Includes bibliographical references (p. 619-646) and index.

Autonomous systems are machines that can alter their behavior without direct human oversight or control. How ought we to program them to behave? A plausible starting point is given by the Reduction to Acts Thesis, according to which we ought to program autonomous systems to do whatever a human agent ought to do in the same circumstances. Although the Reduction to Acts Thesis is initially appealing, we argue that it is false: it is sometimes permissible to program a machine to (...) do something that it would be wrong for a human to do. We advance two main arguments for this claim. First, the way an autonomous system will behave can be known in advance. This knowledge can indirectly affect the behavior of other agents, while the same may not be true at the time the system actually executes its programming. Second, a lack of knowledge of the identities of the victims and beneficiaries can provide a justification during the programming phase that would be unavailable to an agent at the time the autonomous system executes its programming. (shrink)

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

Self-awareness is commonly expressed by means of indexical expressions, primarily, first- person pronouns like.

According to the Welfare Diffusion Objection, we should reject Prioritarianism because it implies the ‘desirability of welfare diffusion’: the claim that it can be better for there to be less total wellbeing spread thinly between a larger total number of people, rather than for there to be more total wellbeing, spread more generously between a smaller total number of people. I argue that while Prioritarianism does not directly imply the desirability of welfare diffusion, Prioritarians are nevertheless implicitly committed to certain (...) principles for comparing different-number populations which, together with the Prioritarian same-person axiology, imply the desirability of welfare diffusion. (shrink)

In “An Intrapersonal Addition Paradox,” Jacob Nebel provides a novel intrapersonal argument for the Repugnant Conclusion. The most controversial premise of Nebel’s argument is the “Probable Addition Principle,” on which it is better for individuals to receive additional chances of existence with a life worth living. I provide an alternative intrapersonal argument for the Repugnant Conclusion which does not assume the Probable Addition Principle. I also show that Pareto principles alone, when conjoined with very minimal principles of prudence, imply a (...) version of the Repugnant Conclusion. (shrink)

In God Emperor of Dune, Leto II explains to Moneo why people destroyed thinking machines in the Butlerian Jihad: "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments." The Orange Catholic Bible (OCB), the key religious text in the Dune universe, forbids the creation of machines that imitate human thinking: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind." The OCB focuses on human mental (...) abilities – especially computation, reason, and logic – that have a status that machines should not emulate. In Frank Herbert's universe, divine imitation and creation are presented in conflicting ways: on the one hand, they are strictly prohibited, on the other, they are aspirations for key characters. Mentats replace machines by use of hard, cold, logical thinking and reasoning with machine‐like efficiency. (shrink)

Tarkastelemme tässä artikkelissa, kuinka ihmisen psykologinen taipumus olemusajatteluun eli niin kutsuttu psykologinen essentialismi voisi näkyä argumentaatiossa. Esittelemme ensin psykologista tutkimusta aiheesta, minkä jälkeen tarkastelemme ilmiön merkitystä argumentaation ja sen tutkimuksen kannalta. Olemusajattelu näkyy julkilausumattomina taustaoletuksina, jotka kuitenkin vaikuttavat ihmisten tapaan tehdä päätelmiä ja rakentaa argumentteja. Argumentaation yhteydessä olemusajattelua tulee tarkastella taipumuksena tietynlaisiin piilopremisseihin. Lopuksi pohdimme, mitä merkitystä tällä voisi olla filosofian näkökulmasta.

I argue for the principle of Anonymity, according to which two populations are equally good whenever they have the same anonymous distribution of wellbeing. I first show that, given transitivity of the at-least-as-good-as relation, Anonymity is entailed by the ``Non-Identity Principle'', according to which the consequence of bringing better rather than worse lives into existence is, all else equal, better. I then argue for the Non-Identity Principle on the basis that if it were false, it would follow that we fail (...) to improve the world when we make existing people better off, while at the same time replacing worse-off future people with different better-off future people. Since this is implausible, we should accept the Non-Identity Principle, and therefore Anonymity as well. (shrink)

Understanding the effect of stress, fatigue, and sleep deprivation on the ability to maintain an alert and attentive state in an ecologically valid setting is of importance as lapsing attention can, in many safety-critical professions, have devastating consequences. Here we studied the effect of close-quarters battle exercise combined with overnight military training with sleep deprivation on cognitive performance, namely sustained attention and response inhibition. In addition, the effect of the CQ battle and overnight training on cardiac activity [heart rate and (...) root mean square of the successive differences ] during the cognitive testing and the relationship between cardiac activity and cognitive performance were examined. Cognitive performance was measured with the psychomotor vigilance task and the sustained attention to response task. Altogether 45 conscripts participated in the study. The conscripts were divided into control and experimental groups. The CON completed the training day after a night of sleep and the EXP after the overnight military training with no sleep. Results showed that the effect of the overnight training on cognitive performance and the between-group difference in heart rate and heart rate variability depended on the cognitive test. Surprisingly, the cognitive performance was not largely affected by the CQ battle. However, as expected, the CQ battle resulted in a significant decrease in RMSSD and an increase in HR measured during the cognitive testing. Similarly, the HR parameters were related to cognitive performance, but the relationship was found only with the PVT. In conclusion, fatigue due to the overnight training impaired the ability to maintain sufficient alertness level. However, this impairment in arousal upregulation was counteracted by the arousing nature of the SART. Hence, the conscripts' cognitive performance was mainly preserved when performing a stimulating task, despite the fatigue from the sleep loss of the preceding night and physical activity. (shrink)

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries. This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, their (...) triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments. (shrink)

In this article, we compare the expressive powers of classes of normal logic programs that are obtained by constraining the number of positive subgoals in the bodies of rules. The comparison is based on the existence/nonexistence of polynomial, faithful, and modular translation functions between the classes. As a result, we obtain a strict ordering among the classes under consideration. Binary programs are shown to be as expressive as unconstrained programs but strictly more expressive than unary programs which, in turn, are (...) strictly more expressive than atomic programs. We also take propositional theories into consideration and prove them to be strictly less expressive than atomic programs. In spite of the gap in expressiveness, we develop a faithful but non-modular translation function from normal programs to propositional theories. We consider this as a breakthrough due to sub-quadratic time complexity |). Furthermore, we present a prototype implementation of the translation function and demonstrate its promising performance with SAT solvers using three benchmark problems. (shrink)

Composed more than 2,000 years ago during a turbulent period of Chinese history, the Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. (...) class='Hi'>Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world. Though attributed to Laozi, “the Old Master,” the Dao de jing is, in fact, of unknown authorship and may well have originated in an oral tradition four hundred years before the time of Christ. Eschewing philosophical dogma, the Dao de jing set forth a series of maxims that outlined a new perspective on reality and invited readers to embark on a regimen of self-cultivation. In the Daoist world view, each particular element in our experience sends out an endless series of ripples throughout the cosmos. The unstated goal of the Dao de jing is self-transformation–the attainment of personal excellence that flows from the world and back into it. Responding to the teachings of Confucius, the Dao de jing revitalizes moral behavior by recommending a spontaneity made possible by the cultivated “habits” of the individual. In this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the Dao de jing and translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. The book’s extensive introduction is a model of accessible scholarship in which Ames and Hall consider the origin of the text, place the emergence of Daoist philosophy in its historical and political context, and outline its central tenets. The Dao de jing is a work of timeless wisdom and beauty, as vital today as it was in ancient China. This new version will stand as both a compelling introduction to the complexities of Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation. (shrink)

The Malayalam poet, Kunjunni, is known for his short and simple poems. Some of his poems are filled with rich philosophical insights, and a few such poems are gathered in this paper with a view to unravel the philosophical view point embedded in them. By explicating the poet’s views about space, time, the world and the other, the paper contends that the philosophical vision that unfolds in these poems is a form of solipsism, the doctrine that the self alone exits. (...) It is shown how the poet considers the other minds including God, and the spatiotemporal universe as various manifestations of his self and refuses to grant them independent ontological status as people generally tend to do. The paper concludes by noting also certain sceptical tendencies in the poet. (shrink)

François Recanati describes a metarepresentation as a representation of linguistic and mental representations. Two levels of content are involved, that of a metarepresentation dS, and that of the object representation S. According to Recanati’s “iconicity thesis,” dS contains S semantically as well as syntactically, so that one cannot entertain dS without also entertaining S. Iconicity “suggests” the doctrine of semantic innocence, whereby an embedded object-representation has the same content it would have when uttered in isolation—its “normal” semantic value—and one of (...) Recanati’s principal aims is to show how the opacity of oratio obliqua and oratio recta constructions can be explained without sacrificing innocence. His treatment is set firmly within the framework of Kaplan 1989 and is inspired by the account of quotation in Davidson 1968. Though devoid of technical and metaphysical encumbrance, his book is not a lean display of a single vision, since Recanati spends considerable time on proposals that he ends up rejecting or modifying. Some readers might become impatient with the detailed comparisons, but the dedicated student will welcome the learned discussion of alternatives. In all, Recanati has given us an excellent study of metarepresentation, enlivened by state-of-the-art pragmatics and at the forefront of the latest discourse on attitudinal ascriptions. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the notion of autogenesis and mechanism of unpredictable emergence in culture. The notion is treated in the context of the semiotics ofculture and the theory of semiosphere. The examples are drawn mainly from Russian avant-garde culture.

From "word-images' to "chapter-shots: The irnagiuist montage of Anatolij Mariengof. The article discusses the three dominant imaginist principles of Anatolij Mariengofs poetic technique, as they are translated into prose in his first fictional novel Cynics. These principles include the "catalogue of images", a genre introduced by Vadim Shershenevich, i.e. poetry formed of nouns, which Mariengof makes use of in his longer imaginist poems. Another dominant imaginist principle, to which Mariengof referred in his theoretic articles and poetic texts, is similar to (...) the creating of shocking images typical of Russian futurism. Mariengofs application is the juxtaposition of "pure" and "impure", either a conflict between the vehicle and the object within a metaphor or a conflict between metaphors. This is an essential poetic feature in both Mariengofs poetry and prose. The third, maybe the most Mariengofian imaginist principle, relevant to the study of Cynics, is the poetics of transition, i.e. a certain fragmented structure of the text, which is related to Mariengors use of heteroaccentual rhyme. All these principles can be treated as fundamental elements in Mariengofs use of montage technique in his fictional prose. (shrink)

From "word-images' to "chapter-shots: The irnagiuist montage of Anatolij Mariengof. The article discusses the three dominant imaginist principles of Anatolij Mariengofs (1897-1962) poetic technique, as they are translated into prose in his first fictional novel Cynics (1928). These principles include the "catalogue of images", a genre introduced by Vadim Shershenevich, i.e. poetry formed of nouns, which Mariengof makes use of in his longer imaginist poems. Another dominant imaginist principle, to which Mariengof referred in his theoretic articles and poetic texts, is (...) similar to the creating of shocking images typical of Russian futurism. Mariengofs application is the juxtaposition of "pure" (chistyj) and "impure" (nechistyj), either a conflict between the vehicle and the object within a metaphor or a conflict between metaphors. This is an essential poetic feature in both Mariengofs poetry and prose. The third, maybe the most Mariengofian imaginist principle, relevant to the study of Cynics, is the poetics of transition (poetika sdviga), i.e. a certain fragmented structure of the text, which is related to Mariengors use of heteroaccentual rhyme. All these principles can be treated as fundamental elements in Mariengofs use of montage technique in his fictional prose. (shrink)

From "word-images' to "chapter-shots: The irnagiuist montage of Anatolij Mariengof. The article discusses the three dominant imaginist principles of Anatolij Mariengofs (1897-1962) poetic technique, as they are translated into prose in his first fictional novel Cynics (1928). These principles include the "catalogue of images", a genre introduced by Vadim Shershenevich, i.e. poetry formed of nouns, which Mariengof makes use of in his longer imaginist poems. Another dominant imaginist principle, to which Mariengof referred in his theoretic articles and poetic texts, is (...) similar to the creating of shocking images typical of Russian futurism. Mariengofs application is the juxtaposition of "pure" (chistyj) and "impure" (nechistyj), either a conflict between the vehicle and the object within a metaphor or a conflict between metaphors. This is an essential poetic feature in both Mariengofs poetry and prose. The third, maybe the most Mariengofian imaginist principle, relevant to the study of Cynics, is the poetics of transition (poetika sdviga), i.e. a certain fragmented structure of the text, which is related to Mariengors use of heteroaccentual rhyme. All these principles can be treated as fundamental elements in Mariengofs use of montage technique in his fictional prose. (shrink)

The earliest Analects yet discovered, this work provides us with a new perspective on the central canonical text that has defined Chinese culture--and clearly illuminates the spirit and values of Confucius.