30 found
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  1. Artificial thinking and doomsday projections: a discourse on trust, ethics and safety.Jeffrey White, Dietrich Brandt, Jan Söffner & Larry Stapleton - 2023 - AI and Society 38 (6):2119-2124.
    The article reflects on where AI is headed and the world along with it, considering trust, ethics and safety. Implicit in artificial thinking and doomsday appraisals is the engineered divorce from reality of sublime human embodiment. Jeffrey White, Dietrich Brandt, Jan Soeffner, and Larry Stapleton, four scholars associated with AI & Society, address these issues, and more, in the following exchange.
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  2.  83
    (1 other version)Autonomous Reboot: Kant, the categorical imperative, and contemporary challenges for machine ethicists.Jeffrey White - 2022 - AI and Society 37 (2):661-673.
    Ryan Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. This series of papers meets this challenge by landscaping traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. The first paper established the challenge and set out autonomy in Aristotelian terms. (...)
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  3.  68
    Autonomous reboot: Aristotle, autonomy and the ends of machine ethics.Jeffrey White - 2022 - AI and Society 37 (2):647-659.
    Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. Challenges for machine ethicists have also been presented by Anthony Beavers and Wendell Wallach. Beavers pushes for the reinvention of traditional ethics to avoid "ethical nihilism" due to the reduction of morality to mechanical causation. (...)
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  4. On a Possible Basis for Metaphysical Self-development in Natural and Artificial Systems.Jeffrey White - 2022 - Filozofia i Nauka. Studia Filozoficzne I Interdyscyplinarne 10:71-100.
    Recent research into the nature of self in artificial and biological systems raises interest in a uniquely determining immutable sense of self, a “metaphysical ‘I’” associated with inviolable personal values and moral convictions that remain constant in the face of environmental change, distinguished from an object “me” that changes with its environment. Complementary research portrays processes associated with self as multimodal routines selectively enacted on the basis of contextual cues informing predictive self or world models, with the notion of the (...)
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  5. Simulation, self-extinction, and philosophy in the service of human civilization.Jeffrey White - 2016 - AI and Society 31 (2):171-190.
    Nick Bostrom’s recently patched ‘‘simulation argument’’ (Bostrom in Philos Q 53:243–255, 2003; Bos- trom and Kulczycki in Analysis 71:54–61, 2011) purports to demonstrate the probability that we ‘‘live’’ now in an ‘‘ancestor simulation’’—that is as a simulation of a period prior to that in which a civilization more advanced than our own—‘‘post-human’’—becomes able to simulate such a state of affairs as ours. As such simulations under consid- eration resemble ‘‘brains in vats’’ (BIVs) and may appear open to similar objections, the (...)
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  6. Augmenting Morality through Ethics Education: the ACTWith model.Jeffrey White - 2024 - AI and Society:1-20.
    Recently in this journal, Jessica Morley and colleagues (AI & SOC 2023 38:411–423) review AI ethics and education, suggesting that a cultural shift is necessary in order to prepare students for their responsibilities in developing technology infrastructure that should shape ways of life for many generations. Current AI ethics guidelines are abstract and difficult to implement as practical moral concerns proliferate. They call for improvements in ethics course design, focusing on real-world cases and perspective-taking tools to immerse students in challenging (...)
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  7. Models of Moral Cognition.Jeffrey White - 2010 - In Lorenzo Magnani, Walter Carnielli & Claudio Pizzi (eds.), MODEL-BASED REASONING IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Springer. pp. last 20.
    3 Abstract This paper is about modeling morality, with a proposal as to the best 4 way to do it. There is the small problem, however, in continuing disagreements 5 over what morality actually is, and so what is worth modeling. This paper resolves 6 this problem around an understanding of the purpose of a moral model, and from 7 this purpose approaches the best way to model morality.
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  8. Variable Value Alignment by Design; averting risks with robot religion.Jeffrey White - forthcoming - Embodied Intelligence 2023.
    Abstract: One approach to alignment with human values in AI and robotics is to engineer artiTicial systems isomorphic with human beings. The idea is that robots so designed may autonomously align with human values through similar developmental processes, to realize project ideal conditions through iterative interaction with social and object environments just as humans do, such as are expressed in narratives and life stories. One persistent problem with human value orientation is that different human beings champion different values as ideal, (...)
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  9. The role of robotics and AI in technologically mediated human evolution: a constructive proposal.Jeffrey White - 2020 - AI and Society 35 (1):177-185.
    This paper proposes that existing computational modeling research programs may be combined into platforms for the information of public policy. The main idea is that computational models at select levels of organization may be integrated in natural terms describing biological cognition, thereby normalizing a platform for predictive simulations able to account for both human and environmental costs associated with different action plans and institutional arrangements over short and long time spans while minimizing computational requirements. Building from established research programs, the (...)
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  10.  36
    Understanding and augmenting human morality: An introduction to the ACTWith model of conscience.Jeffrey White - 2010 - In W. Carnielli L. Magnani (ed.), Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. pp. 607--621.
    Recent developments, both in the cognitive sciences and in world events, bring special emphasis to the study of morality. The cognitive sciences, spanning neurology, psychology, and computational intelligence, offer substantial ad- vances in understanding the origins and purposes of morality. Meanwhile, world events urge the timely synthesis of these insights with traditional ac- counts that can be easily assimilated and practically employed to augment moral judgment, both to solve current problems and to direct future action. The object of the following (...)
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  11. An Information Processing Model of Psychopathy.Jeffrey White - 201? - In Unknown (ed.), moral psychology. Nova. pp. 1-34.
    Psychopathy is increasingly in the public eye. However, it is yet to be fully and effectively understood. Within the context of the DSM-IV, for example, it is best regarded as a complex family of disorders. The upside is that this family can be tightly related along common dimensions. Characteristic marks of psychopaths include a lack of guilt and remorse for paradigm case immoral actions, leading to the common conception of psychopathy rooted in affective dysfunctions. An adequate portrait of psychopathy is (...)
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  12. From Biological to Synthetic Neurorobotics Approaches to Understanding the Structure Essential to Consciousness (Part 3).Jeffrey White & Jun Tani - 2017 - APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 17 (1):11-22.
    This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting (...)
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  13. From Biological to Synthetic Neurorobotics Approaches to Understanding the Structure Essential to Consciousness, Part 1.Jeffrey White & Jun Tani - 2016 - APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 1 (16):13-23.
    Direct neurological and especially imaging-driven investigations into the structures essential to naturally occurring cognitive systems in their development and operation have motivated broadening interest in the potential for artificial consciousness modeled on these systems. This first paper in a series of three begins with a brief review of Boltuc’s (2009) “brain-based” thesis on the prospect of artificial consciousness, focusing on his formulation of h-consciousness. We then explore some of the implications of brain research on the structure of consciousness, finding limitations (...)
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  14. Manufacturing Morality A general theory of moral agency grounding computational implementations: the ACTWith model.Jeffrey White - 2013 - In Computational Intelligence. Nova Publications. pp. 1-65.
    The ultimate goal of research into computational intelligence is the construction of a fully embodied and fully autonomous artificial agent. This ultimate artificial agent must not only be able to act, but it must be able to act morally. In order to realize this goal, a number of challenges must be met, and a number of questions must be answered, the upshot being that, in doing so, the form of agency to which we must aim in developing artificial agents comes (...)
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  15. Infosphere to Ethosphere Moral Mediators in the Nonviolent Transformation of Self and World.Jeffrey White - 201? - International Journal of Technoethics:1-19.
    This paper reviews the complex, overlapping ideas of two prominent Italian philosophers, Lorenzo Magnani and Luciano Floridi, with the aim of facilitating the nonviolent transformation of self and world, and with a focus on information technologies in mediating this process. In Floridi’s information ethics, problems of consistency arise between self-poiesis, anagnorisis, entropy, evil, and the narrative structure of the world. Solutions come from Magnani’s work in distributed morality, moral mediators, moral bubbles and moral disengagement. Finally, two examples of information technology, (...)
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  16. understanding and augmenting human morality: the actwith model of conscience.Jeffrey White - 2009 - In L. Magnani (ed.), computational intelligence.
    Abstract. Recent developments, both in the cognitive sciences and in world events, bring special emphasis to the study of morality. The cognitive sci- ences, spanning neurology, psychology, and computational intelligence, offer substantial advances in understanding the origins and purposes of morality. Meanwhile, world events urge the timely synthesis of these insights with tra- ditional accounts that can be easily assimilated and practically employed to augment moral judgment, both to solve current problems and to direct future action. The object of the (...)
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  17.  58
    Conscience, Consciousness, Sciousness and Science.Jeffrey Benjamin White - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 42:207-213.
    No question has demanded so much attention from the philosopher of mind as has this one: What is consciousness? One promising answer begins by noting that consciousness is, itself, a conjugate of more basic stuff. For the ethicist, there is a question that seems at least formally related to the question of consciousness: What is conscience? Could it be that a similar approach carries similar promise? The following short paper first examines consciousness as a conjugate, and then pursues the implications (...)
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  18.  78
    Conscience.Jeffrey Benjamin White - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 10:437-444.
    This work introduces the ACTWith model of moral cognition. This is a model of conscience and conscientious agency, inspired by Socratic philosophy, neurology and artificial intelligence. The ACTWith model is a synthesis across these disciplines, integrating ancient and contemporary insights into the human condition, while distilling this synthesis into a practicable dynamic simplified via architectural paradigms imported from theories of computational models of human learning. It was developed in response to the need in these fields for a clear articulation of (...)
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  19.  64
    Dreyfus on the “Fringe”: information processing, intelligent activity, and the future of thinking machines.Jeffrey White - 2019 - AI and Society 34 (2):301-312.
    From his preliminary analysis in 1965, Hubert Dreyfus projected a future much different than those with which his contemporaries were practically concerned, tempering their optimism in realizing something like human intelligence through conventional methods. At that time, he advised that there was nothing “directly” to be done toward machines with human-like intelligence, and that practical research should aim at a symbiosis between human beings and computers with computers doing what they do best, processing discrete symbols in formally structured problem domains. (...)
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  20.  78
    Good Will and the Conscience in Kant’s Ethical Theory.Jeffrey Benjamin White - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 10:445-452.
    The compass point of Kantian ethics is Kant’s categorical imperative. The compass point of Kantian ethics directs persons to ends of actions. It directs to ends the attainment of which can be universally prescribed. It directs away from those which can not. Most reviews of the demands of the categorical imperative tend torest in an assay of rationality and its demands. I think that this is a mistake. I think that on Kant’s mature view, the conscience, and so the categorical (...)
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  21.  69
    Heidegger and the Space of Life.Jeffrey Benjamin White - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 19:181-188.
    Heidegger is perhaps best known for stressing the function of time as temporality on the phenomena of life. There is a sense, however, in which the full significance of these insights can be best understood only through an exploration of the function of space as spatiality in the phenomena of life. At their juxtaposition, there is a privileged perspective on the meaning of life, and most importantly on what is the most meaningful life on the Heideggerian account, thephilosophical life. The (...)
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  22.  85
    (1 other version)How Did Socrates Become Socrates?Jeffrey Benjamin White - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 2:205-212.
    Socrates is philosophy’s greatest hero, and a model for the philosophic life. Yet, why did Socrates live the way he did? How did Socrates become Socrates? How can a contemporary philosopher aspire to be like Socrates, even in ways and contexts in which there is no record of a Socratic example? This short paper explores the implications of Socrates’ encounter with Callicles in the Gorgias on the aspiring philosophic life. In this dialogue, we find Socrates’ own testimony as to why (...)
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  23. Conscience: the mechanism of morality.Jeffrey White - manuscript
    Conscience is often referred to yet not understood. This text develops a theory of cognition around a model of conscience, the ACTWith model. It represents a synthesis of results from contemporary neuroscience with traditional philosophy, building from Jamesian insights into the emergence of the self to narrative identity, all the while motivated by a single mechanism as represented in the ACTWith model. Emphasis is placed on clarifying historical expressions and demonstrations of conscience - Socrates, Heidegger, Kant, M.L. King - in (...)
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  24.  35
    Psychophysiological and subjective indices of emotion as a function of age and gender.Louisa Burriss, D. A. Powell & Jeffrey White - 2007 - Cognition and Emotion 21 (1):182-210.
  25. rethinking machine ethics in the era of ubiquitous technology.Jeffrey White (ed.) - 2015 - Hershey, PA, USA: IGI.
    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 (...)
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  26.  66
    Why Believe in Collective Agents? Because You Did Something Wrong!Jeffrey Benjamin White - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 50:845-851.
    The focus of the following paper is the phenomenon of the collective agent; what constitutes the appearance of a collective agent? I begin by investigating one simple argument for the existence of collective agents. Two critical issues emerge: does it make sense to hold a collective agent blameworthy, and, what is the motivation for doing so, one way or the other? I then dissolve these issues with a distinction, that between blameworthiness and responsibility. In light of this distinction, there appears (...)
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  27. Lorenzo Magnani: Discoverability—the urgent need of an ecology of human creativity. [REVIEW]Jeffrey White - 2023 - AI and Society:1-2.
    Discoverability: the urgent need of an ecology of human creativity from the prolific Lorenzo Magnani is worthy of direct attention. The message may be of special interest to philosophers, ethicists and organizing scientists involved in the development of AI and related technologies which are increasingly directed at reinforcing conditions against which Magnani directly warns, namely the “overcomputationalization” of life marked by the gradual encroachment of technologically “locked strategies” into everyday decision-making until “freedom, responsibility, and ownership of our destinies” are ceded (...)
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  28. Self-abduction; oracles, ecocognition and purpose in life.Jeffrey White - forthcoming - In Selene Arfini (ed.), Essays in Honor of Lorenzo Magnani: Volume 2 - Scientific Cognition, Semiotics, and Computational Agents. Springer.
    This chapter follows Lorenzo Magnani's observation that ongoing commercialization of science and academia impoverishes human potential for discovery. The chapter reviews Magnani on affordance, wonders what is accessible when "good" affordances appear absent, and answers self-affordance. Ecologies optimized for discovery should be optimized for self-affordance. The chapter considers the role of oracle as leading vision for discovery, and proposes a naturalized account of self that is essentially propositional, in pursuit of an inner oracle, seeking salvation through routine and religious ritual. (...)
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  29. Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences. [REVIEW]Jeffrey White - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (8):1249-1253.
    Readers of Philosophical Psychology may be most familiar with Ron Sun by way of an article recently appearing in this journal on creative composition expressed within his own hybrid computational intelligence model, CLARION (Sun, 2013). That article represents nearly two decades’ work in situated agency stressing the importance of psychologically realistic architectures and processes in the articulation of both functional, and reflectively informative, AI and agent- level social-cultural simulations. Readers may be less familiar with Sun’s 2001 “prolegomena” to related multi-agent (...)
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  30. (1 other version)Reflections on Lorenzo Magnani's Understanding Violence. [REVIEW]Jeffrey White - 2012 - Biosemiotics 5:439-444.