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The Automated Self
The Automated Self explores meta-theoretical issues in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, combining it with themes from philosophy of science and technology, media and communication studies, and ethics. Balsemão-Pires provides an integrated view of contemporary problems of AI including the theoretical premises and discussions on the meaning, functioning and social uses of cognitive machines, the recent ethical and legal challenges on privacy, interpretability, and data ownership, passing through a careful discussion of the media embedment of the new technologies, and the uses of algorithms in the production and consumption of art.
The Morality of Urban Mobility
Cities’ transportation systems affect people, ecosystems, and future generations, and they increase tensions between historical preservation, social justice concerns, and future needs. In turn, all of these factors deserve consideration, but not equally. A just and moral way forward must prioritize values in how we give preference in planning decisions. Shane Epting illustrates that the problem of “moral prioritization” rests at the heart of these problems. To overcome such challenges, he develops a multitiered assessment system that shows how to evaluate complicated affairs in urban mobility. This book brings philosophical underpinnings of public works into full view, showing how the love of wisdom benefits the ongoing and future transportation issues of our increasingly urbanized world.
Humans and Robots
Can robots perform actions, make decisions, collaborate with humans, be our friends, perhaps fall in love, or potentially harm us? Even before these things truly happen, ethical and philosophical questions already arise. The reason is that we humans have a tendency to spontaneously attribute minds and “agency” to anything even remotely humanlike. Moreover, some people already say that robots should be our companions and have rights. Others say that robots should be slaves. This book tackles emerging ethical issues about human beings, robots, and agency head on. It explores the ethics of creating robots that are, or appear to be, decision-making agents. From military robots to self-driving cars to care robots or even sex robots equipped with artificial intelligence: how should we interpret the apparent agency of such robots? This book argues that we need to explore how human beings can best coordinate and collaborate with robots in responsible ways. It investigates ethically important differences between human agency and robot agency to work towards an ethics of responsible human-robot interaction.
Nanotechnology
Over the last decades, nanoscience and nanotechnology has been ascribed the potential to contribute beneficial applications in fields such as medicine, cosmetics, or environmental remediation. At the same time it is still contested whether engineered nanomaterials might be not one-sidedly “good” but may also entail negative side-effects for human health and the environment. To address this uncertainty, academic and political initiatives have sought to establish norms and practices to assess and govern nanomaterials. Rooted in different disciplines such as ethics, ecology, law, social and political sciences, the chapters in this edited volume explore the normative approaches, societal practices, and legal mechanisms which have emerged in the nano-field over the last two decades. The chapters also present a broad variety of evaluative approaches that may assist societal actors in their attempts to actively shape and contribute to the debate about nanomaterials.
Water Ethics
While the interdependence of the different aspects of water security and the relevance of ethical and distributive aspects is acknowledged in both policy circles and academia, a comprehensive introduction to water ethics is still missing. This book aims to fill that gap, by exploring the common thread that follows from three current interrelated debates: the allocation of water resources, the human right to water, and the commodification and privatisation of water services. These questions create a plea for alternatives to the predominantly consequentialist approach to dealing with water issues. The author explores the normative and ethical aspects of flood and water-related risks, and looks at the topic of responsibility: who should be responsible for correcting inequities, or taking remedial action in the case of pollution? These and other questions to be linked to ongoing discussion in other disciplines within philosophy, such as environmental ethics, climate ethics, the ethics of technology and climate justice, making this text important across a wide range of courses for upper undergraduate and graduate students.
The War on Drugs
"Fifty years after President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," leading scholars examine how drug war policies contributed to the making of the carceral state, racial injustice, deviant globalization, regulatory disasters, and a massive underground economy; they also point the way forward to a more just and humane drug policy regime"--
Test-Driving the Future
As the development of autonomous vehicles proceeds full-speed ahead, it is often said that this new, disruptive form of transportation will change everything. Such a claim has drawn both philosophical and public attention to what could be called ethical emergencies: imaginary situations ranging from life-or-death trolley-problem conundrums to large-scale cyber-attacks on mobility networks. This perspective puts other important, but less dramatic, ethical dilemmas connected with driverless vehicles at risk of being underexplored or simply ignored. The primary focus of the original essays collected together in this volume shifts to considering these issues, ones arising out of more everyday hu...
Problem-Solving Technologies
From hammers to robots, this book embarks on a comprehensive metaphysical exploration of how we should understand and study technological objects and systems. It reconstructs the metaphysics of technology and offers a unique perspective on the identification and functional classification of objects. Arguing that universal and static approaches are ill-suited to capture relational properties like usefulness, the book introduces a novel approach, called activity realism, which recognises the dynamic identities that objects acquire by playing roles in different activities. How can the role and impact of technologies on human activities be incorporated into the metaphysical study of technologies...
Interpreting Technology
Paul Ricœur has been one of the most influential and intellectually challenging philosophers of the last century, and his work has contributed to a vast array of fields: studies of language, of history, of ethics and politics. However, he has up until recently only had a minor impact on the philosophy of technology. Interpreting Technology aims to put Ricœur’s work at the centre of contemporary philosophical thinking concerning technology. It investigates his project of critical hermeneutics for rethinking established theories of technology, the growing ethical and political impacts of technologies on the modern lifeworld, and ways of analysing global sociotechnical systems such as the I...
Psychedelic Humanities
Psychedelics are part of a resurgence of interest in consciousness studies, especially as altered states of consciousness are being re-examined in the context of psychedelic-assisted therapies. To date, discussions about psychedelics in modern medicine have been dominated by studies in biomedicine. However, given that cultural factors play a significant role in the subjective effects of psychedelics, psychedelics can be considered a uniquely powerful point of convergence between the cultural and biomedical. Writers and artists, alongside psychiatrists and pharmacologists, have participated in shaping ‘the psychedelic experience’ by drawing on a rich set of approaches that blend narrative, arts, and humanities concepts to explain and interpret psychedelic experiences and explore consciousness for creative purposes. Psychedelic studies, past and present, emphasize the importance of ‘set and setting’ or the context of psychedelic consumption and its paramount importance in shaping psychedelic experiences. These non-pharmacological factors rely on a different set of methods and interpretations that necessarily rely on studies conducted outside of the biomedical sciences.
