On October 14-15, 2016, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness in conjunction with the NYU Center for Bioethics will host a conference on “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence”.
Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) makes questions about the ethics of AI more pressing than ever. Existing AI systems already raise numerous ethical issues: for example, machine classification systems raise questions about privacy and bias. AI systems in the near-term future raise many more issues: for example, autonomous vehicles and autonomous weapons raise questions about safety and moral responsibility. AI systems in the long-term future raise more issues in turn: for example, human-level artificial general intelligence systems raise questions about the moral status of the systems themselves.
This conference will explore these questions about the ethics of artificial intelligence and a number of other questions, including:
What ethical principles should AI researchers follow? Are there restrictions on the ethical use of AI? What is the best way to design morally beneficial AI? Is it possible or desirable to build moral principles into AI systems? When AI systems cause benefits or harm, who is morally responsible? Are AI systems themselves potential objects of moral concern? What moral framework is best used to assess questions about the ethics of AI?
Speakers and panelists will include:
Nick Bostrom (Future of Humanity Institute),
Meia Chita-Tegmark (Future of Life Institute),
Mara Garza (UC Riverside, Philosophy),
Sam Harris (Project Reason),
Demis Hassabis (DeepMind/Google),
Yann LeCun (Facebook, NYU Data Science),
Peter Railton (University of Michigan, Philosophy),
Francesca Rossi (University of Padova, Computer Science),
Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley, Computer Science),
Susan Schneider (University of Connecticut, Philosophy),
Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside, Philosophy),
Max Tegmark (Future of Life Institute),
Wendell Wallach(Yale, Bioethics),
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Machine Intelligence Research Institute), and others.
Organizers:
Ned Block (NYU, Philosophy),
David Chalmers (NYU, Philosophy),
S. Matthew Liao (NYU, Bioethics)
A full schedule will be circulated closer to the conference date.
Registration is free but required. REGISTER HERE. Please note that admission is limited, and is first-come first-served: it is not guaranteed by registration.
Subscribe to the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness Mailing List HERE.
SWIP-Analytic Spring 2017 Events
Friday February 10th, 11am- 1pm
GC, CUNY, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307
Roundtable Discussion: “Women in Philosophy: Publishing, Jobs, and Fitting In”
Speakers:
Elise Crull (City College)
Una Stojnik (NYU)
Denise Vigani (Drew College)
Friday March 10th, 10am- 12pm
NYU, Philosophy Department, Room 202
Speaker: Romina Padró (The Saul Kripke Center, GC, CUNY)
Title to be confirmed
Friday April 21st, 10am- 12pm
NYU, Philosophy Department, Room 202
Speaker: Winner of the SWIP-Analytic Essay Prize (TBD)
Friday May 5th, 11am- 13om
GC, CUNY (Room TBA).
Speaker: Alyssa Ney (UC Davies)
“Physics and Fundamentality”
CALL FOR PAPERS
SWIP-Analytic
2017 Graduate Student Essay Prize
SWIP-Analytic invites women graduate students to submit abstracts and papers in the areas of language, mind, metaphysics, logic, ethics, epistemology, & philosophy of science for consideration for a two-hour presentation at SWIP-Analytic in NYC.
https://philevents.org/event/show/29366
One student’s paper will be accepted for presentation on April 21st, 2017. The student will be awarded the 2017 SWIP-Analytic Graduate Student Paper Prize of $250. The winner will also be reimbursed for up to $250 of travel expenses.
Submission Requirements
(1) a pdf, .doc, or .docx of a maximum 300 word abstract and 5,000 word paper prepared for blind review
(2) document of identification with name, institution, and email address
Email both to swipanalytic@gmail.com by February 15th, 2017.
Notifications of decisions will be sent by March 15th 2017. The winning student paper presentation will take place on Friday, April 21st 2017 in New York City.
Please send any questions to swipanalytic@gmail.com.
SWIP-Analytic is made possible through the generous support of NYU’s New York Institute of Philosophy, The John H. Kornblith Family Chair, and The CUNY Graduate Center Department of Philosophy, and The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies.
SWIP-Analytic continues the Society for Women in Philosophy’s commitment to being a resource for all women in philosophy by providing a forum for women working in language, mind, metaphysics, logic, ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. Let us know at swipanalytic@gmail.com if you’d like to subscribe or unsubscribe from the SWIP-Analytic email list.
Jim Weatherall (University of California, Irvine)
There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
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Metro Area Philosophy of Science group (MAPS) Presents:
Heather Demarest (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Abstract: I argue that if we take the standard formulation of special relativity seriously, causation is frame-dependent. Thus, many ordinary causal claims require a parameter to specify the relevant frame of reference. This is in contrast to the widely-accepted belief that the causal structure of the world is objectively and absolutely determined by the light cone structure. Any event that can affect another (so the thought goes) must do so via light or matter, and the spacetime structure will tell us which of those came first, absolutely. For instance, according to Carl Hoefer (2009, 694, italics in original), if we assume that all signals travel slower than or equal to the speed of light, “we may take the light-cone structure of Minkowski spacetime as equally representing the causal structure of spacetime.” I argue that causation in relativistic spacetime is not so simple. Events can be extended in space and time, and events can be related to one another by distance and duration. Yet, according to special relativity, extension in space and time (i.e., distances and durations) are not invariant—they depend upon relative motion. Therefore, when ordinary events enter into causal relations, they do so relative to frames of reference, which can yield different causes and different effects. If you want to keep your promises, or bring about one outcome rather than another, you should take note of your reference frame.
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Abstract: Hugh Everett III’s pure wave mechanics, sometimes known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, was proposed as a solution to the quantum measurement problem. Both physicists and philosophers of physics have repeatedly claimed to be able to deduce the standard quantum probabilities from pure wave mechanics alone. We will consider why this is impossible, then consider how Everett himself understood quantum probabilities. This will involve clearly distinguishing between typical and probable quantum worlds.
Speakers:
Yann LeCun (Data Science, NYU; Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research)
Gary Marcus (Psychology, NYU; Founder, Geometric Intelligence)
Thursday, October 5, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Tishman Auditorium
NYU School of Law
40 Washington Square South
No registration required. Seating is first-come first-served.
The standard way to show the consistency of a theory, or the independence of a given statement from that theory, is to exhibit a model. But there’s more than one thing that’s been called a “model” as this notion has evolved from its original role in 19th century foundations of geometry to its current role as a universallyapplicable tool in logic. This talk investigates some of the changes that bring us to the modern notion, and asks to what extent various kinds of model do, or don’t, successfully demonstrate various kinds of consistency and independence.
When: Friday October 20, 11:00am-1:00pm (with reception to follow)
Where: NYU Philosophy Department, 5 Washington Place, Room 202
Nina Emery (Mount Holyoke), November 3, The Graduate Center, CUNY
On November 17-18, 2017, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness in conjunction with the NYU Center for Bioethics and NYU Animal Studies will host a conference on “Animal Consciousness”.
The recent flourishing of research into animal mentality raises pressing questions for many including zoologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind and ethicists. How unified are the realizers of consciousness across species? What can animal psychology teach philosophy about the underpinnings of consciousness? How should the light shed by research into animal consciousness inform our conception of the ethical status of animals? By bringing together researchers from a wide range of salient fields, this conference seeks to make progress on these important questions and others.
Registration is free but required. *REGISTER HERE*
PARTICIPANTS:
Speakers and panelists:
Colin Allen (Indiana University, Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine), Andrew Barron (Macquarie, Cognitive Neuroethology), Victoria Braithwaite (Penn State, Biology), Peter Carruthers (Maryland, Philosophy), Marian Dawkins (Oxford, Zoology), Dan Dennett (Tufts, Philosophy), Todd Feinberg (Mt. Sinai, Neurology), Peter Godfey-Smith (Sydney, Philosophy), Lori Gruen (Wesleyan, Philosophy), Brian Hare (Duke, Evolutionary Anthropology), Eva Jablonka (Tel Aviv, Cohn Institute), Björn Merker (Neuroscience), Diana Reiss (Hunter, Psychology), Peter Singer (Princeton, Philosophy), Michael Tye (Texas, Philosophy),
Organizers: Ned Block (NYU, Philosophy), David Chalmers (NYU, Philosophy), Dale Jamieson (NYU, Animal Studies), S. Matthew Liao (NYU, Bioethics)
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE AND LOCATION:
The conference will be held at the NYU Cantor Film Center (36 E 8th St), Room 200 (the main theater on the second floor). The overflow room will be Cantor 101. Sessions will run from about 9:30am to 6pm on both days, with registration beforehand (beginning at 8:30).
Please note again that registration is free, but required. Seating is on a first-come first-served basis. *REGISTER HERE*
Subscribe to the NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness Mailing List here.
Inquiries to: consciousness@nyu.edu
The metaphysics of implicit bias has been an area of heated debates involving philosophers and psychologists. Most theorists of implicit bias posit that associations underwrite implicit bias. Recent dissenters have argued that propositional attitudes undergird this pernicious attitude. However, the propositional attitude view of implicit bias does not satisfyingly explain its various manifestations that are underwritten by its diverse contents. In this paper my criticism targets: (1) legitimacy of ascriptions of unconscious mental content, and (2) the phenomenology of implicit bias. The first criticism focuses on a common assumption in philosophy of mind—the equivalence of content in the conscious and unconscious domain—and raises problems regarding the propositional attitude theorist’s strategy to ascribe propositional attitudes to explain implicit biases which they locate in the unconscious mind of the subject. Second, I argue that the similarities between a more familiar mental phenomenon—the phenomenon of moods—and the conscious manifestations of implicit bias have been ignored. I identify several parallels between moods and implicit bias: their context-dependence, the subject’s lack of awareness of their source, their effects on the salience and valence of their targets, and their simultaneous responsiveness and recalcitrance to reasons. I argue that an explanatorily robust view of implicit bias must be commensurate with this analogy. I end with a proposal that I dub the indeterminate content view, which avoids these problems and promises explanatory power.
We will also be giving an award to 2nd-place essay prize winner Elis Miller (Harvard) for her paper “Whether to Suspend Judgment”.
In split-brain patients, the cerebral hemispheres have been separated by severing the corpus collosum. These patients sometimes behave as if they have one mind and sometimes as if they have two. Do these patients have a single consciousness that is in some respects fragmented? Or does each hemisphere support a distinct experiencing subject with a separate mind?
Joseph LeDoux (Center for Neural Science, NYU)
Yaïr Pinto (Psychology, University of Amsterdam)
Elizabeth Schechter (Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis)
Elizabeth Schechter, author of the recent book Self-consciousness and ‘Split-brains’: The Mind’s I, will argue for the two-minds view. Yair Pinto, author of the recent article “The Split Brain Phenomenon Revisited: A Single Conscious Agent with Split Perception”, will argue for the one-mind view. Joseph Ledoux, author of the 1977 article “A Divided Mind: Observations on the Conscious Properties of the Separated Hemispheres”, will argue for an intermediate position.