CFP: Philosophy and Technology: The Question of the Bio-Machine Hybrids

Guest editors

J. Mark Bishop and Yasemin J. Erden

Introduction

Turing’s famous question ‘can machines think?’ raises parallel questions about what it means to say of us humans that we think. More broadly, what does it mean to say that we are thinking beings? In this way we can see that Turing’s question about the potential of machines raises substantial questions about the nature of human identity. ‘If’, we might ask, ‘intelligent human behaviour could be successfully imitated, then what is there about our flesh and blood embodiment that need be regarded as exclusively essential to either intelligence or human identity?’ This and related questions come to the fore when we consider the way in which our involvement with and use of machines and technologies, as well as their involvement in us, is increasing and evolving. This is true of few more than those technologies that have a more intimate and developing role in our lives, such as implants and prosthetics (e.g. neuroprosthetics).

Fertile areas for investigation include how new developments in AI look set to develop implant technology (e.g. swarm intelligence for the control of smaller and smaller components); the impact of developments of implants and prosthetics for use in human, primate and non-primate animals; the nature of human identity and how implants may impact on it (involving both conceptual and ethical questions); the identification of, and debate surrounding, distinctions drawn between improvement or repair (e.g. for medical reasons), and enhancement or “upgrading” (e.g. to improve performance) using implants/prosthetics; what role other emerging, and converging, technologies may have on the development of implants (e.g. nanotechnology or biotechnology); what role ‘animat’ devices (robotic machines with both active biological and artificial components;  whether the convergence of different biotechnological hybrid systems will be accompanied by a corresponding convergence of their respective teleological capacities (and what might be the limits of this).

Call

The Fifth AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy was held at the joint AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 in Birmingham from 2nd to 6th July 2012 (http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/index.php) on the topic ofComputing, Philosophy and the Question of Bio-Machine Hybrids. The Congress was co-organised by AISB(http://www.aisb.org.uk) and IACAP (http://www.iacap.org), and was held in honour of Alan Turing, as part of the Centenary celebrations of his life and work. Following this symposium, a special issue of Springer’sPhilosophy & Technology journal (http://www.springer.com/13347) is now being planned. We invite all those working in these (typically interdisciplinary) areas to participate in the project by contributing a paper for consideration to the special issue. In this call we particularly encourage submissions that address one or more of the themes discussed above. Authors who presented a paper at this conference are invited to submit an original, recently revised, version of that paper, while other interested authors are invited to submit original papers related to the topics mentioned below. All submissions will be double peer-reviewed according to usual standards. Submitted papers must not have been previously published, and where work has featured elsewhere (e.g. in AISB conference proceedings), this must be cited, and these ideas be further developed for the purposes of this new and original submission.

Topics

• Cognitive science; 
• Artificial intelligence; 
• the Turing test; 
• machine understanding; 
• Searle’s Chinese Room argument; 
• Foundations of computing; 
• Simulation of behaviour and agency; 
• Ambient intelligence; 
• Artificial life; 
• computational biology; 
• Implant technology; 
• Biosemiotics; 
• Constructivism; 
• Second order cybernetics; 
• Enactivism and sensorimotor theories of perception; 
• Converging technologies (e.g. ICT, Nanotechnology, etc.); 
• Information / computer / nanotechnology ethics; 
• Cognitive / epigenetic robotics.

Timetable

February 28, 2013: Deadline papers submissions

April 30, 2013: Deadline reviews papers

June 28, 2013: Deadline revised papers

2013: Publication of the special issue 

Submission details

To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/ The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- authored papers) must register into EM. The author must then select the special article type: “SI ON THE QUESTION OF BIO-MACHINE HYBRIDS” from the selection provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the submissions to the Guest Editors. Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure: New Submissions ---> Journal Editorial Office ----> Guest Editor(s) ---> Reviewers  ---> Reviewers’ Recommendations ---> Guest Editor(s)’ Recommendation ---> Editor-in- Chief’s Final Decision---> Author Notification of the Decision. The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.

For any further information please contact:

J. Mark Bishop [email protected]

Yasemin J. Erden [email protected]