Showing papers in "Midwest Studies in Philosophy in 2015"

A Defense of the Rights of Artificial Intelligences

Abstract: There are possible artificially intelligent beings who do not differ in any morally relevant respect from human beings. Such possible beings would deserve moral consideration similar to that of human beings. Our duties to them would not be appreciably reduced by the fact that they are non-human, nor by the fact that they owe their existence to us. Indeed, if they owe their existence to us, we would likely have additional moral obligations to them that we don’t ordinarily owe to human strangers – obligations similar to those of parent to child or god to creature. Given our moral obligations to such AIs, two principles for ethical AI design recommend themselves: (1) design AIs that tend to provoke reactions from users that accurately reflect the AIs’ real moral status, and (2) avoid designing AIs whose moral status is unclear. Since human moral intuition and moral theory evolved and developed in contexts without AI, those intuitions and theories might break down or become destabilized when confronted with the wide range of weird minds that AI design might make possible. Word count: approx 10,000 (including notes and references), plus one figure

“But Is It Science Fiction?”: Science Fiction and a Theory of Genre

Abstract: If science fiction is a genre, then attempts to think about the nature of science fiction will be affected by one’s understanding of what genres are. I shall examine two approaches to genre, one (genres as regions of conceptual space) dominant but inadequate, the other (genres as historical particulars) better, but only occasionally making itself seen. I shall then discuss several important, interrelated issues, focusing particularly on science fiction: what it is for a work to belong to a genre, the semantics of genre names, the (in)validity of attempts to define genres, and the connections between genre and normativity. One important but neglected clue to the nature of genres lies in the kinds of disagreements they generate over the assignment of works to genres. I conclude by explaining why these disagreements tell us something about the nature of genres, and discussing in some detail two famous cases of disagreement about whether some work or works are science fiction. Before beginning, it is necessary to sound a note of methodological caution. I began this article with a conditional. Is its antecedent true? Is science fiction a genre? Aesthetically significant categories of artworks are abundant and highly heterogeneous. They include formal, historical, topical, political. and many other kinds of categories. But which of these are genres? “Genre” is one of those terms about which there is no agreement at all over either its analysis or definition, on the one hand, or the range of things to which it applies, on the other hand. This essay

The Epistemic Value of Speculative Fiction

Abstract: In Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3 (1964), a team of computer scientists employs an elaborate computer simulation to reduce the need for marketing research in the actual world. The agents in the simulation are conscious and do not realize they live in a simulated world. When Morton Lynch, one of the scientists, mysteriously disappears, his colleague Douglas Hall attempts to find out what happened to him, only to realize that nobody else even remembers the vanished man. Gradually, it transpires that the world Hall inhabits is also a simulation, and thus that their creation is a simulation within a simulation. The fact that Hall remembers Lynch is a computer glitch. The novel explores several philosophical topics: If the creator of a simulated world turns out to be a malicious sadist (as is the case in the novel), can he be considered a god to his creation? Do simulated beings have souls? If there is an afterlife, will only “real” people go there, or also simulated beings? Can you fall in love with a simulated being? How do people from the level above know they are living in the real physical world, or do they perhaps also inhabit a simulation? Schwitzgebel and Bakker (2013) explore similar issues in their short story Reinstalling Eden, focusing on the moral responsibilities of creators of simulations to their simulated entities. Nick Bostrom (2003), in his philosophical paper “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?,” uses a weak indifference principle and probability calculus to argue that it is either highly likely that we are living in a computer simulation, or that future generations will never run any simulations (for instance, because they bs_bs_banner MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

“This Endless Space between the Words”: The Limits of Love in Spike Jonze's Her

Abstract: A great deal of the discussion pertaining to artificial intelligence, or AI, has focused on two questions: Can computers be built that convincingly mimic patterns of human behavior, and if so, how can they be built? This leaves aside a host of other questions that are not only interesting but important. Many of these are straightforwardly ethical, or at least have an ethical element. Should we try to build computers that mimic human behavior? Are there particular human behaviors that we should not try to simulate? Would a simulation of a certain pattern of human behavior—romantic love, for instance—be as good as the real thing, and if not, what would it be missing? Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her portrays a romantic relationship between a human being, Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and a piece of bs_bs_banner MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

Nowhere Man: Time Travel and Spatial Location

Abstract: 1 Abstract: This paper suggests that time travelling scenarios commonly depicted in science fiction introduce problems and dangers for the time traveller. If time travel takes time, then time travellers risk collision with past objects, relocation to distant parts of the universe, and time travel-specific injuries. I propose several models of time travel that avoid the dangers and risks of time travel taking time, and that introduce new questions about the relationship between time travel and spatial location.