Despite its successes, to date Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still characterized by a number of shortcomings with regards to different application domains and goals. These limitations are arguably both conceptual (e.g., related to the underlying theoretical models, such as symbolic vs.connectionist), and operational (e.g., related to robustness and ability to generalize). Biologically inspired AI, and more specifically brain-inspired AI, promises to provide further biological aspects beyond those that are already traditionally included in AI, making it possible to assess and possibly (...) overcome some of its present shortcomings. This article examines some conceptual, technical, and ethical issues raised by the development and use of brain-inspired AI. Against this background, the paper asks whether there is anything ethically unique about brain-inspired AI. The aim of the paper is to introduce a method that has a heuristic nature and that can be applied to identify and address the ethical issues arising from brain-inspired AI (and from AI more generally). The conclusion resulting from the application of this method is that, compared to traditional AI, brain-inspired AI raises new foundational ethical issues and some new practical ethical issues, and exacerbates some of the issues raised by traditional AI. (shrink)

The 2D:4D-Ratio, as an indirect measure of the fetal testosterone to estradiol ratio, is potentially very important for understanding and explaining different personality traits. It was the aim of the present study to replicate the findings from Fink et al. (2004) about the relation between individual differences in 2D:4D-Ratios and the Five Factor Model in different cultural groups. Therefore a sample of n = 78 Chinese and n = 370 German participants was recruited. Every participant provided hand scans of both (...) hands, from which 2D:4D-Ratios were computed. Moreover, all participants filled in the NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). Significant sex differences were found for ratios of both hands in the expected direction, with females showing higher ratios than males. With respect to links between personality and the digit ratio, a positive association was observed between 2D:4D-Ratio and Neuroticism in females, as shown in the earlier study. These findings were observed in both female subsamples from China and Germany, as well as in the full sample of participants. But in contrast to the results for the whole and the German female sample, where 2D:4D-Ratio of both hands were related to Neuroticism, in the Chinese female sample only left hand 2D:4D-Ratio was significantly and positively related to Neuroticism. There were no significant correlations found in any of the male samples. Thus, prenatal exposure to sex steroids appears to influence the personality factor Neuroticism in females specifically. This finding potentially has implications for mental health, as Neuroticism has been shown to be a risk factor for various forms of psychopathology. (shrink)

The authors of this volume — all of them recognized representatives of a wide range of academic disciplines — agree that Locke’s work must have had a considerable influence both on English and German literature and the visual arts of Great Britain, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the perspective of interdisciplinarity and intertextuality, the essays presented here deal with Locke as a source of ideas for Archibald Alison, John Constable, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, Johann Timotheus (...) Hermes, William Hogarth, Immanuel Kant, Martin Knutzen, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, George Lillo, Edward Moore, Johann Gottwerth Müller, Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Richardson, John Ruskin, Joseph Spence, Laurence Sterne, J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Whately, among others. (shrink)

The beneficial effects of physical exercise on physical health and cognitive functioning have been repeatedly shown. However, evidence of its effect on psychosocial functioning in healthy adults is still scarce or inconclusive. One limitation of many studies examining this link is their reliance on correlational approaches or specific subpopulations, such as clinical populations. The present study investigated the effects of a physical exercise intervention on key factors of psychosocial functioning, specifically well-being, stress, loneliness, and future time perspective. We used data (...) from healthy, previously sedentary older adults who participated in a 6-month at-home intervention, either engaging in aerobic exercise or as part of a control group who participated in foreign language-learning or reading of selected native-language literature. Before and after the intervention, comprehensive cardiovascular pulmonary testing and a psychosocial questionnaire were administered. The exercise group showed significantly increased fitness compared to the control group. Contrary to expectations, however, we did not find evidence for a beneficial effect of this fitness improvement on any of the four domains of psychosocial functioning we assessed. This may be due to pronounced stability of such psychological traits in older age, especially in older adults who show high levels of well-being initially. Alternatively, it may be that the well-documented beneficial effects of physical exercise on brain structure and function, as well as cognition differ markedly from beneficial effects on psychosocial functioning. While aerobic exercise may be the driving factor for the former, positive effects on the latter may only be invoked by other aspects of exercise, for example, experiences of mastery or a feeling of community. (shrink)

In recent years, the rights of patients have assumed a more pivotal role in international discussion. Stricter laws on the protection of patients place greater priority on the perspective and the status of patients. The purpose of this study is to emphasize ethical aspects in communication, the role of patient advocates as contacts for the concerns and suggestions of patients, and how many problems of ethics disappear when communication is highlighted. We reviewed 680 documented cases of consultation in a 10-year (...) period of patient advocates’ activity at a big German university hospital with 1,300 beds. On the basis of this extensive material, the article will focus on the intersection of the advocate’s work with the problems of patients in hospitals. Deficits in the level of communication between health care professionals and patients were frequently uncovered. Patients primarily complain about the lack of dialogue and empathy. Middle-aged patients consulted the patients’ advocate disproportionately more often. Measured against this baseline, the group of 65 and older complained less frequently. Besides complaints the advocate was asked in more than one-third of all cases for information about medical matters, hospital regulations or administrative problems. Patients obviously see the advocate as a well-connected and ideally unbiased contact person for uncertainties concerning their malady or a potential stay in hospital. Those seeking help often set hope in the information given by the voluntary patient representative. It should be highly recommended for every German hospital to establish the position of a patient advocate. Furthermore, patients can profit from regular exchange between the advocate and the Ethics Committee, also, to help ensure that their rights are taken into account and implemented in an ethically desirable context. (shrink)

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

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)

There has been much debate whether computers can be responsible. This question is usually discussed in terms of personhood and personal characteristics, which a computer may or may not possess. If a computer fulfils the conditions required for agency or personhood, then it can be responsible; otherwise not. This paper suggests a different approach. An analysis of the concept of responsibility shows that it is a social construct of ascription which is only viable in certain social contexts and which serves (...) particular social aims. If this is the main aspect of responsibility then the question whether computers can be responsible no longer hinges on the difficult problem of agency but on the possibly simpler question whether responsibility ascriptions to computers can fulfil social goals. The suggested solution to the question whether computers can be subjects of responsibility is the introduction of a new concept, called “quasi-responsibility” which will emphasise the social aim of responsibility ascription and which can be applied to computers. (shrink)

Attempts to explain the origin of macroevolutionary innovations have been only partially successful. Here it is proposed that the patterns of major evolutionary transitions have to be understood first, before it is possible to further analyse the forces behind the process. The hypothesis is that major evolutionary innovations are characterized by an increase in organismal autonomy, in the sense of emancipation from the environment. After a brief overview of the literature on this subject, increasing autonomy is defined as the evolutionary (...) shift in the individual system–environment relationship, such that the direct influences of the environment are gradually reduced and a stabilization of self-referential, intrinsic functions within the system is generated. This is described as relative autonomy because numerous interconnections with the environment and dependencies upon it are retained. Features of increasing autonomy are spatial separations, an increase in homeostatic functions and in body size, internalizations and an increase in physiological and behavioral flexibility. It is described how these features are present in different combinations in the major evolutionary transitions of metazoans and, consequently, how they should be taken into consideration when evolutionary innovations are studied. The hypothesis contributes to a reconsideration of the relationship between organisms and their environment. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how it is to be explained that an action or object X counts as Y. I argue that John Searle's notion of a constitutive rule should not be employed because it involves a confusion. Instead, I propose an explanatory framework containing the following three elements: 1) The X-action or object is involved in certain social practices. 2) These practices confer properties on the X-items, in addition to their physical properties. 3) In virtue of these (...) additional properties the X-items fall under the Y-concept. Moreover, I stress that the social practices mentioned under 1) look differently from case to case and involve various constellations of prescriptive rules and interpersonal patterns of intentions. To illustrate and corroborate these claims, I discuss several cases of socially constituted actions and objects, in particular, the case of money, where I reject Searle's claim that something counts as money in virtue of giving its owner the right to buy something. (shrink)

This article gives a new explanation for the phenomenon of subcontracting. A model in which a principal contracts two agents who work in a sequence on a project, have soft information and can collude is considered. Side-contracts between agents can be signed at any stage of the game. It is shown that in this setting both a decentralized contracting structure, in which contracting of the agents at the initial production stage is delegated to the agent at the final production stage, (...) and a centralized structure, in which the principal directly contracts both agents, can be superior for the principal. The article derives the conditions under which this holds. The results give an explanation for recently observed tendencies in public procurement of design and construction activities. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

The placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens is a tiny hairy plate and more simply organized than any other living metazoan. After its original description by F.E. Schulze in 1883, it attracted attention as a potential model for the ancestral state of metazoan organization, the “Urmetazoon”. Trichoplax lacks any kind of symmetry, organs, nerve cells, muscle cells, basal lamina, and extracellular matrix. Furthermore, the placozoan genome is the smallest (not secondarily reduced) genome of all metazoan genomes. It harbors a remarkably rich diversity of (...) genes and has been considered the best living surrogate for a metazoan ancestor genome. The phylum Placozoa presently harbors three formally described species, while several dozen “cryptic” species are yet awaiting their description. The phylogenetic position of placozoans has recently become a contested arena for modern phylogenetic analyses and view‐driven claims. Trichoplax offers unique prospects for understanding the minimal requirements of metazoan animal organization and their corresponding malfunctions. (shrink)

Kants Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre galten seit ihrem Erscheinen 1797 als mehr oder weniger verunglücktes Alterswerk. Bernd Ludwigs Untersuchung beansprucht dagegen, in ihrem ersten Teil den Nachweis zu führen, daß der problematische Zustand der Schrift nicht etwa den nachlassen den Geisteskräften des Autors zuzuschreiben ist, sondern sich vielmehr einer verunglücken Drucklegung verdankt: Zum Druck gelangte ein Manuskript, in dem nicht nur einzelne Textpassagen falsch angeordnet waren, sondern das auch Vorarbeiten enthielt, die für den Druck gar nicht vorgesehen waren. Anhand (...) von philologischen Indikatoren läßt sich eine Version rekonstruieren, die der von Kant intendierten Textgestalt weitgehend entspricht, ihr zumindest aber wesentlich näher kommt als der Druck von 1797. Im zweiten Teil wird in Gestalt eines analytischen Kommentars feingliedrig die Kantische Argumentation rekonstruiert und auf diesem Wege aufgezeigt, daß das wiederhergestellte Werk tatsächlich die über dreißig Jahre währende Arbeit Kants an seiner Rechtsphilosophie erfolgreich zum Abschluß gebracht hat. Spuren nachlassender Geisteskräfte sind dabei nicht auszumachen. Vielmehr erweist sich Kant als Autor, der traditionelle Lehrstücke des Naturrechts souverän an seine kritische Grundlegung der praktischen Philosophie anschließt. (shrink)

Ist der Relativismus eine Herausforderung für die Rationalität von Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Kultur? Seit der Antike bis hin zu aktuellen philosophischen Debatten wird kontrovers diskutiert, ob die Relativierung von Geltungsansprüchen auf bestimmte Erkenntnisformen oder Deutungskontexte eine Gefahr für die Objektivität der Wahrheitsfrage darstellt, oder ob sie, genau umgekehrt, angesichts der heutigen Pluralität von Denkformen und Weltbildern ein angemessenes Vorgehen ist, das epistemische Bescheidenheit ausdrückt und die Tolerierung unvereinbarer Überzeugungen ermöglicht. Das vorliegende Buch ist die erste deutschsprachige Einführung in die komplexe (...) Thematik des Relativismus. Dabei geht es um den Begriff, die Entstehung und bekannte Entwürfe des Relativismus, um die Debatte über den Wahrheitsrelativismus, aber auch um das Verhältnis zwischen Pluralität, Toleranz und Relativismus. Der Autor vertritt eine kritische Position zu Spielarten des normativen Relativismus, hält sich aber auch von Auffassungen fern, die im Relativismus eine generelle Gefahr für unsere Kultur und Rationalität sehen. (shrink)

Taking account of Kant's unpublished mss., the author presents a close textual interpretation of Kant's logic of concepts.

This series of images forms part of the ongoing project Soft Ground, Hard Light, which speculates on a multiscalar spatial ontology of photography emanating from the Arditurri silver mine complex in the Basque Country. Evoking the mountainous massif around Arditurri where silver ore and galena have been extracted since Roman presence in the area, the depicted topographies are, in fact, data transcriptions from atomic force microscopy (AFM) probing the analogue film stock of an early 1930s experiment in 3D cinema, Cine (...) en Relieve, by the Basque cinematographer Teófilo Mingueza. In contrast to optical or electron microscopy, AFM uses a scanning probe to physically touch the specimen, recording its surface undulations at the atomic scale of a nanometre, or a billionth of a metre. As a haptic operation based on direct contact between instrument and sample, between apparatus and referent, AFM is literally a contact print, a ‘blind’ scan that senses not the visual content of the recorded image but ‘feels’ its underlying material substrate of silver nanoparticles within the 35 mm film emulsion. The resulting image assemblies visualize a topography resulting from the intra-action between the silver nanoparticles and the scanning probe as much as its transcription through the particular parameters afforded by the AFM analysis software. Hard Light, Soft Ground was initiated during an artist’s residency at Tabakalera Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia-San Sebastián, and is currently in production as part of the wider research project Esper Syndrome: Archaeotopologies of the Image at the Royal College of Art, funded by the AHRC through the London Arts & Humanities Partnership. With additional thanks to the Basque Film Archive and Gustavo Ariel Schwartz at the Materials Physics Centre, Donostia-San Sebastián. (shrink)

Biographical note: Bernd Seidensticker, Freie Universität Berlin; Martin Vöhler, Freie Universität Berlin.

The essay review summarizes the intention as well as some of the major topics from the book of A. Moreno and M. Mossio and discusses them against the background of recent considerations on the general understanding of organisms. The authors see themselves in the organicist tradition in biology and propose that a new understanding of living beings can be developed around the notion of organismic autonomy, which enables biological systems to maintain themselves in an environment through directed behavior.

Platon läßt in der Politeia seine Sokrates-Gestalt in Buch I und anderen früheren Büchern mit Voraussetzungen argumentieren, die für seine Beweisführung wesentlich sind, deren Berechtigung aber erst in einem späteren Zusammenhang erkennbar wird. Diese Antizipationen werden hier in Anlehnung an Ch.H. Kahn, der die von ihm beobachteten Bezüge zwischen früheren und späteren Büchern der Politeia "proleptic composition" genannt hat, als ‘proleptische Argumentation’ bezeichnet. Es läßt sich an der Konzeption der Gerechtigkeit erweisen, daß diese argumentativen Vorgriffe – so willkürlich sie an (...) Ort und Stelle erscheinen – Bestandteil eines planmäßigen Vorgehens sind, das im Rahmen des Dialogs an die Gesprächspartner angepaßt ist, aber durch seinen systematischen Aufbau einen über den Dialog hinausführenden Erkenntnisprozeß beim Leser anzustoßen vermag. (shrink)

Naturalistic Descriptions and Normative-Intentional Interpretations Normative pragmatists about linguistic meaning such as Sellars and Brandom have to explain how norms can be implicit in practices described in purely naturalistic terms. The explanation of implicit norms usually offered in the literature commits pragmatists to equate actions with naturalistic events. Since this is an unacceptable consequence, I propose an alternative explanation of implicit norms that avoids this identification. To do so, one has to treat the normative-intentional concepts such as "norm", "action", "sanction", (...) "belief", "desire" as a holistic system, in the sense that one has to apply all of them to a given naturalistic practice simultaneously. This result might be taken to imply that the pragmatist strategy of explaining the content of assertions and beliefs in terms of norm-governed use is misguided because it presupposes that one can account for the concept "norm" independently of the concept "belief". I argue that this consequence does not follow. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

THIS paper consists essentially of three parts. The first part argues the case for construing Nietzsche's remarks about Übermenschlichkeit as endorsing some specific set of character traits, of "virtues" if you like. To be an Übermensch, on this reading, is to possess or exhibit certain traits of character, traits which in the typical case are associated with notions of self-overcoming, sublimation, creativity, and self-perfection. An Übermensch, construed in this way, expresses Nietzsche's vision of the human ideal, of what human beings (...) should or might be like. In this sense Nietzsche merely continues the ancient project of articulating the human ideal, the conception of human perfectibility. Although Nietzsche's answer may appear to be shockingly different, the project of articulating a human ideal is scarcely radical. The project qua project is no different than that of Plato or Aristotle, the Stoics, Spinoza or Kant. For Plato, the philosopher-king represents the ideal of human self-perfection; for Aristotle megalopsychic man conjoined with the life of contemplation; for the Stoics apatheia and right reason; for Spinoza the intellectual amor dei was a necessary and perhaps a sufficient condition for human liberation; for Kant, the genuinely moral person qualifies as the human ideal, the person whose actions are always and only governed by the categorical imperative, although Kant would probably have called such a will a "holy" will rather than a human one. (shrink)

This volume describes features of biological autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype, and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively generated (...) during the macroevolutionary transitions. The author states that a recurring central aspect of macroevolutionary innovations is an increase in individual organismal autonomy whereby it is emancipated from the environment with changes in its capacity for flexibility, self-regulation and self-control of behavior. The first chapters define the concept of autonomy and examine its history and its epistemological context. Later chapters demonstrate how changes in autonomy took place during the major evolutionary transitions and investigate the generation of organs and physiological systems. They synthesize material from various disciplines including zoology, comparative physiology, morphology, molecular biology, neurobiology and ethology. It is argued that the concept is also relevant for understanding the relation of the biological evolution of man to his cultural abilities. Finally the relation of autonomy to adaptation, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and other factors and patterns in evolution is discussed. The text has a clear perspective from the context of systems biology, arguing that the generation of biological autonomy must be interpreted within an integrative systems approach. (shrink)

In this paper some parts of the model theory for logics based on generalised Kripke semantics are developed. Löwenheim-Skolem theorems and some applications of ultraproduct constructions for generalised Kripke models with variable universe are investigated using similar theorems of the model theory for classical logic. The results are generalizations of the theorems of [4].

A famous passage in the first Critique (A 557 f.) often gives rise to the belief that Kant had not yet delivered a full treatment of freedom in 1781 and intended to shift this treatment to future writings. However, a closer inspection of the passage reveals that, to the contrary, Kant claims that due to the limitations of human reason his critical account of freedom given thus far must be considered complete. And indeed, this account reappears unchanged in the Groundwork. (...) When considered in this light, not only do the exact achievements of the first Critique concerning Kant’s doctrine of freedom become evident, but so too does the further development of this doctrine. In 1785, the Groundwork supplies a new conceptual link between freedom and the moral law (and with it an explanation of the possibility of categorical imperatives). And thanks to this very link, Kant is able, in the second Critique (1787/88), to remedy a ‘dogmatic’ mistake (discovered by a reviewer in 1786) in his 1781/85 account of freedom. (shrink)