APA Newsletters NEWSLETTER on PHILOSOPHY and COMPUTERS
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APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring
NEWSLETTER | The American Philosophical Association Philosophy and Computers SPRING 2019 VOLUME 18 | NUMBER 2 FEATURED ARTICLE Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot Turing’s Mystery Machine ARTICLES Igor Aleksander Systems with “Subjective Feelings”: The Logic of Conscious Machines Magnus Johnsson Conscious Machine Perception Stefan Lorenz Sorgner Transhumanism: The Best Minds of Our Generation Are Needed for Shaping Our Future PHILOSOPHICAL CARTOON Riccardo Manzotti What and Where Are Colors? COMMITTEE NOTES Marcello Guarini Note from the Chair Peter Boltuc Note from the Editor Adam Briggle, Sky Croeser, Shannon Vallor, D. E. Wittkower A New Direction in Supporting Scholarship on Philosophy and Computers: The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique CALL FOR PAPERS VOLUME 18 | NUMBER 2 SPRING 2019 © 2019 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 APA NEWSLETTER ON Philosophy and Computers PETER BOLTUC, EDITOR VOLUME 18 | NUMBER 2 | SPRING 2019 Polanyi’s? A machine that—although “quite a simple” one— FEATURED ARTICLE thwarted attempts to analyze it? Turing’s Mystery Machine A “SIMPLE MACHINE” Turing again mentioned a simple machine with an Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot undiscoverable program in his 1950 article “Computing UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH, NZ Machinery and Intelligence” (published in Mind). He was arguing against the proposition that “given a discrete- state machine it should certainly be possible to discover ABSTRACT by observation sufficient about it to predict its future This is a detective story. The starting-point is a philosophical behaviour, and this within a reasonable time, say a thousand discussion in 1949, where Alan Turing mentioned a machine years.”3 This “does not seem to be the case,” he said, and whose program, he said, would in practice be “impossible he went on to describe a counterexample: to find.” Turing used his unbreakable machine example to defeat an argument against the possibility of artificial I have set up on the Manchester computer a small intelligence. -
Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln July 2005 Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information Ken R. Herold Hamilton College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Herold, Ken R., "Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information" (2005). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 27. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/27 Library Philosophy and Practice Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring 2001) (www.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/lppv3n2.htm) ISSN 1522-0222 Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information Ken R. Herold Systems Manager Burke Library Hamilton College Clinton, NY 13323 “My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind.” Ovid, Metamorphoses Part I. Library Philosophy Provocation Information seems to be ubiquitous, diaphanous, a-categorical, discrete, a- dimensional, and knowing. · Ubiquitous. Information is ever-present and pervasive in our technology and beyond in our thinking about the world, appearing to be a generic ‘thing’ arising from all of our contacts with each other and our environment, whether thought of in terms of communication or cognition. For librarians information is a universal concept, at its greatest extent total in content and comprehensive in scope, even though we may not agree that all information is library information. · Diaphanous. Due to its virtuality, the manner in which information has the capacity to make an effect, information is freedom. In many aspects it exhibits a transparent quality, a window-like clarity as between source and patron in an ideal interface or a perfect exchange without bias. -
Why Information Matters Luciano Floridi
Why Information Matters Luciano Floridi When we use a computer, its performance seems to degrade progres- sively. This is not a mere impression. Over the years of owning a par- ticular machine, it will get sluggish. Sometimes this slowdown is caused by hardware faults, but more often the culprit is software: programs get more complicated, as more features are added and as old bugs are patched (or not), and greater demands are placed on resources by new programs running in the background. After a while, even rebooting the computer does not restore performance, and the only solution is to upgrade to a new machine. Philosophy can be a bit like a computer getting creakier. It starts well, dealing with significant and serious issues that matter to anyone. Yet, in time, it can get bloated and bogged down and slow. Philosophy begins to care less about philosophical questions than about philosophers’ questions, which then consume increasing amounts of intellectual attention. The problem with philosophers’ questions is not that they are impenetrable to outsiders — although they often are, like any internal game — but that whatever the answers turn out to be, assuming there are any, they do not matter, because nobody besides philosophers could care about the ques- tions in the first place. This is an old problem. In the sixteenth century, the French scholar and doctor François Rabelais satirized scholastic philosophy in his Gargantua and Pantagruel. In a catalogue of 139 invented book titles that he attributes to the library of the Abbey of St. Victor, he lists such titles as “The Niddy-noddy of the Satchel-loaded Seekers, by Friar Blindfastatis” and “The Raver and idle Talker in cases of Conscience.” Centuries later, we seem to be back to the same problem. -
THE LOGIC of BEING INFORMED LUCIANO FLORIDI∗ Abstract One of the Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information Is Wheth- Er T
Logique & Analyse 196 (2006), x–x THE LOGIC OF BEING INFORMED ∗ LUCIANO FLORIDI Abstract One of the open problems in the philosophy of information is wheth- er there is an information logic (IL), different from epistemic (EL) and doxastic logic (DL), which formalises the relation “a is in- formed that p” (Iap) satisfactorily. In this paper, the problem is solved by arguing that the axiom schemata of the normal modal logic (NML) KTB (also known as B or Br or Brouwer's system) are well suited to formalise the relation of “being informed”. After having shown that IL can be constructed as an informational read- ing of KTB, four consequences of a KTB-based IL are explored: information overload; the veridicality thesis (Iap ! p); the relation between IL and EL; and the Kp ! Bp principle or entailment prop- erty, according to which knowledge implies belief. Although these issues are discussed later in the article, they are the motivations be- hind the development of IL. Introduction As anyone acquainted with modal logic (ML) knows, epistemic logic (EL) formalises the relation “a knows that p” (Kap), whereas doxastic logic (DL) formalises the relation “a believes that p” (Bap). One of the open problems in the philosophy of information (Floridi, 2004c) is whether there is also an information logic (IL), different from EL and from DL, that formalises the relation “a is informed that p” (Iap) equally well. The keyword here is “equally” not “well”. One may contend that EL and DL do not capture the relevant relations very well or even not well at all. -
Abstract Papers
Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering WPE2008 The Royal Academy of Engineering London November 10th-12th 2008 Supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry), the British Academy, ASEE Ethics Division, the International Network for Engineering Studies, and the Society for Philosophy & Technology Co-Chairs: David E. Goldberg and Natasha McCarthy Deme Chairs: Igor Aleksander, W Richard Bowen, Joseph C. Pitt, Caroline Whitbeck Contents 1. Workshop Schedule p.2 2. Abstracts – plenary sessions p.5 3. Abstracts – contributed papers p.7 4. Abstracts – poster session p.110 1 Workshop Schedule Monday 10 November 2008 All Plenary sessions take place in F4, the main lecture room 9.00 – 9.30 Registration 9.30 – 9.45 Welcome and introduction of day’s theme(s) Taft Broome and Natasha McCarthy 09.45 – 10.45 Billy V. Koen: Toward a Philosophy of Engineering: An Engineer’s Perspective 10. 45 – 11.15 Coffee break 11. 15 – 12.45 Parallel session – submitted papers A. F1 Mikko Martela Esa Saarinen, Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Mikko Martela and Jukka Luoma: Systems Intelligence Thinking as Engineering Philosophy David Blockley: Integrating Hard and Soft Systems Maarten Frannsen and Bjørn Jespersen: From Nutcracking to Assisted Driving: Stratified Instrumental Systems and the Modelling of Complexity B. F4 Ton Monasso: Value-sensitive design methodology for information systems Ibo van de Poel: Conflicting values in engineering design and satisficing Rose Sturm and Albrecht Fritzsche: The dynamics of practical wisdom in IT- professions C. G1 Ed Harris: Engineering Ethics: From Preventative Ethics to Aspirational Ethics Bocong Li: The Structure and Bonds of Engineering Communities Priyan Dias: The Engineer’s Identity Crisis:Homo Faber vs. -
THE RENAISSANCE of EPISTEMOLOGY Luciano Floridi
XML 052159104Xc42.xml CU979-Baldwin March 18, 2003 19:50 42 THE RENAISSANCE OF EPISTEMOLOGY luciano floridi The renaissance of epistemology between the two world wars forms a bridge between early modern and contemporary philosophy of knowledge. At the turn of the century there had been a resurgence of interest in epistemology through an anti-metaphysical, naturalist, reaction against the nineteenth-century devel- opment of Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian idealism. Within German-speaking philosophy, this reaction had its roots in Helmholtz’s scientific reinterpretation of Kant, in Brentano’s phenomenology, and in Mach’s neutral monism. In British philosophy, it had acquired the specific nature of a rebuttal of Hegelianism by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. And in America, the new pragmatist epistemology of William James and C. S. Peirce had directed attention away from the traditional a priori to the natural sciences. The interwar renaissance of epistemology, however, was not just a continuation of this emancipation from idealism. It was also prompted by major advances in mathematics, logic, and physics which engendered new methodological concerns (as in the influen- tial tradition of French philosophers of science: Duhem, Poincare,´ Bachelard). Hence among the traits that became prominent as a result of this renaissance, one may list an interest in mathematical, natural, and social sciences; criticism of the possibility of synthetic a priori truth; logical and semantic investigations which transformed epistemology from a theory of ideas and judgement into a theory of propositional attitudes, sentences, and meanings; a realist and naturalist orientation that tended to accommodate, if not to privilege, commonsensical and empiricist demands; a reconsideration of the role of philosophy as a critical exercise of analysis rather than as an autonomous and superior form of knowl- edge; and, finally, a disregard for the philosophy of history and the temporal dialectic of conceptual developments. -
Date of Birth 16 November 1964 Nationality Italian Address For
CURRICULUM VITAE LUCIANO FLORIDI PERSONAL DETAILS Date of Birth 16 November 1964 Nationality Italian Address for correspondence Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB, UK E-mail [email protected] Web http://www.philosophyofinformation.net Office +44 (0)1707 285561 QUALIFICATIONS 1992 M.A. status, University of Oxford 1991 Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Warwick 1989 M.Phil. in Philosophy, University of Warwick 1988 Laurea (MA) in Philosophy, Università degli Studi di Roma, “La Sapienza”, with 110/110 et summa cum laude (first class with distinction) AREAS OF SPECIALISATION Philosophy of Information Information/Computer Ethics Epistemology (especially information-theoretical issues) Logic (especially philosophy of logic and epistemic logic) AREAS OF COMPETENCE Ethics Ontology Philosophy of Language Humanities Computing CURRENT POSITIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS since 2007 Professor of Philosophy, Research Chair in Philosophy of Information, Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire. since 2006 Fellow, St Cross College, University of Oxford. since 1999 Member of the OUCL (Dept. of Computer Science), University of Oxford. since 1990 Member of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. AWARDS AND PRIZES 2009 appointed UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics. 2008-9 elected Fellow of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour. 2008-9 elected Gauss Professur by the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Germany, in recognition of my research in philosophy of information (this is a unique award for a philosopher, since it is normally given to mathematicians or physicists). 2008-9 Barwise Medal, awarded by the American Philosophical Association in recognition of my research in ethics and philosophy of information. -
History and Philosophy of Neural Networks
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF NEURAL NETWORKS J. MARK BISHOP Abstract. This chapter conceives the history of neural networks emerging from two millennia of attempts to rationalise and formalise the operation of mind. It begins with a brief review of early classical conceptions of the soul, seating the mind in the heart; then discusses the subsequent Cartesian split of mind and body, before moving to analyse in more depth the twentieth century hegemony identifying mind with brain; the identity that gave birth to the formal abstractions of brain and intelligence we know as `neural networks'. The chapter concludes by analysing this identity - of intelligence and mind with mere abstractions of neural behaviour - by reviewing various philosophical critiques of formal connectionist explanations of `human understanding', `mathematical insight' and `consciousness'; critiques which, if correct, in an echo of Aristotelian insight, sug- gest that cognition may be more profitably understood not just as a result of [mere abstractions of] neural firings, but as a consequence of real, embodied neural behaviour, emerging in a brain, seated in a body, embedded in a culture and rooted in our world; the so called 4Es approach to cognitive science: the Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, and Ecological conceptions of mind. Contents 1. Introduction: the body and the brain 2 2. First steps towards modelling the brain 9 3. Learning: the optimisation of network structure 15 4. The fall and rise of connectionism 18 5. Hopfield networks 23 6. The `adaptive resonance theory' classifier 25 7. The Kohonen `feature-map' 29 8. The multi-layer perceptron 32 9. Radial basis function networks 34 10. -
Neural Network
© 2014 IJIRT | Volume 1 Issue 5 | ISSN : 2349-6002 NEURAL NETWORK Neha, Aastha Gupta, Nidhi Abstract- This research paper gives a short description 1.1.BIOLOGICAL MOTIVATION of what an artificial neural network is and its biological motivation .A clear description of the various ANN The human brain is a great information processor, models and its network topologies has been given. It even though it functions quite slower than an also focuses on the different learning paradigms. This ordinary computer. Many researchers in the field of paper also focuses on the applications of ANN. artificial intelligence look to the organization of the I. INTRODUCTION brain as a model for building intelligent machines.If we think of a sort of the analogy between the In machine learning and related fields, artificial complex webs of interconnected neurons in a brain neural networks (ANNs) are basically and the densely interconnected units making up computational models ,inspired by the biological an artificial neural network, where each unit,which is nervous system (in particular the brain), and are used just like a biological neuron,is capable of taking in a to estimate or the approximate functions that can number of inputs and also producing an output. depend on a large number of inputs applied . The complexity of real neurons is highly abstracted Artificial neural networks are generally presented as when modelling artificial systems of interconnected nerve cells or neurons(“as neurons. These basically consist of inputs (like they are called”) which can compute values from synapses), which are multiplied by weights inputs, and are capable of learning,which is possible (i.e the strength of the respective signals), and then is only due to their adaptive nature. -
NTNU Cyborg: a Study Into Embodying Neuronal Cultures Through Robotic Systems
NTNU Cyborg: A study into embodying Neuronal Cultures through Robotic Systems August Martinius Knudsen Master of Science in Cybernetics and Robotics Submission date: July 2016 Supervisor: Sverre Hendseth, ITK Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Engineering Cybernetics Problem description Through The NTNU Cyborg initiative, a cybernetic (bio-robotic) organism is currently under development. Using neural tissue, cultured on a microelectrode array (MEA), the goal is to use in-vitro biological neurons to control a robotic platform. The objective for this thesis, is to research and discuss the necessary aspects of developing such a cybernetic system. A literary search into similar studies is suggested, along with getting acquainted with the biological sides of the project. The student is free to explore any fields deemed relevant for the goal of embodying a neuronal culture. The student may contribute to this discussion with own ideas and suggestions. Part of the objective for this assignment, is to lay the ground work for a further Phd project as well as for the future development of the NTNU Cyborg system. i Sammendrag Gjennom NTNU Cyborg, er en kybernetisk organisme (en blanding an biologi or robot) under utvikling. Ved hjelp av nevrale vev, dyrket pa˚ toppen av mikroelektroder (MEA), er malet˚ a˚ bruke biologiske nerveceller til a˚ styre en robot. Denne avhandlingen dan- ner grunnlaget for denne utviklingen, og fungerer som et forstudium til en Phd oppgave angaende˚ samme tema. Det har blitt gjennomført en undersøkelse av de nødvendige aspekter ved det a˚ integrere en nervecellekultur i en robot. Med utgangspunkt i lignende forskning, samt kunnskap fra fagomradene˚ nevrovitenskap og informatikk, er de nødvendige komponenter for a˚ bygge et slikt system diskutert. -
Prof. Luciano Floridi
PROF. LUCIANO FLORIDI PROFILE He is the OII’s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he is also the Director of the Digital Ethics Lab of the Oxford Internet Institute. Still in Oxford, he is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics of the Faculty of Philosophy, and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy of the Department of Computer Science. Outside Oxford, he is Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (the national institute for data science) and Chair of its Data Ethics Group; and Adjunct Professor (“Distinguished Scholar in Residence”) of the Department of Economics, American University, Washington D.C. His research concerns primarily Information and Computer Ethics (aka Digital Ethics), the Philosophy of Information, and the Philosophy of Technology. Other research interests include Epistemology, Philosophy of Logic, and the History and Philosophy of Scepticism. He has published over a 150 papers in these areas, in many anthologies and peer-reviewed journals. His works have been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. His lifetime project is a tetralogy (not his term) on the foundation of the philosophy of information, called Principia Philosophiae Informationis. His most recent books are: The Fourth Revolution – How the infosphere is reshaping human reality (Oxford University Press, 2014); The Ethics of Information (Oxford University Press, 2013, volume two of the tetralogy ); The Philosophy of Information (Oxford University Press, 2011, volume one of the tetralogy); Information – A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010). -
The Philosophy of Information As a Conceptual Framework
Preprint from http://www.philosophyofinformation.net This is a preprint of a paper accepted for publication in Knowledge Technology and Policy (Publisher) Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. It is a publisher's requirement to display the following notice: The documents distributed by this server have been provided by the contributing authors as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a noncommercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders, notwithstanding that they have offered their works here electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. In the case of Springer, it is the publisher’s requirement that the following note be added: “An author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and his/her institution’s repository, including his/her final version; however he/she may not use the publisher’s PDF version which is posted on www.springerlink.com. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer’s website.