(2001). Autonomous Learners and the Learning Society: systematic perspectives on the practice of teaching in Higher Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 33, No. 3-4, pp. 381-395.

This analysis of the emergent automated vehicle technology focuses on the friction at its interface with society, clouding its future. The sequential focus of development → deployment is reconfigured as reciprocal: society ↔ technology. A best path forward is presented that incorporates environmental and social sustainability factors as they relate to climate change and public health. The path’s signpost is automated electric vehicles deployed in public and private fleets. This course has promise to recover automobility from the damaging, (...) unsustainable legacy of personal internal combustion vehicles—highlighted by their toxic and carbon emissions, and road casualties. (shrink)

Choice architecture describes the environment in which choices are presented to decision-makers. In recent years, public and private actors have looked at choice architecture with great interest as they seek to influence human behaviour. These actors are typically called choice architects. Increasingly, however, this role of architecting choice is not performed by a human choice architect, but an algorithm or artificial intelligence, powered by a stream of Big Data and infused with an objective it has been programmed to maximise. We (...) call this entity the autonomous choice architect. In this paper, we present an account of why artificial intelligence can fulfil the role of a choice architect and why this creates problems of transparency, responsibility and accountability for nudges. We argue that choice architects, be them autonomous computational systems or human-beings, at a most basic level select, from a range of designs, the design which is most likely to maximise a pre-determined objective. We then proceed to argue that, given the growing demand for targeted, personalised choice architecture and for faster, dynamic reconfigurations of choice architecture, as well as the ever-expanding pool of data from which feedback can be drawn, the role of the human choice architect is increasingly obscured behind algorithmic, artificially intelligent systems. We provide a discussion of the implications of autonomous choice architects, focusing on the importance of the humans who programme these systems, ultimately arguing that despite technological advances, the responsibility of choice architecture and influence remains firmly one human beings must bear. (shrink)

본 논문의 목표는, ‘칸트 윤리학의 현재와 미래’를 문제사적으로 고찰하여 오늘날 칸트 연구가들에게 현실적으로 요구되는 과제는 고대 그리스의 ‘철학적 삶의 기술론’의 주제이던 ‘좋은 삶으로서의 행복’을 칸트의 ‘자율도덕’의 틀 안에서 통합하는 ‘자율적 행복론’의 정립임을 밝히고 그 가능성을 짚어보는 데 있다. 이를 위해 먼저 저 과제에 이르게 되는 문제를 낳게 한 ― 그리고 1970년대 ‘실천철학의 복권 운동’을 일으킨 ― 존 롤즈(John Rawls)의 사회정의론에서 칸트 윤리학의 연구를 고찰하여 본다. 이에 따르면 칸트의 윤리학은 ‘의무론적 도덕의 근거지움의 프로그램’이라는 좁은 의미의 도덕철학적 반성으로 제한되며, 여기서 고대 그리스의 (...) 철학적 삶의 기술론의 중심 주제이던 좋은 삶으로서의 행복은 더 이상 철학적-윤리적 반성의 대상의 지위를 갖지 못한다. 다음으로 롤즈의 ‘사회정의론’이 바탕으로 하고 있는 칸트의 의무론에 대한 비판을 통해 고대 그리스의 좋은 삶의 문제를 윤리학의 근본주제로 복권시키려는 ― 1980년대에 본격적으로 등장한 ― 신아리스토텔레주의의 문제제기와 이에 대한 영미권의 소위 구성주의적 칸트주의자들과 독일어권의 담론윤리적 칸트주의자들의 ― 결과적으로 불충분한 ― 숙고들을 논하여 본다. 신아리스토텔레주의의 비판은 근본적으로 두 가지인데, 첫 번째는 칸트에게서 좋은 삶의 추상으로부터 가능한 정언명법을 통한 도덕의 근거지움에 대한 것이고, 두 번째는 저 좋은 삶으로서의 행복을 윤리학의 중심 주제로 다시 설정하는 것에 관한 문제이다. 이 두 번째 문제는 자율 도덕 역시 도덕의 의미와 관련하여 매우 진지하게 받아들이지 않으면 안 될 매우 중요한 윤리적 반성의 대상이다. 그리하여 여기서 자율 도덕의 틀 안에서 가능한 철학적 행복론인 자율적 행복론의 가능성은 칸트 연구가들에게 필연적인 윤리적 과제가 된다. 이에 연결하여 2000년대 들어서 저 자율적 행복론의 가능성을 매우 설득력 있게 보여준 오트프리트 회페(Otfride Höffe)에게서 칸트 윤리학의 행위론적 연구를 짧게 고찰하여 본다. 그리고 회페의 저 연구를 바탕으로 하여 칸트의 최고선에 관한 이론을, 특히 아리스토텔레스적 좋은 삶의 물음의 자율 도덕적 완성이라는 시각을 통해 자율 도덕의 틀 안에서 통합된 좋은 삶의 윤리학으로서의 ‘자율적 행복론’으로 해석하여 본다. 이 자율적 행복론에서 중심이 되는 물음은 도덕의 근거지움에 관한 것이 아니라, 도덕이 행복으로 인도하여주는지 여부와 정도에 대해 묻는 도덕적 행위의 행복론적인 의미이다. 이 경우 칸트에게서 자율 도덕은 좁은 의미의 도덕철학적 근거지움에 관한 윤리이론적 방식이 아닌 행위론적인 반성을 통해 최고선의 물음에 이르게 된다. 여기서 자율 도덕과 좋은 삶으로서의 행복은 윤리-필연적 조건관계를 갖게 되며, 그리하여 ‘도덕적 삶의 행복론적 의미’를 윤리적 물음의 대상으로 갖게 되는 ‘자율적 행복론’이 칸트에게서 정립될 가능성이 열린다. 끝으로 이 자율적 행복론의 미래적 전망과 의의를 또한 응용윤리적 물음과 관련하여 짧게 언급한다. (shrink)

This article explores how George Lapassade’s institutional pedagogy meets the definition of ‘praxis’ formulated by Cornelius Castoriadis, as the activity creating reflective and deliberative subjects. Lapassade applies Castoriadis’s criticism of bureaucracy to transform the teacher-learners’ relationship and emphasises how self-governance group dynamics among learners facilitates learning in general and access to critical thinking in particular. Castoriadis’s concept of democracy as individual and collective autonomy demands an interpretation of equality as a dynamic process instead of as a state of social relations, (...) both in politics and in classrooms. His understanding of politics as a matter of opinions rather than applied knowledge necessitates a questioning of how the relationship between politics and knowledge is presented in classrooms. The argument articulates two main themes: authority and power both between adults and children and within class groups, and the relationship between knowledge and politics, problematised by Castoriadis’s concept of truth. (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship on the ethics of autonomous vehicles. Yet the ethical discourse has mostly been focusing on the behavior of the vehicle in accident scenarios. This paper offers a different ethical prism: the implications of the autonomous vehicle for human well-being. As such, it contributes to the growing discourse on the wider societal and moral implications of the autonomous vehicle. The paper is premised on the neo-Aristotelian approach which holds that as human (...) beings, our well-being depends on developing and exercising our innate human capacities: to know, understand, love, be sociable, imagine, create and use our bodies and use our willpower. To develop and exercise these capacities, our environments need to provide a range of opportunities which will trigger the development and exercise of the capacities. The main argument advanced in the paper is that one plausible future of the autonomous vehicle—a future of single-rider autonomous vehicles—may effectively reduce the opportunities to develop and exercise our capacities to know, be sociable and use our willpower. It will therefore be bad for human well-being, and this provides us with a moral reason to resist this plausible future and search for alternative ones. (shrink)

The history of East Timor has gone through several moments of transformation due to human actions that have the presence of Portuguese, Japanese, Indonesians and different social groups and local kingdoms. With this, one can note the trend of the evolution of thinking, arising from education in philosophy and its contribution to the changes that were seen as necessary, were initial instruments for Timor to become a republic, not explored, but as an autonomous people. Thus, the aim of this (...) article is to present a reflection on the role of philosophy in the history of the Timorese society. Thus, philosophy should not be understood only with a mere sense of individualistic self-construction, or even an incorporation of circumstantial urgencies, but rather with regard to a content that must be taught and learned, given that there are languages and methods and that, with due importance, understanding is built, also developing more doubts and, thus, the philosophical character of national thought. However, it is necessary to recognize the assumption that philosophical themes were established according to universal terms, with Universal approaches and incorporated with the urgencies of each place. Thus, even the themes with a challenging nature, there was still Timorese philosophical expression of clear importance for the development of a national idea, so that philosophy is present and is still discussed in all periods that make up the National History. In that regard, this article will offer in the first part an introduction, second philosophy, third history, fourth nation building, fifth the history of struggle for national liberation and will be end with final consideration. (shrink)

The increasing number of newborns has stimulated the infant market. In particular, the baby stroller, serving as an important life partner for both babies and parents, has attracted more attention from society. Stroller design and functionality are of vital importance to babies' physiological and psychological health as well as brain development. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a modularization design method for the novel four-wheeled baby stroller based on the KANO model to ensure the mechanical safety and involve more (...) functionalities. Manual control of the baby stroller requires the rapid response of human motor systems in a completely controlled manner, which could be a potential risk. To enhance the safety and stability of the stroller motion, especially in situations where manual control is hard to achieve (e.g., sharp turns), we propose an autonomous motion control scheme based on model predictive control. Both the modularization design and the motion controller are verified in the MATLAB simulation environment through path tracking tasks. The feasibility is validated by the satisfactory experimental results with lateral position error in a reasonable range and good trajectory smoothness. (shrink)

The Kurdish-led autonomous entity called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria - also known as Rojava - considers women?s liberation an imperative condition for shaping a democratic society. The practice of autonomy in NES shares strong resemblances with Non- Territorial Autonomy models; however, it introduces a novelty in the role of women as active agents in building a plurinational democracy. This paper examines the intellectual and political origins of the political role ascribed to women in (...) class='Hi'>autonomous administrations and how the practice of autonomy in Rojava has advanced women?s rights by shedding light on both institutional implementation of women?s rights, as well as the creation of -territorial spaces of women?s emancipation within the autonomous model. The argument made is that the conceptual framework of the Rojava model goes beyond the Kurdish question and can be considered an attempt to resolve a democratic deficit of liberal democratic nation-states through bringing together solutions that address the intertwined subordination of minorities and women. nema. (shrink)

As we move our social institutions from paper and ink based operations to the electronic medium, we invisibly create a type of surveillance society, a panopticon society. It is not the traditional surveillance society in which government officials follow citizens around because they are concerned about threats to the political order. Instead it is piecemeal surveillance by public and private organizations. Piecemeal though it is, It creates the potential for the old kind of surveillance on an even (...) grander scale. The panopticon is the prison environment described by Foucault in which prison cells are arranged in a large circle with the side facing the inside of the circle open to view. The guard tower is placed in the middle of the circle so that guards can see everything that goes on in every cell. When we contemplate all the electronic data that is now gathered about each of us as we move through our everyday lives --- intelligent highway systems, consumer transactions, traffic patterns on the internet, medical records, financial records, and so on --- there seems little doubt that we are moving into a panopticon. The social issues that arise from this are too numerous to detail here, but data retention is an important part of it. In the paper-and-ink world, documents are filed, files are boxed, boxes are put away or thrown away. The capacity for data retrieval and manipulation is, thereby, limited by the sheer difficulty and cost of storing, finding, searching, and manipulating large numbers of paper files. This inconvenience functions as a mechanism whereby the system forgets past information, not unlike the way we ourselves forget. However, the story is very different in the digital world; digital information is easy to store, easy to search and manipulate, and inexpensive to keep over extensive periods of time. Digitalized information systems tend, therefore, to collect extensive ancillary information and to retain this information indefinitely. Such lack of forgetfulness is likely to hamper the ability of individuals to shed their past, and start over with a clean slate. Concerns about data retention were expressed in the early literature on the social impact of computing, but for the most part the issue has dropped from sight. Rarely, has the social good of discarding accumulated personal data been addressed. In this paper, we want to make the case by examining diverse cases in which retention of information by either business or governmental institutions hinders the ability of individuals to start over or to act autonomously. We hope our argument for the good of forgetfulness will challenge the standard framework in which such issues have traditionally been debated. The privacy debate exemplifies the traditional framework insofar as it has been characterized as involving an inherent tension between, on the one hand, the needs of organizations and institutions for more accurate and efficient information systems so as to further their goals and, on the other hand, the desire of individuals to have information about them kept private. Regan argues against this framing of the privacy issue in favor of one that recognizes the social importance of personal privacy. We will examine the non-forgetfulness of information systems as a problem threatening not just individual interests but social good as well. Cryptography is often cited as the technology that will give us privacy and mediate against surveillance. One of the uses of cryptography, encryption, will allow us, some hope, to create confidentiality and relationships of trust that will facilitate many of the social arrangements we now have and perhaps make them even more secure than they are now. Electronic cash, for example, could be created in such a form that it would have the anonymity associated now with hard cash Others are less optimistic of the potential for cryptography to re-create relationships of trust in the new medium. One important point that already seems clear is that even if encryption technology will protect the confidentiality and integrity of electronic transactions and data, it will NOT stop the observation of traffic patterns on networks. This seems an important distinction to put on the table. Our patterns of communication will continue to be available, no matter what is encrypted, and an amazing amount of information can be gleaned from this data. In a sense, it means content integrity but no anonymity. This will indubitably impact how we interact and with whom we interact. (shrink)

After briefly describing the history and significance of the nature–reason dualism for philosophy this article examines why much of the Kantian inspired examination of norms and ethics continues to appeal to this division. It is argued that much of what is claimed to be rationally legitimated norms can, at least in part, be understood as binding on actions and beliefs, not because they are rationally legitimated, but because they are habituated. Drawing on Hegel’s discussion of ethical life and habit it (...) is argued that human subjects identify most practices and norms as their own through self-feeling, not reason. It is on this basis that norms are taken not just as the basis for action but are constitutive of human identity, an identity that is spiritual, embodied and affective. While habit is central to the way Hegel reconfigures ethics and norms, as well as the distinct model of freedom that he develops in his social and political thought, it will be argued that habit has its limits as a model for human freedom, limits of which Hegel is well aware. (shrink)

Human organizations’ adoption of the paradigm of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is associated with the growth of techno-empowerment, which is the process of transferring autonomy in decision-making to intelligent machines. Particular persuasive strategies have been identified that may coax people to use intelligent devices. However, there is a substantial research gap regarding what antecedents influence human intention to assign decision-making autonomy to artificial agents. In this study, ethological and evolutionary concepts are applied to explain the drivers for autonomous assistants’ (...) techno-empowerment. The method used in the study was a 4 × 2 between-subject experiment made with 278 persons. The research tool used to collect the data was an online survey. The results show that more positive attitudes and higher trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use are correlated with higher intention to allow the autonomous assistant independence in decision-making. Second, the results suggest that the more human-like a non-human agent is, the higher the intention to empower it—but only if this agent simultaneously provides functional and visual anthropomorphic cues explainable by the mimicry effect. (shrink)

This is one of the most original and important works of contemporary European thought. First published in France in 1975, it is the major theoretical work of one of the foremost thinkers in Europe today.Castoriadis offers a brilliant and far-reaching analysis of the unique character of the social-historical world and its relations to the individual, to language, and to nature. He argues that most traditional conceptions of society and history overlook the essential feature of the social-historical world, namely that (...) this world is not articulated once and for all but is in each case the creation of the society concerned. In emphasizing the element of creativity, Castoriadis opens the way for rethinking political theory and practice in terms of the autonomous and explicit self-institution of society. (shrink)

The question of whether new rules or regulations are required to govern, restrict, or even prohibit the use of autonomous weapon systems has been the subject of debate for the better part of a decade. Despite the claims of advocacy groups, the way ahead remains unclear since the international community has yet to agree on a specific definition of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and the great powers have largely refused to support an effective ban. In this vacuum, the (...) public has been presented with a heavily one-sided view of Killer Robots. This interdisciplinary volume presents a more nuanced approach to autonomous weapon systems that recognizes the need to progress beyond a discourse framed by the Terminator and HAL 9000. Re-shaping the discussion around this emerging military innovation requires a new line of thought and a willingness to challenge the orthodoxy. Lethal Autonomous Weapons focuses on exploring the moral and legal issues associated with the design, development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons. The volume brings together some of the most prominent academics and academic-practitioners in the lethal autonomous weapons space and seeks to return some balance to the debate. As part of this effort, it recognizes that society needs to invest in hard conversations that tackle the ethics, morality, and law of these new digital technologies and understand the human role in their creation and operation. (shrink)

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) are robotic weapons systems, primarily of value to the military, that could engage in offensive or defensive actions without human intervention. This paper assesses and engages the current arguments for and against the use of LAWs through the lens of achieving more ethical warfare. Specific interest is given particularly to ethical LAWs, which are artificially intelligent weapons systems that make decisions within the bounds of their ethics-based code. To ensure that a wide, but not exhaustive, (...) survey of the implications of employing such ethical devices to replace humans in warfare is taken into account, this paper will engage on matters related to current scholarship on the rejection or acceptance of LAWs—including contemporary technological shortcomings of LAWs to differentiate between targets and the behavioral and psychological volatility of humans—and current and proposed regulatory infrastructures for developing and using such devices. After careful consideration of these factors, this paper will conclude that only ethical LAWs should be used to replace human involvement in war, and, by extension of their consistent abilities, should remove humans from war until a more formidable discovery is made in conducting ethical warfare. (shrink)

This paper examines Castoriadis’ concept of time as ontological creation in relation to the activation of the project of autonomy. We argue that since Castoriadis presents as a practitioner of the creation of time as radical autonomous thinking, this is the standpoint from which to assess his claims. Through an examination of Castoriadis’ claim that the practice of autonomy depends upon it being activated by a willing singularity who accepts the Chaos of society and of the world, we (...) argue that Castoriadis’ position presupposes an effective contrast between the autonomy of significance that he advocates and the heteronomy of insignificance that he laments. If, as we suggest, both these orientations accept the Groundlessness of the world, then Castoriadis’ appeal to the awareness of a willing singularity is not sufficient to distinguish the practice of radical autonomy. To this extent, his elucidation of the radical imaginary time of ontological creation remains incomplete. (shrink)

In modern technical societies computers interact with human beings in ways that can affect moral rights and obligations. This has given rise to the question whether computers can act as autonomous moral agents. The answer to this question depends on many explicit and implicit definitions that touch on different philosophical areas such as anthropology and metaphysics. The approach chosen in this paper centres on the concept of information. Information is a multi-facetted notion which is hard to define comprehensively. However, (...) the frequently used definition of information as data endowed with meaning can promote our understanding. It is argued that information in this sense is a necessary condition of cognitivist ethics. This is the basis for analysing computers and information processors regarding their status as possible moral agents. Computers have several characteristics that are desirable for moral agents. However, computers in their current form are unable to capture the meaning of information and therefore fail to reflect morality in anything but a most basic sense of the term. This shortcoming is discussed using the example of the Moral Turing Test. The paper ends with a consideration of which conditions computers would have to fulfil in order to be able to use information in such a way as to render them capable of acting morally and reflecting ethically. (shrink)

NADOT M. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 118–127The world’s first secular autonomous nursing school against the power of the churchesSecular healthcare practices were standardized well before the churches’ established their influence over the nursing profession. Indeed, such practices, resting on the tripartite axiom of domus, familia, hominem, were already established in hospitals during the middle ages. It was not until the last third of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Church imposed its culture on secular health institutions; the Protestant church (...) followed suit in 1836. In reaction to the encroachment of religious orders on civil society and the amalgam of religious denominations favored, for example, by the devout Florence Nightingale (supported, in 1854, by Sir Sidney Herbert, the influential Puseyite), it is on 20 July 1859 that the great Swiss nineteenth century pedagogue and recipient of the Académie française Gold Medal, Valérie de Gasparin-Boissier (1813–94), proposed a model of secular healthcare training for nurses that would become a counter-model set in opposition to religious health institutions. Forerunner of later schools, the world’s first secular autonomous Nursing School was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland. Its mission was to bring decisive changes to the statutes of nurses’ training, which were then still based on six principles not far removed from those of religious communities at the time: commitment for life, the Rule of St Augustine, obedience, celibacy, the renouncement of salary, and the uniform. (shrink)

The Moscow Psychological Society, a learned society founded in 1885 at Moscow University, was the philosophic center of the revolt against positivism in the Russian Silver Age. In 1889 it began publication of Russia's first regular, specialized journal in philosophy, Questions of Philosophy and Psychology. By the end of its activity in 1922, the Psychological Society had included most of the country's outstanding philosophers and had played the major role in the growth of professional philosophy in Russia. (...) ;While the Silver Age mounted a broad-based revolt against positivism, neo-idealist philosophy in the Psychological Society was distinctive in the theoretical depth of its critique. For leading philosophers in the Society , neo-idealism was a compelling defense of the self against positivist reductionism and naturalism, a defense that took the form, moreover, of a modernized, theoretically explicit theism, in which the value of the person is rooted in transcendent being . In this, neo-idealism promoted not only the autonomization and professionalization of Russian philosophy but also the theoretical development of Russian liberalism. ;This dissertation argues: that a learned society of philosophers had special significance in Russia, where the frail social foundations of liberalism made its intellectual defense all the more imperative; that the Psychological Society, especially in its programmatic symposium, Problems of Idealism , was integrally involved in the Russian Liberation Movement; that the neo-idealist development of Russian liberalism drew heavily on Kant, in its substantiation of the possibility of personalism and in its critique of utopianism; and that the neo-idealist critique of utopianism, specifically in the responses of Psychological Society philosophers to their colleague, Vladimir Solov'ev, provides an excellent measure of the distinctiveness of neo-idealism relative to other currents in the Silver Age. (shrink)

This paper argues against the moral Turing test as a framework for evaluating the moral performance of autonomous systems. Though the term has been carefully introduced, considered, and cautioned about in previous discussions :251–261, 2000; Allen and Wallach 2009), it has lingered on as a touchstone for developing computational approaches to moral reasoning :98–109, 2015). While these efforts have not led to the detailed development of an MTT, they nonetheless retain the idea to discuss what kinds of action and (...) reasoning should be demanded of autonomous systems. We explore the flawed basis of an MTT in imitation, even one based on scenarios of morally accountable actions. MTT-based evaluations are vulnerable to deception, inadequate reasoning, and inferior moral performance vis a vis a system’s capabilities. We propose verification—which demands the design of transparent, accountable processes of reasoning that reliably prefigure the performance of autonomous systems—serves as a superior framework for both designer and system alike. As autonomous social robots in particular take on an increasing range of critical roles within society, we conclude that verification offers an essential, albeit challenging, moral measure of their design and performance. (shrink)

The question of human control is a key concern in autonomous military systems debates. Our research qualitatively and quantitatively investigates values and concerns of the general public, as they relate to autonomous military systems, with particular attention to the value of human control. Using participatory value evaluation (PVE), we consulted 1980 Australians about which values matter in relation to two specific technologies: an autonomous minesweeping submarine and an autonomous drone that can drop bombs. Based on value (...) sensitive design, participants were tasked to enhance the systems with design features that can realize values. A restriction (limited budget) in each design task forced participants to make trade-offs between design options and the values that these options realize. Our results suggest that the ‘general public’ has diverse and nuanced stances on the question of human control over autonomous military systems. A third of participants that is opposed to autonomous military systems when asked directly, selected different combinations of design features realizing varying degrees of human control. Several contextual factors, technology-specific concerns, and certain values seemed to explain these different choices. Our research shows that a focus on human control might overlook other important values that the general public is concerned about, such as system reliability, verifiability, and retrievability. (shrink)

Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning have raised many questions about the regulatory and governance mechanisms for autonomous machines. Many commentators, scholars, and policy-makers now call for ensuring that algorithms governing our lives are transparent, fair, and accountable. Here, I propose a conceptual framework for the regulation of AI and algorithmic systems. I argue that we need tools to program, debug and maintain an algorithmic social contract, a pact between various human stakeholders, mediated by machines. (...) To achieve this, we can adapt the concept of human-in-the-loop (HITL) from the fields of modeling and simulation, and interactive machine learning. In particular, I propose an agenda I call society-in-the-loop (SITL), which combines the HITL control paradigm with mechanisms for negotiating the values of various stakeholders affected by AI systems, and monitoring compliance with the agreement. In short, ‘SITL = HITL + Social Contract.’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Neo-Idealist Reception of Kant in the Moscow Psychological SocietyRandall A. Poole*The Moscow Psychological Society, founded in 1885 at Moscow University, was the philosophical center of the revolt against positivism in the Russian Silver Age. By the end of its activity in 1922 it had played the major role in the growth of professional philosophy in Russia. 1 The Society owes its name to its founder, M. (...) M. Troitsky (1835–99), an empiricist psychologist. Although it sponsored significant psychological research, its greater importance in the history of Russian philosophy began to emerge already in 1888, when Nikolai Ia. Grot (1852–99) took over as director. Grot’s principal colleagues in the affairs of the Society included the major Russian idealist philosophers Vladimir S. Solov’ev (1853–1900), Sergei N. Trubetskoi (1862–1905), and Lev M. Lopatin (1855–1920). In 1889 the Psychological Society began publication of Russia’s first regular, specialized journal in philosophy, Questions of Philosophy and Psychology (Voprosy Filosofii i Psikhologii). Grot characterized the journal’s prevailing direction as idealist or, “in respect to method, metaphysical.” 2While the cultural revival of the Silver Age mounted a broad-based revolt against positivism, neo-idealist philosophy in the Psychological Society was distinctive in the theoretical depth of its critique. Positivism was remarkably pervasive [End Page 319] in Russia from the middle of the nineteenth century. The main characteristics of this positivist Weltanschauung were reductionism, which dismissed as a meaningless proposition (neither analytic nor empirical) the possibility of being beyond the positively-given data of sense experience, i.e., phenomena in space and time; scientism, the claim, consistent with the positivist reduction of being to natural phenomena, that the methodology of the natural sciences covered eve-rything; and utopianism, the hope that the application of natural scientific methods to man and society would make human existence as regular and well-ordered as nature. 3 The defining trait was reductionism or, in other words, naturalism or atheism: the reduction of being to nature. In ethics, epistemology, ontology, and social philosophy neo-idealism emerged as a response to these characteristics. Its development by philosophers in the Psychological Society, apart from comprising a basic chapter in the history of Russian thought, informs the European-wide revolt against positivism characteristic of fin-de-siècle culture.According to scientistic positivism, philosophy had no distinctive methodology and thus no legitimate right to exist as its own type of scientific (nauchnyi or wissenschaftlich) discipline. Empirical sciences were the only sciences; philosophy could at best serve as a field that systematized empirical research. Against these claims Russian neo-idealists sought to advance the autonomy of philosophy by showing that the positivist measure of reality was far from exhaustive and that what it did not exhaust comprised the domain of philosophy. This domain was human consciousness itself, to the extent it could be shown to be irreducible to empirical experience (the positivist sphere). Neo-idealism thus took shape as a type of philosophy of consciousness. In the inaugural issue of Questions of Philosophy and Psychology S. N. Trubetskoi published the first installment of a large essay bearing the title, “On the Nature of Human Consciousness.” “The question of the nature of consciousness is the principal question of philosophy, not only of psychology,” Trubetskoi wrote, “for in consciousness we know everything that we know.” 4 Trubetskoi and his colleagues in the Psychological Society were convinced that philosophy had to develop through specification of its own internal standards and through autonomization from the spurious criteria positivism applied externally to it. Their goal was to match, in theoretical rigor, the professionalism associated with the natural sciences by making philosophy “scientific,” but on idealist, not empirical grounds. [End Page 320]The Kantian Critique of PositivismIn their defense of the self against positivist reductionism and naturalism, neo-idealists of the Psychological Society were deeply indebted to Kant, in both epistemology and moral philosophy. This claim revises the traditional view that Russian philosophy developed without significant assistance from Kant. 5In two ways Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason defends the minimal idealist claim that not everything intellectual can be reduced to the natural (sensible or psychological), that consciousness cannot... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a solution to a problem that arises from the fact that people who commit crimes under the influence of serious mental disorders may still have a capacity to refuse treatment. Several ethicists have argued that the present legislation concerning involuntary treatment of people with mental disorder is discriminatory and should change to the effect that psychiatric patients can refuse care on the same grounds as patients in somatic care. However, people with mental (...) disorders who have committed crimes and been exempted from criminal responsibility would then fall outside the scope of criminal justice as well as that of the psychiatric institutions if they were to refuse care. In this paper, I present and develop a solution to how society should deal with this group of people, called Advance criminal responsibility. The basic idea being that if a person with a potentially responsibility exempting psychiatric condition refuses care, that person is responsible for any future criminal acts which are due to the mental disorder. (shrink)

A specter is haunting sociologists. It is the specter of “mass society.” This phantasm is not of the sociologist's own making. The conception of mass society, that had its origin in the Roman historians’ idea of the tumultuous populace and its greatest literary expression in Coriolanus, is largely a product of the nineteenth century. In this epoch, it is a product of the reaction against the French Revolutions which ran from 1789, through 1830 and 1848, to 1871. Jakob (...) Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche, fearful of the inflammability of the mob in the presence of a heated demagogue—that demagogue was Louis Napoléon—came to envisage modern society, particularly modern democratic society, as tending toward an inert and formless mass, lying in brutish torpor most of the time and occasionally aroused to plebiscitary acclamation by a “great simplifier.” Tocqueville's critique of the absolutist ancien régime, centered on a vision of a society which has lost its framework of feudal liberty through the destruction of the autonomous corporations and estates on which it rested, is a cornerstone of that construction. The no-man's land between the absolute prince and the mass of the population became a field open to passion and manipulation. (shrink)

"A runaway trolley is speeding down a track" So begins what is perhaps the most fecund thought experiment of the past several decades since its invention by Philippa Foot. Since then, moral philosophers have applied the "trolley problem" as a thought experiment to study many different ethical conflicts - and chief among them is the programming of autonomous vehicles. Nowadays, however, very few philosophers accept that the trolley problem is a perfect analogy for driverless cars or that the situations (...) autonomous vehicles face will resemble the forced choice of the unlucky bystander in the original thought experiment. This book represents a substantial and purposeful effort to move the academic discussion beyond the trolley problem to the broader ethical, legal, and social implications that autonomous vehicles present. There are still urgent questions waiting to be addressed, for example: how AVs might interact with human drivers in mixed or "hybrid" traffic environments; how AVs might reshape our urban landscapes; what unique security or privacy concerns are raised by AVs as connected devices in the "Internet of Things"; how the benefits and burdens of this new technology, including mobility, traffic congestion, and pollution, will be distributed throughout society; and more. An attempt to map the landscape of these next-generation questions and to suggest preliminary answers, this volume draws on the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, economics, urban planning and transportation engineering, business ethics and more, and represents a global range of perspectives. (shrink)

This article critically re-examines the application of the principle of patient autonomy within bioethics. In complex societies such as those found in North America and Europe health care professionals are increasingly confronted by patients from diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. This affects the relationship between clinicians and patients to the extent that patients' deliberations upon the proposed courses of treatment can, in various ways and to varying extents, be influenced by their ethnic, cultural, and religious commitments. The principle of (...) patient autonomy is the main normative constraint imposed upon medical treatment. Bioethicists typically appeal to the principle of patient autonomy as a means for generally attempting to resolve conflict between patients and clinicians. In recent years a number of bioethicists have responded to the condition of multiculturalism by arguing that the autonomy principle provides the basis for a common moral discourse capable of regulating the relationship between clinicians and patients in those situations where patients' beliefs and commitments do or may contradict the ethos of biomedicine. This article challenges that claim. I argue that the precise manner in which the autonomy principle is philosophically formulated within such accounts prohibits bioethicists' deployment of autonomy as a core ideal for a common moral discourse within multicultural societies. The formulation of autonomy underlying such accounts cannot be extended to simply assimilate individuals' most fundamental religious and cultural commitments and affiliations per se. I challenge the assumption that respecting prospective patients' fundamental religious and cultural commitments is necessarily always compatible with respecting their autonomy. I argue that the character of some peoples' relationship with their cultural or religious community acts to significantly constrain the possibilities for acting autonomously. The implication is clear. The autonomy principle may be presently invalidly applied in certain circumstances because the conditions for the exercise of autonomy have not been fully or even adequately satisfied. This is a controversial claim. The precise terms of my argument, while addressing the specific application of the autonomy principle within bioethics, will resonate beyond this sphere and raises questions for attempts to establish a common moral discourse upon the ideal of personal autonomy within multicultural societies generally. (shrink)

This paper takes stock of all the various factors that cause the design-time opacity of autonomous systems behaviour. The factors include embodiment effects, design-time knowledge gap, human factors, emergent behaviour and tacit knowledge. This situation is contrasted with the usual representation of moral dilemmas that assume perfect information. Since perfect information is not achievable, the traditional moral dilemma representations are not valid and the whole problem of ethical autonomous systems design proves to be way more empirical than previously (...) understood. (shrink)

This paper investigates the importance of standardising and maintaining the transparency of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) functions nomenclature, designs, and operations in all categories up until fully autonomous vehicles. The aim of this paper is to reveal the discrepancies in ADAS functions across automakers and discuss the underlying issues and potential solutions. In this pilot study, user manuals of various brands are reviewed systematically and critical analyses of common ADAS functions are conducted. The result shows that terminologies used to (...) describe ADAS functions vary widely across manufacturers and sometimes do not reflect their fundamental functions intuitively. Operational conditions and control procedures also vary across the selected models under this study. Due to this lack of consensus across the industry, drivers are not aware or well informed about ADAS functions in their vehicles, leading to a very low utilization rate and may lead to misuse of those functions. This paper provides insightful suggestions for the transport industry, Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts, and regulators to design frameworks and guidelines in governing the naming convention, operating conditions, control procedures, and information disclosure of ADAS. Such guidelines can be the foundations for regulating future AI-based self-driving functions. (shrink)

Diagnostic self-testing devices are being developed for many illnesses, chronic diseases and infections. These will be used in hospitals, at point-of-care facilities and at home. Designed to allow earlier detection of diseases, self-testing diagnostic devices may improve disease prevention, slow the progression of disease and facilitate better treatment outcomes. These devices have the potential to benefit both the individual and society by enabling individuals to take a more proactive role in the maintenance of their health and by helping (...) class='Hi'>society improve health and reduce health costs. However, the full implications of future home-based diagnostic technology for individuals and society remain unclear due to their novelty. We argue that the development of diagnostic tools, especially for home use, will heighten a number of ethical challenges. This paper will explore some of the ethical implications of home-based self-testing diagnostic devices for the autonomous and relational dimensions of the person. This will be facilitated by examining the impact of diagnostic devices for individual autonomy, for the delivery of accurate diagnosis and for the personal significance of the information for the user. The latter will be examined using Charles Taylor's view of personhood and his emphasis on human agency and interpretation. While the ethical issues are not necessarily new, the development of home-based self-testing diagnostic devices will make issues regarding autonomy, accuracy of information and personal significance more and more demanding. This will be the case particularly when an individual's autonomous choices come into conflict with the person's relational responsibilities. (shrink)

Ryan Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. This series of papers meets this challenge by landscaping traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. The first paper established the challenge and set out autonomy in Aristotelian terms. (...) The present paper interprets Kantian moral theory on the basis of the preceding introduction, argues contra Tonkens that an engineer does not violate the categorical imperative in creating Kantian AMAs, and proposes that a Kantian AMA is not only a possible goal for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics, Education, the Critical Autonomous Self, and the Culture IndustryMarianna Papastephanou (bio)IntroductionE Lucevan le Stelle disconnected both from Tosca and Puccini becomes incidental music and brings strong recollections of the detergent advertisement it once coated. Last Year in Marienbad has caused some of the deepest yawn relief to many hopefuls for the title of the sophisticated who wished to cash out the film's cultural and social capital. A (...) painting by a well-known artist in the living room of a middle-upper-class residence often matches the colors of the carpet, and a piece of African art in the corner testifies to the hosts' cosmopolitan respect for otherness and the proper dose of hybridity in their selfhood. The young of the family are said to search for freedom from the puritan lifestyle in Ecstasis. Or, they rebel against the oppressive order of the system through idolizing music bands of an unconventional style and, as a matter of fact, of "unconventional" wealth accumulated precisely through the systemic exploitation of their idolization. The whole family, including the discontented young, will unite in the enjoyment of a new movie in which, just as in hundreds before it, police detectives can solve cases only after their suspension from duty and foreigners prefer to converse in perfect English when they are alone. What all members of the family are sure of by the end of the day, some of them through the prism of heavy drinking and others in the sober appreciation of the latest reality show, is that they exercised once again their free will in all instances. For they oriented their desires, treated as natural and self-posited, to objects they initially lacked but "autonomously" and "critically" found and selected from a rich and all-encompassing marketplace of culture. [End Page 75]How are art, its education, and its educational ideals of autonomy and critique related to this particular cultural reality that I have highlighted? Pseudo-individualism, escapism, Ersatzbefriedigung, fetishization, reification, and educationalization are some of the terms Adorno employed to approach the reality of artistic production and reception in capitalist times while preserving the distance that art offers for critiquing reality.1 In contrast with the above-sketched reality, in Adorno's ultimate aesthetic vision through art the self is not supposed to "forget in dreams the present world, but to change it by the strength of an image."2 Adorno attacks the drive toward a "totally administered" society—that of late capitalism—which "reduces every aspect of present-day life to the dead level of conformist popular 'taste' as dictated by a wholesale culture industry given over to the purposes of mass indoctrination."3 Fundamentally, the culture industry hinders the formation of autonomous, critical, and independent individuals.4I shall argue that such a theoretical framework gives us additional insight through which to combat what has already been perceived in pedagogical discourse as educational inability to cultivate reflective and critical subjectivities. Instead of autonomy, education nurtures narcissism. and instead of critique, it promotes appeasement5 —all the more so when education succumbs to the culture industry or fails to encourage students' critical stance to its imperatives.My position here is that by reclaiming their own valuable connection to reflective artistic experience and reception, aesthetic theory and art education can contribute to a reconceptualization of autonomy and critique and, perhaps more importantly, to a reorientation of educational practice.6 Adorno's aesthetics is exceptionally relevant to this aim because his work exemplifies in a unique way the necessary awareness of the antinomic qualities of autonomy and critique, their ineluctable dependence on society and culture, and their secret culpability in domination. Moreover, Adorno's cultural criticism comprises an unsurpassable diagnosis of those social pathologies that leads away from critical and reflective subjectivity and offers conceptual means for setting a critical eye on some current impoverished practices of teaching art. Above all, Adorno's aesthetic theory displays a remarkable topicality regarding contemporary positions on purely artistic concerns and contentions. Thus, the current neglect of his work in aesthetic educational theory7 must be dealt with since accommodation of such aesthetics within art educational discourse will serve significantly the latter's... (shrink)

Despite resistance from various societal actors, the development and deployment of lethal autonomous weaponry to warzones is perhaps likely, considering the perceived operational and ethical advantage such weapons are purported to bring. In this paper, it is argued that the deployment of truly autonomous weaponry presents an ethical danger by calling into question the ability of such weapons to abide by the Laws of War. This is done by noting the resonances between battlefield target identification and the process (...) of ontic-ontological investigation detailed in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, before arguing that the nature of lethal autonomous weaponry precludes them from being able to engage in such investigations—a key requisite for abiding by the relevant legislation that governs battlefield conduct. (shrink)

The recent progress in the development of autonomous cars has seen ethical questions come to the forefront. In particular, life and death decisions regarding the behavior of self-driving cars in trolley dilemma situations are attracting widespread interest in the recent debate. In this essay we want to ask whether we should implement a mandatory ethics setting for the whole of society or, whether every driver should have the choice to select his own personal ethics setting. While the consensus (...) view seems to be that people would not be willing to use an automated car that might sacrifice themselves in a dilemma situation, we will defend the somewhat contra-intuitive claim that this would be nevertheless in their best interest. The reason is, simply put, that a PES regime would most likely result in a prisoner’s dilemma. (shrink)

The development of cancer therapies is a long and arduous process. Because it can take several years for a cancer agent to pass clinical testing and be approved for use, terminal cancer patients rarely have the time to see these experimental therapies become widely available. For most terminal cancer patients the only opportunity they have to access an experimental drug that could potentially improve their prognosis is by joining a clinical trial. Unfortunately, several aspects of clinical trial methodology that are (...) set in place in order to optimise drug development for the benefit of future generations of cancer patients, pose significant limitations to current patient participation. Therefore, several terminal cancer patients believe that they should have the right to access experimental agents that have passed initial safety testing without having to participate in clinical trials. However, granting off-trial access to patients could be detrimental to the scientific process of drug development, and thus could pose significant risks to the health of future patients relying on sound research. Examining this matter through two divergent ethical lenses, rights-based ethics and communitarian ethics, may provide new insight into the issues surrounding the balance between the autonomous rights of current terminal cancer patients, and the needs of future patients and the values of society. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine three different approaches to autonomy in order to demonstrate how each leads to a different conclusion about the ethicality of advertising. I contend that Noggle''s (1995) belief-based autonomy theory provides the most complete understanding of autonomy. Read in conjunction with Arendt''s theory of cooperative power, Noggle''s theory leads to the conclusion that advertising does not violate consumers'' autonomy. Although it is possible for advertisers to abuse the power granted them by society (...) these abuses do not constitute a violation of consumers'' autonomy. (shrink)

Title: Die Demokratische FragePublisher: SuhrkampISBN: 3518115723Author: Ulrich Rödel, Günter Frankenberg, Helmut Dubiel,Title: Autonome Gesellschaft und Libertäre DemokratiePublisher: SuhrkampISBN: 3518115731Author: Ulrich Rödel Title: Civil Society and Political TheoryPublisher: The MIT PressISBN: 0262031779Author: Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato.

Ensuring the trustworthiness of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence is an important interdisciplinary endeavour. In this position paper, we argue that this endeavour will benefit from technical advancements in capturing various forms of responsibility, and we present a comprehensive research agenda to achieve this. In particular, we argue that ensuring the reliability of autonomous system can take advantage of technical approaches for quantifying degrees of responsibility and for coordinating tasks based on that. Moreover, we deem that, in certifying (...) the legality of an AI system, formal and computationally implementable notions of _responsibility_, _blame_, _accountability_, and _liability_ are applicable for addressing potential responsibility gaps (i.e. situations in which a group is responsible, but individuals’ responsibility may be unclear). This is a call to enable AI systems themselves, as well as those involved in the design, monitoring, and governance of AI systems, to represent and reason about who can be seen as responsible in prospect (e.g. for completing a task in future) and who can be seen as responsible retrospectively (e.g. for a failure that has already occurred). To that end, in this work, we show that across all stages of the design, development, and deployment of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), responsibility reasoning should play a key role. This position paper is the first step towards establishing a road map and research agenda on how the notion of responsibility can provide novel solution concepts for ensuring the _reliability_ and _legality_ of TAS and, as a result, enables an effective embedding of AI technologies into society. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on the scholarly and policy debate on autonomous weapon systems and particularly on the objections to the use of these weapons which rest on jus ad bellum principles of proportionality and last resort. Both objections rest on the idea that AWS may increase the incidence of war by reducing the costs for going to war or by providing a propagandistic value. We argue that whilst these objections offer pressing concerns in their own right, they (...) suffer from important limitations: they overlook the difficulties of calculating ad bellum proportionality; confuse the concept of proportionality of effects with the precision of weapon systems; disregard the ever-changing nature of war and of its ethical implications; mistake the moral obligation imposed by the principle of last resort with the impact that AWS may have on political decision to resort to war. Our analysis does not entail that AWS are acceptable or justifiable, but it shows that ad bellum principles are not the best set of ethical principles for tackling the ethical problems raised by AWS; and that developing adequate understanding of the transformations that the use of AWS poses to the nature of war itself is a necessary, preliminary requirement to any ethical analysis of the use of these weapons. (shrink)

In this paper we present some concepts and their relations that are necessary for modeling autonomous agents in an environment that is governed by some (social) norms. We divide the norms over three levels: the private level the contract level and the convention level. We show how deontic logic can be used to model the concepts and how the theory of speech acts can be used to model the generation of (some of) the norms. Finally we give some idea (...) about an agent architecture incorporating the social norms based on a BDI framework. (shrink)

In recent years, autonomous systems have become an important research area and application domain, with a significant impact on modern society. Such systems are characterized by different levels of autonomy and complex communication infrastructures that allow for collective decision-making strategies. There exist several publications that tackle ethical aspects in such systems, but mostly from the perspective of a single agent. In this paper we go one step further and discuss these ethical challenges from the perspective of an aggregate (...) of autonomous systems capable of collective decision-making. In particular, in this paper, we propose the Caesar approach through which we model the collective ethical decision-making process of a group of actors—agents and humans, as well as define the building blocks for the agents participating in such a process, namely Caesar agents. Factors such as trust, security, safety, and privacy, which affect the degree to which a collective decision is ethical, are explicitly captured in Caesar. Finally, we argue that modeling the collective decision-making in Caesar provides support for accountability. (shrink)

This article examines the Palestinian women's autonomous movement that emerged in the early 1990s, emphasizing changes in the sociopolitical context to account for the movement's emergence, dynamics, and challenges. Using interviews obtained during fieldwork in Palestine in 1992, 1993, and 1994, and employing historical and archival records, I argue that Palestinian feminist discourses were shaped and influenced by the sociopolitical context in which Palestinian women acted and with which they interacted. The multiplicity of views voiced by the women I (...) interviewed attests to the impossibility of homogenizing and flattening women's experiences, while the range of actions and strategies employed by different groups and organizations calls attention to contextual limitations on social action. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles, and the larger socio-technical systems that they are a part of are likely to have a deep and lasting impact on our societies. Trust is a key value that will play a role in the development of autonomous driving systems. This paper suggests that trust of autonomous driving systems will impact the ways that these systems are taken up, the norms and laws that guide them and the design of the systems themselves. Further to this, (...) in order to have autonomous driving systems that are worthy of our trust, we need a superstructure of oversight and a process that designs trust into these systems from the outset. Rather than banning or avoiding all autonomous vehicles should a tragedy occur, despite these systems having some level of risk, we want resilient systems that can survive tragedies, and indeed, improve from them. I will argue that trust plays a role in developing these resilient systems. (shrink)

As the autonomous vehicles technology gradually enters the public eye, understanding consumers' psychological motivations for accepting autonomous vehicles is critical for the development of autonomous vehicles and society. Previously, researchers have explored the determinants of fully autonomous vehicles but the relevant research is far from enough. Moreover, the relationship between anthropomorphism and users' behavior has been ignored to a large extent. Therefore, this study aim to fill the gap by using anthropomorphism and the unified theory (...) of acceptance and use of technology to explore how system attributes and UTAUT attributes influence consumers' acceptance behavior. The data were collected via questionnaire survey conducted in Beijing, China, which can be a promising early adopter of AVs. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results reveal that perceived anthropomorphism and perceived intelligence have a direct positive influence on the adoption of AVs; performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions have an indirect positive influence on intention to adopt AVs. Also, this research contributes to the literature by enriching studies on psychological determinants of autonomous vehicles' adoption by taking an initial step to highlight anthropomorphism perceptions. This can provide managerial implications for policy-makers and businesses on how to effectively allocate resources to enhance autonomous vehicle adoption. (shrink)