James K. Wight looks at how cultures define our views of machines. The word ‘robot’ first appeared in Karel Čapek’s 1921 play, Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti – Rossum’s Universal Robots. The word robota in Slavic languages translates as worker or serf, with the term implying mechanization and technology. Importantly, it is a man-made creation. Using the …
James Sirois gives us a strong warning about overusing the net. The internet has become so all-pervading that even the word seems a little old-fashioned now. No-one really uses it much anymore. We ask each other for wifi, or talk of going online, or complain about a lack of data, but rarely do we talk …
Joakim Vindenes says VR could be a useful addition to the philosopher’s toolkit. Virtual Reality is in some ways a simple concept: it can be reduced to an act of representation, symbolism, or language. Through technological means – be it a pencil or a VR headset – we can represent the past as we remember …
Brett Wilson judges the case for laws for robots. Some time in the near future your cat Tybalt, while sunning himself on the lawn, suffers a hair-raising experience which scars him for life. The first you know about it are the cat calls that alert you to a standoff between feline and machine, just before …
Derek Leben computes the risks of general AI. In 2008 European physicists at CERN were on the verge of activating the Large Hadron Collider to great acclaim. The LHC held the promise of testing precise predictions of the most important current theories in physics, including finding the elusive Higgs Boson (which was indeed successfully confirmed …
Seán Moran asks amiable Aquinas about amity. It’s not Friar Tuck I’m talking about. The jovial gourmand of the Robin Hood stories was apparently a good friend of the Merry Men and Maid Marian in Sherwood Forest. But the religious order of Friars, the Dominicans, was founded in 1216, so it is hard to see …
Robert Michael Ruehl calls for a friendly revolution. Western philosophers have enthusiastically praised friendship. A few intellectuals have raised doubts about it, such as Thomas Hobbes and Søren Kierkegaard, but friendship has inspired many others, including Aristotle, Francis Bacon, C.S. Lewis, and Mary E. Hunt, who have esteemed its benefits, especially the reciprocal commitment to …
Tim Delaney and Anastasia Malakhova categorize and analyze the different kinds of modern-day friendships. What is friendship? It links people who share dispositions, a sense of intimacy or feelings of affection, and have an attachment or association with one another. As such, friends are bonded by expressions of harmony, accord, understanding, and rapport. There are …
Tim Madigan and Daria Gorlova explain Aristotle’s understanding of good friends and tell us why we need them. Although he lived long ago, the ethical writings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) still have relevance to the present day, particularly when we want to understand the meaning of friendship. In Books VIII and IX …
Steve Taylor says of determinism: “I refute it thus!” One of the main trends of recent academic culture has been to take freedom and autonomy away from human beings. I don’t mean that professors armed with guns have been locking up their intellectual opponents; I mean that from sociology to philosophy, from psychology to neuroscience, …