In a recent paper, Schaefer et al. proposed to enhance autonomy via improving reasoning abilities through cognitive enhancement [1]. While initially their idea additionally seems to elegantly avoid objections against genetic enhancements based on the value of autonomy, we want to draw attention to several problems their approach poses. First, we will show that it is not at all clear that safe and meaningful methods to genetically or pharmaceutically enhance cognition will be feasible any time soon. Second, we want to (...) provide a deeper discussion of the role of cognition and reasoning abilities in philosophical concepts of autonomy, as discussed in the mentioned paper. In doing so, we wish to demonstrate that using reasoning abilities as the common denominator in different accounts of autonomy in the context of enhancement does not do justice to the highly complex interrelations between cognition, reasoning abilities and autonomy. Neither should this way of arguing be accepted as a basis to call for practical outcomes, such as funding research into e. g. genetic cognitive enhancements, if the examined concepts of autonomy are taken seriously. (shrink)

The article first of all holds that environmental regulation has failed. This is because it is too weak to prevent the overstepping of ecological boundaries by humanity. In this legal regulation is...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against InauthenticityChristopher S. SchreinerScars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against Inauthenticity, by Geoffrey Hartman; xii & 260 pp. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. $17.95 paper.Geoffrey Hartman is now an emeritus faculty member at Yale. All but the youngest readers of this journal will recognize him as a member of the now defunct Yale School of Criticism, which in its glory days included (...) Harold Bloom, Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida. Among these accomplished individuals, Hartman distinguished himself as the one most engaged with discussing the role of style in theoretically propelled criticism, and this remains his lasting contribution. The question he kept asking was the following: what demands do the books we read and the theories we use make on our own critical practice, and in particular, on our style? Works such as Criticism in the Wilderness (1980) and Saving the Text (1981) were concerned with promoting a philosophical criticism that is as creative as the literature it seeks to criticize, in opposition to the Arnoldian standard of a disinterested criticism that respects and preserves the canonical hauteur of literary classics and doesn't seek to imitate them. Yet over the decades Hartman's own prose, except when it lapsed into copying Derrida's, seemed more that of the Doctor and less the Explorer, to borrow the terms Lionel Trilling used to describe Matthew Arnold's criticism. This is an irony we are grateful for.Hartman's most recent book, Scars of the Spirit, takes up the problem of authenticity in the context of postmodern culture, seeking to reestablish its legitimacy as a serious topic and unmask what merely poses as authentic in the global marketplace. Today his agenda ignominiously crosses paths with the likes of Jane Fonda, whose autobiography is replete with New Age claims to recover "the authentic me." One of the issues never resolved by Hartman's book and which taunts his project behind its back is whether his Continental erudition makes his project any more authentic than Fonda's celebrity psychobabble. Authenticity was the Heideggerian concept that Adorno ruthlessly and ironically attacked in his The Jargon of Authenticity, and it has an old-fashioned existential ring to it to this day. For those readers who haven't read Being and Time lately, authenticity (Jemeinigkeit) was the resolute impetus of making time one's own, taking it back from the instrumental public world that had appropriated it so that one can live a sincerely mortal life and die one's own death, as it were properly. Professors valiantly conjured an ethic out of this retrieval of selfhood, of one's personal property of time and destiny in the Lost and Found of culture, not fully cognizant of its Nietzschean roots. The absence of altruism in this existential ethic inspired Emmanel Levinas's patient attempt to persuade us to demote our egoism in an insatiable responsibility to and for others, for whom we can never do enough.There is surely irony in the fact that the anachrony of authenticity as a concept was accelerated by the deconstructive theory that Hartman helped [End Page 501] promulgate. Hence his new book reads a bit like someone having to gingerly retrace his steps in a field of landmines planted by the Yale School of Criticism. The question of propriety, what is right and proper, what is one's own, stamped with one's unique or authentic properties, was deconstructed by Derrida, and Hartman reverently recorded the results in the incongruously titled Saving the Text, an analysis of Derrida's attempt to promote textual intercourse between Hegel and Jean Genet by setting them in parallel columns on one page. In a nutshell, the original source of an event or text, its material advent, is untraceable due to its derivativeness, the forces of semiosis (or textuality) at play in and between texts. In parallel to this discovery, Jean Baudrillard spoke of the simulacrum as a media-generated version behind which the original "thing itself" was forever irrecoverable. The very idea of authenticity came to sound illusory, denoting a mirage sought in a hopeless regressive inquiry or Ruckfrage which Husserl (with... (shrink)

Ethical issues concerning brain–computer interfaces have already received a considerable amount of attention. However, one particular form of BCI has not received the attention that it deserves: Affective BCIs that allow for the detection and stimulation of affective states. This paper brings the ethical issues of affective BCIs in sharper focus. The paper briefly reviews recent applications of affective BCIs and considers ethical issues that arise from these applications. Ethical issues that affective BCIs share with other neurotechnologies are presented and (...) ethical concerns that are specific to affective BCIs are identified and discussed. (shrink)

Research conducted on Brain-Computer Interfaces has grown considerably during the last decades. With the help of BCIs, users can gain a wide range of functions. Our aim in this paper is to analyze the impact of BCIs on autonomy. To this end, we introduce three abilities that most accounts of autonomy take to be essential: the ability to use information and knowledge to produce reasons; the ability to ensure that intended actions are effectively realized ; and the ability to enact (...) intentions within concrete relationships and contexts. We then consider the impact of BCI technology on each of these abilities. Although on first glance, BCIs solely enhance self-determination because they restore or improve abilities, we will show that there are other positive, but also negative impacts on user autonomy, which require further philosophical and ethical discussions. (shrink)

In the cocktail party situation, people with normal hearing usually follow a single speaker among multiple concurrent ones. However, there is no agreement in the literature as to whether the background is segregated into multiple streams/speakers. The current study varied the number of concurrent speech streams and investigated target detection and memory for the contents of a target stream as well as the processing of distractors. A male-voiced target stream was either presented alone (single-speech), together with one male-voiced distractor (one-distractor), (...) or a male- and a female-voiced distractor (two-distractor). Behavioral measures of target detection and content tracking performance as well as target- and distractor detection related event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were assessed. We found that the N2 amplitude decreased whereas the P3 amplitude increased from the single-speech to the concurrent speech streams conditions. Importantly, the behavioral effect of distractors differed between the conditions with one vs. two distractor speech streams and the non-zero voltages in the N2 time window for distractor numerals and in the P3 time window for syntactic violations appearing in the non-target speech stream significantly differed between the one- and two-distractor conditions for the same (male) speaker. These results support the notion that the two background speech streams are segregated, as they show that distractors and syntactic violations appearing in the non-target streams are processed even when two speech non-target speech streams are delivered together with the target stream. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest that medical students’ moral competence decreases throughout medical school. This pilot study gives preliminary insights into the effects of two educational interventions in ethics classes on moral competence among medical students in Munich, Germany. Between 2012 and 2013, medical students were tested using Lind’s Moral Competence Test prior to and after completing different ethics classes. The experimental group participated in principle-based structured case discussions and was compared with a control group with theory-based case discussions. The pre/post C-scores (...) were compared using a Wilcoxon Test, ANOVA and effect-size calculation. The C-score improved by around 3.2 C-points in the EG, and by 0.2 C-points in the CG. The mean C-score difference was not statistically significant for the EG or between the two groups. There was no statistical significance for the teachers’ influence on C-score. In both groups, students with below-average C-scores improved and students with above-average C-scores regressed. The increase of the C-Index was greater in the EG than in the CG. The absolute effect-size of the EG compared with the CG was 3.0 C-points, indicating a relevant effect. Teaching ethics with PBSCDs did not provide a statistically significant influence on students’ moral competence, compared with TBCDs. Yet, the effect size suggests that PBSCDs may improve moral competence among medical students more effectively. Further research with larger and completely randomized samples is needed to gain definite explanations for the results. (shrink)

Recent results from neuroimaging appear to indicate that some patients in a vegetative state have partially intact awareness. These results may demonstrate misdiagnosis and suggest the need not only for alternative forms of treatment, but also for the reconsideration of end-of-life decisions in cases of disorders of consciousness. This article addresses the second consequence. First, I will discuss which aspects of consciousness may be involved in neuroimaging findings. I will then consider various factors relevant to ethical end-of-life decision-making, and analyse (...) whether and to what extent the above consequence applies to these factors. It will be shown that knowledge of the existence of partial awareness in patients with disorders of consciousness only influences end-of-life decision-making if certain background assumptions are made. (shrink)

Research with psychiatric patients raises frequently discussed, ethical questions, one of which is: Can psychiatric patients give consent to participation in research at all? To answer this and similar questions adequately, it is - according to our thesis - necessary to analyze first, which theoretical assumptions are made in established practice. -/- To solve the question after the possibility of consent, compatible understandings of ‘disease’, ‘illness’ and ‘autonomy’ are crucial, but there is no consensual use of these terms in philosophy. (...) Therefore we first are going to explain different concepts of ‘autonomy’ and ‘disease’. Subsequent to this we will test how the different conceptualizations of ‘autonomy’ and ‘disease’ can be related to each other and how the reasonable combinations shape possible answers to the opening question. It will become apparent that an adequate analysis of ‘autonomy’ and ‘disease’ raises ethical dilemma in psychiatry, for which we shall suggest possible solutions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:AbusesC. S. SchreinerAbuses, by Alphonso Lingis; 268 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, $25.00 paper.Long ago and far away it seemed that academia served as a way station for inventive figures whose nonconformism, demonstrated in their work and lifestyles, was welcomed with graceful suspicion by their colleagues. Philosophy has had its share: one thinks of Wittgenstein and C. S. Peirce, but many lesser Wittgensteins and Peirces somehow (...) adapted and became tenured. In regard to such figures “eccentric” meant outside the circle or off center; “radical” meant surprising, original, sincere. Today radical has a murky political sense. Most radicality takes place in a discourse, or as a discourse—in the title of a university press book—which when invoked aligns the writer with the orthodoxy of a speech community. No surprise; only a dull echo as membership is [End Page 516] confirmed and the circle remains unbroken. Contrary to almost everyone’s intentions, never has so much “identity politics” been melded with the writing act in a metaphysical proof. We write about pragmatism, therefore we are new pragmatists. We write eco-feminism, therefore we are radical eco-feminists.Yet the nonconformist self-image of many philosophers is belied less by the uniformity of their discourse than of their lives, constrained as they are by professional protocol. This situation has become especially painful for phenomenologists whose credos “to the things themselves” and “towards the concrete” mandate a method of worldbound description confirmed by first-person evidence. It is a longstanding embarrassment that most phenomenological studies are either studies about phenomenology, or phenomenologies of books. In this regard even before Of Grammatology it was obvious that there was nothing outside the text.The rare exception is Alphonso Lingis, author of Excesses (1983), Libido: The French Existential Theories (1985), and The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (1994). So much is obvious to anyone who leafs through his Abuses. The vistas and catastrophes we access through this book cannot be easily disengaged from the personality that guides us to Tenochtitlan, Matagalpa, Kuta, Bali, the Sambodromo in Rio de Janeiro, Khlong Toei, and Chichicastenango. From these places and others Lingis reports the sometimes macabre longings and vulnerabilities of those who have nothing in common except violent changes in heritage and landscape. He speaks to their wounds and of his own ailments he acquires by exposing himself to forsaken circumstances: it is all material for his philosophy. In this work speech is primary, as it was for phenomenologists before Derrida.Merleau-Ponty’s writing remains unsurpassed as an eloquent transcript of perceptual life as expression and bodily engagement. Lingis, who translated The Visible and the Invisible, has from the start of his career been the most interesting and outlandish promulgator of this style of phenomenology. But his focus was decisively turned by Emmanuel Lévinas (whom Lingis has also translated) towards alterity relations, intimate events in which persons defer to and ennoble strangers by taking responsibility for them. Speech and physical contact are precious components of these relations, allowing persons to disburden themselves, to exchange pain and betrayal for tenderness and trust.Lingis shows how alterity relations suffer abuses at the face-to-face level and in the global network of electronic media. We enter his work breathlessly, as into a deep valley where there is gunfire and tropical birds. Spy satellites pass overhead. The human beings are strangely quiet. Women and children are being herded into canvas-covered trucks by youthful militia with oversized weapons. The volatile prose lifts up the voices of the damned just before they vanish around the bend in the jungle. Lingis speaks for them. This is the mandate of his research: “One has to speak for the silenced” (p. 36).How does highly educated thought speak for the tortured and dispossessed [End Page 517] without looking absurd or merely pretentious? Here it won’t do to speak of the world as a text. In this regard the kind of work we find in Abuses is at a vast remove from something like Susan Suleiman’s recently published Risking Who One Is: Encounters With Contemporary Art and Literature. There is nothing peculiar... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary HistoryC. S. SchreinerThe Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History, by Susan Howe; 189 pp. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1993, $40.00.In the interview which concludes The Birth-Mark, Susan Howe says that during childhood her Boston household was visited by such pioneers of American studies as Perry Miller and F. O. Matthiessen. Career-wise, however, Howe’s path to academia has be (...) en indirect: born in 1937, she gained her first professorship in 1989 in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. A visual artist by [End Page 192] training, Howe veered into a genre of writing in the 1970s that seeks to “install certain narrativ es somewhere between history, mystic speech, and poetry” (p. 44). Her poetry includes Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978), Pythagorean Silence (1982), and Defenestration of Prague (1983). In 1985 she published an original criti cal study, My Emily Dickinson, which criticized editors for having homogenized the format and typography of Dickinson’s manuscripts, taming the unruly rigor of poems which were originally “multifaceted visual and verbal productions.” Howe also argu ed that the Amherst poet should not be viewed as a victim of repression, as many feminists see her, but as a refuser of congregations, a powerful will-to-reclusion in art—“One unchosen American women alone at home and choosing.” Emily’s home was a nomadi c space between orthodoxies.An understanding of Howe’s kinship with Dickinson’s poetic daring is helpful for reading The Birth-Mark, whose prose is poetic, and whose protagonist, Mary Rowlandson, shared Dickinson’s “stubborn strength in isolation.” The captivity narratives ar e portals into the antinomian controversy of New England, which was “the primordial struggle of North American literary expression” (p. 4). It is not Gilbert and Gubar to whom Howe has recourse in her analyses of hostage consciousness. She cites the philo sophy of Emmanuel Lévinas. As with feminism, which she extends rather than follows, Howe takes up the philosophy of alterity without its orthodoxy. (In the face of frontier brutality she cannot discern the “Father of orphans and defender of widows” of Psalm 68.) Encounters in the wilderness of tribes, woods, and waters aroused an immodest otherness within the American literary unconscious, unsettling the styles of expression and selfhood which the puritan colonies were trying to instantiate. The literary awakening of Dickinson, Rowlandson, Melville, Hawthorne, and other writers was not due to the Great Awakening urged by churches, but to the traumatic transfer of sovereignty from God to frontier, a permanent revolution to which these writers’ imaginations would remain exposed.Howe’s new foray into criticism tracks the textual marginalia which yield the visionary utterances of Rowlandson and Hutchinson. A self-confessed “library cormorant,” Howe gathers a quiet spectacle of testimonies, those of separated loved ones dragged int o “Removes” by tribes of Native Americans. These resonant texts from New England village libraries and major collections at Harvard, are melded together by Howe’s intuitive, almost telepathic sensibility into a kind of spiritual drama informed by critical acumen. Howe takes her bearings from Patricia Caldwell’s essay “The Antinomian Language Controversy,” which appeared in the Harvard Theological Review in 1976. The dislocating frontier experience for Hutchinson, Rowlandson, and others forced the c reation of a different language. It is with this antinomian language that Howe develops a sensitive rapport, echoing its myriad haunting voices in her commentaries. What Gadamer calls effective history broods and rustles inside her [End Page 193] writing with lyrical unease. Indeed, Howe’s work is a creative example of the fusion of horizons which Gadamer says epitomizes the hermeneutic event. Howe’s personal method as revealed in her interview: “Not to explain the work, not to trans late it, but to meet the work with writing... Not just to write a tribute, but to meet her [Dickinson] in the tribute. And that’s a kind of fusion” (p. 158). Some scholars will find her method obscure. But it’s hard to find anything negative at this height. Howe would have us meet others at their most exposed, delicate point, where their vulnerability... (shrink)

While digitization claims to provide efficiency, accessibility, expansion, speediness, and profit accumulation, it is actually colonizing every human activity. It has even become a purpose in itself. In this essay we focus on the digitization of legal practices and contents. We describe what digitization encompasses, how digitalization processes work, and to what extent they are able to replace juristic processes and produce legal outcomes. We are inspired by Walter Benjamin’s essay on the influence of mechanical reproduction of the works of (...) Art. Parallel to Benjamin’s work on Art, we will analyze Law and the consequences of innovations such as mechanical mass (re)production and computerized digitization. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungWährend die Implementierung und Nutzung von Ethikberatung in deutschen Krankenhäusern in den letzten 20 Jahren vorangeschritten ist, entstehen erst in den letzten Jahren zunehmend Ethikberatungsangebote im außerklinischen Bereich. In den Landkreisen Traunstein und Berchtesgadener Land in Südost-Bayern wurde 2012 eine außerklinische Ethikberatung etabliert. Um im Rahmen einer ersten Evaluation wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse über den Bedarf, die Inanspruchnahme und die Zufriedenheit mit diesem Beratungsangebot zu gewinnen, wurde eine Dokumentenanalyse und eine Fragebogenerhebung unter den Hausärzten der beiden Landkreise durchgeführt. Insgesamt nahmen 58 der (...) 195 angeschriebenen Hausärzte an der Umfrage teil.Die Auswertung der Dokumentation der außerklinischen Ethikberatung zeigte, dass die meisten Anfragen von betreuenden Angehörigen und aus Pflegeheimen kamen. Den Ergebnissen der Fragebogenerhebung zufolge sahen sich die Hausärzte mit vielfältigen ethischen Fragestellungen konfrontiert. Das Angebot einer ethischen Fallbesprechung zur Lösung dieser Konflikte wurde bislang jedoch nur von 17 Hausärzten in Anspruch genommen. Als Hauptgründe für die fehlende Nutzung des Angebots wurde der mangelnde Bekanntheitsgrad, der fehlende Bedarf und der organisatorische bzw. zeitliche Aufwand angeführt. Gleichzeitig äußerten Hausärzte, die eine ethische Fallbesprechung in Anspruch genommen haben, zu einem Großteil Interesse an einer erneuten Beratung und empfanden das Ergebnis der Ethikberatung als hilfreich. Damit verdeutlichen die Ergebnisse der Studie, dass Hausärzte zwar vielfältige ethische Fragestellungen in ihrem Arbeitsalltag wahrnehmen, aber bislang nur vergleichsweise selten ein externes Beratungsangebot zur Entscheidungsunterstützung in Betracht ziehen. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 2 Seiten: 943-994.

In the present article we examine the anthropological implications of “intelligent” neurotechnologies (INTs). For this purpose, we first give an introduction to current developments of INTs by specifying their central characteristics. We then present and discuss traditional anthropological concepts such as the “homo faber,” the concept of humans as “deficient beings,” and the concept of the “cyborg,” questioning their descriptive relevance regarding current neurotechnological applications. To this end, we relate these anthropological concepts to the characteristics of INTs elaborated before. As (...) we show, the explanatory validity of the anthropological concepts analyzed in this article vary significantly. While the concept of the homo faber, for instance, is not capable of adequately describing the anthropological implications of new INTs, the cyborg proves to be capable of grasping several aspects of today’s neurotechnologies. Nevertheless, alternative explanatory models are needed in order to capture the new characteristics of INTs in their full complexity. (shrink)

Social robots are designed to perform intelligent, emotional, and autonomous behavior in order to establish intimate relationships with humans, for instance, in the context of elderly care. However, the imitation of qualities usually assumed to be necessary for human reciprocal interaction may impact our understanding of social interaction. Against this background, we compare the technical operations based on which social robots imitate human-like behavior with the concepts of emotionality, intelligence, and autonomy as usually attached to humans. In doing so, we (...) aim at making a conceptual contribution to the intuition that the technical imitation of emotional, intelligent, and autonomous behavior differs qualitatively from human forms of emotionality, intelligence, and autonomy. We conclude that the increasing tendency of social robots to imitate human characteristics and the thus increased human tendency of anthropomorphizing technical systems put forth new forms of human–machine interactions (HMI) that call for a critical examination. Thus, the emerging forms of interaction may lead, for instance, to false, reinforced, and perplexing assumptions regarding reciprocity. Therefore, studies are needed that critically examine the potential consequences and psychological effects that may be associated with the use of social robots, especially with regard to vulnerable groups such as children or the elderly. (shrink)

Este estudo objetivou conhecer o pensamento de toxicômanos sobre o uso de maconha durante o tratamento para abuso do crack. Participaram 10 sujeitos do sexo masculino, entre 15 e 36 anos, em tratamento nos CAPSi e CAPSad na cidade de Santa Maria/RS. Foram realizadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas e s..

Zusammenfassung Die Rekrutierung von guten Trainern ist eine der zentralen Herausforderungen für Vereine, Verbände und Olympiastützpunkte. Über die strukturellen Bedingungen der Trainerrekrutierung im Spitzensport liegen bislang jedoch nur wenige Erkenntnisse vor. Ziel des vorliegenden Artikels ist es, den Prozess der Trainerrekrutierung im deutschen Spitzensport und die zugrunde liegenden organisationsstrukturellen Bedingungen zu analysieren. Die Analyse zeigt, dass für die Trainerrekrutierung im Spitzensport insbesondere Netzwerke funktional sind. Deren Nachteil liegt darin, dass sie formale Vorgaben aushebeln können und persönlichen Präferenzen ein zum Teil (...) unangemessenes Gewicht verschaffen. Formalisierte Rekrutierungsmittel haben vor diesem Hintergrund vor allem die symbolische Funktion, eine Gerechtigkeitsillusion im Hinblick auf bereits getroffene Entscheidungen zu erzeugen. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)

The increasing availability of brain data within and outside the biomedical field, combined with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to brain data analysis, poses a challenge for ethics and governance. We identify distinctive ethical implications of brain data acquisition and processing, and outline a multi-level governance framework. This framework is aimed at maximizing the benefits of facilitated brain data collection and further processing for science and medicine whilst minimizing risks and preventing harmful use. The framework consists of four primary (...) areas of regulatory intervention: binding regulation, ethics and soft law, responsible innovation, and human rights. (shrink)

For almost two decades, the concept of epistemic injustice has been a point of reference to discuss the extent to which persons can be disadvantaged in their role as knowers and what morally relevant consequences might follow from such violations. This volume brings together contributions that have significantly shaped debates about the concept of epistemic injustice and its meaning, as well as recent contributions on its implications and possible consequences of situations of epistemic injustice. With contributions by David Coady | (...) Katharina Eisenhut | Miranda Fricker | Orsolya Friedrich | Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra | Axel Gelfert | Hilkje C. Hänel | Julia A. Harzheim | Lars Leeten | José Medina | Ruben Sakowsky | Ela Sauerborn | Sebastian Schleidgen | Katharina Trettenbach | Verina Wild | Andreas Wolkenstein. (shrink)

Social robotics aims at designing robots capable of joint interaction with humans. On a conceptual level, sufficient mutual understanding is usually said to be a necessary condition for joint interaction. Against this background, the following questions remain open: in which sense is it legitimate to speak of human–robot joint interaction? What exactly does it mean to speak of humans and robots sufficiently understanding each other to account for human–robot joint interaction? Is such joint interaction effectively possible by reference, e.g., to (...) the mere ascription or simulation of understanding? To answer these questions, we first discuss technical approaches which aim at the implementation of certain aspects of human–human communication and interaction in social robots in order to make robots accessible and understandable to humans and, hence, human–robot joint interaction possible. Second, we examine the human tendency to anthropomorphize in this context, with a view to human understanding of and joint interaction with social robots. Third, we analyze the most prominent concepts of mutual understanding and their implications for human–robot joint interaction. We conclude that it is—at least for the time being—not legitimate to speak of human–robot joint interaction, which has relevant implications both morally and ethically. (shrink)

There is growing interest in contact tracing apps for pandemic management. It is crucial to consider ethical requirements before, while, and after implementing such apps. In this paper, we illustrate the complexity and multiplicity of the ethical considerations by presenting an ethical framework for a responsible design and implementation of CT apps. Using this framework as a starting point, we briefly highlight the interconnection of social and political contexts, available measures of pandemic management, and a multi-layer assessment of CT apps. (...) We will discuss some trade-offs that arise from this perspective. We then suggest that public trust is of major importance for population uptake of contact tracing apps. Hasty, ill-prepared or badly communicated implementations of CT apps will likely undermine public trust, and as such, risk impeding general effectiveness. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)