6 October

Neurorights and mental integrity in the age of neurotechnologies
Prof Philip Højme
University of Warsaw, Center for Bioethics and Biolaw

Abstract: I will begin my presentation with an introduction to recent calls for the necessity of safeguarding the mind within the framework of Neurorights (Ienca & Andorno, 2017; Yuste et al., 2017). Neurorights are a cluster of rights aiming at protecting our minds from harm, undue interference, and, in some cases, mental health. However, different authors and organisations have proposed various conceptions of these rights or have proposed that existing rights can be changed to better account for the ethical challenges posed by technologies capable of affecting our sense of self, identity, personality, thoughts, and desires. The first part of the presentation therefore aims to outline these varied arguments and propositions as myriad solutions to a common issue—how to protect our forum internum, or inner world, from the ethical issues that neurotechnologies may pose to individuals and society.

In the second part, I will focus on mental integrity (one of the proposed rights) and the focus of my own research. In this part of the presentation, I will first conceptualise mental integrity as it is most commonly envisioned in the literature. Following this introduction to mental integrity, I move on to my own (current, being developed) research, presenting my thoughts about the treatment versus enhancement debates as these relate to the discussion about mental integrity as a right to mental health, some current issues concerning autonomy that I am working on in relation to BCI devices and patients with Locked-In Syndrome.

Pevensey 1 2A3

Meeting ID: 848 2724 8027

Passcode: 73505

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27 October

Reclaiming AI as a Theoretical Tool for Cognitive Science
Prof Iris Van Rooij
Radboud University Nijmegen

Abstract: The idea that human cognition is, or can be understood as, a form of computation is a useful conceptual tool for cognitive science. It was a foundational assumption during the birth of cognitive science as a multidisciplinary field, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) as one of its contributing fields. One conception of AI in this context is as a provider of computational tools (frameworks, concepts, formalisms, models, proofs, simulations, etc.) that support theory building in cognitive science. The contemporary field of AI, however, has taken the theoretical possibility of explaining human cognition as a form of computation to imply the practical feasibility of realising human(-like or -level) cognition in factual computational systems, and the field frames this realisation as a short-term inevitability. Yet, as we formally prove herein, creating systems with human(-like or -level) cognition is intrinsically computationally intractable. This means that any factual AI systems created in the short-run are at best decoys. When we think these systems capture something deep about ourselves and our thinking, we induce distorted and impoverished images of ourselves and our cognition. In other words, AI in current practice is deteriorating our theoretical understanding of cognition rather than advancing and enhancing it. The situation could be remediated by releasing the grip of the currently dominant view on AI and by returning to the idea of AI as a theoretical tool for cognitive science. In reclaiming this older idea of AI, however, it is important not to repeat conceptual mistakes of the past (and present) that brought us to where we are today.

Talk based on published paper:

van Rooij, I., Guest, et al. (2024) Reclaiming AI as a Theoretical Tool for Cognitive Science. Computation Brain & Behavior 7, 616–636 

Bio

Iris van Rooij is a Professor of Computational Cognitive Science in the School of Artificial Intelligence at Radboud University, The Netherlands. She is PI at the Donders Centre for Cognition, Chair of the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, and Guest Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Her research interests lie at the interface of psychology, philosophy and theoretical computer science, with a particular focus on the computational scope and limits of cognition (including scientists’ cognition). By taking a meta-theoretical perspective, her research group also leads a critical AI literacy initiative.

Pevensey 1 2A3

Meeting ID: 852 8484 5103

Passcode: 858582

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29 October

Artificial Externality: A Three-Layer Model of Reality from Substrate to Smart Contract
Keisuke Suzuki 
Hokkaido University

Abstract: What is real has always been something we find, not something we make—or so philosophy has assumed. This paper argues otherwise. Characterizing reality through resistance rather than substance (the ways the world refuses a subject’s mastery), I distinguish three modalities correlative to epistemic, judgmental, and practical mastery: Substrate (matter’s resistance to representation), Contingency (the forceful givenness of experience that resists revision by judgment), and the Inexorable (structures’ resistance to intervention). Treating virtual environments, AI agents, and blockchain smart contracts not as proofs but as revelatory cases, I show that technology now extends the latter two modalities, Contingency and the Inexorable, artificially. The result is the paper’s central concept, Artificial Externality: human-made structures whose resistance to intervention is deliberately engineered to be practically insurmountable, even for their creators, and that thereby acquire an externality once attributed only to nature. Absoluteness, traditionally found, can now be produced. I close by drawing out the stakes for consciousness: our criteria for what counts as real quietly shape our criteria for what counts as conscious.

Pevensey 1A6

Meeting ID: 822 6668 5542

Passcode: 404525

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10 November

Escaping Cartesian Gravity
Prof Andy Clark
University of Sussex

Abstract: Daniel Denett famously urges us to reject the picture of conscious experience as involving mysterious ‘qualia’, where these are directly known experiential states whose nature cannot be fully explained in terms of our own discriminative capacities and tendencies to react, judge, and respond. The key move in that work was to ask what tricks our own minds are playing on us that push us towards seeing our own conscious experience as so very weird and puzzling. To be fooled by such tricks is to be in the grip of what Dennett (2017) describes as ‘Cartesian Gravity’. To escape the pull of Cartesian gravity would be to open the doors for a true science of consciousness. In this talk, I begin by touring Dennett’s well-engineered escape-velocity spacecraft. I then retro-fit the spacecraft using some new resources drawn from recent work on bodily energy management and interoceptively-inflected predictive processing. With that in hand, I re-visit and try to resolve some classic worries about Dennett’s account. Escaping Cartesian Gravity in this way does not solve all our puzzles. But it shifts the focus from hopeless questions about classic qualia to better ones concerning self-models, energy management, and information flow in living beings.

Reference: Dennett, D (2017) From Bacteria to Bach, and Back (W.W. Norton and Co)

Pevensey 1 2A3

Meeting ID: 829 7763 6554

Passcode: 000490

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1 December

Preserving Human Values in a Mechanistic Universe
Blay Whitby
University of Sussex

Abstract: Both Margaret Boden and myself were once accused of ‘speaking from an outmoded humanist perspective’. Her response at the time was highly dismissive. There has also been a more recent publication - Szollosy, (2017) - criticising a publication which includes both Whitby and Boden among its authors on similar grounds. I have absolutely no doubt that the late Professor Boden would want me to take this opportunity to demonstrate - partly on her behalf - that humanism is not outmoded.

The critics of humanism often derogatively call it a Eurocentric Enlightenment invention: which is probably an oxymoron. More importantly, they want to replace humanism with a posthuman or transhuman perspective in which the division between human and machine is obscured, if not irrelevant. While I would not want to off-handedly dismiss the claims of posthumanism – particularly in the area of the social implications of AI on which both Professor Boden and I focussed our careers – a defence of human values is morally necessary. Particularly today, there are ethical risks in reducing the importance of human values. In the age of machines, it is more important than ever that someone speaks up for the humans.

Szollosy, M. (2017). EPSRC Principles of Robotics: defending an obsolete human(ism)? Connection Science, 29(2), 150–159.

Pevensey 1 2A3

Meeting ID: 835 6921 6760

Passcode: 082132

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