An indispensable and comprehensive resource for students and scholars of philosophy of religion.

The use of the computer metaphor has led to the proposal of mind architecture (Pylyshyn 1984; Newell 1990) as a model of the organization of the mind. The dualist computational model, however, has, since the earliest days of psychological functionalism, required that the concepts mind architecture and brain architecture be remote from each other. The development of both connectionism and neurocomputational science, has sought to dispense with this dualism and provide general models of consciousness – a uniform cognitive architecture –, (...) which is in general reductionist, but which retains the computer metaphor. This paper examines, in the first place, the concepts of mind architecture and brain architecture, in order to evaluate the syntheses which have recently been offered. It then moves on to show how modifications which have been made to classical functionalist mind architectures, with the aim of making them compatible with brain architectures, are unable to resolve some of the most serious problems of functionalism. Some suggestions are given as to why it is not possible to relate mind structures and brain structures by using neurocomputational approaches, and finally the question is raised of the validity of reductionism in a theory which sets out to unite mind and brain architectures. (shrink)

El cuestionamiento del sistema capitalista de mercado tiene una larga trayectoria, pero en las últimas décadas se han incrementado las propuestas que pretenden ofrecer alternativas a un sistema de mercado que favorece a los más aventajados e incrementa la desigualdad (Piketty 2014; Stiglitz 2013). Estas propuestas han surgido desde la experiencia de que el modelo actual dominante de capitalismo consumista es insostenible medioambientalmente e injusto socialmente.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the ethical and social impact of augmented visual field devices, identifying issues that AVFDs share with existing devices and suggesting new ethical and social issues that arise with the adoption of AVFDs. Design/methodology/approach This essay incorporates both a philosophical and an ethical analysis approach. It is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, philosophical notions of transparency and presence and human values including psychological well-being, physical well-being, privacy, deception, informed consent, ownership and property and (...) trust. Findings The paper concludes that the interactions among developers, users and non-users via AVFDs have implications for autonomy. It also identifies issues of ownership that arise because of the blending of physical and virtual space and important ways that these devices impact, identity and trust. Practical implications Developers ought to take time to design and implement an easy-to-use informed consent system with these devices. There is a strong need for consent protocols among developers, users and non-users of AVFDs. Social implications There is a social benefit to users sharing what is visible on their devices with those who are in close physical proximity, but this introduces tension between notions of personal privacy and the establishment and maintenance of social norms. Originality/value There is new analysis of how AVFDs impact individual identity and the attendant ties to notions of ownership of the space between an object and someone’s eyes and control over perception. (shrink)

This paper analyzes certain technical details of Floridi’s Theory of Strongly Semantic Information. It provides a clarification regarding desirable properties of degrees of informativeness functions by rejecting three of Floridi’s original constraints and proposing a replacement constraint. Finally, the paper briefly explores the notion of quantities of inaccuracy and shows an analysis that mimics Floridi’s analysis of quantities of vacuity.

We demonstrate that different categories of software raise different ethical concerns with respect to whether software ought to be Free Software or Proprietary Software. We outline the ethical tension between Free Software and Proprietary Software that stems from the two kinds of licenses. For some categories of software we develop support for normative statements regarding the software development landscape. We claim that as society's use of software changes, the ethical analysis for that category of software must necessarily be repeated. Finally, (...) we make a utilitarian argument that the software development environment should encourage both Free Software and Proprietary Software to flourish. (shrink)

“Congealing” is a word that evokes senses of unpleasantness where perhaps something inviting had once been. It also implies that things are becoming less fluid and more rigid. As we began organizing ETHICOMP 2018, we wanted a theme that reflected the impact of technologies on human cultures, practices and lives. Our initial draft of the theme was “Creating, Changing, and Congealing Ways of Life with Technologies.” And while we were eventually persuaded to use a more congenial way of putting the (...) idea (it became “Creating, Changing, and Coalescing Ways of Life with Technologies”), in some ways, it remains true for us that “congealing,” and its connotations of something less pleasant, gets at the original idea. As we incorporate technologies into our practices, much attention is paid to how they change our ways of doing things. But technologies can also help ways of life set-up and harden like yesterday’s leftovers – not appealing, yet difficult to budge and sometimes quite unhealthy. Once a particular process is built around a piece of technology, it can become entrenched and increasingly difficult to change. For a historical example, consider how difficult it was to adapt records and software on the eve of the 21st century in response to the so-called “Y2K” problem. In early software development, efficient use of memory was an important design consideration. It had become a standard practice to use a 2-digit field for the year, which would roll to from “99” to “00” in the year 2000, causing problems for datedependent functions. Technologies can also reflect and reinforce existing cultural tendencies. For a recent example, consider the human resources software created by Amazon that used its existing hiring data to train a machine-learning system to rate applicants. The resulting system turned out to be biased against women applicants, downranking resumes that included the word “woman” or “women’s.” Amazon ended up scrapping the project altogether. Because of these kinds of effects, we wanted to encourage people to think beyond well-worn paradigms like “technologies are disruptive” to consider other kinds of effects they can have. As it happened, the imagery of “congealing” proved distasteful enough that the steering committee opted for a more neutral term. But even with the less-dramatic wording the conference ended up attracting a rich and diverse range of papers that examined technological issues from a variety of angles, exactly as we had hoped. (shrink)

This commentary on Fresco's article "Information processing as an account of concrete digital computation" illuminates the two intertwined roles that the definition of the term "information" plays in Fresco's analysis. It provides analysis of the notion of actualizing control in information processing. The key point made is that not all control information in common computational devices cannot be processed.

Gut microbiome plays a significant role in defining the health status of subjects, and recent studies highlight the importance of using time series strategies to analyse microbiome dynamics. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian model for microbiota longitudinal data, based on Dirichlet distribution with time-varying parameters, that take into account the compositional paradigm and consider principal balances. The proposed model can be effective for predicting the future dynamics of a microbial community in the short term and for analysing the (...) microbial interactions using the value of the estimated parameters. The usefulness of the proposed model is illustrated with six different datasets, and a comparison study with four alternative models is provided. (shrink)

What is nontrivial digital computation? It is the processing of discrete data through discrete state transitions in accordance with finite instructional information. The motivation for our account is that many previous attempts to answer this question are inadequate, and also that this account accords with the common intuition that digital computation is a type of information processing. We use the notion of reachability in a graph to defend this characterization in memory-based systems and underscore the importance of instructional information for (...) digital computation. We argue that our account evaluates positively against adequacy criteria for accounts of computation. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of when a researcher is justified in describing his or her artificial agent as demonstrating ethical decision-making. The paper is motivated by the amount of research being done that attempts to imbue artificial agents with expertise in ethical decision-making. It seems clear that computing systems make decisions, in that they make choices between different options; and there is scholarship in philosophy that addresses the distinction between ethical decision-making and general decision-making. Essentially, the qualitative (...) difference between ethical decisions and general decisions is that ethical decisions must be part of the process of developing ethical expertise within an agent. We use this distinction in examining publicity surrounding a particular experiment in which a simulated robot attempted to safeguard simulated humans from falling into a hole. We conclude that any suggestions that this simulated robot was making ethical decisions were misleading. (shrink)

Successful therapies to combat microbial diseases and cancers require incorporating ecological and evolutionary principles. Drawing upon the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, we present a systems‐based approach in which host and disease‐causing factors are considered as part of a complex network of interactions, analogous to studies of “classical” ecosystems. Centering this approach around empirical examples of disease treatment, we present evidence that successful therapies invariably engage multiple interactions with other components of the host ecosystem. Many of these factors interact (...) nonlinearly to yield synergistic benefits and curative outcomes. We argue that these synergies and nonlinear feedbacks must be leveraged to improve the study of pathogenesis in situ and to develop more effective therapies. An eco‐evolutionary systems perspective has surprising and important consequences, and we use it to articulate areas of high research priority for improving treatment strategies. (shrink)

In search of human uniqueness Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9472-6 Authors Elsa Addessi, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Via Ulisse Aldrovandi, 16/b, 00197 Rome, Italy Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Do the dynamics of a physical system determine what function the system computes? Except in special cases, the answer is no: it is often indeterminate what function a given physical system computes. Accordingly, care should be taken when the question ‘What does a particular neuronal system do?’ is answered by hypothesising that the system computes a particular function. The phenomenon of the indeterminacy of computation has important implications for the development of computational explanations of biological systems. Additionally, the phenomenon lends (...) some support to the idea that a single neuronal structure may perform multiple cognitive functions, each subserved by a different computation. We provide an overarching conceptual framework in order to further the philosophical debate on the nature of computational indeterminacy and computational explanation. (shrink)

In their important paper “Autonomous Agents”, Floridi and Sanders use “levels of abstraction” to argue that computers are or may soon be moral agents. In this paper we use the same levels of abstraction to illuminate differences between human moral agents and computers. In their paper, Floridi and Sanders contributed definitions of autonomy, moral accountability and responsibility, but they have not explored deeply some essential questions that need to be answered by computer scientists who design artificial agents. One such question (...) is, “Can an artificial agent that changes its own programming become so autonomous that the original designer is no longer responsible for the behavior of the artificial agent?” To explore this question, we distinguish between LoA1 (the user view) and LoA2 (the designer view) by exploring the concepts of unmodifiable, modifiable and fully modifiable tables that control artificial agents. We demonstrate that an agent with an unmodifiable table, when viewed at LoA2, distinguishes an artificial agent from a human one. This distinction supports our first counter-claim to Floridi and Sanders, namely, that such an agent is not a moral agent, and the designer bears full responsibility for its behavior. We also demonstrate that even if there is an artificial agent with a fully modifiable table capable of learning* and intentionality* that meets the conditions set by Floridi and Sanders for ascribing moral agency to an artificial agent, the designer retains strong moral responsibility. (shrink)

As software developers design artificial agents , they often have to wrestle with complex issues, issues that have philosophical and ethical importance. This paper addresses two key questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology: What is deception? And when is it permissible for the developer of a computer artifact to be deceptive in the artifact’s development? While exploring these questions from the perspective of a software developer, we examine the relationship of deception and trust. Are developers using deception to (...) gain our trust? Is trust generated through technological “enchantment” warranted? Next, we investigate more complex questions of how deception that involves AAs differs from deception that only involves humans. Finally, we analyze the role and responsibility of developers in trust situations that involve both humans and AAs. (shrink)

This paper describes the Electronic Schoolbag, a digital workspace developed at the University of Savoie (France) and analyses its usages. This online environment is dedicated to the educational world: it offers pupils, students, teachers, school staff, or parents, personal and group workspaces in which individual or collaborative activities can take place. The flexibility of this software, allowing synchronous or asynchronous activities, lies in the “participation model”. This model allows groups themselves to describe and organise their activities. The architecture that permits (...) its implementation in the Electronic Schoolbag workspace is described. The study of the practices of the workspace is then presented. This requires different observation methods, according to the different procedures chosen: real practices provided by quantitative methods (analysis of the logs of the actions and questionnaires) and imagined practices provided by qualitative methods (semi-directive interviews). The results obtained from the university users allow us to assess the evolution of the usages for different periods and on different university sites. The observatory also lets us list the main uses of the Electronic Schoolbag for educative communication (collaborative vs. individual, informative vs. communicative). (shrink)

Symposium on Christopher Bennet's The Apology Ritual. A Philosophical Theory of Punishment [Cambridge University Press, 2008].

Background and objective: Assuming the hypothesis that the general practitioner can and should be a key player in making end-of-life decisions for hospitalised patients, perceptions of GPs’ role assigned to them by hospital doctors in making withdrawal decisions for such patients were surveyed.Design: Questionnaire survey.Setting: Urban and rural areas.Participants: GPs.Results: The response rate was 32.2% , and it was observed that 70.8% of respondents believed that their participation in withdrawal decisions for their hospitalised patients was essential, whereas 42.1% believed that (...) the hospital doctors were sufficiently skilled to make withdrawal decisions without input from the GPs. Most respondents were found to believe that they had the necessary skills and enough time to participate in withdrawal decisions. The last case of treatment withdrawal in hospital for one of their patients was described by 40% of respondents, of whom only 40.0% believed that they had participated actively in the decision process. The major factors in the multivariate analysis were the GP’s strong belief that his or her participation was essential , information on admission of the patient given to the GP by the hospital department , rural practice , visit to the patient dying in hospital and a request by the family to be kept informed about the patient .Conclusion: Strong interest was evinced among GPs regarding end-of-life issues, as well as considerable experience of patients dying at home. As GPs are more closely corrected to patients’ families, they may be a good choice for third-party intervention in making end-of-life decisions for hospitalised patients. (shrink)

This paper addresses how impairments in prediction in young adults with autism spectrum disorder relate to their behavior during a collaboration. To assess it, we developed a task where participants play in collaboration with a synthetic agent to maximize their score. The agent’s behavior changes during the different phases of the game, requiring participants to model their sensorimotor contingencies to play collaboratively. Our results (n = 30) show differences between autistic and neurotypical individuals in their behavioral adaptation to the other (...) partner. Contrarily, there are no differences in the self-reports of that collaboration. (shrink)

In their important paper “Autonomous Agents”, Floridi and Sanders use “levels of abstraction” to argue that computers are or may soon be moral agents. In this paper we use the same levels of abstraction to illuminate differences between human moral agents and computers. In their paper, Floridi and Sanders contributed definitions of autonomy, moral accountability and responsibility, but they have not explored deeply some essential questions that need to be answered by computer scientists who design artificial agents. One such question (...) is, “Can an artificial agent that changes its own programming become so autonomous that the original designer is no longer responsible for the behavior of the artificial agent?” To explore this question, we distinguish between LoA1 (the user view) and LoA2 (the designer view) by exploring the concepts of unmodifiable, modifiable and fully modifiable tables that control artificial agents. We demonstrate that an agent with an unmodifiable table, when viewed at LoA2, distinguishes an artificial agent from a human one. This distinction supports our first counter-claim to Floridi and Sanders, namely, that such an agent is not a moral agent, and the designer bears full responsibility for its behavior. We also demonstrate that even if there is an artificial agent with a fully modifiable table capable of learning* and intentionality* that meets the conditions set by Floridi and Sanders for ascribing moral agency to an artificial agent, the designer retains strong moral responsibility. (shrink)

The Association for Computing Machinery's Committee on Professional Ethics has been charged to execute three major projects over the next two years: updating ACM's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, revising the enforcement procedures for the Code, and developing new media to promote integrity in the profession. We cannot do this alone, and we are asking SIGCAS members to volunteer and get involved. We will briefly describe the rationale and plan behind these projects and describe opportunities to get involved.

We describe the process of changing and the changes being suggested for the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. In addition to addressing the technical and ethical basis for the proposed changes, we identify suggestions that commenters made in response to the first draft. We invite feedback on the proposed changes and on the suggestions that commenters made.

SummaryInstead of telling us why one should or should not derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, most philosophers try to see whether this can or cannot be done. Since there are no clearly stated rules of inference for the ordinary language, the is‐ought dichotomy is re‐examined within the context of the deontic logic. This paper shows that rules like ‐AB ÓOB enables us to adopt the theorems of the propositional logic normatively, because logical standards for exactness, truth, completeness, etc. are (...) all values and conventions accepted by the deontic logicians right from the beginning.RésuméLa plupart des philosophes reste attachée à une manière incorrecte de poser la question de la dichotomie entre ce qui est et ce qui devrait être. Au lieu de se demander, avec Hume, si nous avons de bonnes raisons ?on;autoriser ou ?on;interdire des raisonnements qui concluent de ľêtre au devoir être, des philosophes tels que Searle se demandent si de tels raisonnements sont possibles dans une langue naturelle. Comme, dans une telle langue, nous n'avons pas de règie univoque pour la déduction logique, j'examine la règie de la logique déontique AB OAOB selon la formalisation de Azizah al‐Hibri. Je montre que la règie ne viole pas du tout ľinterdiction de conclure ?on;énonces de faits à des énoncés normatifs. Car dans la logique déontique, les règies et les théorèmes de la logique des propositions sont utilisés dans un sens normatif.ZusammenfassungIn bezug auf die ‘Sein‐Sollen‐Dichotomie’ scheinen die meisten Philosophen bis jetzt auf einer falschen Fragestellung zu beharren. Anstatt wie Hume zu fragen, ob wir gute Gründe haben, Schlüsse von Sein und Sollen zuzulassen oder zu verbieten, versuchen Philosophen wie etwa Searle festzustellen, ob wir dies im Rahmen der natürlichen Sprache tun konnen. Da wir in der natürlichen Sprache keine eindeutige Regel für logische Schlüsse haben, wird die Regel der deontischen Logik nach der Formalisierung von Azizah al‐Hibri untersucht. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Regel keineswegs das Verbot, von 1st‐Sätzen auf Soll‐Sätze zu schliessen, verletzt. Denn in der deontischen Logik werden die Regeln und Theoreme der Satzlogik in einem norrnativen Sinn gebraucht. (shrink)

In April 2004 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe debated a report from its Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee , which questioned the Council of Europe’s opposition to legalising euthanasia. This article exposes the Report’s flaws, not least its superficiality and selectivity.

Soler, R. Sobre la dialéctica: Modelo mecanicista y método dialéctico. Causalidad en el mecanicismo y casualidad en la dialéctica. Dialéctica de universales e individuales.--Martínez, J. de J. Ensayos filosóficos: Sobre el humanismo en la Edad Media y en el Renacimiento. Sobre el problema de la muerte.

La cuestión de la justicia global en el ámbito de la bioética no es una cuestión baladí, en ella nos jugamos la dignidad a escala planetaria y la dignidad de todos y cada uno de los seres humanos en particular. El paradigma para pensar el mundo ya no es la confrontación Este-Oeste, ni incluso Norte-Sur. Los problemas, con sus posibilidades y limitaciones en la forma de abordarlos, tienen dimensiones globales. Urge una rearticulación de los discursos parcelados y compartimentados pues, desde (...) ellos, resulta extremadamente difícil seguir abordando las cuestiones que afectan a la vida descontextualizándolas del entorno global. En la misma medida tampoco se puede pensar apropiadamente la justicia sin las condiciones práctico-materiales concretas que, a nivel vital, vienen determinadas por el factum de lo global. Ni se puede abordar una ética de la vida y para la vida sin atender a referencias globales y criterios de justicia. Todo ello plantea un nuevo esquema en el que la tríada vida-globalidad-justicia ha de ser abordada también desde la Bioética Teológica. O, lo que es lo mismo, la Teología Moral no puede prescindir hoy de esa triple conexión emergente so pena de que traicione su propio estatuto de servicio. La intención de fondo en todo ello no es sino estimular la búsqueda, el diálogo y la cooperación de los bioeticistas, tanto de índole secular como teológica, en la tarea ineludiblemente humana de cuidar la fragilidad vital en todas sus dimensiones. Francisco J. Alarcos Martínez, nacido en 1963 en Cúllar (Granada), terminó los estudios de Teología en la Facultad de Teología de Granada (1986). Licenciado en Teología moral (1999) por la U. P. Comillas (Madrid), con premio extraordinario, realiza el Máster en Bioética en la misma Universidad. Se doctoró en la Facultad de Teología de Granada (2004) en la cual es profesor de Bioética y secretario de la Cátedra Andaluza de Bioética, dependiente de la misma Facultad. Además, es director del Centro de Estudios Teológico-Pastorales de Guadix (Granada) y profesor de moral en el mismo. Interviene también como profesor invitado en diversos Máster, así como en cursos monográficos sobre Bioética. Entre sus publicaciones se encuentran: Para vivir la ética en la vida pública (2000), Bioética y pastoral de la salud (2002), Co-autor de 10 palabras clave en humanizar la salud (2002), Ed. de La moral cristiana como propuesta. Homenaje al profesor Eduardo López Azpitarte (2004). Su dedicación académica la compagina con la praxis pastoral como presbítero secular en la diócesis de Guadix-Baza. (shrink)

We discuss the 1818 case in which the jury sided with inspector J. Maurice, who had demanded payment for inspecting casks of whale oil. The verdict is arguably incorrect: as several experts argued,...

This book maps out the lexico-conceptual articulation of Greene's narrative dramatization of ethical situations. This main aim issues from three working hypotheses: in the first place, a reduced set of terms such as peace, despair, pity or commitment have a striking lexical recurrence in Greene's texts. They are considered here as keywords that articulate his discourse at a conceptual level. In the second place, those keywords are invested with narrative potential. They have the capacity to generate narrative situations and developments. (...) In the third place, they articulate a particular narrative pattern. Such lexico-conceptual articulation is shaped mainly as ethical conflict dramatized in narrative form. Drawing on contemporary theories of community and ethics developed by Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, J. Hillis Miller or Derek Attridge, this book sets out to explore a recurrent narrative pattern in Greene's work, emerging from his personal use of the language of ethics and community. (shrink)