Technologies of communication condition human sense-making. They do so by creating the social environment we inhabit and extending their structural biases and logics through human use. As such, this essay inquires into the prevailing habits of mind in the digital era. Employing a media ecology of communication, I argue that digital computers and microprocessors are defined by three structural properties and, hence, underlying logics: digitization (binary code), algorithmic execution (input/output), and efficiency (machine logic). Repeated exposure to these logics (...) cultivates a digital mind, a model of thinking, communicating, and sense-making characterized by intransigence, impertinence, and impulsivity. I conclude the essay by exploring the broader implications of a digital mind, paying particular attention to the challenges it poses to democratic politics. (shrink)

I survey four categories of factors that might give a digital mind, such as an upload or an artificial general intelligence, an advantage over humans. Hardware advantages include greater serial speeds and greater parallel speeds. Self-improvement advantages include improvement of algorithms, design of new mental modules, and modification of motivational system. Co-operative advantages include copyability, perfect co-operation, improved communication, and transfer of skills. Human handicaps include computational limitations and faulty heuristics, human-centric biases, and socially motivated cognition. The shape of (...) hardware growth curves, as well as the ease of modifying minds, are found to have a major impact on how quickly a digital mind may take advantage of these factors. (shrink)

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of digital psychiatry were touting the promise of various digital tools and techniques to revolutionize mental healthcare. As social distancing and its knock-on effects have strained existing mental health infrastructures, calls have grown louder for implementing various digital mental health solutions at scale. Decisions made today will shape the future of mental healthcare for the foreseeable future. We argue that bioethicists are uniquely positioned to cut through the hype surrounding digital (...) mental health, which can obscure crucial ethical and epistemic gaps that ought to be considered by policymakers before committing to a digital psychiatric future. Here, we describe four such gaps: The evidence gap, the inequality gap, the prediction-intervention gap, and the safety gap. (shrink)

Emerging cybertechnologies, such as social digibots, bend epistemological conventions of life and culture already complicated by human and animal relationships. Virtually-augmented niches of machines and organic life promise new free-energy-governed selection of intelligent digital life. These provocative eco-evolutionary contexts demand a theory of (natural and artificial) minds to characterize and validate the immersive social phenomena universally-shaping cultural affordances.

I aim to illustrate how the recommender systems of digital platforms create a particularly problematic kind of vulnerability in their users. Specifically, through theories of scaffolded cognition and scaffolded affectivity, I argue that a digital platform’s recommender system is a cognitive and affective artifact that fulfills different functions for the platform’s users and its designers. While it acts as a content provider and facilitator of cognitive, affective and decision-making processes for users, it also provides a continuous and detailed (...) amount of information to platform designers regarding users’ cognitive and affective processes. This dynamic, I argue, engenders a kind of vulnerability in platform users, structuring a power imbalance between designers and users. This occurs because the recommender system can not only gather data on users’ cognitive and affective processes, but also affects them in an unprecedentedly economic and capillary manner. By examining one instance of ethically problematic practice from Facebook, I specifically argue that rather than being a tool for manipulating or exploiting people, digital platforms, especially by their underlying recommender systems, can single out and tamper with specific cognitive and affective processes as a tool specifically designed for mind invasion. I conclude by reflecting how the understanding of such AI systems as tools for mind invasion highlights some merits and shortcomings of the AI Act with regards to the protection of vulnerable people. (shrink)

From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the "fast world" of high tech and the "slow world" of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced while online. In a series of exercises carefully (...) designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers observe themselves while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment with unplugging for a specified period. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of compatibility of the extended mind thesis with the concept of epistemic responsibility. This compatibility problem lies at the intersection of two current trends in Virtue Epistemology (VE): the study of extended cognition, and the return of VE to the topic of epistemic responsibility. I give objections to two seemingly independent positions; their acceptance makes it difficult or even impossible to make the concept of epistemic responsibility applicable to the agents of digital society (...) whose cognition is extended. The core of both positions can be illustrated by the following thesis: “Since the subject cannot voluntarily change his/her beliefs, we cannot ascribe to him/her either epistemic responsibility or intellectual virtues that allow him/her to take responsibility”. The counter-arguments to this thesis are based on the distinction between the causal (responsibility-in) and normative (responsibility-for) components of responsibility. The absence of the former allows us to characterize the subject as not responsible, the absence of the latter as irresponsible. I propose two conceptual foundations that can make possible the consistent talk about the epistemic responsibility of an extended subject. 1) The subject may not be responsible for the beliefs taken from the epistemic environment, but the subject bears significant responsibility for what environment he finds himself in. 2) Being epistemically responsible means deliberately reducing the number of possible causal excuses – excuses based on agent’s unresponsibiity due to his causal dependence on his epistemic environment (‘cognitive extensions’). (shrink)

Intellectual property is one of the highly divisive issues in contemporary philosophical and political debates. The main objective of this paper is to explore some sources of tension between the formal rules of intellectual property (particularly copyright and patents) and the emerging informal norms of file sharing and open access in online environments. We look into the file sharing phenomena not only to illustrate the deepening gap between the two sets of norms, but to cast some doubt on the current (...) regime of intellectual property as an adequate frame for the new type of interactions in online environments. Revisiting the classic Arrow–Demsetz debate about intellectual property and the epistemological issues involved in assessing institutions, we suggest that seeking out new institutional arrangements aligned with the norms-in-use seems to be a more promising strategy in the new technological setting than attempting to reinforce the current legal framework. Moreover, such a strategy is less prone to committing the so-called ‘Nirvana fallacies’. As a secondary task, we try to cast some doubt on the two most common moral justifications of intellectual property as being able to ground the full extent of the current intellectual property regime. (shrink)

The digital transfer of the mind to a computer system requires representing the mind as a finite sequence of bits. The classic “stored-program computer” paradigm, in turn, implies the equivalence between program and data, so that the sequence of bits themselves can be interpreted as a program, which will be algorithmically executed in the receiving device. Now, according to a previous proof, on which this paper is based, a computational or algorithmic machine, however complex, cannot be free. Consequently, a (...) finite sequence of bits cannot adequately represent a free mind and, therefore, a free mind cannot be digitally transferred, quod erat demonstrandum. The impossibility of making this transfer, as demonstrated here, should be a concern especially for those who wish to achieve it. Since we intend this to be a rigorous demonstration, we must give precise definitions and conditions of validity. The most important part of the paper is devoted to explaining the meaning and reasonableness of these definitions and conditions. Special attention is paid, also, to the philosophical implications of the demonstration. Finally, this thesis is distinguished from other closely related issues. (shrink)

This book argues that relational cognition, a form of social cognition, exhibits digital infinity as does language. Copies of elementary models are combined and recursively nested to form a potentially infinite number of complex models. Just as one posits proof-theoretic grammars in order to account for the digital infinity of language, one also should posit proof-theoretic grammars to account for the digital infinity of relational cognition. Objections to a proof-theoretic approach, often equally applicable both to language and (...) to relational cognition, are considered and criticized. Such objections either posit overly complex alternatives or overlook the role of idealization in science. (shrink)

In this presentation we shall discuss the nature of mind vis-a-vis the brain and computers. Such a comparison presumes a general equivalence of brains and computers and models the brain as a huge biological computer, with consciousness added. The uniqueness of Mind in the lines of ancient Indian thought has been accpted as the basic concept in the analysis. Regarding the chief difference between mind and brain, material of the mind is taken to be subtle matter.The brain is made of (...) gross matter and is a part of the physical body. Considering the brain and the computer, the brain is a biological structure made of organic molecules, whereas computer chips are inorganic objects manufactured by etching circuits on the surface of silica chips. Thus the human brain, occupying volume, is a volumetric entity whereas a computer, as electronic circuitry on a silica chip, is an areal entity. This explains the vast processing power andexceptional capabilities of the human brain. (shrink)

In this paper, I will critically consider Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis of the «extended mind» in order to sketch a possible phenomenological account of active externalism, by following three steps: I will consider Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis within the broader context of the so-called «physical symbol system hypothesis» theorized by Herbert A. Simon; I will connect the problem of the «extended mind» to that of the «extended self», with particular regard to the context of digitalization; I will take into account (...) an explanatory dimension that has been fundamentally underrated by externalist theories: the dimension of the human body and its relationship to mind, which I understand from a phenomenological perspective. My ultimate goal is to show how phenomenology could provide the missing theoretical framework to develop a more complex and comprehensive theory of the extended self. (shrink)

This is a review of Susan Greenfield's 2015 book 'Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Mark On Our Brains'. Greenfield is a neuroscientist and a member of the UK House of Lords, who argues that digital technologies are changing the human environment "in an unprecedented way," and that by adapting to this environment, "the brain may also be changing in an unprecedented way." The book and its author have created a surprising amount of controversy. I discuss (...) both Greenfield's book and a prominent critique by Bell et al. (2015). The exchange points to some flaws in Greenfield's argument and represents an interesting debate about the public role of scientists, but it does not undermine the value of the book as a springboard for discussions about possible policies and future research. (shrink)

As ever more advanced digital systems are created, it becomes increasingly likely that some of these systems will be digital minds, i.e. digital subjects of experience. With digital minds comes the risk of digital suffering. The problem of digital suffering is that of mitigating this risk. We argue that the problem of digital suffering is a high stakes moral problem and that formidable epistemic obstacles stand in the way of solving it. (...) We then propose a strategy for solving it: Access Monitor Prevent (AMP). AMP uses a ‘dancing qualia’ argument to link the functional states of certain digital systems to their experiences—this yields epistemic access to digital minds. With that access, we can prevent digital suffering by only creating advanced digital systems that we have such access to, monitoring their functional profiles, and preventing them from entering states with functional markers of suffering. After introducing and motivating AMP, we confront limitations it faces and identify some options for overcoming them. We argue that AMP fits especially well with—and so provides a moral reason to prioritize—one approach to creating such systems: whole brain emulation. We also contend that taking other paths to digital minds would be morally risky. (shrink)

Empathy is an integral aspect of human existence. Without at least a basic ability to access others’ affective life, social interactions would be well-nigh impossible. Yet, recent studies seem to show that the means we have acquired to access others’ emotional life no longer function well in what has become our everyday business – technologically mediated interactions in digital spaces. If this is correct, there are two important questions: (1) What makes empathy for frequent internet users so difficult? and (...) (2) What can we do to alleviate the negative consequences? Correspondingly, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, we identify structural differences between offline and technologically mediated interactions that can explain why digital empathy is harder to achieve. Second, drawing on the literature on ‘situated affectivity,’ we consider the idea of modifying digital spaces in ways specifically designed to ‘scaffold’ empathy where our evolved mechanisms fail. Section 2 argues that empathy is requires interpreting the behavior of embodied subjects. Section 3 identifies three factors that are crucial for this interpretative endeavor: the empathizer’s affective repertoire, their perceptual input, and their background knowledge. Section 4 argues that technologically mediated interactions differ from face-to-face interactions with regard to these factors in ways which render our evolved empathy mechanisms less effective in the digital world. Section 5 introduces the idea that situational factors can serve as ‘empathic scaffolds,’ i.e., as ‘tools’ that can ‘shape’ people’s empathic reactions. Section 6 wraps up the main line of reasoning, responds to objections and invites further scholarship. (shrink)

The article examines the impact of digitalization on human life and intellectual experience. The development of computer technology demands an understanding of new aspects of human development and requires a capability to overcome not only external conditions but also ourselves. Entering a new level of development cannot imply a complete rejection of previous dispositions, but should be accompanied by reflection on personal experience and by the quest for new forms of interaction in society and with nature. Communicative and cognitive activity (...) of a person has an ontological basis and relies on processes that actually evolve in nature. Therefore, the creation of new objects is always associated with the properties of natural material and gives rise to new points of support in the development of man. The more audacious his projects, the more important it is to preserve this connection to nature. It is always the human being who turns out to be the initiator who knows how to solve problems. The conformity of complex technical systems to nature is not only a goal but also a value of meaningful construction of development perspectives. The key to the nature orientation of the modern digital world is the human being himself, who keeps all the secrets of the culture of his natural development. Therefore, the proposed by the Russian philosopher V.S. Stepin post-non-classical approach, based on the principle of “human-sizedness,” is an important contribution to contemporary research because it draws attention to the “human – machine” communication, to the relationship between a person and technological systems he created. The article concludes that during digital transformation, a cultural conflict arises: in an effort to solve the problems of the future, a person equips his life with devices that are designed to support him, to expand his functionality, but at the same time, the boundaries of humanity become dissolved and the forms of human activity undergo simplification. Transhumanism engages society in the fight against fears of vulnerability and memory loss and ignores the flexibility and sustainability of natural foundation. (shrink)

Galit Wellner’s exploration of new kinds of digital technologies employing AI algorithms that simulate features and functions of the human imagination leads her to propose a conceptual analysis of the imagination as a composite of perception and memory. Wellner poses the question of whether the output of such technological applications might be regarded as not merely simulating creative activity but as truly imaginative in their own right. Wellner concludes with a qualified “no.” The use of AI algorithms in conjunction (...) with human cognitive activity, conceived in terms of a layered architecture of the faculties in question, can in fact be understood as an essential component of imaginative, and thus creative, production, but humans are still needed in the mix. To the extent that the AI-algorithm-enhanced human system is capable of imagining and creating works of art, imagination can be extended to AI algorithms. But, the algorithms sans humans are not themselves imaginers. For Wellner, AI algorithms can augment and enhance human imaginative efforts, equipping us with a richer and vastly wider array of possibilities and options for aesthetic consideration, but ultimately, the human is the essential element. However, once the door is opened to accepting algorithmically determined alternatives as capable of successfully achieving desired results within a field of possible outcomes, it seems possible that the activities of connecting, coordinating, or meaningfully linking, combining, and establishing new imaginative layers that Wellner reserves as requiring humans to enact might also be programmable, algorithmically achievable tasks that instantiate genuine aesthetic decision making. (shrink)

Our digital technologies have inspired new ways of thinking about old religious topics. Digitalists include computer scientists, transhumanists, singularitarians, and futurists. Digitalists have worked out novel and entirely naturalistic ways of thinking about bodies, minds, souls, universes, gods, and life after death. Your Digital Afterlives starts with three digitalist theories of life after death. It examines personality capture, body uploading, and promotion to higher levels of simulation. It then examines the idea that reality itself is ultimately a (...) system of self-surpassing computations. On that view, you will have infinitely many digital lives across infinitely many digital worlds. Your Digital Afterlives looks at superhuman bodies and infinite bodies. Thinking of nature in purely computational terms has the potential to radically and positively change our understanding of life after death. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to appraise scholarly works from the 1940s to the contemporary era, examining the scientific quest to transpose human cognition and consciousness into a digital surrogate, while contemplating the potential ramifications should humanity attain such an abstract level of intellect. The discourse commences with an explication of theories concerning consciousness, progressing to the Turing Test apparatus, and intersecting with Damasio’s research on the human cerebrum, particularly in relation to consciousness, thereby establishing congruence between the Turing Test and (...) Damasio’s notions of consciousness. Subsequently, the narrative traverses the evolutionary chronology of transmuting human cognition into machine sapience, and delves into the fervent endeavors to metamorphose human minds into synthetic counterparts. Additionally, theoretical perspectives from the domains of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience provide insight into the constraints intrinsic to AI implementations, contentious hypotheses, the perils concealed within artificial networks, and the ethical considerations necessitated by AI frameworks. Furthermore, contemplation of prospective repercussions facilitates the refinement of strategic approaches to safeguard our future Augmented Age Realities within AI, circumventing the prospect of inhabiting an intimidating technopolis where a mere 30% monopolize the intellect and ingenuity of the remaining 70% of human minds. (shrink)

Digitalists base their thoughts about reality on concepts taken from the sciences of information and computation. For digitalists, these sciences are prior to the physical sciences. Digitalists emphatically reject substance metaphysics. They are neither materialists nor idealists nor dualists. They have their own novel definitions of bodies, minds, lives, and souls. They talk about digital universes running on digital gods, and they regard nature as a recursively self-improving system of computations. They endorse digitized theories of resurrection and (...) reincarnation. But they also argue for deeper and more mathematical approaches to life after death. All these digital ideas are naturalistic. They are consistent with our best sciences. (shrink)

Digital health includes applications for smartphones and smart speakers as well as more traditional ways to access health information electronically, such as through your health care provider's online web‐based patient portal. As the number of digital health offerings—such as smartphone health trackers and web‐based patient portals—grows, what benefit do ethics, or bioethics, perspectives bring to digital health product development? For starters, the field of bioethics is concerned about issues of social justice, including equitable benefit and minimization and (...) fair distribution of the burden of harms. Researchers who employ user‐centered design methods should consider what digital health applications and products would look like if issues like equity and accessibility were foregrounded throughout design and development. One group whose needs are often neglected in the design of digital health products is older adults. Many people anticipate that the digital divide among older adults will close as the current generation of tech‐savvy consumers ages up. But since technology is constantly evolving, this divide may be constantly recreated. As bioethics moves ever further into the technology era, I want it to be mindful of the creation of digital health care disparities. (shrink)

Through this contribution I aim to explore the horizons and limits of digital medicine in light of an embodied approach to the issue of care. I will sketch the historical background of digital medicine and show the contemporary status of this interdisciplinary field, as well as its applications and outcomes. Then, I will address a critique of the computational theory of mind (CTM) upon which many contemporary mental health apps are designed. This approach to the mind is inscribed (...) into the modern trend of neuromania, which conceives the embodied, living human being as a mere series of data analyses and algorithms, with the brain as the seat of the person. Drawing on continental philosophy and classical phenomenology I will develop a notion of health conceived as a moral enterprise, showing how wellbeing and vitality are not reducible to a product made by technologies or doctors, but rather they are the results of an embodied encounter. As such, empathy and person-centered care cannot be achieved by digital medicine. They are the result of a journey into the regions of recognition, embodied presence and the aliveness constituting the person. Finally, I will show how the issue of care cannot be separated from an embodied encounter between people, especially in case of dementia. (shrink)

Representation is central to contemporary theorizing about the mind/brain. But the nature of representation--both in the mind/brain and more generally--is a source of ongoing controversy. One way of categorizing representational types is to distinguish between the analog and the digital: the received view is that analog representations vary smoothly, while digital representations vary in a step-wise manner. I argue that this characterization is inadequate to account for the ways in which representation is used in cognitive science; in its (...) place, I suggest an alternative taxonomy. I will defend and extend David Lewis's account of analog and digital representation, distinguishing analog from continuous representation, as well as digital from discrete representation. I will argue that the distinctions available in this four-fold account accord with representational features of theoretical interest in cognitive science more usefully than the received analog/digital dichotomy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the ubiquitous digital networks in which we are increasingly becoming immersed present a threat to our ability to exercise free will. Using process philosophy, and expanding upon understandings of causal autonomy, the paper outlines a thematic analysis of diary studies and interviews gathered in a project exploring the nature of digital experience. It concludes that without mindfulness in both the use and design of digital devices and services we run the risk of allowing (...) such services to direct our daily lives in ways over which we are increasingly losing control. (shrink)

Up to now, there is a big debate, about what self-consciousness is, what inhibits it, and how this is related to work. By referring to classical theories of mind by Hegel this paper advances the thesis of an apparent congruence of self-consciousness and work as a developmental process in social relationships. This paper aims to open up a wider philosophical horizon for the criticism of current digitalization and the increasing variety of new flexible forms of work design. For example, the (...) working conditions on large digital platforms for taxi drivers tend to inhibit the development of worker`s self-consciousness for two reasons: Firstly, workers on digital platforms are not able to further develop digital tools through their work and this inhibits their intellectual creativity and secondly, the developmental process of the self-consciousness remains restricted because of the asymmetrical recognition, which only obtains by virtue of a process of recognizing and being recognized by others. Creative work and recognition are important for the development of consciousness as self-reflection in digital business, in which organizations operate and people work. (shrink)

Many recent writers have developed a rich system of theological concepts inspired by computers. This is digital theology. Digital theology shares many elements of its eschatology with Christian post-millenarianism. It promises a utopian perfection via technological progress. Modifying Christian soteriology, digital theology makes reference to four types of immortality. I look critically at each type. The first involves transferring our minds from our natural bodies to superior computerized bodies. The second and third types involve bringing into (...) being a previously living person, or person who has never existed, within an artificial digital environment. The fourth involves promotion of our lives into some higher level computational reality. (shrink)

Love taking pictures with your digital camera? Want to improve your skills, but don’t have a lot of time to spend? How about some straight-to-the-point tips that cut to the chase and show you step by step how to accomplish a task? If that sounds like just what you had in mind, Digital Photography Just The Steps For Dummies, 2nd Edition is exactly what you need. This handy, full-color guide breaks down the most important tasks into simple two-page, (...) illustrated instructions. You choose what you want to do, flip to the right page, follow the instructions, and voilà! A new skill is yours! Digital Photography Just The Steps For Dummies, 2nd Edition covers important tasks from choosing a camera to printing your photos or turning them into slideshows or galleries. You’ll be able to: Select and use various lenses Take advantage of your meters Use tripods, screens, and scrims when shooting Work with depth of field Shoot and process Camera Raw images Download and organize your pictures Understand and use color profiles Edit in the “quick fix” mode Restore a vintage photo Create an online photo gallery, greeting cards, calendars, or CD jackets More than 170 digital photography tasks are presented in this easy-to-use, full-color reference. Grab a copy and find out how much more fun you can have with your digital camera! (shrink)

There is much discussion about whether the human mind is a computer, whether the human brain could be emulated on a computer, and whether at all physical entities are computers (pancomputationalism). These discussions, and others, require criteria for what is digital. I propose that a state is digital if and only if it is a token of a type that serves a particular function - typically a representational function for the system. This proposal is made on a syntactic (...) level, assuming three levels of description (physical, syntactic, semantic). It suggests that being digital is a matter of discovery or rather a matter of how we wish to describe the world, if a functional description can be assumed. Given the criterion provided and the necessary empirical research, we should be in a position to decide on a given system (e.g. the human brain) whether it is a digital system and can thus be reproduced in a different digital system (since digital systems allow multiple realization). (shrink)

Growing demand for broadly accessible mental health care, together with the rapid development of new technologies, trigger discussions about the feasibility of psychotherapeutic interventions based on interactions with Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI). Many authors argue that while currently available CAI can be a useful supplement for human-delivered psychotherapy, it is not yet capable of delivering fully fledged psychotherapy on its own. The goal of this paper is to investigate what are the most important obstacles on our way to developing CAI (...) systems capable of delivering psychotherapy in the future. To this end, we formulate and discuss three challenges central to this quest. Firstly, we might not be able to develop effective AI-based psychotherapy unless we deepen our understanding of what makes human-delivered psychotherapy effective. Secondly, assuming that it requires building a therapeutic relationship, it is not clear whether psychotherapy can be delivered by non-human agents. Thirdly, conducting psychotherapy might be a problem too complicated for narrow AI, i.e., AI proficient in dealing with only relatively simple and well-delineated tasks. If this is the case, we should not expect CAI to be capable of delivering fully-fledged psychotherapy until the so-called “general” or “human-like” AI is developed. While we believe that all these challenges can ultimately be overcome, we think that being mindful of them is crucial to ensure well-balanced and steady progress on our path to AI-based psychotherapy. (shrink)

Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or (...) science-humanities integration. (shrink)

Se intenta en este trabajo identificar y describir de algún modo, en caso de que exista, la contracultura digital de nuestro tiempo. Con tal propósito en mente, en primer lugar, el autor esboza sus presuposiciones con respecto la cultura, la tecnología digital, la cultura digital y la contracultura, bajo las ópticas que imponen la naturaleza de este artículo. Digital Culture and Counter-Culture: an Essay It is attempted in this work to identify and to describe somehow, in (...) case it exists, the digital counterculture of our time. With such a purpose in mind, first of all, the author sketches his presuppositions regarding culture, digital technology, digital culture and counterculture, under the optics that imposes the nature of this article. (shrink)

I argue that sometimes a group can author a work of art without the work being either co-authored or multiply-authored. Sometimes the group, itself, is an author, rather than any of its members alone or together. I argue that when a group is an author like this, it has mental properties that no individual member of the group possesses. For example, we can consider the groups that authored digital remixes based on a film titled #INTRODUCTIONS created by the artists (...) LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner. YouTubers posted their digital remixes online, and the question is: Who authored those remixes? I contend that many digital remixes are authored by groups that are capable of cognition. (shrink)

Many digital technologies, designed and controlled by intensive data-driven corporate platforms, have become ubiquitous for many of our daily activities. This has raised political and ethical concerns over how they might be threatening our personal autonomy. However, not much philosophical attention has been paid to the specific role that their hyper-designed (sensorimotor) interfaces play in this regard. In this paper, we aim to offer a novel framework that can ground personal autonomy on sensorimotor interaction and, from there, directly address (...) how technological design affects personal autonomy. To do this, we will draw from enactive sensorimotor approaches to cognition, focusing on the central notion of habits, understood as sensorimotor schemes that, in networked relations, give rise to sensorimotor agency. Starting from sensorimotor agency as a basis for more complex forms of personal autonomy, our approach gives us grounds to analyse our relationship with technology (in general) and to distinguish between autonomy-enhancing and autonomy-diminishing technologies. We argue that, by favouring/obstructing the enactment of certain (networks of) habits over others, technologies can directly act upon our personal autonomy, locally and globally. With this in mind, we then discuss how current digital technologies are often being designed to be autonomy-diminishing (as is the case of “dark patterns” in design), and sketch some ideas on how to build more autonomy-enhancing digital technologies. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for three claims. The first is that the difference between analog and digital representation lies in the format and not the medium of representation. The second is that whether a given system is analog or digital will sometimes depend on facts about the user of that system. The third is that the first two claims are implicit in Haugeland's (1998) account of the distinction.

Mind, Matter, and Method was first published in 1966. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This volume of twenty-six essays by as many contributors is published in honor of Herbert Feigl, professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota and director of the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science. Though the majority of the contributors are philosophers, there are also (...) -- as benefits Mr. Feigl's varied intellectual interests -- representatives of psychology, psychoanalysis, and physics. The first group of ten essays deals with the philosophy of mind, particularly with the mind-body problem, to which Mr. Feigl has devoted much attention. The eleven essays in the second part are concerned with problems of philosophical method, especially with induction and confirmation. The third part is comprised of five essays on the philosophy of the physical sciences. A biographical sketch of Mr. Feigl and a bibliography of his writings are also provided. (shrink)

Dishonesty is prevalent and causes great damage to society. On an individual level, besides reaping rewards, it also carries a psychological cost for those who engage in it. This principle is used to make people more honest with behavioral interventions, one of them being the well-known ‘signature nudge’. Digital transition in society has however led to changes in the way people sign, which may affect the effectiveness of this nudge. In two experiments, the current study investigates the relationship between (...) digital signatures and honesty, building on previous research by examining novel signature types, the moderating role of personal characteristics, effect decay, and the predicting value of digital signature characteristics. Results show no effect of any signature intervention and no unilateral relation between digital signature characteristics and subsequent behavior. These findings contrast with earlier research and cast doubt on the use of signature interventions as a tool to prevent or predict dishonest behavior. (shrink)

There are different ways to present a Presidential Address to the APA; the one I have chosen is simply to report on work that I am doing right now, on work in progress. I am going to present some of my further explorations into the computational model of the mind.\**.

This special issue seeks to problematize the role of digital technologies in the constitution of the self, taking up the phenomenological premise that experiential structures are shaped and renegotiated through interactions between subjects, environments, and the manipulation of both real and fictional objects. The articles herein address the effects of digital technologies on the human self and, conversely, the active, open, and plastic ways that the self experiences and shapes the digital w...

Smartphone use plays an increasingly important role in our daily lives. Philosophical research that has used first wave or second wave theories of extended cognition in order to understand our engagement with digital technologies has focused on the contribution of these technologies to the completion of specific cognitive tasks (e.g., remembering, reasoning, problem-solving, navigation).However, in a considerable number of cases, everyday smartphone use is task-unrelated. In psychological research, these cases have been captured by notions such as absent-minded smart-phone use (...) (Marty-Dugas et al., 2018) or smartphone-related inattentiveness (Liebherr et al., 2020).Given the prevalence of these cases, we develop a conceptual framework that can accommodate the functional and phenomenological characteristics of task-unrelated smartphone use. To this end, we will integrate research on second wave extended cognition with mind-wandering research and introduce the concept of ‘extended mind-wandering’. Elaborating the family resemblances approach to mind-wandering (Seli, Kane, Smallwood, et al., 2018), we will argue that task-unrelated smartphone use shares many characteristics with mind-wandering. We will suggest that an empirically informed conceptual analysis of cases of extended mind-wandering can enrich current work on digitally extended cognition by specifying the influence of the attention economy on our cognitive dynamics. (shrink)

The concept of a digital twin comes from engineering.1 It refers to a digital model of an artefact in the real world, which takes data about the artefact itself, data about other such artefacts, among other things, as inputs. The idea is that the maintenance of artefacts—such as jet engines—can be vastly improved if we work with digital twins that simulate actual objects. Similarly, personalised medicine might benefit from the digital modelling of body parts or even (...) whole human bodies. A medical digital twin could use data about the patient, more general population data, and other inputs to generate predictions about the patient. This could lead to highly personalised interventions and nuanced judgments about the patient’s health. Matthias Braun2 discusses this intriguing prospect, asking how we should think about the way in which a digital twin could represent a patient. I will respond to Braun’s striking suggestion that we can regard a digital twin as an extension of the patient’s body. Notably, Braun does not compare his just-mentioned idea with the extended mind thesis popularised by Andy Clark and David Chalmers.3 But I am sure many readers will be reminded of the extended mind thesis. Accordingly, I will consider this comparison. I cannot discuss this comparison in detail, nor fully evaluate Braun’s suggestion. But I can say something about how we might approach this comparison, and provide some …. (shrink)

The ‘received view’ of the analog–digital distinction holds that analog representations are continuous while digital representations are discrete. In this paper I first provide support for the received view by showing how it (1) emerges from the theory of computation, and (2) explains engineering practices. Second, I critically assess several recently offered alternatives, arguing that to the degree they are justified they demonstrate not that the received view is incorrect, but rather that distinct senses of the terms have (...) become entrenched specific fields, perhaps most notably in the cognitive psychology of mental imagery. (shrink)

This article develops a framework for analysing how digital software and models become mediums for creative imagination in architectural design. To understand the hermeneutics of these relationships, we develop key concepts from Material Engagement Theory (MET) and Postphenomenology (PP). To push these frameworks into the realm of digital design, we develop the concept of Digital Materiality. Digital Materiality describes the way successive layers of mathematics, code, and software come to mediate enactive perception, and the possibilities of (...) creative material engagement actualised in work with software. Just as molecular materials come to transform action with material objects, so digital materiality comes to enable and transform creative practices with computers. Digital architectural design form a new space for ongoing enactive discovery and creativity through manipulation of digital models and their underlying software environments. By shifting relationships within their digital models, architects can direct their attention, intention, and imagination towards widely different aspects of the model. Here, creative imagination becomes a fundamentally situated activity where mind emerges through dynamic interaction between a variety of embodied, material, and cultural domains. (shrink)