SPECIAL TRACK: PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
SYNOPSIS:
Since the notorious "Turing Test" had been proposed, by means of which one can (allegedly) measure if or to what extent a computer possesses features of intelligence, the philosophical debates on this topic have not ended. Famous thinkers like Hans Driesch, John Searl (with the "chinese room"), Hilary Putnam, Noam Chomsky, or Roger Penrose (to name only a few) have made their well-known ground-breaking contributions, and at least one specialist journal, namely Minds & Machines, has since continued to provide ever finer arguments in smaller and smaller details. In addition to the philosophical Epistemology of AI, the philosophical Ethics of AI was inspired by eminent thinkers such as Isaac Asimov (with his well-known "laws of robotics") or Joseph Weizenbaum (with "computer power and human reason").
For this ISDA Track we are seeking novel and original science-philosophical contributions (with new ideas and arguments) especially to the philosophical Epistemology of AI (however without excluding the philosophical Ethics of AI) which clearly point beyond the already achieved "state of the art" and the already well-known philosophical arguments. Moreover, we are also calling for solid science-philosophical arguments concerning the question to what extent the academic discipline of AI is "scientific" (or "a science") from the perspective of classical 20th-Century philosophy of science (w.r.t.: theory, hypotheses, experiments, repeatability, falsifiability, etc.), or whether AI is still a rather pre-scientific "art", or whether AI might possibly be regarded as an entirely "new type" of science for which the classical science-philosophical framework of the 20th Century is perhaps no longer appropriate. Artificial Life (AL) is hereby also included as an AI-related theme.
All contributions to this track must be solidly reasoned and argued, and may not be written as mere opinion-pieces. Thereby we presume that all contributors to this special track are reasonably familiar with relevant "Related Work" especially from sources such as: the journal Minds & Machines, the IACAP conferences (International Association for Computing and Philosophy), the HAPOC conferences (History and Philosophy of Computing), and the like. All submissions must include a relevant "Related Work" section on the basis of which the philosophical novelty and significance of the submitted contribution can be assessed by the Track's anonymous referees.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
* AI from the perspective of Philosophy of Science;
* AI from the perspective of Philosophical Epistemology;
* AI from the perspective of Philosophical Ethics;
* New Techno-Philosophical arguments on What is a Machine;
* New Mind-Philosophical arguments on What is Intelligence or Thinking;
* New Philosophical considerations concerning Robotics and Artificial Life (AL);
* New Philosophical questions and problems concerning "Transhumanism" (TH);
* New Philosophical considerations concerning the fundamental limits of computability;
* New Philosophical considerations concerning the links between intelligence, language (speech), and embodiment (having a body);
* etc...
TRACK CHAIR:
Stefan Gruner (Dept. of CS, Univ. of Pretoria, South Africa)