Do people hold robots responsible for their actions? While Clark and Fischer present a useful framework for interpreting social robots, we argue that they fail to account for people's willingness to assign responsibility to robots in certain contexts, such as when a robot performs actions not predictable by its user or programmer.

This article introduces definitions for direct, means-end, oblique (or indirect) and ulterior intent which can be used to test for intent in an algorithmic actor. These definitions of intent are informed by legal theory from common law jurisdictions. Certain crimes exist where the harm caused is dependent on the reason it was done so. Here the actus reus or performative element of the crime is dependent on the mental state or mens rea of the actor. The ability to prosecute these (...) crimes is dependent on the ability to identify and diagnose intentional states in the accused. A certain class of auto didactic algorithmic actor can be given broad objectives without being told how to meet them. Without a definition of intent, they cannot be told not to engage in certain law breaking behaviour nor can they ever be identified as having done it. This ambiguity is neither positive for the owner of the algorithm or for society. The problem exists over and above more familiar debates concerning the eligibility of algorithms for culpability judgements that mens rea is usually associated with. Aside from inchoate offences, many economic crimes with elements of fraud or deceit fall into this category of crime. Algorithms operate in areas where these crimes could be plausibly undertaken depending on whether the intent existed in the algorithm or not. (shrink)

Many philosophers subscribe to the view that philosophy is a priori and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair. This paper sets out to empirically test this picture. If this were the case, we would expect to see this reflected in philosophical practice. In particular, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, rather than inductive, arguments. The paper shows that the percentage of philosophy articles advancing deductive arguments is higher than those advancing inductive arguments, which is (...) what we would expect from the vantage point of the armchair philosophy picture. The results also show, however, that the percentages of articles advancing deductive arguments and those advancing inductive arguments are converging over time and that the difference between inductive and deductive ratios is declining over time. This trend suggests that deductive arguments are gradually losing their status as the dominant form of argumentation in philosophy. (shrink)

In all the arts a war is being waged between modernists and postmodernists. Radicals have tended to side with the modernists against the forces of conservatism. Postmodern Culture is a break with this tendency. Its contributors propose a postmodernism of resistance - an aesthetic that rejects hierarchy and celebrates diversity. Ranging from architecture, sculpture and painting to music, photography and film, this collection is now recognised as a seminal text on the postmodernism debate.The essays are by Hal Foster, Jürgen Habermas, (...) Kenneth Frampton, Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp, Craig Owens, Gregory L. Ulmer, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, and Edward W. Said. (shrink)

This essay is a review of Ronald Dworkin's recent essay on equality of resources. Many of the ideas discussed by Dworkin have also been examined by economists with, I believe, considerable insight. Unfortunately, economists tend to write for economists, not for philosophers, and their insights are seldom communicated properly to noneconomists. Of course, the same criticism can be levied on philosophers! But perhaps legal theorists are less subject to this criticism. One of the great contributions of Dworkin is that he (...) is very readable; and the quality of his exposition makes these ideas accessible to a wide audience of philosophers, lawyers, and social scientists in general. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with those commentators of Heidegger's philosophy whose point of entry into his thinking is the inherited prejudices of others. It demonstrates that if prior judgments are suspended, so that Heidegger's texts are permitted to speak for themselves, the truth of his `position', more a wege than a static motionless point, gradually and inexorably begins to emerge. I take Pope Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, to draw the theological contours of a truly post-modern ethic. I then (...) hold up Heidegger's philosophy, as this is characterized principally though not exclusively in his lecture Der Satz Der Identität, to consider possible symmetries. Finally I offer an answer to the question: does Heidegger's thought have ethical consequences? (shrink)

Social insects show us very little about the evolution of complex human society. As more relevant literature demonstrates, ultrasociality is a cause rather than an effect of human social evolution.

For the past thirty years, Hal Foster has pushed the boundaries of cultural criticism, establishing a vantage point from which the seemingly disparate agendas of artists, patrons, and critics have a telling coherence. In The Anti-Aesthetic, preeminent critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman's film stills, to Barbara Kruger's collages. With a redesigned cover and a new afterword that (...) situates the book in relation to contemporary criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic provides a strong introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism. Includes a new afterword by Hal Foster and 12 black and white photographs. (shrink)

The recent renewed interest in the foundation of quantum statistical mechanics and in the dynamics of isolated quantum systems has led to a revival of the old approach by von Neumann to investigate the problem of thermalization only in terms of quantum dynamics in an isolated system [1, 2]. It has been demonstrated in some general or concrete settings that a pure initial state evolving under quantum dynamics indeed approaches an equilibrium state [3–9]. The underlying idea that a single pure (...) quantum state can fully describe thermal equilibrium has also become much more concrete [10–12]. (shrink)

Why do societies collapse? We use an individual-based evolutionary model to show that, in environmental conditions dominated by low-frequency variation (“red noise”), extirpation may be an outcome of the evolution of cultural capacity. Previous analytical models predicted an equilibrium between individual learners and social learners, or a contingent strategy in which individuals learn socially or individually depending on the circumstances. However, in red noise environments, whose main signature is that variation is concentrated in relatively large, relatively rare excursions, individual learning (...) may be selected from the population. If the social learning system comes to lack sufficient individual learning or cognitively costly adaptive biases, behavior ceases tracking environmental variation. Then, when the environment does change, fitness declines and the population may collapse or even be extirpated. The modeled scenario broadly fits some human population collapses and might also explain nonhuman extirpations. Varying model parameters showed that the fixation of social learning is less likely when individual learning is less costly, when the environment is less red or more variable, with larger population sizes, and when learning is not conformist or is from parents rather than from the general population. Once social learning is fixed, extirpation is likely except when social learning is biased towards successful models. Thus, the risk of population collapse may be reduced by promoting individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity, or by preferential selection of relatively fit individuals as models for social learning. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Equilibrium explanations use an equilibrium to represent and explain a system’s dynamic behavior. They provide a system with the property of global stability: a system will converge towards and remain in equilibrium regardless of its initial conditions and dynamic process. Thus, equilibrium explanations are generally treated as non-causal explanations. There are two claims subsumed under that comprehensive thesis. The first claim is that equilibrium explanations do not identify any causes because a system with global stability resists manipulation. The second claim (...) is that even if equilibrium explanations do identify causes by manipulation, those causes are embedded in a system’s deeper, underlying structural relationships, and those causes are irrelevant to explaining a system’s behavior. Only the system’s structural relationships are relevant. But equilibrium explanations are not monolithic. I compare dynamic systems with multiple, competing equilibria to systems with a globally stable equilibrium. Equilibrium explanations of the former use intervention on a system’s initial conditions and dynamic process to manipulate equilibria, which identifies causes. Furthermore, a system’s initial conditions and dynamic process are relevant to explaining why one equilibrium is selected instead of another. I then apply these lessons to systems with a globally stable equilibrium and discuss when their corresponding equilibrium explanations have a proper role in the parent sciences. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that public discourse as we know it is less than ideal from an epistemological point of view. In this paper, we develop an underappreciated aspect of the trouble with public discourse: what we call the Listening Problem. The listening problem is the problem that public discourse has in giving appropriate uptake and reception to ideas and concepts from oppressed groups. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser, we develop an institutional response to the (...) listening problem: the establishment of what we call Receptive Publics, discursive spaces designed to improve listening skills and to give space for counterhegemonic ideas. (shrink)

Provides information on all of the writings of Socialists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

We study the problem of the approach to equilibrium in a macroscopic quantum system in an abstract setting. We prove that, for a typical choice of “nonequilibrium subspace”, any initial state (from the energy shell) thermalizes, and in fact does so very quickly, on the order of the Boltzmann time τ B := h/(k B T ). This apparently unrealistic, but mathematically rigorous, conclusion has the important physical implication that the moderately slow decay observed in reality is not typical in (...) the present setting. (shrink)

The ancient Greeks hard‑wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage—to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than seventy years of great‑power peace and a quarter‑century of unrivaled global leadership, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten (...) that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history. This amnesia has become most pronounced just as Americans and the global order they created are coming under graver threat than at any time in decades. In a forceful argument that brims with historical sensibility and policy insights, two distinguished historians argue that a tragic sensibility is necessary if America and its allies are to address the dangers that menace the international order today. Tragedy may be commonplace, Brands and Edel argue, but it is not inevitable—so long as we regain an appreciation of the world’s tragic nature before it is too late. (shrink)

_An eloquent call to draw on the lessons of the past to address current threats to international order_ The ancient Greeks hard‑wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and courage—to spur citizens and their leaders to take the difficult actions necessary to avert such a fate. Today, after more than seventy years of great‑power (...) peace and a quarter‑century of unrivaled global leadership, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. They have forgotten that the descent into violence and war has been all too common throughout human history. This amnesia has become most pronounced just as Americans and the global order they created are coming under graver threat than at any time in decades. In a forceful argument that brims with historical sensibility and policy insights, two distinguished historians argue that a tragic sensibility is necessary if America and its allies are to address the dangers that menace the international order today. Tragedy may be commonplace, Brands and Edel argue, but it is not inevitable—so long as we regain an appreciation of the world’s tragic nature before it is too late. (shrink)

The human loss of the sense of sacred has been driven by a mechanization of the world that privileges the mundane and the material. Yet the earliest surviving history of the human mind reveals a widespread, embodied human faculty for perception of the cosmos and an intimate human relation to the cosmos. This history hints of an origin story that may be partly recovered by sacred relics of human prehistory.

Scholars have recently noted the interest of Guibert of Tournai’s sermons on Francis of Assisi. Nicole Bériou partially edited Guibert’s sermon Surrexit Helyas, focusing on the theme of prophecy, in 1994,1 and Sean Field edited two more, Inflammatum est cor meum and Veni columba mea, highlighting the theme of Francis as a perfected soul through annihilation, in 1999.2 The two yet unexamined works in Guibert’s corpus of sermons discussing Francis hold their own interest, as they discuss an important topos in (...) Franciscan literature of the mid-thirteenth century. The present article edits and analyzes these two previously unedited sermons for the first time.3 This topos is the Biblical quotation Vidi .. (shrink)

Getting everything you want out of life isn't about doing more. It's about becoming more. Hal Elrod and The Miracle Morning have helped millions of people become the person they need to be to create the life they've always wanted. Now, it's your turn.

In A Philosophical, Scientific and Theological Defense for the Notion That a God Exists, Hal Flemings presents an overview of the history of the debate on the question of the existence of God. In an objective fashion, Flemings provides equal voice to opposing views while not hiding his own. He treats the problem of evil from a new perspective, which includes moral evil and natural evil and discusses the relationship between God and the theoretical and factual sciences.

Formal logic has often been seen as uniquely placed to analyze mathematical argumentation. While formal logic is certainly necessary for a complete understanding of mathematical practice, it is not sufficient. Important aspects of mathematical reasoning closely resemble patterns of reasoning in nonmathematical domains. Hence the tools developed to understand informal reasoning, collectively known as argumentation theory, are also applicable to much mathematical argumentation. This chapter investigates some of the details of that application. Consideration is given to the many contrasting meanings (...) of the word “argument”; to some of the specific argumentation-theoretic tools that have been applied to mathematics, notably Toulmin layouts and argumentation schemes; to some of the different ways that argumentation is implicated in mathematical practices; and to the social aspects of mathematical argumentation. (shrink)

In this article, I explore what it means to “serve somebody,” drawing from my own experience as a full-time chaplain. Chaplains must serve many different parties, but are ultimately called to care for their patients via a covenental relationship of care.

An anthropological view of the publishing industry sees it as a culture with its own assumptions and patterns, in which publishing companies are macro-communities associated with micro-communities of readers. Anthropology sees ‘digital culture’ in a comparable way. Awareness of the cultural characteristics of publishing as a culture and of digital culture can turn their differences into synergies that benefit both. Examples from anthropological research and from publishing show that some processes are comparable. One is the process in which material value (...) is transformed into cultural value, with the benefit of increasing the cohesion of a community. Another occurs when communities interlink their cultural processes in cultural–commercial ecosystems, to mutual benefit. Anthropological insights suggest how strategies, at project level and at the level of international cooperation, can bridge the cultural divide between traditional publishing values and digital opportunities and so help businesses survive and succeed in times of change. (shrink)