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- Manuel de Pinedo-Garcia & Jason Noble (2008). Beyond Persons: Extending the Personal/Subpersonal Distinction to Non-Rational Animals and Artificial Agents. Biology and Philosophy 23 (1).The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends to do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centred concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered.In my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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We all know about the vehicle/content distinction (see Dennett 1991a, Millikan 1991, 1993). We shouldn't confuse properties represented in content with properties of vehicles of content. In particular, we shouldn't confuse the personal and subpersonal levels. The contents of the mental states of subject/agents are at the personal level. Vehicles of content are causally explanatory subpersonal events or processes or states. We shouldn't suppose that the properties of vehicles must be projected into what they represent for subject/agents, or vice versa. (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: cogprints.org cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk warwick.ac.uk citebase.eprints.org blackwell-synergy.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: cogprints.org cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk warwick.ac.uk citebase.eprints.org blackwell-synergy.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal and sub-personal levels as interaction withoutreduction.There are downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level but we find upward explanatory gaps when we try to construct illuminating accounts of personal level conditions using just sub-personal level notions. This conception faces several serious challenges but the objection that I consider in this paper says that, when theories support downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level, this is the product (...)
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| | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | More.. This paper attempts in the first instance to clarify the application of the personal/sub-personal distinction to psychoanalysis and to indicate how this issue is related to that of psychoanalysis" epistemology. It is argued that psychoanalysis may be regarded either as a form of personal psychology, or as a form of jointly personal and sub-personal psychology, but not as a form of sub-personal psychology. It is further argued that psychoanalysis indicates a problem with the personal/sub-personal distinction itself as understood by Dennett (...)
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| | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | More.. I claim that consciousness, just as thought or action, is only to be found at the personal level of explanation. Dennett's account is often taken to be at odds with this view, as it is seen as explicating consciousness in terms of sub-personal processes. Against this reading, and especially as it is developed by John McDowell, I argue that Dennett's work is best understood as maintaining a sharp personal/sub-personal distinction. To see this, however, we need to understand better what content (...)
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| | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | More.. In their important paper “Autonomous Agents”, Floridi and Sanders use “levels of abstraction” to argue that computers are or may soon be moral agents. In this paper we use the same levels of abstraction to illuminate differences between human moral agents and computers. In their paper, Floridi and Sanders contributed definitions of autonomy, moral accountability and responsibility, but they have not explored deeply some essential questions that need to be answered by computer scientists who design artificial agents. One such question (...)
In their important paper “Autonomous Agents”, Floridi and Sanders use “levels of abstraction” to argue that computers are or may soon be moral agents. In this paper we use the same levels of abstraction to illuminate differences between human moral agents and computers. In their paper, Floridi and Sanders contributed definitions of autonomy, moral accountability and responsibility, but they have not explored deeply some essential questions that need to be answered by computer scientists who design artificial agents. One such question (...)
Since 1969, when Dennett introduced a distinction between personal and sub-personal levels of explanation, many philosophers have used 'sub-personal' very loosely, and Dennett himself has abandoned a view of the personal level as genuinely autonomous. I recommend a position in which Dennett's original distinction is crucial, by arguing that the phenomenon called mental causation is on view only at the properly personal level. If one retains the commit-' ments incurred by Dennett's early distinction, then one has a satisfactory anti-physicalistic, anti-dualist (...)
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| | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | More.. This paper argues that, while there is a difference between personal and sub-personal explanation, claims of autonomy should be treated with scepticism. It distinguishes between horizontal and vertical explanatory relations that might hold between facts at the personal and farts at the sub-personal level. Noting that many philosophers are prepared to accept vertical explanatory relations between the two levels, I argue for the stronger claim that, in the case of at least three central personal level phenomena, the demands of explanatory (...)
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| | Other links: informaworld.com | Scholar | More.. The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative values, reasons, and principles; Derek Parfit (...)
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A situated agent is one which operates within an environment. In most cases, the environment in which the agent exists will be more complex than the agent itself. This means that an agent, human or artificial, which wishes to carry out non-trivial operations in its environment must use techniques which allow an unbounded world to be represented within a cognitively bounded agent. We present a brief description of some important theories within the fields of epistemology and metaphysics. We then discuss (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: portal.acm.org springerlink.com kluweronline.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: portal.acm.org springerlink.com kluweronline.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. 
