Cybernetics promoted machine-supported investigations of adaptive sensorimotor behaviours observed in biological systems. This methodological approach receives renewed attention in contemporary robotics, cognitive ethology, and the cognitive neurosciences. Its distinctive features concern machine experiments, and their role in testing behavioural models and explanations flowing from them. Cybernetic explanations of behavioural events, regularities, and capacities rely on multiply realizable mechanism schemata, and strike a sensible balance between causal and unifying constraints. The multiple realizability of cybernetic mechanism schemata paves the way to principled (...) comparisons between biological systems and machines. Various methodological issues involved in the transition from mechanism schemata to their machine instantiations are addressed here, by reference to a simple sensorimotor coordination task. These concern the proper treatment of ceteris paribus clauses in experimental settings, the significance of running experiments with correct but incomplete machine instantiations of mechanism schemata, and the advantage of operating with real machines ??? as opposed to simulated ones ??? immersed in real environments. (shrink)

The import of computational learning theories and techniques on the ethics of human-robot interaction is explored in the context of recent developments of personal robotics. An epistemological reflection enables one to isolate a variety of background hypotheses that are needed to achieve successful learning from experience in autonomous personal robots. The conjectural character of these background hypotheses brings out theoretical and practical limitations in our ability to predict and control the behaviour of learning robots in their interactions with humans. Responsibility (...) ascription problems, which concern damages caused by learning robot actions, are analyzed in the light of these epistemic limitations. Finally, a broad framework is outlined for ethically motivated scientific inquiries, which aim at improving our capability to understand, anticipate, and selectively cope with harmful errors by learning robots. (shrink)

Research on hybrid bionic systems (HBSs) is still in its infancy but promising results have already been achieved in laboratories. Experiments on humans and animals show that artificial devices can be controlled by neural signals. These results suggest that HBS technologies can be employed to restore sensorimotor functionalities in disabled and elderly people. At the same time, HBS research raises ethical concerns related to possible exogenous and endogenous limitations to human autonomy and freedom. The analysis of these concerns requires reflecting (...) on the availability of scientific models accounting for key aspects of sensorimotor coordination and plastic adaptation mechanisms in the brain. (shrink)

Robots are being extensively used for the purpose of discovering and testing empirical hypotheses about biological sensorimotor mechanisms. We examine here methodological problems that have to be addressed in order to design and perform “good” experiments with these machine models. These problems notably concern the mapping of biological mechanism descriptions into robotic mechanism descriptions; the distinction between theoretically unconstrained “implementation details” and robotic features that carry a modeling weight; the role of preliminary calibration experiments; the monitoring of experimental environments for (...) disturbing factors that affect both modeling features and theoretically unconstrained implementation details of robots. Various assumptions that are gradually introduced in the process of setting up and performing these robotic experiments become integral parts of the background hypotheses that are needed to bring experimental observations to bear on biological mechanism descriptions. (shrink)

When a person performs or fails to perform a morally significant action, we sometimes think that a particular kind of response is warranted. Praise and blame are perhaps the most obvious forms this reaction might take. For example, one who encounters a car accident may be regarded as worthy of praise for having saved a child from inside the burning car, or alternatively, one may be regarded as worthy of blame for not having used one's mobile phone to call for (...) help. To regard such agents as worthy of one of these reactions is to ascribe moral responsibility to them on the basis of what they have done or left undone. (These are examples of other-directed ascriptions of responsibility. The reaction might also be self-directed, e.g., one can recognize oneself to be blameworthy). Thus, to be morally responsible for something, say an action, is to be worthy of a particular kind of reaction —praise, blame, or something akin to these—for having performed it.[1.. (shrink)

Abstract. The rapid developments of robotics technologies in the last twenty years of the XX century have greatly encouraged research on the use of robots for surgery, diagnosis, rehabilitation, prosthetics, and assistance to disabled and elderly people. This chapter provides an overview of robotic technologies and systems for health care, focussing on various ethical problems that these technologies give rise to. These problems notably concern the protection of human physical and mental integrity, autonomy, responsibility, ...