Will future lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), or ‘killer robots’, be a threat to humanity? The European Parliament has called for a moratorium or ban of LAWS; the ‘Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention at the United Nations’ are presently discussing such a ban, which is supported by the great majority of writers and campaigners on the issue. However, the main arguments in favour of a ban are unsound. LAWS do not support extrajudicial killings, they do not take responsibility away (...) from humans; in fact they increase the abil-ity to hold humans accountable for war crimes. Using LAWS in war would probably reduce human suffering overall. Finally, the availability of LAWS would probably not increase the probability of war or other lethal conflict—especially as compared to extant remote-controlled weapons. The widespread fear of killer robots is unfounded: They are probably good news. (shrink)

Considered by many to be Abraham Robinson's magnum opus, this book offers an explanation of the development and applications of non-standard analysis by the mathematician who founded the subject. Non-standard analysis grew out of Robinson's attempt to resolve the contradictions posed by infinitesimals within calculus. He introduced this new subject in a seminar at Princeton in 1960, and it remains as controversial today as it was then. This paperback reprint of the 1974 revised edition is indispensable reading for anyone interested (...) in non-standard analysis. It treats in rich detail many areas of application, including topology, functions of a real variable, functions of a complex variable, and normed linear spaces, together with problems of boundary layer flow of viscous fluids and rederivations of Saint-Venant's hypothesis concerning the distribution of stresses in an elastic body. (shrink)

This paper investigates the prospects of Rodney Brooks’ proposal for AI without representation. It turns out that the supposedly characteristic features of “new AI” (embodiment, situatedness, absence of reasoning, and absence of representation) are all present in conventional systems: “New AI” is just like old AI. Brooks proposal boils down to the architectural rejection of central control in intelligent agents—Which, however, turns out to be crucial. Some of more recent cognitive science suggests that we might do well to dispose of (...) the image of intelligent agents as central representation processors. If this paradigm shift is achieved, Brooks’ proposal for cognition without representation appears promising for full-blown intelligent agents—Though not for conscious agents. (shrink)

This study addresses the question about which groups journalists in 12 European and two Arab countries feel that they are accountable to. In their daily work, journalists do not only face dilemmas about conflicting values, but they also have to make decisions about whose interests they should protect in the first instance. Academic scholarship has developed well argued discourses on pressure groups and conflicting interests, as well as on the various incentives that influence journalists' loyalties. The present study aims to (...) empirically analyze journalists' accountability perceptions and discuss what kinds of loyalty ideologies would be most widely disseminated by the professional community. Five profiles are constructed and analyzed based on a cluster analysis of responses from 1,215 journalists. (shrink)

Animal ethics has often been criticized for an overreliance on “ideal” or even “utopian” theorizing. In this article, I recognize this problem, but argue that the “nonideal theory” which critics have offered in response is still insufficient to make animal ethics action-guiding. I argue that in order for animal ethics to be action-guiding, it must consider agent-centered theories of change detailing how an ideally just human-animal coexistence can and should be brought about. I lay out desiderata that such a theory (...) of change should suffice so as to be helpful in guiding action. Specifically, a theory of change should determine (1) who needs to do what in order for ideal justice to be achieved in the long run, (2) who should be expected to refuse compliance and how they should be moved to comply, and (3) why specific intermediate steps are necessary. I show how previous “nonideal” contributions, though helpful in other ways, are insufficiently determinate on these points and I sketch a (still somewhat utopian) theory of change for one specific context. This brings animal ethics a crucial step closer to being action-guiding in the real world. (shrink)

The Society of Jesus has always been a highly “political” religious order. The context for its political thought was its engagement with higher-level education, its antiheretical, pastoral, and missionary activities, and its close relationships with secular rulers. Although there was no single, cohesive, or exclusively Jesuit political doctrine its members shared some premises: the premise that reason and revelation are complementary; that prudence is a pre-eminent virtue in all practical activity; and that the principles of good order are the same (...) for church, polity, and any other “body” or corporation . Inferences could therefore be drawn from reason to revelation and from one kind of body to another. Reason and revelation concurred that the polity requires coordination of individuals to the common good by coercive authority, and therefore hierarchy and headship, although that headship need not be monarchical. However, like most of their contemporaries, Jesuits regarded monarchy as the best form of government. Although authority as such is natural and necessary, the element of consent is the political community’s freedom to choose its own form of government. The alterability of most laws implies an “absolute” ruler. However, the authority of any ruler or regime is limited by fundamental laws, natural and divine law, and the natural and legal rights of subjects, as well as the right or threat of tyrannicide. The Society’s antiheretical activities were centered on defending the ultimate authority of the papacy over the church, especially as supreme arbiter of controversies about faith and morals. Jesuit theologians defended the papal “indirect power” to intervene in secular government where the salvation of souls was involved. This could threaten the independent authority of secular rulers. However, the Society was normally highly sympathetic to the position of secular rulers; indeed Jesuit theologians and controversialists made substantial concessions to “reason of state.” Almost from the establishment of the Society of Jesus , Jesuits have been involved with things political. The Society’s founders, preeminent among them Ignatius Loyola, had not intended this. However, their placing the Society at the papacy’s disposal, the remarkable gifts and educational attainments of its members, and its adaptability meant that even in the lifetime of the founding fathers , its activities came to center on secondary- and tertiary-level education and antiheretical engagements, as well as retaining the original focus on foreign and domestic missions, and spiritual guidance. For all these activities, the Society needed patrons among prelates and secular rulers to fund and protect it, and in dealing with them it acquired a vast collective political experience, as well as political enemies. Its various engagements also demanded theoretical reflection about politics. (shrink)

This paper wants to shed light on the way the philosophical school of Stoicsm in Greco-Roman antiquity has dealt with the relationship of men and nature by pointing out to some of the key texts in which these issues are mentioned. Although the modern concept of sustainability or environmental protection did not really exist in antiquity, the Stoa was convinced that individual decisions had a direct impact on this world. Following the concept of environmental humanities, the ancient texts and authors (...) are collected as historical ideas of the multifaceted interactions between nature and men that can be fruitfully mirrored with the arguments of the current Anthropocene discourse and its focus on (post)industrialism. By doing so we might come across helpful approaches deeply rooted in our cultural heritage that we could possibly adopt and find practical answers for our age in terms of individual behaviour as well as management decisions to face the ecological and social challenges ahead. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a digital technology that will be of major importance for the development of humanity in the near future. AI has raised fundamental questions about what we should do with such systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve and how we can control these. - After the background to the field (1), this article introduces the main debates (2), first on ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e. tools made and (...) used by humans; here, the main sections are privacy (2.1), manipulation (2.2), opacity (2.3), bias (2.4), autonomy & responsibility (2.6) and the singularity (2.7). Then we look at AI systems as subjects, i.e. when ethics is for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (2.8.) and artificial moral agency (2.9). Finally we look at future developments and the concept of AI (3). For each section within these themes, we provide a general explanation of the ethical issues, we outline existing positions and arguments, then we analyse how this plays out with current technologies and finally what policy conse-quences may be drawn. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that emotions are evaluative. Moreover, many authors suppose that emotions are important or valuable as evaluations. According to the currently dominant version of cognitivism, emotions are evaluative insofar as they make us aware of value properties of their intentional objects. In attributing to emotions an epistemic role, this view conceives of them as epistemically valuable. In this paper, I argue that proponents of this account mischaracterize the evaluative character of emotions and, a fortiori, their value. Moreover, (...) I propose an alternative view of emotional evaluation, according to which emotions are practically rather than epistemically important. As I argue, emotions are ways of acknowledging their intentional objects as (dis)valuable. As such, they do not apprehend values but make them count. I elaborate this idea by drawing an analogy with legal and political sanctions. The resulting view has it that emotions are practically important in that they affirm the cares and concerns which serve as standards of emotional evaluation. (shrink)

This paper explores a currently popular view in the philosophy of emotion, according to which emotions constitute a specific form of evaluative aspect-perception (cf. esp. Roberts 2003, Döring 2004, Slaby 2008). On this view, adequate or fitting emotions play an important epistemic roe vis à vis evaluative knowledge. The paper specifically asks how to conceive of the adequacy or fittingness conditions of emotion. Considering the specific, relational nature of the evaluative properties disclosed by emotions, it is argued that a suitable (...) standard of fittingness has both a world-involving and person-involving aspect: Fitting emotions require both a fundamentum in re as well as a fundamentum in persona. (shrink)

John Calvin, 1509–1564, Reformer of Geneva, Frenchman, naturalized Genevan bourgeois 1559, authority for Reformed Christians throughout Europe, translator of the Bible into French, author of a famed theological text, the Institution of the Christian Religion in successive Latin and French versions , 1560 ), pastor, ecclesiastical organizer, bilingual preacher, and polemicist whose sermons and catechetical, controversial, and organizational works were very widely diffused.

Martin Luther was a German Reformer, theologian, translator of the Bible into German, priest, theology professor at the university of Wittenberg in Electoral Saxony, preacher and pastor, prolific author in both German and Latin, former Augustinian monk, and excommunicated by the papacy in 1521. His best known political doctrines are the Zwei Reiche/Regimente Lehre ; political obedience and hostility to rebellion and millennialism; endorsement of princely “absolutism”; the territorial “prince’s church” . Slightly less well known are his opposition to usury, (...) his anti-Jewish attitudes, his very “secular” interpretation of marriage and divorce, his doctrine of the three estates , his “congregational” tendencies in church government, and his belief that his was the “end-time” when Satan and Anti-Christ ruled the world. His principal political doctrines were not unfamiliar; they resemble Augustine’s conception of the two civitates, the medieval “two swords” controversy, and conventional doctrines of obedience and good order of his time. Luther, moreover, set out his political ideas in pamphlets prompted by specific emergencies, and never consolidated them in a definitive text. Some interpreters see them as an expression of “social conservatism” rather than as inferences from his theology. (shrink)

A term of art, originally Italian, becoming common usage in other European vernaculars in the late sixteenth century. It meant practical reflection, albeit in writing and general in form, about all aspects of statecraft . It claimed practical usefulness in virtue of its grounding in experience and history, contrasting itself with “mirrors of princes,” which were supposedly ignorant of the realities of politics. More narrowly, reason of state meant a “Machiavellian” disregard for legal, moral, and religious considerations when the “interests (...) of the state” or “necessity” required it. Particularly contentious were the justifiability of dishonesty, duplicity, breach of faith and even treaty obligations, violence against opponents and competitors, illegal taxation, disregard of the claims of traditional institutions and officeholders, and the practice of religious toleration. Opponents of “reason of state” attempted to demonstrate that, on the contrary, adherence to religion, morality, and legality was the best policy, in that it earned providential rewards, but also that in strictly pragmatic terms it was most likely to bring political success. However, these proponents of “true reason of state” acknowledged that strict adherence to these norms was sometimes impossible, and when it was, statesmen must attempt to avoid the greater evil. Having become the subject of a vast literature and even a standard university topic, reason of state faded as an issue in the later seventeenth century. Realpolitik from the nineteenth century onwards resembles it, with the state representing a morality superior to the norms of legality and private morality, a view in turn contested by advocates of human rights and international morality. (shrink)

Thomas Fitzherbert's two-part Treatise concerning Policy and Religion (1606, 1610) was a rebuttal of unidentified Machiavellians, statists or politikes and their politics and policies. The work was apparently still well-regarded in the following century. Fitzherbert's objections to ‘statism’ were principally religious, and he himself thought the providentialist case against it unanswerable. But for those who did not share his convictions, he attempted to undermine Machiavellism on its own ground. Like both ‘Machiavellians’ and their opponents, he argued by inference from historical (...) examples, but with a particularly copious knowledge of historians ancient, medieval and modern to draw on. Equally, however, he deployed the principles of speculative (principally Aristotelian) ‘political science,’ as well as theology and jurisprudence, to demonstrate that the kind of knowledge that Machiavellians required to guarantee the success of their ‘reason of state’ policies was simply unobtainable. A particularly striking strategy (perhaps modelled on that of his mentor and friend Robert Persons) was Fitzherbert's attempt to demonstrate, on the Machiavellians’ own premises, that they advocated policies which were very likely to fail, and would be visited with divine punishments sooner as well as later, whereas policies that were compatible with faith and morals were also much more likely to succeed, even judged in purely human and ‘statist’ terms. (shrink)

The Victorian polymath William Stanley Jevons is generally and rightly venerated as one of the great innovators of economic theory and method in what came to be known as the 'marginalist revolution'. This book is an investigation into the cultural and intellectual resources that Jevons drew upon to revolutionize research methods in economics. Jevons's uniform approach to the sciences was based on a firm belief in the mechanical constitution of the universe and a firm conviction that all scientific knowledge was (...) limited and therefore hypothetical in character. Jevons's mechanical beliefs found their way into his early meteorological studies, his formal logic, and his economic pursuits. By using mechanical analogies as instruments of discovery, Jevons was able to bridge the divide between theory and statistics that had become more or less institutionalized in mid nineteenth-century Britain. (shrink)

The notorious ‘measurement problem’ has been roving around quantum mechanics for nearly a century since its inception, and has given rise to a variety of ‘interpretations’ of quantum mechanics, which are meant to evade it. We argue that no less than six problems need to be distinguished, and that several of them classify as different types of problems. One of them is what traditionally is called ‘the measurement problem’. Another of them has nothing to do with measurements but is a (...) profound metaphysical problem. We also analyse critically Maudlin’s (Topoi 14:7–15, 1995) well-known statement of ‘three measurements problems’, and the clash of the views of Brown (Found Phys 16:857–870, 1986) and Stein (Maximal of an impossibility theorem concerning quantum measurement. In: R. S. Cohen et al. (Eds.), Potentiality, entanglement and passion-at-a-distance, 1997) on one of the six measurement problems. Finally, we summarise a solution to one measurement problem which has been largely ignored but tacitly if not explicitly acknowledged. (shrink)

We use quotation marks when we wish to refer to an expression. We can and do so refer even when this expression is composed of characters that do not occur in our alphabet. That's why Tarski, Quine, and Geach's theories of quotation don't work. The proposals of Davidson, Frege, and C. Washington, however, do not provide a plausible account of quotation either. (Section I). The problem is to construct a Tarskian theory of truth for an object language that contains quotation (...) marks, without appealing to quotation marks in the metalanguage. I propose to supply Tarski's truth definition with one axiom that determines the denotation of all expressions containing quotation marks. According to this axiom, quotation marks create a non-extensional context. Since admitting such contexts does not lead to any difficulties in the recursive truth characterization, we may indeed dispense with extensionalism. (Section II). Finally, I argue that we classify and denote expressions in the very same way that we classify and denote extralinguistic entities. Both tokens and types of written signs can be easily incorporated into the naturalist's worldview. (Section III). (shrink)

Wie denkt Dogen (1200-1253) Sprache im Horizont der sprachkritischen Tradition des Zenbuddhismus? Die vorliegende Studie widmet sich dieser Frage und rekonstruiert umfassend das Sprachdenken des philosophisch fruchtbarsten Autors der japanischen Vormoderne. Dazu wählt der Autor einen doppelten Zugang: zum einen rezeptionsgeschichtlich unter Einschluss von Philosophen des modernen Japans, zum anderen systematisch mithilfe der Symboltheorie Ernst Cassirers in der Theoretisierung eines adäquaten Sprachbegriffs. So verschränken sich mit Interpretationen zum Hauptwerk Dogens, dem Shobogenzo, Außen- und Innenperspektive auf ein zenbuddhistisches Sprachdenken und erweisen (...) es in seiner Kommensurabilität zum philosophischen Diskurs. (shrink)

Proceedings of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Revisiting Turing and his Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World" at the 2012 AISB and IACAP Symposium that was held in the Turing year 2012, 2–6 July at the University of Birmingham, UK. Ten papers. - http://www.pt-ai.org/turing-test --- Daniel Devatman Hromada: From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents - Michael Zillich: My Robot is Smarter than Your Robot: On the Need for (...) a Total Turing Test for Robots - Adam Linson, Chris Dobbyn and Robin Laney: Interactive Intelligence: Behaviour-based AI, Musical HCI and the Turing Test - Javier Insa, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Sergio España - David Dowe and M.Victoria Hernandez-Lloreda: The anYnt Project Intelligence Test (Demo) - Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Javier Insa, David Dowe and Bill Hibbard: Turing Machines and Recursive Turing Tests — Francesco Bianchini and Domenica Bruni: What Language for Turing Test in the Age of Qualia? - Paul Schweizer: Could there be a Turing Test for Qualia? - Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti: Jazz and Machine Consciousness: Towards a New Turing Test - William York and Jerry Swan: Taking Turing Seriously (But Not Literally) - Hajo Greif: Laws of Form and the Force of Function: Variations on the Turing Test. (shrink)

Mit rein rationalen Mitteln können wir keine Entscheidung über die transzendenten Sätze der Religion herbeiführen; ob es außerhalb unseres physischen Universums einen Gott gibt oder ob wir nach dem Tod erlöst werden, muss rein naturwissenschaftlich offenbleiben. Daher suche ich nach Zugkräften, die im Leben des religiös Unentschiedenen einen Umschwung bewirken könnten. Wer seine Überzeugungen und Gefühle in eine harmonische Balance bringen will, ist gut beraten, mit bestimmten Erlebnissen (die wir alle kennen) nicht allzu rabiat umzuspringen. Diese Erlebnisse scheinen auf Gott (...) zu verweisen; und statt sie fortzuwischen, könnten wir versuchen auszuprobieren, was mit uns geschieht, wenn wir sie zulassen. Was das heißen kann, springt besonders deutlich bei unserem Umgang mit großer religiöser Musik ins Ohr. Während dem hartgesottenen Atheisten der Zugang zu wichtigen Schichten dieser Musik (etwa der Matthäuspassion) versperrt bleibt, könnte darin für den religiös Unentschiedenen mehr stecken, als man gemeinhin denkt. (shrink)

Branching theories are popular frameworks for modeling objective indeterminism in the form of a future of open possibilities. In such theories, the notion of a history plays a crucial role: it is both a basic ingredient in the axiomatic definition of the framework, and it is used as a parameter of truth in semantics for languages with a future tense. Furthermore, histories—complete possible courses of events—ground the notion of modal consistency: a set of events is modally consistent iff there is (...) a history containing that set. We will explain these roles of histories and highlight some critical aspects having to do with the fact that histories are global and, in a relevant sense, “big” objects. The notion of modal consistency, on the other hand, has both local and global aspects. We ask in how far a local notion of modal consistency can serve as an alternative to the common uses of histories, and work out two recent approaches to alternatives to histories. Combining these approaches, we develop a novel semantics for branching time. (shrink)

This book addresses the question of how to properly handle Dōgen’s texts, a core issue that became critical during the Meiji period in which the philosophical appropriation of Dōgen became apparent inside and outside of the monastery. In present day Dōgen studies, most scholarship is informed by a number of factions representing Dōgen. The chapters herein address: the Zennist (j. zenjōka) emphasising practice, the Genzōnians (j. genzōka) shifting the attention to the close reading of Dōgen’s texts, the laity movement opening (...) up both the texts and the practice to people in modern society, and the Genzō researchers (j. genzō kenkyūka) searching for the authenticity and truth of Dōgen’s writings. The book aims to clarify the rightful place of Dōgen: in the monastery, in denominational studies, or in modern academic philosophy? It brings forth various viewpoints on Dōgen, and analyzes the relations of these viewpoints from the premodern to modern times. The collected volume appeals to students and researchers in the field while establishing hermeneutic standards of reading and proposing new, original, and critical interpretations of Dōgen’s texts. Chapter From Uji to Being-time (and Back): Translating Dōgen into Philosophy is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer. com. (shrink)

This extended abstract summarises some of the basic points of AI ethics and policy as they present themselves now. We explain the notion of AI, the main ethical issues in AI and the main policy aims and means.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the density of road traffic in the Global North decreased considerably. For those enjoying the resulting tranquillity, it prompted the hope that this experience would raise public noise awareness and alter mobility culture. Now that Global North economies are returning to pre-pandemic levels, however, not much appears to have changed. This article aims to contribute to understanding the persistence of the status quo by historically tracing discourse coalitions around traffic noise in the twentieth and early twenty-first (...) century. Discourse coalitions are connections between groups of actors that have opposing interests but share a specific set of storylines concerning a public problem. As we will show by focusing on the issue of traffic noise in the Netherlands, the long-term results of these discourse coalitions -in terms of discourse structuration, institutionalization and destabilization- tend to shift attention away from structural interventions in traffic flows. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical discussion about the link between utopianism and responsibility. It argues that our time demands a strong practice of political responsibility in both organizations and society based on what has been called ‘real utopianism’. It takes as a starting point Hans Jonas’ critique of utopianism. Keeping in mind the horrors of the Second World War this Jewish thinker disconnected the principle of responsibility from the idea of utopianism, and connected it to a ‘heuristics of fear’ – (...) we should be careful with ‘wild’ new technologies, but also with new utopian perspectives. In a second step Jonas’ predecessors and utopian thinkers Martin Buber, Ernst Bloch and Ernest Callenbach are revisited. They show that a fully conceptualized idea of utopianism includes at least three dimensions of responsibility: subsistence, justice and spirituality. I then argue that if one digs deeper into the work of Jonas, it seems that the concept of responsibility in fact implies the courage to overcome a heuristics of fear. This paper therefore argues that there is no need to radically disjunct responsibility from utopianism and that the concept of responsibility actually opens a path to ‘real utopianism’. Such a concept of responsibility can best be supported by a confessionally neutral but nonetheless spiritual eco-humanist worldview that develops a new attitude towards nature, in which (eco)asceticism, morality and spirituality become intertwined. (shrink)

This book discusses undercover reporting and deception in journalism, addressing the ethical issues encountered by professionals when deception is involved and providing an explanation of how high-profile cases have developed. Carson and Muller begin by examining how philosophical theories which form the basis of contemporary ethical codes for journalists, bear upon undercover reporting and questions of deception in the digital age. Drawing upon case studies such as Al Jazeera's undercover operation against the National Rifle Association in the US and the (...) One Nation political party in Australia, and Britain's Channel 4 infiltration of Cambridge Analytica, this book goes on to define and discuss the ethical concepts behind deception and betrayal and lays out an original ethical framework for undercover journalists facing related challenges in their work. Undercover Reporting, Deception and Betrayal in Journalism is an important research text for students and academics in journalism and media studies. (shrink)

In this original work of psychoanalytic theory, John Muller explores the formative power of signs and their impact on the mind, the body and subjectivity, giving special attention to work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Muller explores how Lacan's way of understanding experience through three dimensions--the real, the imaginary and the symbolic--can be useful both for thinking about cultural phenomena and for understanding the complexities involved in treating psychotic patients. Muller develops Lacan's (...) perspective gradually, presenting it as distinctive approaches to data from a variety of sources, such as cognitive, social and developmental psychology, literature, history, art, and psychoanalytic treatment. The book's first four chapters present Muller's reading of selected data from child development research, psychology and linguistics, approximating a semiotic model of "normal" development. The following three chapters examine in a Lacanian framework the structural basis of psychotic stages as indicative of massive semiotic failure in development. The final chapters on human narcissism suggest reasons that "normal" development may be impossible. (shrink)

We provide a formally rigorous framework for integrating singular causation, as understood by Nuel Belnap's theory of causae causantes, and objective single case probabilities. The central notion is that of a causal probability space whose sample space consists of causal alternatives. Such a probability space is generally not isomorphic to a product space. We give a causally motivated statement of the Markov condition and an analysis of the concept of screening-off. 1. Causal dependencies and probabilities1.1Background: causation in branching space-times1.2What are (...) probabilities defined for?2. Basic transitions2.1Basics of basic transitions2.2Sets of basic transitions3. Causal probability theory3.1Some simple cases3.2General causal probabilities3.3Application: probability of suprema of a chain. (shrink)

Reichenbach's 'principle of the common cause' is a foundational assumption of some important recent contributions to quantitative social science methodology but no similar principle appears in econometrics. Reiss (2005) has argued that the principle is necessary for instrumental variables methods in econometrics, and Pearl (2009) builds a framework using it that he proposes as a means of resolving an important methodological dispute among econometricians. We aim to show, through analysis of the main problem instrumental variables methods are used to resolve, (...) that the relationship of the principle to econometric methods is more nuanced than implied by previous work, but nevertheless may make a valuable contribution to the coherence and validity of existing methods. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of science have interpreted the taxonomic theory of Carl Linnaeus as an ‘essentialist’, ‘Aristotelian’, or even ‘scholastic’ one. This interpretation is flatly contradicted by what Linnaeus himself had to say about taxonomy in Systema naturae , Fundamenta botanica and Genera plantarum . This paper straightens out some of the more basic misinterpretations by showing that: Linnaeus’s species concept took account of reproductive relations among organisms and was therefore not metaphysical, but biological; Linnaeus did not favour classification by (...) logical division, but criticized it for necessarily failing to represent what he called ‘natural’ genera; Linnaeus’s definitions of ‘natural’ genera and species were not essentialist, but descriptive and polytypic; Linnaeus’s method in establishing ‘natural’ definitions was not deductive, but consisted in an inductive, bottom-up procedure of comparing concrete specimens. The conclusion will discuss the fragmentary and provisional nature of Linnaeus’s ‘natural method’. I will argue in particular that Linnaeus opted for inductive strategies not on abstract epistemological grounds, but in order to confer stability and continuity to the explorative practices of contemporary natural history. (shrink)

Can we make machines that think and act like humans or other natural intelligent agents? The answer to this question depends on how we see ourselves and how we see the machines in question. Classical AI and cognitive science had claimed that cognition is computation, and can thus be reproduced on other computing machines, possibly surpassing the abilities of human intelligence. This consensus has now come under threat and the agenda for the philosophy and theory of AI must be set (...) anew, re-defining the relation between AI and Cognitive Science. We can re-claim the original vision of general AI from the technical AI disciplines; we can reject classical cognitive science and replace it with a new theory (e.g. embodied); or we can try to find new ways to approach AI, for example from neuroscience or from systems theory. To do this, we must go back to the basic questions on computing, cognition and ethics for AI. The 30 papers in this volume provide cutting-edge work from leading researchers that define where we stand and where we should go from here. (shrink)