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The AI Does Not Hate You: Superintelligence, Rationality and the Race to Save the World
by Tom Chivers'A fascinating and delightfully written book about some very smart people who may not, or may, be about to transform humanity forever' JON RONSONThis is a book about AI and AI risk. But it's also more importantly about a community of people who are trying to think rationally about intelligence, and the places that these thoughts are taking them, and what insight they can and can't give us about the future of the human race over the next few years. It explains why these people are worried, why they might be right, and why they might be wrong. It is a book about the cutting edge of our thinking on intelligence and rationality right now by the people who stay up all night worrying about it.Along the way, we discover why we probably don't need to worry about a future AI resurrecting a perfect copy of our minds and torturing us for not inventing it sooner, but we perhaps should be concerned about paperclips destroying life as we know it; how Mickey Mouse can teach us an important lesson about how to program AI; and how a more rational approach to life could be what saves us all.
AI, Consciousness and The New Humanism: Fundamental Reflections on Minds and Machines
by Sangeetha Menon Saurabh Todariya Tilak AgerwalaThis edited volume presents perspectives from computer science, information theory, neuroscience and brain imaging, aesthetics, social sciences, psychiatry, and philosophy to answer frontier questions related to artificial intelligence and human experience. Can a machine think, believe, aspire and be purposeful as a human? What is the place in the machine world for hope, meaning and transformative enlightenment that inspires human existence? How, or are, the minds of machines different from that of humans and other species? These questions are responded to along with questions in the intersection of health, intelligence and the brain. It highlights the place of consciousness by attempting to respond to questions with the help of fundamental reflections on human existence, its life-purposes and machine intelligence. The volume is a must-read for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary researchers in humanities and social sciences and philosophy of science who wish to understand the future of AI and society.
AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems XI-XII: AICOL International Workshops 2018 and 2020: AICOL-XI@JURIX 2018, AICOL-XII@JURIX 2020, XAILA@JURIX 2020, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #13048)
by Víctor Rodríguez-Doncel Monica Palmirani Michał Araszkiewicz Pompeu Casanovas Ugo Pagallo Giovanni SartorThis book includes revised selected papers from the International Workshops on AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems, AICOL-XI@JURIX2018, held in Groningen, The Netherlands, on December 12, 2018; AICOL-XII@JURIX 2020, held in Brno, Czechia, on December 9, 2020; XAILA@JURIX 2020, held in in Brno, Czechia, on December 9, 2020.*The 17 full and 4 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected form 39 submissions. They represent a comprehensive picture of the state of the art in legal informatics. The papers are logically organized in 5 blocks: Knowledge Representation; Logic, rules, and reasoning; Explainable AI in Law and Ethics; Law as Web of linked Data and the Rule of Law; Data protection and Privacy Modelling and Reasoning.*Due to the Covid-19 pandemic AICOL-XII@JURIX 2020 and XAILA@JURIX 2020 were held virtually.
AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems: International Workshops Aicol-i/ivr-xxiv, Beijing, China, September 19, 2009 And Aicol-ii/jurix 2009, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, December 16, 2009 Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #6237)
by Ugo Pagallo Monica Palmirani Pompeu Casanovas Giovanni Sartor Serena VillataThis book includes revised selected papers from five International Workshops on Artificial Intelligence Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems, AICOL VI to AICOL X, held during 2015-2017: AICOL VI in Braga, Portugal, in December 2015 as part of JURIX 2015; AICOL VII at EKAW 2016 in Bologna, Italy, in November 2016; AICOL VIII in Sophia Antipolis, France, in December 2016; AICOL IX at ICAIL 2017 in London, UK, in June 2017; and AICOL X as part of JURIX 2017 in Luxembourg, in December 2017.The 37 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected form 69 submissions. They represent a comprehensive picture of the state of the art in legal informatics. The papers are organized in six main sections: legal philosophy, conceptual analysis, and epistemic approaches; rules and norms analysis and representation;legal vocabularies and natural language processing; legal ontologies and semantic annotation; legal argumentation; and courts, adjudication and dispute resolution.
Ahuman Pedagogy: Multidisciplinary Perspectives for Education in the Anthropocene (Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures)
by Jessie L. Beier Jan JagodzinskiThis book brings together a collection of multi-disciplinary voices to discuss, debate, and devise a series of ahuman pedagogical proposals that aim to address the challenging ecological, political, social, economic, and aesthetic milieu within which education is situated today. Attending to contemporary calls to decenter all-too-human educational research and practice, while also coming to terms with the limits and inheritances through which such calls are made possible in the first place, this book aims to interrogate, but also invent, what we are calling an ahuman pedagogy. Organized in three main sections — Conjuring an Ahuman Pedagogy, Machinic Re/distributions, and Non-pedagogies for Unthought Futures — this multi-disciplinary experiment in ahuman pedagogies for the age of the Anthropocene offers an experimental – albeit always speculative and incomplete – series of pedagogical proposals that work to unthink and counter-actualize educational futures-as-usual.
Ahmes’ Legacy: Puzzles And The Mathematical Mind (Mathematics in Mind)
by Marcel DanesiThis book looks at classic puzzles from the perspective of their structures and what they tell us about the brain. It uses the work on the neuroscience of mathematics from Dehaene, Butterworth, Lakoff, Núñez, and many others as a lens to understand the ways in which puzzles reflect imaginative processes blended with rational ones. The book is not about recreational or puzzle-based mathematics in and of itself but rather about what the classic puzzles tell us about the mathematical imagination and its impact on the discipline. It delves into the history of classic math puzzles, deconstructing their raison d’être and describing their psychological features, so that their nature can be fleshed out in order to help understand the mathematical mind.This volume is the first monographic treatment of the psychological nature of puzzles in mathematics. With its user-friendly technical level of discussion, it is of interest to both general readers and those who engage in the disciplines of mathematics, psychology, neuroscience, and/or anthropology. It is also ideal as a textbook source for courses in recreational mathematics, or as reference material in introductory college math courses.
Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else
by Alain BadiouEnglish-speaking readers might be surprised to learn that Alain Badiou writes fiction and plays along with his philosophical works and that they are just as important to understanding his larger intellectual project. In Ahmed the Philosopher, Badiou's most entertaining and accessible play, translated into English here for the first time, readers are introduced to Badiou's philosophy through a theatrical tour de force that has met with much success in France. <P><P> Ahmed the Philosopher presents its comic hero, the "treacherous servant" Ahmed, as a seductively trenchant philosopher even as it casts philosophy itself as a comic performance. The comedy unfolds as a series of lessons, with each "short play" or sketch illuminating a different Badiousian concept. Yet Ahmed does more than illustrate philosophical abstractions; he embodies and vivifies the theatrical and performative aspects of philosophy, mobilizing a comic energy that exposes the emptiness and pomp of the world. Through his example, the audience is moved to a living engagement with philosophy, discovering in it the power to break through the limits of everyday life.
El águila y la rosa (Biblioteca De Bolsil Ser.)
by Rosemary AlteaEl clásico que nos enseña que, más allá de la vida cotidiana, hay otro plano de la existencia: un mundo de bondad infinita Cuando su marido la abandonó, Rosemary Altea se dio cuenta de que el miedo había sido su compañero desde la cuna. Miedo a un padre con la severidad propia del militar y a una madre incapaz de mostrar ternura; miedo a los rostros y las voces que poblaban las noches de su niñez, a las extrañas percepciones que la estremecían, a todo cuanto la acercara a su abuela Eliza. No fue fácil para ella aceptar que poseía un don para comunicarse con los espíritus. En ese misterioso mundo, Rosemary halla a Águila Gris, guía espiritual, compañero inquebrantable y mentor que, a través de ella, con palabras cargadas de luz, nos revela la naturaleza de los ángeles guardianes, la vida después de la muerte y el amor que lo impregna todo. Reseña:«Un libro inspirador y trascendental.»Brian Weiss
Agricultural Ethics in East Asian Perspective: A Transpacific Dialogue (The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics #27)
by Paul B. Thompson Kirill O. ThompsonThis book brings together agricultural ethics scholars from the US, Japan and Taiwan to discuss crucial issues in agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics in comparative context. Agricultural ethics and sustainability ethics are wide-ranging and closely linked to environmental ethics, bioethics, virtue ethics, animal welfare, soil conservation, not to mention rural traditions and lifestyles. Six of the chapters cover historical traditions and values in Europe, the US and East Asia. Four of the chapters cover the role of virtue ethics in the analysis of agrarian and environmental ethics, agricultural biotechnology, food ethics, and alternative agriculture, respectively. Finally, two of the chapters cover field efforts of agricultural ethics involving preserving agricultural heritage and building consensus for sustainable farming, respectively. Although the papers are divided into three groups, their contents are interconnected and mutually informative.
Agricultural Digitization and Zhongyong Philosophy: Creating a Sustainable Circular Economy (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability)
by Yiyan Chen Hooi Hooi Lean Ye LiThis interdisciplinary book combines digital technology with Eastern philosophy to examine how the concept of Zhongyong in Confucianism can be used to coordinate digital technology with sustainable agriculture. Zhongyong comes from the connotation of moderate and sustainable in ancient Chinese culture. It is with this concept in mind that this book presents a novel collaboration between philosophy and computer technology to explain how Zhongyong can play an important part in realizing agricultural digitization within a circular economy in order to help solve the current food crisis. The book examines two popular, yet contradictory, digital technologies—blockchain and the green data center. It showcases how the use of traditional Chinese Zhongyong can promote the decentralization of blockchain and the centralization of the green data center and explains the advantages of using both technologies simultaneously. The book puts forward a digital circular agricultural framework that embeds both blockchain and the green data center through an actual case study. While this book specifically focuses on agriculture, it also provides readers with a new perspective for thinking further on how to break down the disciplinary barriers between the social sciences and natural sciences. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of agriculture, digital technologies, circular economy, sustainable development, and Eastern philosophy.
Agreement in Argumentation: A Discursive Perspective (Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology #31)
by Francesca Santulli Chiara DeganoThis book explores the construction of agreement in the argumentative process, aiming to investigate how the activation of shared knowledge, values and beliefs leads to the creation of a common ground between the speaker and the audience in the pursuit of persuasion. In the first part of the book, the authors examine agreement from a historical and theoretical perspective, setting in relation major ancient and contemporary approaches to argumentation, with special regard for the notions of ethos, objects of agreement, starting points and topoi, all with a focus on their deployment in discourse. This is complemented with a compendium of linguistic resources that can be exploited for the discursive construction of agreement, offering a principled selection of structures across different levels of language description. The second part of the book is devoted to the investigation of actual uses of agreement in a choice of institutional genres within the domain of the US presidential elections: the Presidential Announcement, the TV debate and the Inaugural Address. Due to their political relevance and cultural salience, these genres provide an ideal interface for observing the interplay of discursive and argumentative components, against the backdrop of a shared cultural heritage, rich with intertextual references. The application of the theoretical framework developed in the first part of the book to the analysis of real political discourse carried out in the second is the distinguishing feature of this volume, making it of interest to linguists and argumentation scholars, as well as to political scientists and communicators.
Agrarian Justice
by Thomas PaineThomas Paine (1737-1809) was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination." Born in Thetford, in the English county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet "Common Sense" (1776), advocating colonial America's independence from Great Britain, and "The American Crisis" (1776-1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Paine was also deeply involved in the early stages of the French Revolution. He wrote the "Rights of Man" (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics, in particular the British statesman Edmund Burke. Despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention in 1792. The Girondists regarded him as an ally, so, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy. In December of 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of "The Age of Reason" (1793-94), his book advocating deism, promoting reason and freethinking, and arguing against institutionalized religion and Christian doctrines. He also wrote the pamphlet "Agrarian Justice" (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.
The Agony of the American Left
by Christopher LaschFive long essays by an American historian, the author of The New Radicalism in America (1965). Under the rubric of "the collapse of mass-based radical movements," Lasch examines the decline of populism, the disintegration of the American socialist party, and the weaknesses of black nationalism. Also included is a history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and a discussion of the '60's revival of ideological controversy.
The Agony of Eros (Untimely Meditations #1)
by Byung-Chul HanAn argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other.Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today's society. For Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self. In today's increasingly narcissistic society, we have come to look for love and desire within the “inferno of the same.” Han offers a survey of the threats to Eros, drawing on a wide range of sources—Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Fifty Shades of Grey, Michel Foucault (providing a scathing critique of Foucault's valorization of power), Martin Buber, Hegel, Baudrillard, Flaubert, Barthes, Plato, and others. Han considers the “pornographication” of society, and shows how pornography profanes eros; addresses capitalism's leveling of essential differences; and discusses the politics of eros in today's “burnout society.” To be dead to love, Han argues, is to be dead to thought itself. Concise in its expression but unsparing in its insight, The Agony of Eros is an important and provocative entry in Han's ongoing analysis of contemporary society.This remarkable essay, an intellectual experience of the first order, affords one of the best ways to gain full awareness of and join in one of the most pressing struggles of the day: the defense, that is to say—as Rimbaud desired it—the “reinvention” of love.—from the foreword by Alain Badiou
Agonistics
by Chantal MouffePolitical conflict in our society is inevitable, and its results are often far from negative. How then should we deal with the intractable differences arising from complex modern culture? Developing her groundbreaking political philosophy of agonistics - the search for a radical and plural democracy - Chantal Mouffe examines international relations, strategies for radical politics, the future of Europe and the politics of artistic practices. She shows that in many circumstances where no alternatives seem possible, agonistics offers a new road map for change. Engaging with cosmopolitanism, post-operaism, and theories of multiple modernities she argues in favour of a multipolar world with real cultural and political pluralism.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Agonistic Democracy and Political Practice: Ways of Being Adversarial
by Fuat GürsözlüThis book explores the implications of agonistic democratic theory for political practice. Fuat Gürsözlü argues that at a time when political parties exacerbate political division, political protesters are characterized as looters and terrorists, and extreme partisanship and authoritarian tendencies are on the rise, the agonistic approach offers a much-needed rethinking of political practice to critically understand challenges to democracy and envision more democratic, inclusive, and peaceful alternatives. Inspired by Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory and drawing on insights of other prominent agonistic scholars, Gürsözlü offers a distinctive approach that develops the connections between the agonistic approach and political practice. His main claim is that approaching democratic politics from an agonistic perspective changes the way we understand the nature of democratic society, the place of political protest in democracy, the nature of adversarial engagement, and the democratic function of political parties. The book also advances an account of agonistic peace that is best fitted to the pluralistic and inherently conflictual nature of democratic societies. This book should be of interest to anyone working in the field of contemporary political theory, political philosophy, peace studies, and philosophy of peace.
Agonistic Democracy: Rethinking Political Institutions in Pluralist Times (Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory)
by Marie PaxtonAgonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers. Paxton delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen’s perfectionist agonism, Mouffe’s adversarial agonism, and William Connolly and James Tully’s inclusive agonism. Paxton demonstrates how each is fundamental to enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further. Through discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, Agonistic Democracy provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory.
Agonistic Democracy
by Mark WenmanThis pioneering book delivers a systematic account of agonistic democracy, and a much-needed analysis of the core components of agonism: pluralism, tragedy, and the value of conflict. It also traces the history of these ideas, identifying the connections with republicanism and with Greek antiquity. Mark Wenman presents a critical appraisal of the leading contemporary proponents of agonism and, in a series of well-crafted and comprehensive discussions, brings these thinkers into debate with one another, as well as with the post-structuralist and continental theorists who influence them. Wenman draws extensively on Hannah Arendt, and stresses the creative power of human action as augmentation and revolution. He also reworks Arendt's discussion of reflective judgement to present an alternative style of agonism, one where the democratic contest is linked to the emergence of a militant form of cosmopolitanism, and to prospects for historical change in the context of neoliberal globalisation.
Agonistes: Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien
by Monique DixsautAgonistes comprises a collection of essays presented by his friends and colleagues to Denis O'Brien, former Directeur de recherché at the Centre Nationale de Recherché Scientifique, representing the full range of his scholarly interests in the field of ancient philosophy, from the Presocratics, through Plato, Aristotle and Hellenistic philosophy, to Plotinus and later Neoplatonism. The honorand himself leads off with a stimulating Apologia, sketching the development of his scholarly interests and dwelling on the issues that have chiefly concerned him. The contributions then follow in chronological order, under four headings: I From the Presocratics to Plato (Frère, Brancacci); II From Plato to the Stoics (Brisson, Casertano, Dixsaut, Kühn, McCabe, Narcy, Rowe, Goulet); III Plotinus and the Neoplatonist Tradition (O'Meara, Sakonji, Gersh, Steel, Dillon, Smith); IV Saint Augustine and After (Pépin, Rist, Brague/Freudenthal). They comprise a significant representation of the most distinguished scholars both on the continent and in the British Isles, and fairly represent the wide influence which Denis O'Brien has had on his contemporaries. The volume includes also a full bibliography of O'Brien's works.
The Agon of Interpretations
by Ming XieWritten by a team of leading international scholars, The Agon of Interpretations explores the challenges and possibilities of critical intercultural hermeneutics in a globalized world. Editor Ming Xie and writers from eight countries on five continents not only lay out the importance of critical hermeneutics to intercultural understanding but also probe the conditions under which a hermeneutics that is both intercultural and critical can be possible. The contributors examine and define critical intercultural hermeneutics as an emerging field from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, including phenomenology, critical theory, sociology, object-oriented ontology, and pragmatism. The essays combine philosophical argumentation with historical and intellectual inquiry. Together, the contributors to The Agon of Interpretations demonstrate the value of critical intercultural hermeneutics for enabling intercultural communication, engagement, and understanding.
An Agnostic Defends God: How Science and Philosophy Support Agnosticism
by Bryan FrancesThis book contains a unique perspective: that of a scientifically and philosophically educated agnostic who thinks there is impressive—if maddeningly hidden—evidence for the existence of God. Science and philosophy may have revealed the poverty of the familiar sources of evidence, but they generate their own partial defense of theism. Bryan Frances, a philosopher with a graduate degree in physics, judges the standard evidence for God’s existence to be awful. And yet, like many others with similar scientific and philosophical backgrounds, he argues that the usual reasons for atheism, such as the existence of suffering and success of science, are weak. In this book you will learn why so many people with scientific and philosophical credentials are agnostics (rather than atheists) despite judging all the usual evidence for theism to be fatally flawed.
Agitators and Promoters in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli: A Biographical Dictionary of the Leaders of British Pressure Groups Founded Between 1865 and 1886 (Routledge Library Editions: Gladstone and Disraeli #2)
by Howard LeRoy MalchowOriginally published in 1983, Agitators and Promoters in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli brings together the lives of thousands of persons, some famous, most modest and obscure, who were joined a century ago in pursuit of causes promising, a more just world which embodied much of the life and substance of the politics of during this time of transition. The book focuses on not simply the political Establishment but the members of government and legislature with their paid functionaries and party hacks, and much of the politicised sub-elite of a generation, including some three thousand persons from many layers of Victorian life. These are the organisers and leaders, the agitators and promoters of a host of causes.
Aging and the Art of Living
by Jan BaarsBaars explores philosophers from Plato to Foucault as they consider the meaning of aging—and wisdom—in our society.In this deeply considered meditation on aging in Western culture, Jan Baars argues that, in today’s world, living longer does not necessarily mean living better. He contends that there has been an overall loss of respect for aging, to the point that understanding and "dealing with" aging people has become a process focused on the decline of potential and the advance of disease rather than on the accumulation of wisdom and the creation of new skills. To make his case, Baars compares and contrasts the works of such modern-era thinkers as Foucault, Heidegger, and Husserl with the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Cicero, and other Ancient and Stoic philosophers. He shows how people in the classical period—less able to control health hazards—had a far better sense of the provisional nature of living, which led to a philosophical and religious emphasis on cultivating the art of living and the idea of wisdom. This is not to say that modern society’s assessments of aging are insignificant, but they do need to balance an emphasis on the measuring of age with the concept of "living in time." Gerontologists, philosophers, and students will find Baars' discussion to be a powerful, perceptive conversation starter.
Aging and Human Nature: Perspectives from Philosophical, Theological, and Historical Anthropology (International Perspectives on Aging #25)
by Mark Schweda Michael Coors Claudia BozzaroThis book focuses on ageing as a topic of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology. It provides a systematic inventory of fundamental theoretical questions and assumptions involved in the discussion of ageing and old age. What does it mean for human beings to grow old and become more vulnerable and dependent? How can we understand the manifestations of ageing and old age in the human body? How should we interpret the processes of change in the temporal course of a human life? What impact does old age have on the social dimensions of human existence? In order to tackle these questions, the volume brings together internationally distinguished scholars from the fields of philosophy, theology, cultural studies, social gerontology, and ageing studies. The collection of their original articles makes a twofold contribution to contemporary academic discourse. On one hand, it helps to clarify and deepen our understanding of ageing and old age by examining it from the fundamental point of view of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology. At the same time, it also enhances and expands the discourses of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology by systematically taking into account that human beings are essentially ageing creatures.
Aging Across Cultures: Growing Old in the Non-Western World (Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science #10)
by Helaine SelinThis volume brings together chapters about aging in many non-Western cultures, from Africa and Asia to South America, from American Indians to Australian and Hawaii Aboriginals. It also includes articles on other issues of aging, such as falling, dementia, and elder abuse. It was thought that in Africa or Asia, elders were revered and taken care of. This certainly used to be the case. But the Western way has moved into these places, and we now find that elders are often left on their own or in institutions, as younger people have migrated to other cities and even countries. Grandparents often find themselves being parents to their grandchildren, a far cry from the kind of life they believed they would have as they aged. This book will explore all these issues and will be of use to students and researchers in this relatively new field.