The question about the potential for consciousness of artificial systems has often been addressed using thought experiments, which are often problematic in the philosophy of mind. A more promising approach is to use real experiments to gather data about the correlates of consciousness in humans, and develop this data into theories that make predictions about human and artificial consciousness. A key issue with an experimental approach is that consciousness can only be measured using behavior, which places fundamental limits on our (...) ability to identify the correlates of consciousness. This paper formalizes these limits as a distinction between type I and type II potential correlates of consciousness (PCCs). Since it is not possible to decide empirically whether type I PCCs are necessary for consciousness, it is indeterminable whether a machine that lacks neurons or hemoglobin, for example, is potentially conscious. A number of responses have been put forward to this problem, including suspension of judgment, liberal and conservative attribution of the potential for consciousness and a psychometric scale that models our judgment about the relationship between type I PCCs and consciousness. (shrink)

This paper is a review of the work that has been carried out on machine consciousness. A clear overview of this diverse field is achieved by breaking machine consciousness down into four different areas, which are used to understand its aims, discuss its relationship with other subjects and outline the work that has been carried out so far. The criticisms that have been made against machine consciousness are also covered, along with its potential benefits, and the work that has been (...) done on analysing systems for signs of consciousness. Some of the social and ethical issues raised by machine consciousness are examined at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the (...) consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how 'designer' states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Research is starting to identify correlations between consciousness and some of the spatiotemporal patterns in the physical brain. For theoretical and practical reasons, the results of experiments on the correlates of consciousness have ambiguous interpretations. At any point in time a number of hypotheses co-exist about and the correlates of consciousness in the brain, which are all compatible with the current experimental results. This paper argues that consciousness should be attributed to any system that exhibits spatiotemporal physical patterns that match (...) the hypotheses about the correlates of consciousness that are compatible with the current experimental results. Some computers running some programs should be attributed consciousness because they produce spatiotemporal patterns in the physical world that match those that are potentially linked with consciousness in the human brain. (shrink)

David Gamez, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 21 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400046.

Scientific research on consciousness is attempting to gather data about the relationship between consciousness and the physical world. The basic procedure is to measure consciousness through first-person reports, measure the physical world and look for correlations between these sets of measurements. While this work has focused on neural correlates of consciousness, it has also been proposed that information states in the brain might be linked to consciousness. This paper uses Floridi’s distinction between dedomena, data and information to state this claim (...) more precisely and suggests that the best starting point for this work is the potential correlation between data patterns and consciousness. Floridi’s method of levels of abstraction is used to understand how data can be measured at different levels of abstraction in the brain and the paper examines a number of problems with this work, which could make it difficult to prove that data patterns are correlated with consciousness. (shrink)

Conscious technology features in many Black Mirror episodes. For example, there are the cookies in White Christmas, the people uploaded into the San Junipero simulation, Robert Daly's digital copies of his coworkers in USS Callister, and the copy of Clayton Leigh that is exhibited in Black Museum. But would such pieces of technology really be conscious? Would they, for example, feel pain? And how could we tell? Is uploading or replicating someone's consciousness even possible? This chapter explores these questions and (...) discusses the ethical issues that are raised by consciousness technology. (shrink)

O que queremos dizer atualmente quando falamos sobre filosofia? Como a filosofia se relaciona com a ciência, com a política e a literatura? Que métodos o filósofo moderno utiliza, e como a filosofia progride? A filosofia é diferente de um lugar para outro? O que a filosofia pode fazer por nós? E o que não pode fazer? Este livro diz o que a filosofia é e também nos mostra a filosofia contemporânea em ação.

This paper describes how Tononi’s information integration theory of consciousness was used to make detailed predictions about the distribution of phenomenal states in a spiking neural network. This network had approximately 18,000 neurons and 700,000 connections and it used models of emotion and imagination to control the eye movements of a virtual robot and avoid ‘negative’ stimuli. The first stage in the analysis was the development of a formal definition of Tononi’s theory of consciousness. The network was then analysed for (...) information integration and detailed predictions were made about the distribution of consciousness for each time step of recorded activity. This work demonstrates how an artificial system can be analysed for consciousness using a particular theory and in the future this approach could be used to make predictions about the phenomenal states associated with biological systems. (shrink)

This book addresses the question "What is Philosophy?" by gathering together responses from philosophers working in a variety of areas.

What do we mean when we talk about philosophy today? How does philosophy relate to science, to politics, to literature? What methods does the modern philosopher use, and how does philosophy progress? Does philosophy differ from place to place? What can philosophy do for us? And what can it not do? This book, with contributions from such exciting and influential contemporary philosophers as Simon Blackburn, Michael Friedman, Simon Critchley and Manuel DeLanda, offers us a fascinating picture of the character and (...) methods of philosophy; its possibilities and its limitations. And of course, it is itself a piece of philosophy in action, not merely offering us answers but also prompting us to ask further questions and to philosophise for ourselves. (shrink)

Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the “machine question” by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes situations where either (...) human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On “relational” views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings. (shrink)

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question (...) whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy. (shrink)

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

By means of an example, shows the possibility of beliefs that are separately rational whilst together inconsistent.

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 1, Page 118-149, March 2022.

In this paper, I provide the outlines of an alternative metaphilosophical orientation for Continental philosophy, namely, a form of scientific naturalism that has proximate roots in the work of Bachelard and Althusser. I describe this orientation as an “alternative” insofar as it provides a framework for doing justice to some of the motivations behind the recent revival of metaphysics in Continental philosophy, in particular its ecological-ethical motivations. In the second section of the paper, I demonstrate how ecological-ethical issues motivate new (...) metaphysicians like Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, Ian Bogost, and Graham Harman to impute to objects real features of agency. I also try to show how their commitments lead to deep ambiguities in their metaphysical projects. In the final section, I outline a type of scientific naturalism in Continental philosophy that parallels the sort of naturalism championed by Quine, both conceptually and historically, and suggest that it might serve our ecological-ethical purposes better. (shrink)

How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.

In ecology, if the considered area or space is large, the spatial distribution of individuals of a given plant species is never homogeneous; plants form different patches. The homogeneity change in space or in time (in particular, the related change-point problem) is an important research subject in mathematical statistics. In the paper, for a given data system along a straight line, two areas are considered, where the data of each area come from different discrete distributions, with unknown parameters. In the (...) paper a method is presented for the estimation of the distribution change-point between both areas and an estimate is given for the distributions separated by the obtained change-point. The solution of this problem will be based on the maximum likelihood method. Furthermore, based on an adaptation of the well-known bootstrap resampling, a method for the estimation of the so-called change-interval is also given. The latter approach is very general, since it not only applies in the case of the maximum-likelihood estimation of the change-point, but it can be also used starting from any other change-point estimation known in the ecological literature. The proposed model is validated against typical ecological situations, providing at the same time a verification of the applied algorithms. (shrink)

The mystery of existence and our place in that mystery--as expressed in a single Chinese landscape painting: a new work of meditative philosophy by the renowned translator of the Chinese classics and author of Hunger Mountain. Join David Hinton, the premier modern translator of the Chinese classics, as he stands before a single landscape painting, discovering in it the wondrous story of existence—and as part of that story, the magical nature of consciousness. What he coaxes from the image is (...) nothing less than a revelation: the dynamic interweaving of mind and Cosmos, and the glorious dance of Absence and Presence that is the secret of that Cosmos. The painting called Peaceful-Distance Pavilion by Shih-t'ao (1642-1707) is, like other paintings in that genre, mostly space: one tiny figure, accompanied by an attendant, looks out over a vast landscape of mountains and clouds. But start looking into that space and, with the right guidance, what you end up seeing is profound. David Hinton is the perfect guide. He uses his knowledge of Chinese philosophy, poetry, art, language, and writing system to illuminate this painting's message, which is ultimately the story of the glorious dance between nothing and everything, between emptiness and existence. It's an enthralling journey that can change the way you look at the world, a journey for which David is a wise and eloquent guide. (shrink)

Seeing, really seeing, is like meditation. In a world filled with distraction, seeing mindfully is a way to pay attention, to hit pause and find calm by focusing on what’s directly in front of us. See Your Way to Mindfulness is a gift book of inspiration and instruction to help readers open their eyes—and their “I’s.” Written by David Schiller, author of the national bestseller The Little Zen Companion, it’s a collection of quotes, prompts, exercises, meditations—married with photographs and (...) drawings that bring the words to life. The quotes are from artists, Buddhists, philosophers, poets, and more, all centered on the theme of how “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” (Marcel Proust). The short, playful exercises and prompts—like Seeing in the Rain, Eye Spy with My Open I, Spend 30 Minutes Taking a Five-Minute Walk, Get Lost—are designed to disrupt routine and inspire readers to see for themselves. Some of the exercises involve drawing, writing, and taking photographs, opening a path to creativity as well as showing how to engage in the moment. Think of it as the Zen of seeing—a new way to look at the world afresh and rediscover joy in the everyday. (shrink)

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

Om den menneskelige erkendelses udvikling fra oldtiden til i dag - med fokus på især naturvidenskabens opdagelser.

Nietzsche and the theater -- Zukunftstheater! -- How to theatricalize with a hammer -- Nietzsche contra Nietzsche -- The theater and Nietzsche -- Ecce Strindberg -- The genealogy of Shaw -- Thus spake O'Neill -- Epilogue: Centaurs.

Tout oppose les œuvres de William et Henry James, le philosophe américain fondateur du pragmatisme et le romancier, auteur de Portrait de femme et des Ailes de la colombe. L'un se présente comme le philosophe des vérités concrètes, l'inventeur d'un empirisme " radical ", résolument tourné vers une pensée pratique sans cesse reconduite vers l'expérience directe des réalités sensibles ; l'autre se présente au contraire comme le romancier de l'indirect et dresse le portrait de consciences qui ne cessent de s'interpréter (...) les unes les autres en s'éloignant toujours davantage du socle des certitudes sensibles. Mais s'agit-il d'une opposition? N'a-t-on pas en réalité affaire à une sorte d'échange ou de vol mutuel? L'un fait de la philosophie une sorte de roman d'aventures tandis que l'autre fait du roman la forme réfléchie par excellence, le récit du mental et de ses modes de raisonnement. L'un fait de l'action le nouveau centre de gravité de la philosophie ; l'autre fait de la pensée le nouveau sujet du roman, comme si chacun volait à l'autre ce qui jusqu'alors lui revenait de droit. C'est de ce vol ou cet échange dont il s'agit de faire le récit conceptuel. (shrink)

We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes irreducibly de se observations can be powerful evidence for or against believing in metaphysical theories.

It has been argued that metaphor and emotion processing are tightly linked together. Here we explore whether neuroscientific evidence supports this claim.

Worries about mental causation are prominent in contemporary discussions of the mind and human agency. Originally, the problem of mental causation was that of understanding how a mental substance (thought to be immaterial) could interact with a material substance, a body. Most philosophers nowadays repudiate immaterial minds, but the problem of mental causation has not gone away. Instead, focus has shifted to mental properties. How could mental properties be causally relevant to bodily behavior? How could something mental qua mental cause (...) what it does? After looking at the traditional Problem of Interaction, we survey various versions of the property-based problem and look at proposed solutions to them. (shrink)

This paper argues against a common misunderstanding of Foucault's work. Even after the release of his lectures at the Collège de France, which ran throughout the 1970s until his death in 1984, he is still often taken to have made an "ethical" turn toward the end of his life. As opposed to his genealogies of power published in the 1970s, which are relentlessly suspicious of claims of individual agency, his final monographs focus on the ethical self-formation of free individuals. I (...) suggest that this basic misinterpretation makes possible interpretations of Foucault's work as being sympathetic to neoliberal government, by linking the ethical turn to a "liberal" or "neoliberal" turn in his thought. I present a case against the ethical turn by arguing that Foucault's main focus, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, is a concern for the ways in which we become obligated by truth. (shrink)

In this article I want to argue that Foucault’s engagement with the Iranian Revolution was neither romantic fascist atavism nor does it presage any sort of transformation of his thought. Indeed, Foucault’s investigations of neoliberalism and subsequent work on spirituality, truth-telling and ethics are fully continuous with his critical genealogy of power. This is an important point, as we shall see, insofar as Foucault’s journalism on the Iranian Revolution occurs in the midst of his Collège de France lectures on biopolitics (...) and governmentality. Foucault’s enthusiasm for the Revolution might indicate, albeit very indirectly, directions for thought that might resist neoliberalism. I will argue that Foucault was engaged in a very specific telling of the ‘history of truth’, emphasizing a partisan and agonistic form of truth-telling and transformation through struggle and ordeal, as opposed to the pacifying, neutralizing and normalizing forms of modern Western power. The ‘political spirituality’ Foucault wit... (shrink)

Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering, and demographic forecasting raise new questions that strain the categories and assumptions of traditional ethical theories. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound problems of the limits of ethics and the nature of value. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and (...) impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992. (shrink)