to usher in a new perception of AI: a posthuman perception that challenges the conventional notions of AI as a machine devoid of emotions. The novel further expands on the idea of self, soul and human consciousness and ponders on the question, what makes humans human, and if it is possible to imbibe these qualities onto an AI. Owing to the novelty of this notion, an unexplored avenue that deserves further exploration, this paper examines the plausibility of this new notion of AI through a careful exegesis of the novel. The paper also attempts to chart the impact of SF in society and culture. The study reveals a positive shift in perception towards AI, and there seems to be much scope for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. (shrink)

This essay discusses Peirce’s appeal to logical machines as an argument against psychologism. It also contends that some of Peirce’s anti-psychologistic remarks on logic contain interesting premonitions arising from his perception of the asymmetry of proof complexity in monadic and relational logical calculi that were only given full formulation and explication in the early twentieth century through Church’s Theorem and Hilbert’s broad-ranging Entscheidungsproblem.

This essay discusses Peirce’s appeal to logical machines as an argument against psychologism. It also contends that some of Peirce’s anti-psychologistic remarks on logic contain interesting premonitions arising from his perception of the asymmetry of proof complexity in monadic and relational logical calculi that were only given full formulation and explication in the early twentieth century through Church’s Theorem and Hilbert’s broad-ranging Entscheidungsproblem.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book characterizes a notion of type that covers both linguistic and non-linguistic action, and lays the foundations for a theory of action based on a Theory of Types with Records (TTR). Robin Cooper argues that a theory of language based (...) on action allows the adoption of a perspective on linguistic content that is centred on interaction in dialogue; this approach is crucially different to the traditional view of natural languages as essentially similar to formal languages such as logics developed by philosophers or mathematicians. At the same time, he claims that the substantial technical advantages made by the formal language view of semantics can be incorporated into the action-based view, and that this can lead to important improvements in both intuitive understanding and empirical coverage. This enterprise uses types rather than possible worlds as commonly employed in studies of the semantics of natural language. Types are more tractable than possible worlds and offer greater potential for understanding the implementation of semantics both on machines and in biological brains. (shrink)

This book provides a framework for thinking about foundational philosophical questions surrounding machine learning as an approach to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it links recent breakthroughs in deep learning to classical empiricist philosophy of mind. In recent assessments of deep learning's current capabilities and future potential, prominent scientists have cited historical figures from the perennial philosophical debate between nativism and empiricism, which primarily concerns the origins of abstract knowledge. These empiricists were generally faculty psychologists; that is, they argued that the (...) active engagement of general psychological faculties-such as perception, memory, imagination, attention, and empathy-enables rational agents to extract abstract knowledge from sensory experience. This book explains a number of recent attempts to model roles attributed to these faculties in deep neural network based artificial agents by appeal to the faculty psychology of philosophers such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), John Locke David Hume, William James, and Sophie de Grouchy. It illustrates the utility of this interdisciplinary connection by showing how it can provide benefits to both philosophy and computer science: computer scientists can continue to mine the history of philosophy for ideas and aspirational targets to hit on the way to more robustly rational artificial agents, and philosophers can see how some of the historical empiricists' most ambitious speculations can be realized in specific computational systems. (shrink)

Automated translation is systematically gaining popularity among professional translators, who claim that editing MT output requires less time and effort than translating from scratch. MT technology is also offered in leading translator’s workstations, e.g., SDL Trados Studio, memoQ, Déjà Vu and Wordfast. Therefore, the dilemma arises: should MT be introduced into formal translation training? In order to answer this question, first, it is necessary to understand how trainee translators actually use MT. This study is an attempt to obtain this knowledge. (...) The methodology applied in this investigation is text analysis. During the experiment sessions the students were asked to translate a legal text using MT tools, which in practice meant the post-editing of the MT raw output. The post-edited versions of the text underwent analysis in order to answer the following research questions: - What are the most typical errors contained in both French and English MT output? - How critical are the students towards the text generated by MT? - How perceptive are the students during the post-editing task? - Are they able to detect and correct errors using their knowledge and skills? The results of this study suggest that the post-editing of the MT raw output is as demanding for translation students as traditional translation, however, it requires a different set of skills, such as critical thinking and perceptiveness. Therefore, a special kind of training related to the effective use of MT technology should be implemented during translation classes. (shrink)

I would like to introduce the notion of machine hermeneutics in this paper. The notion refers to hermeneutical activity performed by machines. Machines are now capable of making the very interpretive tasks, using artificial intelligence algorithms based on the technology of machine learning that used to be the exclusive domain of human beings. In making this claim, I am not talking about possible conscious machines of the future, but those existing here and now. With facial recognition algorithms, for (...) example, machines are now performing routinely what must be regarded as hermeneutical analyses with astounding accuracy and power. Thus, machine hermeneutics supplements Don Ihde’s notion of material hermeneutics. In the latter, it is still human beings who do the interpretation, through the lenses provided the natural sciences; in this case, the natural sciences, or the technology afforded by the sciences, intervene between the human being and the world. In machine hermeneutics, on the contrary, the intervening comes in two layers. On the one hand, there is the usual intervention that Ihde talks about, but on the other, the artificial intelligence algorithm performs its own kind of intervention and interpretation, presenting an already interpreted result to the human beings, who then perceive it through the aid of the usual intervention such as the normal eyeglasses. Then the paper discusses the problem of how to justify the kind of perception that undergoes this process. In what sense can it be said that the algorithm is performing the right action, i.e., one such that the process comes up with a right picture of the world? I contend that this does not merely consist of technical excellence for the technology involved, but also ethical excellence. The two cannot be considered one apart from the other. (shrink)

Contributors to this book include key theorists and practitioners from media theory, Native Science, bio-media and sound art, philosophy, art history and design informatics. Collectively, they examine the becoming-technique of animal-human- machinic perceptibilities; and micro-perceptions that lie beneath the threshold of known perceptions yet create energetic vibrations. Who, what, and where perceives, and how? What are the sedimentations, inscriptions and axiologies of animal, human and machinic perceptions? What are their perceptibilities? Deleuze uses the word 'visibilities' to indicate that visual (...) class='Hi'>perception isn't just a physiological given but cues operations productive of new assemblages. Perceptibilities are, by analogy, spatio- temporal, geolocative, kinaesthetic, audio-visual, and haptic operations that are always already memory. In the case of strong inscriptions, they are also epigenetic events. The contributors show distributed perception to be a key notion in addressing the emergence and persistence of plant, animal, human and machine relations. An invaluable reference for students and scholars in a range of areas including Media Theory, Sociology, Philosophy, Art and Design. (shrink)

Black Mirror is full of technologies that manipulate people's sensory perceptions. Philosophers of perception explain that our brains actively construct what we sense based on previous knowledge, expectations, and emotions, without us even being aware of this framing. Many Black Mirror episodes illustrate the mistakes that people can make when they misunderstand this framing process. Some episodes suggest that highly effective virtual reality technology could foil the strategies that Descartes recommended for distinguishing hallucinations and dreams from reality. Yet other (...) episodes warn how powerful institutions can punitively wield the power of control over perception. Yet in rare optimistic moments, Black Mirror demonstrates the value of relying on the help of other people to hold firm to deeper truths in the face of forces that would manipulate us. [Or, a slightly longer version with key episode titles: Black Mirror is full of technologies that manipulate people's sensory perceptions. Philosophers of perception explain that our brains actively construct what we sense based on previous knowledge, expectations, and emotions, without us even being aware of this framing. Video playback of perceptions, as in Arkangel, illustrate the mistakes that people can make when they misunderstand this framing process. Playtest and Bandersnatch suggest that highly effective virtual reality technology could foil the strategies that Descartes recommended for distinguishing hallucinations and dreams from reality. In the hands of government, law enforcement, and the military, the total control of perception can be wielded as tool for punishment, as in Men Against Fire and White Bear. But in more optimistic moments, such as at the conclusions of Nosedive and San Junipero, Black Mirror demonstrates the value of relying on the help of other people to hold firm to deeper truths in the face of forces that would manipulate us.]. (shrink)

Human intuition and perception are basic and essential phenomena of consciousness. As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph. D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment. It's important to emphasize that he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, only that the current research program is fatally flawed. Instead, he argues that to get a device (or devices) with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being in (...) the world, which would require them to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. This helps to explain the practical problems in implementing artificial intelligence algorithms. (shrink)

Recent research in cognitive and computational neuroscience portrays the neocortex as a hierarchically structured prediction machine. Several theorists have drawn on this research to challenge the traditional distinction between perception and cognition – specifically, to challenge the very idea that perception and cognition constitute useful kinds from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience. In place of this traditional taxonomy, such theorists advocate a unified inferential hierarchy subject to substantial bi-directional message passing. I outline the nature of this challenge (...) and then raise two objections to the cognitive architecture it proposes as a replacement: first, standard ways of characterising this inferential hierarchy are in tension with the representational reach of conceptual thought; second, there is compelling evidence that commonsense reasoning is structured around highly domain-specific intuitive theories that are difficult to situate within a single hierarchy. (shrink)

The field of machine perception is based on standard informational and computational approaches to perception. But naturalistic informational theories are widely regarded as being inadequate, while purely syntactic computational approaches give no account of perceptual content. Thus there is a significant need for a novel, purely naturalistic perceptual theory not based on informational or computational concepts, which could provide a new paradigm for mechanistic perception. Now specifically evolutionary naturalistic approaches to perception have been—perhaps surprisingly—almost completely (...) neglected for this purpose. Arguably perceptual mechanisms enhance evolutionary fitness by facilitating sensorily mediated causal interactions between an organism Z and items X in its environment. A ‘reflexive’ theory of perception of this kind is outlined, according to which an organism Z perceives an item X just in case X causes a sensory organ zi of Z to cause Z to acquire a disposition toward the very same item X that caused the perception. The rest of the paper shows how an intuitively plausible account of mechanistic perception can be developed and defended in terms of the reflexive theory. Also, a compatibilist option is provided for those who wish to preserve a distinct informational concept of perception. (shrink)

The myth of the myth of transparency - Where do bodies end and objects begin? -- Beside ourselves -- Aesthesiogenesis -- Real time.

The development of conscious machines faces a number of difficult issues such as the apparent immateriality of mind, qualia and self-awareness. Also consciousness-related cognitive processes such as perception, imagination, motivation and inner speech are a technical challenge. It is foreseen that the development of machine consciousness would call for a system approach; the developer of conscious machines should consider complete systems that integrate the cognitive processes seamlessly and process information in a transparent way with representational and non-representational information-processing (...) modes. An overview of the main issues is given and some possible solutions are outlined. (shrink)

The article attempts to locate the role of the computer in the long-standing conflict between the humanities on one side and the hard sciences and mathematics on the other. The state-sponsored promotion of philosophy and its subsequent demotion of scientific explanations provoked a scientific counter-attack, in the course of which psychophysical research subjected the human perception apparatus to rigorous investigations that all but mechanized the faculties of human understanding that were so central to the aspirations of philosophers. The latter (...) retaliated either by creating realms such as Husserl’s phenomenological ‘life-world’ that preceded, and hence were immune to, psychophysical explanations of sensation and perception, or by universalizing the faculty of understanding in such a way as to ensure the importance and competence of philosophy (e.g., in the work of the early Heidegger). This ongoing antagonism was also present in the ways in which the parties treated media technology: Philosophy tried to constrain media by conceptualizing them as obedient instruments tools at the beck and call of their users, whereas psychophysical research modeled the human mind on the very media that were indispensable for accessing this mind in the first place. The former saw media as ‘handy’ tools, the latter proceeded to make them the very measure of man. Alan Turing’s universal machine puts an end to this struggle: Not only does it blur the distinction between instructions and data, it converts the materials of the real world, the mechanisms of the mind, and the principal bastion of philosophy, natural languages, into numbers. (shrink)

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social (...) and the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

Heidegger has provided a profound account of human existence in terms of the to-be-da. Even though Heidegger disregarded its brain machine basis (and even though brain scientists disregard Heidegger), the issue of the Dasein's machine basis is raised by the empirically extremely well confirmed “supervenience” of the Dasein on the brain. Since the Turing machine will not do as basis for the Dasein, as Dreyfus has shown, contemporary functionalism cannot resolve the issue. Instead an “existential functionalism,” which (...) looks to some other kind of machine than the computer, is called for. A machine that continuously tunes filters on input and that detects any match between abstract properties of the input flux and filter specifications was considered. A match points to those tuning rules whose abstract conditions have been satisfied by input, and the rules thus selected are enabled to generate their own fulfillment through mechanisms that can presently be only speculated about. Such a machine cannot sustain direct perception but is “methodologically solipsistic.” At the most general level of description, the wet machine that provides a supervenience base for the Dasein is to be considered a “windowless monad.”. (shrink)

The present study combines dehumanization research with the concept of organizational trust to examine how employees perceive various types of maltreatment embedded within the organizational practices that form the ethical climate of an organization. With the help of grounded theory methodology, we analyzed 188 employment exit interview transcripts from an ICT subcontracting company. By examining perceived trustworthiness and perceived humanness, we found that dehumanizing employees can deteriorate trust within organizations. The violations found in the empirical material were divided into animalistic (...) and mechanistic forms of dehumanization and linked to perceived integrity and benevolence, respectively. Based on the results, a model describing the link between dehumanization and trust is presented and discussed in relation to the ways in which perceptions of humanness become rooted in practices and affect the basic assumptions underlying ethical organizational behavior. (shrink)

Futurism is famous for promoting “the art of noise” in its manifestos, serate (theatrical evenings), poetry, music, and visual art. Noise appears in Futurism as an avatar of the machine age, as a means of assaulting the senses of complacent audiences, and as a sign of the conflict inherent in matter. Beginning with the “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” of 1909, where the noises of the street galvanize Marinetti and his friends to break out of a prison-like domestic space, (...) to early paintings representing the vibrations of music/noise by Balla, Severini, Carr , and Russolo, to Russolo's 1913 manifesto “The Art of Noises” and his invention of a series of “noise tuners,” discordant sound played a vital role in Futurist art and politics. Often it was associated with moments of rebirth or awakening to new forms of consciousness, as in Russolo's noise score “Awakening of the City,” but it could also signify the destruction of life, as in Marinetti's Zang Tumb Tuuum . It served both to shatter older forms of perception based on notions of order and harmony, and to instantiate the violence the Futurists believed was inherent in matter as well as in social life. It allowed repressed energies to be released, but also sought to re-channel these energies towards the integration of man and machine, flesh and metal, war and the universe of matter. (shrink)

Setting aside the problems of recognising consciousness in a machine, this article considers what would be needed for a machine to have human-like conscious- ness. Human-like consciousness is an illusion; that is, it exists but is not what it appears to be. The illusion that we are a conscious self having a stream of experi- ences is constructed when memes compete for replication by human hosts. Some memes survive by being promoted as personal beliefs, desires, opinions and pos- (...) sessions, leading to the formation of a memeplex (or selfplex). Any machine capa- ble of imitation would acquire this type of illusion and think it was conscious. Robots that imitated humans would acquire an illusion of self and consciousness just as we do. Robots that imitated each other would develop their own separate languages, cultures and illusions of self. Distributed seflplexes in large networks of machines are also possible. Unanswered questions include what remains of consciousness without memes, and whether artificial meme machines can ever transcend the illusion of self consciousness. (shrink)

Therapeutic strategies capable of inducing and enhancing prosthesis embodiment are a key point for better adaptation to and acceptance of prosthetic limbs. In this study, we developed a training protocol using an EMG-based human-machine interface that was applied in the preprosthetic rehabilitation phase of people with amputation. This is a case series with the objective of evaluating the induction and enhancement of the embodiment of a virtual prosthesis. Six men and a woman with unilateral transfemoral traumatic amputation without previous (...) use of prostheses participated in the study. Participants performed a training protocol with the EMG-based HMI, composed of six sessions held twice a week, each lasting 30 mins. This system consisted of myoelectric control of the movements of a virtual prosthesis immersed in a 3D virtual environment. Additionally, vibrotactile stimuli were provided on the participant’s back corresponding to the movements performed. Embodiment was investigated from the following set of measurements: skin conductance response, crossmodal congruency effect, ability to control the virtual prosthesis, and reports before and after the training. The increase in the skin conductance response in conditions where the virtual prosthesis was threatened, recalibration of the peripersonal space perception identified by the crossmodal congruency effect, ability to control the virtual prosthesis, and participant reports consistently showed the induction and enhancement of virtual prosthesis embodiment. Therefore, this protocol using EMG-based HMI was shown to be a viable option to achieve and enhance the embodiment of a virtual prosthetic limb. (shrink)

The popularization of intelligent machines such as service robot and industrial robot will make human–machine interaction, an essential work mode. This requires employees to adapt to the new work content through learning. However, the research involved human–machine interaction that how influences the employee’s learning is still rarely. This paper was to reveal the relationship between human–machine interaction and employee’s learning from the perspective of job characteristics and competence perception of employees. We sent questionnaire to 500 employees (...) from 100 artificial intelligence companies in China and received 319 valid and complete responses. Then, we adopted a hierarchical regression for the test. Empirical results show that human–machine interaction has a U-shaped curvilinear relationship with employee learning, and employee’s vitality mediates the curvilinear relationship. In addition, job characteristics moderate the U-shaped curvilinear relationship between human–machine interaction and employee’s vitality, especially the results of moderating effects varying with employee’s competence perception. Exploring the mechanism of the effect of human–machine interaction on employee’s learning enriches the socially embedded model. Moreover, it provides managerial implications how to enhance individual adaptability with the introduction of AI into firms. However, our research focuses more on the impact of human–machine interaction on employees at the initial stage of AI development, and the level of machine intelligence in various industries will reach a high degree of autonomy in the future. The future research can explore the impact of human–machine interaction on individual’s behavior at different stages, and the results may vary depending on the technologies mastered by different individuals. The study has theoretical and practical significance to human–machine interaction literature by underscoring the important of individual’s behavior among individuals with different skills. (shrink)

In technology research, much has been achieved in the field of visual and auditory analysis as compared to the perception of smells. This article discusses the latest advances in the field of electronic (E-nose) used to recognize the olfactory code. All studies can be conditionally divided according to the goals into: 1. Research aimed at the practical application of electronic systems in areas such as food industry, medicine, the environment, etc. 2. Research aimed at cognitive processes and psycho-emotional reactions (...) of a person during olfactory experience, as well as the ability of a machine to predetermine human reactions to various smells. In this case, an important role is played by language, which acts as a representation of olfactory sensations. The methods of conceptual and semantic analysis are becoming more and more in demand in studies devoted to machine recognition of the olfactory code. (shrink)

The young Spinoza and the mature Leibniz both characterize the soul as a self-moving spiritual automaton. Though it is unclear if Leibniz’s use of the term was suggested to him from his reading of Spinoza, Leibniz was aware of its presence in Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Considering Leibniz’s staunch opposition to Spinozism, the question arises as to why he was willing to adopt this term. I propose an answer to this question by comparing the spiritual automaton (...) in both philosophers. For Spinoza, the soul acts as a spiritual automaton when it overcomes imaginative ideas and produces true ideas. For Leibniz, the soul acts as a spiritual automaton when it spontaneously produces its perceptions according to the universal harmony preestablished by God. Thus, for Leibniz contra Spinoza, the spiritual automaton is a means to render intelligible a providential order in which everything happens for the best. (shrink)