Selected recent publications - with abstract <onmouseover>, a PDF and a link to the publisher.

Papers

• (2012), 'Pancomputationalism: Theory or metaphor?' in Ruth Hagengruber (ed.), Philosophy's Relevance in Information Science (Berlin: Springer), forthcoming.
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  Abstract: The theory that all processes in the universe are computational is attractive in its promise to provide an understandable theory of everything. I want to suggest here that this pancomputationalism is not sufficiently clear on which problem it is trying to solve, and how. I propose two interpretations of pancomputationalism as a theory: I) the world is a computer and II) the world can be described as a computer. The first implies a thesis of supervenience of the physical over computation and is thus reduced ad absurdum. The second is underdetermined by the world, and thus equally unsuccessful as theory. Finally, I suggest that pancomputationalism as metaphor can be useful. – At the Paderborn workshop, this paper was presented as a commentary to the relevant paper by Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic.
• (2011), 'On the possibilities of hypercomputing supertasks', Minds and Machines, 21 (1), 83-96.
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  Abstract: This paper investigates the view that digital hypercomputing is a good reason for rejection or re-interpretation of the Church-Turing thesis. After suggestion that such re-interpretation is historically problematic and often involves attack on a straw man (the ‘maximality thesis’), it discusses proposals for digital hypercomputing with “Zeno-machines”, i.e. computing machines that compute an infinite number of computing steps in finite time, thus performing supertasks. It argues that effective computing with Zeno-machines falls into a dilemma: either they are specified such that they do not have output states, or they are specified such that they do have output states, but involve contradiction. Repairs though non-effective methods or special rules for semi-decidable problems are sought, but not found. The paper concludes that hypercomputing supertasks are impossible in the actual world and thus no reason for rejection of the Church-Turing thesis in its traditional interpretation.
• (2011), 'Interaction and resistance: The recognition of intentions in new human-computer interaction', in Anna Esposito, et al. (eds.), Towards autonomous, adaptive, and context-aware multimodal interfaces: Theoretical and practical issues (Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS, 6456; Berlin: Springer), 1-7.
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  Abstract: Just as AI has moved away from classical AI, human-computer interaction (HCI) must move away from what I call ‘good old fashioned HCI’ to ‘new HCI’ – it must become a part of cognitive systems research where HCI is one case of the interaction of intelligent agents (we now know that interaction is essential for intelligent agents anyway). For such interaction, we cannot just ‘analyze the data’, but we must assume intentions in the other, and I suggest these are largely recognized through resistance to carrying out one’s own intentions. This does not require fully cognitive agents but can start at a very basic level. New HCI integrates into cognitive systems research and designs intentional systems that provide resistance to the human agent.
• (2011), 'A dialogue concerning two world systems: Info-computational vs. mechanistic', in Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic and Mark Burgin (eds.), Information and computation: Essays on scientific and philosophical understanding of foundations of information and computation (Boston: World Scientific), 149-84.
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  Abstract: The dialogue develops arguments for and against a broad new world system - info-computationalist naturalism - that is supposed to overcome the traditional mechanistic view. It would make the older mechanistic view into a special case of the new general info-computationalist framework (rather like Euclidian geometry remains valid inside a broader notion of geometry). We primarily discuss what the info-computational paradigm would mean, especially its pancomputationalist component. This includes the requirements for a the new generalized notion of computing that would include sub-symbolic information processing. We investigate whether pancomputationalism can provide the basic causal structure to the world and whether the overall research program of info-computationalist naturalism appears productive, especially when it comes to new approaches to the living world, including computationalism in the philosophy of mind.
• (2010), 'The hard and easy grounding problems', AMD Newsletter, 7 (1), 8-9.
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  Abstract: I see four symbol grounding problems: 1) How can a purely computational mind acquire meaningful symbols? 2) How can we get a computational robot to show the right linguistic behavior? 3) How can we explain and re-produce the behavioral ability and function of meaning in artificial computational agents?4) How does physics give rise to meaning?
• (2009), 'Symbol grounding in computational systems: A paradox of intentions', Minds and Machines, 19 (4), 529-41.
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  Abstract: The paper presents a paradoxical feature of computational systems that suggests that computationalism cannot explain symbol grounding. If the mind is a digital computer, as computationalism claims, then it can be computing either over meaningful symbols or over meaningless symbols. If it is computing over meaningful symbols its functioning presupposes the existence of meaningful symbols in the system, i.e. it implies semantic nativism. If the mind is computing over meaningless symbols, no intentional cognitive processes are available prior to symbol grounding. In this case, no symbol grounding could take place since any grounding presupposes intentional cognitive processes. So, whether computing in the mind is over meaningless or over meaningful symbols, computationalism implies semantic nativism.
• (2009), 'Would you mind being watched by machines? Privacy concerns in data mining', AI & Society, 23 (4), 529-44.
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  Abstract: Data mining is not an invasion of privacy because access to data is only by machines, not by people: this is the argument that is investigated here. The current importance of this problem is developed in a case study of data mining in the USA for counterterrorism and other surveillance purposes. After a clarification of the relevant nature of privacy, it is argued that access by machines cannot warrant the access to further information, since the analysis will have to be made either by humans or by machines that understand. It concludes that the current data mining violates the right to privacy and should be subject to the standard legal constraints for access to private information by people.
• (2008), 'Representation in digital systems', in Adam Briggle, Katinka Waelbers, and Philip Brey (eds.), Current issues in computing and philosophy (Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications; Amsterdam: IOS Press), 116-21.
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  Abstract: Cognition is commonly taken to be computational manipulation of representations. These representations are assumed to be digital, but it is not usually specified what that means and what relevance it has for the theory. I propose a specification for being a digital state in a digital system, especially a digital computational system. The specification shows that identification of digital states requires functional directedness, either for someone or for the system of which it is a part. In the case or digital representations, to be a token of a representational type, where the function of the type is to represent.
• (2008), 'What a course on philosophy of computing is not', APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, 8 (1/Fall), 36-38.
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  Abstract: Immanuel Kant famously defined philosophy to be about three questions: “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?” (KrV, B833). I want to suggest that the three questions of our course on the philosophy of computing are: What is computing? What should we do with computing? What could computing do?
• (2008), 'Για τη δυνατότητα υπερ-υπολογισμού πέρα από την υπόθεση Church-Turing [On the Possibility of Hypercomputing beyond Church-Turing]', in Dimitra Sfendoni-Mentzou (ed.), Φιλοσοφία τον Επιστιμόν [Philosophy of Science], EFE 2006: Proceedings of the 10th Greek Association for Philosophy Conference (vol. I; Thessaloniki: Zitis), 407-14.
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  Abstract: Αυτό το άρθρο εξετάζει κατά πόσο ο υπερ-υπολογισμός οδηγεί υποχρεωτικά σε μιαν αναθεώρηση της υπόθεσης Church-Turing. Συζητάει προτάσεις για υπολογιστικές μηχανές, για τις οποίες λέγεται ότι υπολογίζουν άπειρα βήματα υπολογισμού σε πεπερασμένο χρόνο, εκτελώντας «supertasks». Επιχειρηματολογεί ότι αυτές οι προτάσεις οδηγούν στο εξής δίλημμα: είτε δεν περιγράφονται με τέτοιο τρόπο ώστε να έχουν αποτελέσματα, είτε τα αποτελέσματα είναι αντιφατικά. Άρα, ο άπειρος υπερ-υπολογισμός δεν αποτελεί λόγο να απορριφθεί η παραδοσιακή ερμηνεία της υπόθεσης Church-Turing. Η διερεύνηση του υπολογισμού με «supertasks» επίσης υποδεικνύει ότι συγκεκριμένα «supertasks» είναι αδύνατα.
• (2007), 'Is there a future for AI without representation?' Minds and Machines, 17 (1), 101-15.
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  Abstract: This paper investigates the prospects of AI without representation in general, and the proposals of Rodney Brooks in particular. What turns out to be characteristic of Brooks proposal is the rejection of central control in intelligent agents; his systems has as much or as little representation as traditional AI. The traditional view that representation is necessary for intelligence pre-supposes that intelligence requires central control. However, much of recent cognitive science suggests that we should dispose of the image of intelligent agents as central representation processors. If this paradigm shift is achieved, Brooks proposal for non-centralized cognition without representation appears promising for full-blown intelligent agents - though not for conscious agents and thus not for human-like AI.
• (2006), 'Some information is too dangerous to be on the Internet', Computers and Society, 36 (1), 1-11.
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  Abstract: This paper investigates a problem about freedom of information. Although freedom of information is generally considered desirable, there are a number of areas where there is substantial agreement that freedom of information should be limited. After a certain ordering of the landscape, I argue that we need to add the category of "dangerous" information and that this category has gained a new quality in the context of current information technology, specifically the Internet. This category includes information the use of which would be morally wrong as well as some of what may be called "corrupting" information. Some such information should not be spread at all and some should be very limited in its spread.
• (2006), with Athanassios Raftopoulos, 'Nonconceptual demonstrative reference', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72 (2), 251-85.
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  Abstract: The paper argues that the reference of perceptual demonstratives is fixed in a causal nondescriptive way through the nonconceptual content of perception. That content consists first in spatiotemporal information establishing the existence of a separate persistent object retrieved from a visual scene by the perceptual object segmentation processes that open an object-file for that object. Nonconceptual content also consists in other transducable information, that is, information that is retrieved directly in a bottom-up way from the scene (motion, shape, etc). The nonconceptual content of the mental states induced when one uses a perceptual demonstrative constitutes the mode of presentation of the perceptual demonstrative that individuates but does not identify the object of perceptual awareness and allows reference to it. On that account, perceptual demonstratives put us in a de re relationship with objects in the world through the non-conceptual information retrieved directly from the objects in the environment.
• (2006), with Athanassios Raftopoulos, 'The phenomenal content of experience', Mind and Language, 21 (2), 187-219.
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  Abstract: We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottom-up from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties.

Reviews, Translations and Miscellanea

• (2011), 'Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence, 3–4 October (Report on PT-AI 2011)', The Reasoner, 5 (11), 192-93.
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  Abstract: Report for "The Reasoner" on the conference "Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence", 3 & 4 October 2011, Thessaloniki, Anatolia College/ACT, http://www.pt-ai.org. --- Organization: Vincent C. Müller, Professor of Philosophy at ACT & James Martin Fellow, Oxford http://www.typos.de --- Sponsors: EUCogII, Oxford-FutureTech, AAAI, ACM-SIGART, IACAP, ECCAI
• (2011), Anna Esposito, Antonietta M Esposito, Raffaele Martone, Vincent C. Müller, and Gaetano Scarpetta (eds.), Towards autonomous, adaptive, and context-aware multimodal interfaces: Theoretical and practical issues (Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS, 6456; Berlin: Springer), 474pp.
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• (2010), 'Εικάζει η φιλοσοφία για εμπειρικά δεδομένα; (Η γνωσιακή διαπερατότητα της αντίληψης - Αφιέρομα Ραφτόπουλο) [Does philosophy speculate about empirical facts? (The cognitive penetrability of perception - Commentary on Raftopoulos)]', Noesis - The Journal of the Hellenic Cognitive Science Society, 6, 161-64.
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  Abstract: When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (Hume, Enquiry: Of the academical or sceptical Philosophy)
• (2009), 'Η τεχνητή νοημοσύνη είναι εργαλείο [Artificial intelligence is a Tool] - Interview with Alexandros Salames', Diadromes, Supplement to Aggelioforos, 319 (16.10.2009), 13.
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• (2009), 'Review of Susan Stuart & Gordana Dodig Crnkovic (eds.): 'Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the Liminal' (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)', Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 16 (3-4), 201-303.
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  Abstract: Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the Liminal, Ed. Susan Stuart & Gordana Dodig Crnkovic, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, September 2007, xxiv+340pp, ISBN: 9781847180902, Hardback: £39.99, $79.99 ---- Are you a computer? Is your cat a computer? A single biological cell in your stomach, perhaps? And your desk? You do not think so? Well, the authors of this book suggest that you think again. They propose a computational turn, a turn towards computational explanation and towards the explanation of computation itself. The explanation of computation is the core of the present volume, but the computational turn to regard a wide variety of systems as computational is a potentially very wide-ranging project. --- [28.02.2008]
• (2008), 'Review of Margaret Boden 'Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science' (2 vols., Oxford University Press 2006)', Minds and Machines, 18 (1), 121-25.
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  Abstract: Margaret A. Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, 2 vols, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, xlvii+1631, cloth $225, ISBN 0-19-924144-9.
• (2004), '“Der Mann mit Eigenschaften”, review of Joseph LeDoux: Im Netz der Persönlichkeit: Wie unser Selbst entsteht [Synaptic Self], Düsseldorf: Walter Verlag 2003', Süddeutsche Zeitung, (14.01.2004), 14.
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  Abstract: JOSEPH LEDOUX: Das Netz der Persönlichkeit. Wie unser Selbst entsteht. Walter Verlag, Düsseldorf 2003. 510 Seiten (mit Abbildungen), 39,90 Euro.