Brain implants, such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which are designed to improve motor, mood and behavioural pathology, present unique challenges to our understanding of identity, agency and free will. This is because these devices can have visible effects on persons' physical and psychological properties yet are essentially undetectable when operating correctly. They can supplement and compensate for one's inherent abilities and faculties when they are compromised by neuropsychiatric disorders. Further, unlike talk therapy or pharmacological treatments, patients need not ‘do’ (...) anything for the treatment to take effect. If one accepts, as we argue here, that brain implants are unique among implantable types of devices, then this can have significant implications for what it means to persist as the same person and be the source of one's thoughts and actions. By examining two of the most common indications for DBS in current use, namely in the motor (Parkinson's Disease) and psychiatric (Major Depression) domains, we further argue that although DBS, as it is currently applied, does not necessarily represent a unique threat to personal identity and agency per se, it introduces an unprecedented ‘third party’ into the debate on these concepts. In this way, DBS can be used as a tool to begin probing, both conceptually and empirically, some of philosophy's most perennial metaphysical questions. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The article begins with a discussion about what might constitute consciousness in entities other than oneself and the implications of the mind-brain debate for the possibility of a conscious machine. While referring to several other facets of the philosophy of mind, the author focuses on epiphenomenalism and interactionism and presents a critique of the former in terms of biological evolution. The interactionist argument supports the relevance of parapsychology to the problem of consciousness and the statistical technique of meta-analysis is cited (...) in support of this position. (shrink)

The emergence of electronic computers in the last thirty years has given rise to many interesting questions. Many of these questions are technical, relating to a machine’s ability to perform complex operations in a variety of circumstances. While some of these questions are not without philosophical interest, the one question which above all others has stimulated philosophical interest is explicitly non-technical and it can be expressed crudely as follows: Can a machine be said to think and, if so, in what (...) sense? The issue has received much attention in the scholarly journals with articles and arguments appearing in great profusion, some resolutely answering this question in the affirmative, some, equally resolutely, answering this question in the negative, and others manifesting modified rapture. While the ramifications of the question are enormous I believe that the issue at the heart of the matter has gradually emerged from the forest of complications. (shrink)

A wide range of expressions are predicable literally or primarily only of human beings and of creatures that behave like them. The English word 'mind' is connected primarily with the intellect and the will. To have a mind to do something is to be inclined or tempted to do it, and to have half a mind to do something is to be sorely tempted, perhaps against one's better judgement. Artificial‐intelligence scientists insist that they are already building machines that can (...) think and see, recognize and identify, make choices and decisions. Chess‐playing machines can 'beat' chess‐masters, and computers can 'calculate' far more efficiently and quickly than mathematicians. Machines, unlike living creatures, do not have a body, although they are bodies. Machines and their parts have purposes and functions: viz. those which they were designed to fulfil. (shrink)

Walmsley offers a succinct introduction to major philosophical issues in artificial intelligence for advanced students of philosophy of mind, cognitive science and psychology. Whilst covering essential topics, it also provides the student with the chance to engage with cutting edge debates.

Machines have always been a tool or technical instrument for human beings to facilitate and to accelerate processes through mechanical power. The same applies to robots nowadays – the next step in the evolution of machines. Over the course of the last few years, robot usage in society has expanded enormously, and they now carry out a remarkable number of tasks for us. It seems we are on the eve of a historic revolution that will change everything we (...) know right now. But not only robots have an impact on our life. It is digitization in its entirety, including smart applications and games, that confronts us with new spaces. This special volume of Ethics in Progress tries to broaden our understanding of a philosophical field – robots and digitization – that is still in its infancy in terms of it research and literature. (shrink)

I was asked to develop a course “Philosophy and Cognitive Science” to be taught for the first time in Spring 1995 in the Philosophy Department at the University of Alberta. Since my cognitive science-related interests are focussed more towards philosophy mixed with artificial intelligence (A I) and linguistics than towards (say) neuroscience or anthropology, I decided to slant the course in t hat direction. The departmental intent was that this should be an upper-level course, but with no spe cific prerequisite (...) courses. This meant that while there was a “three previous courses in philosophy ” prerequisite, the students could not be expected to have taken any particular course, as (say) a phil osophy of mind course or a logic course. Further, I had in mind that the course would be part of an initiative to create an undergraduate program in Cognitive Science at the University of Alberta, and s o I encouraged students from linguistics, computer science, and psychology who had taken courses in their department like “Language and Mind”, “Introduction to AI”, and “Introduction to Cognit ive Science” to take this course even without the philosophy background. This resulted in the class consisting of about a quarter each philosophy, psychology and computer science majors, with the re st being drawn from linguistics, education, and anthropology. And although this distribution of stud ents arguably lessened the philosophical sophistication of both the lectures and the class discussion, I (and the students, I believe) found the perspectives brought to the topic by these other students to be fascinating and quite provocative. (shrink)

Ernest Nagel Lecture, Columbia University, Sept. 27, 2007.

This edited volume presents perspectives from computer science, information theory, neuroscience and brain imaging, aesthetics, social sciences, psychiatry, and philosophy to answer frontier questions related to artificial intelligence and human experience. Can a machine think, believe, aspire and be purposeful as a human? What is the place in the machine world for hope, meaning and transformative enlightenment that inspires human existence? How, or are, the minds of machines different from that of humans and other species? These questions are (...) responded to along with questions in the intersection of health, intelligence and the brain. It highlights the place of consciousness by attempting to respond to questions with the help of fundamental reflections on human existence, its life-purposes and machine intelligence. The volume is a must-read for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary researchers in humanities and social sciences and philosophy of science who wish to understand the future of AI and society. (shrink)

Technologies are significant in research not only as instruments for gathering data and analyzing information; they also provide a valuable resource for the development of theory—in terms of what has been called the “tools to theory heuristic.” Focusing on the specific example of the fields of educational psychology and instructional technology and design, this paper begins by describing how the workings of the “tools to theory heuristic” are evident in the metaphors and descriptions of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. In each (...) of these psychological paradigms, the mind is understood in terms of a contemporaneous technological innovation: as rudimentary circuitry, as computerized data processing, and finally, in terms of information representation and visualization. The paper then argues that in applied disciplines like educational technology and human–computer interaction, technology plays two important but conflicting roles. It first operates heuristically to explain complex mental phenomena; it is then designed and developed explicitly as a tool for facilitating and developing these same complex mental processes. This paper concludes by arguing that this dual role represents an ethical dilemma—a kind of epistemological and practical “conflict of interest” in instructional technology and in related fields of systems and interface design. (shrink)

In everyday life, as well as in science, we have to deal with and act on the basis of partial (i.e. incomplete, uncertain, or even inconsistent) information. This observation is the source of a broad research activity from which a number of competing approaches have arisen. There is some disagreement concerning the way in which partial or full ignorance is and should be handled. The most successful approaches include both quantitative aspects (by means of probability theory) and qualitative aspect (by (...) means of graphical or causal models or logic). Some of these approaches have important impacts on various disciplines including philosophy, computer science, statistics, mathematics, physics, and social science. Most notably, the relation between causal and probabilistic information is a topic of interest in all of these fields. The general question of how uncertainty is related to ignorance, and the connection thereof to causality, have been the key topics of the international summer school at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in August 2004. This was the third event in a series of summer schools organized by the interdisciplinary research group “Philosophy, Probability, and Modeling”. The group was in operation from September 1st, 2001, until August 31, 2005. The first summer school, held in September 2002, focused on the application of probability theory to topics of philosophical interest. Problems and questions that arise when probabilistic models and techniques are being applied in the special sciences were then discussed during the second summer school, held in July 2003. The fourth and final event in the series, in August 2005, was devoted to philosophical questions related to the application and interpretation of probabilities in physics. Each of the four summer schools attracted 40–50 people from many different countries. It was an inspiring forum for an interdisciplinary discussion among researchers and students from many different areas. This special issue collects a selection of the invited and contributed papers presented at the summer school in 2004. We acknowledge the generous support of the Center for Junior Research Fellows at the University of Konstanz, the Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie e.V., the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Program for the Investment in the Future (ZIP) of the German Government through a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award. We thank the referees of the papers for their work, and James Moor for his interest in dedicating a special issue of this journal to Causality, Uncertainty and Ignorance. (shrink)

In everyday life, as well as in science, we have to deal with and act on the basis of partial (i.e. incomplete, uncertain, or even inconsistent) information. This observation is the source of a broad research activity from which a number of competing approaches have arisen. There is some disagreement concerning the way in which partial or full ignorance is and should be handled. The most successful approaches include both quantitative aspects (by means of probability theory) and qualitative aspect (by (...) means of graphical or causal models or logic). Some of these approaches have important impacts on various disciplines including philosophy, computer science, statistics, mathematics, physics, and social science. Most notably, the relation between causal and probabilistic information is a topic of interest in all of these fields. (shrink)

This special issue of JET deals with questions relating to our radically enhanced future selves or our possible “mind children” – conscious beings that we might bring about through the development of advanced computers and robots. Our mind children might exceed human levels of cognition, and avoid many human limitations and vulnerabilities. In a call for papers earlier this year, the editors asked how far we ought to go with processes that might ultimately convert humans to some sort of post-biological (...) form or replace us with post-biological beings. Are these coherent ideas at all? If so, is it likely, or plausible, that we’ll one day be able to do such things? Even if we can, is that desirable? More generally, how far can all these processes go, and how far should we pursue them? To offer a more personal and pointed question, would you “upload” your personality into some kind of advanced computer or robot if the technology became available? Would you do so even if the process required the destruction of your original organic brain? We are not the first to ask such questions. A large body of relevant literature has built up in recent decades, some of it discussing these and similar questions purely as philosophical thought experiments , but some of it at the level of practical recommendations for a posthuman future. Despite the intensity and quality of the ongoing debate and the eminence of many of the contributors, much work remains to be done to sort it all out and advance the discussion. We have gathered a range of viewpoints, and I predict that some of these pieces will soon be regarded as classics. They may not be the last word – how could they be when they do not all agree with each other? – but they advance our understanding of what is at stake. (shrink)

The Post-Information Age will see the merger of humans and their technologies, perhaps creating an entirely new species.

Brain-machine interfaces are a growing field of research and application. The increasing possibilities to connect the human brain to electronic devices and computer software can be put to use in medicine, the military, and entertainment. Concrete technologies include cochlear implants, Deep Brain Stimulation, neurofeedback and neuroprosthesis. The expectations for the near and further future are high, though it is difficult to separate hope from hype. The focus in this paper is on the effects that these new technologies may have on (...) our ‘symbolic order’—on the ways in which popular categories and concepts may change or be reinterpreted. First, the blurring distinction between man and machine and the idea of the cyborg are discussed. It is argued that the morally relevant difference is that between persons and non-persons, which does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between man and machine. The concept of the person remains useful. It may, however, become more difficult to assess the limits of the human body. Next, the distinction between body and mind is discussed. The mind is increasingly seen as a function of the brain, and thus understood in bodily and mechanical terms. This raises questions concerning concepts of free will and moral responsibility that may have far reaching consequences in the field of law, where some have argued for a revision of our criminal justice system, from retributivist to consequentialist. Even without such a (unlikely and unwarranted) revision occurring, brain-machine interactions raise many interesting questions regarding distribution and attribution of responsibility. (shrink)

The presence of intelligence and rationality in Artificial Intelligence and the Internet requires a new context of analysis in which Herbert Simon’s approach to the sciences of the artificial is surpassed in order to grasp the role of information in our contemporary setting. This new framework requires taking into account some relevant aspects. In the historical endeavor of building up AI and the Internet, minds and machines have interacted over the years and in many ways through the interrelation (...) between scientific creativity and technological innovation. Philosophically, minds and machines can have epistemological, methodological and ontological differences, which are based on the distinct configuration of human intelligence and artificial intelligence. Their comparison with rationality and its various forms is particularly relevant. Scientifically, AI and the Internet belong to the sciences of the artificial, because they work on designs that search for specific aims, following selected processes in order to achieve expected results. Technologically, AI and the Internet require the support of information and communication technologies. These have an instrumental role regarding the existence of AI and the Internet. Also ICT shape their diverse forms of configuration over the years.Within this framework, this paper offers a new context of analysis that goes beyond Simon’s and follows four main steps: the interaction between scientific creativity and technological innovation as the philosophico-methodological setting for Artificial Intelligence and the Internet; artificial intelligence and human intelligence as epistemological basis for machines and minds, where the differences between artificial intelligence and human intelligence are made explicit and the analysis of minds and machines is made from the perspective of rationality ; intention and its difference with design of machine learning are considered to distinguish human intelligence from artificial intelligence; and the internal and external aspects of artificial designs in contemporary society are considered through the perspective of rationality, which leads to the transition from intelligence to rationality in the Internet as well as to the historicity of information. (shrink)

A prominent feature of late nineteenth-century psychology was its intense preoccupation with precision. Precision was at once an ideal and an argument: the quest for precision helped psychology to establish its status as a mature science, sharing a characteristic concern with the natural sciences. We will analyse how psychologists set out to produce precision in 'mental chronometry', the measurement of the duration of psychological processes. In his Leipzig laboratory, Wundt inaugurated an elaborate research programme on mental chronometry. We will look (...) at the problem of calibration of experimental apparatus and will describe the intricate material, literary, and social technologies involved in the manufacture of precision. First, we shall discuss some of the technical problems involved in the measurement of ever shorter time-spans. Next, the Cattell-Berger experiments will help us to argue against the received view that all the precision went into the hardware, and practically none into the social organization of experimentation. Experimenters made deliberate efforts to bring themselves and their subjects under a regime of control and calibration similar to that which reigned over the experimental machinery. In Leipzig psychology, the particular blend of material and social technology resulted in a specific object of study: the generalized mind. We will then show that the distribution of precision in experimental psychology outside Leipzig demanded a concerted effort of instruments, texts, and people. It will appear that the forceful attempts to produce precision and uniformity had some rather paradoxical consequences. (shrink)

We argued [Since this argument appeared in other journals, I am reprising it here, almost verbatim.] (Fulda in J Law Info Sci 2:230–232, 1991/AI & Soc 8(4):357–359, 1994) that the paradox of the preface suggests a reason why machines cannot, will not, and should not be allowed to judge criminal cases. The argument merely shows that they cannot now and will not soon or easily be so allowed. The author, in fact, now believes that when—and only when—they are ready (...) they actually should be so allowed, in the interests of justice. Both the original argument applied and this detailed reconsideration applies exclusively to trial courts, and both specifically exclude(d) sentencing. The argument highlights some key relevant differences between minds and machines and attempts, also, to explain why automation is of far greater import for the first-level justice system (trial courts) than for higher courts. A final section discusses why sentencing was, is, and should be excluded. (shrink)

One of the most influential arguments against the claim that computers can think is that while our intentionality is intrinsic, that of computers is derived: it is parasitic on the intentionality of the programmer who designed the computer-program. Daniel Dennett chose a surprising strategy for arguing against this asymmetry: instead of denying that the intentionality of computers is derived, he endeavours to argue that human intentionality is derived too. I intend to examine that biological plausibility of Dennett’s suggestion and show (...) that Dennett’s argument for the claim that human intentionality is derived because it was designed by natural selection is based on the misunderstanding of how natural selection works. (shrink)

The rise of computers and robots, heralded in science fiction and pervading ever more daily experience, has fostered a rampant temptation to model mind as a mechanism and expect machines one day to simulate all mental reality. This temptation reflects more than technological developments, however. It arises from the perennial dilemma of two complementary approaches to mind that proceed from the assumption of a mind/body duality: one conceiving mind to be wholly immaterial and the other reducing mind to inanimate (...) matter. Exploring the difficulties of these views puts us in a position to evaluate the relation of mind and machine, helped along the way by key insights from Hegel.The notion that mind cannot be material seems confirmed in every moment of self-consciousness, whose purely temporal flow of mental content testifies to the apparent nonspatial existence of mind. Yet so long as mind is construed as immaterial, it lacks the resources to have any temporal ordering, possess any unity, or retain any specifically mental character. Deprived of materiality, mental life is hardly distinguishable from a succession of logical categories that exhibit determinacy in general rather than anything particular to mind. The possibilities of any non-logical content are excluded. Lacking any embodiment, mind has nothing with which passively to receive content in the manner of sensibility, or to retrieve and refashion any such sensible content in images. Mind could perhaps generate conceptual content, but this would be indistinguishable from the thoughts that logic produces in its thinking of thinking. (shrink)