On the Cognitive, Ethical, and Scientific Dimensions of Artificial Intelligence: Themes from IACAP 2016

In June 2016, the International Association for Computing and Philosophy gathered at the University of Ferrara, and the meeting pulled philosophers, computer scientists, roboticists, logicians, and cognitive researchers into the same rooms. On the Cognitive, Ethical, and Scientific Dimensions of Artificial Intelligence collects 21 of the papers presented there, arranged so that each contribution picks up questions the previous ones leave open.

Edited by Don Berkich and Matteo Vincenzo d’Alfonso, the volume is not a tour of AI techniques or a handbook of implementation. It is a sustained philosophical examination of what computation, information, and intelligence actually are — and of what we owe to machines, and to one another, once those systems begin making decisions that shape real lives.

Six Research Agendas in One Volume

Berkich’s introductory chapter does more than summarize: it maps the collection onto six distinct lines of inquiry, which makes this multi-author book unusually easy to navigate for an academic anthology.

• Computation and Information — what it means for a physical system to compute, and whether “information” clarifies or obscures the picture
• Logic — modal logic and automata, neo-logicism, set-theoretic issues, and what Arrow’s information paradox says to philosophers
• Epistemology and Science — computational complexity and scientific explanation, a software-inspired view of nature, and the politics and epistemology of big data
• Cognition and Mind — telepresence and the senses, ontologies of mental disorder, large-scale brain simulation, and Kantian approaches to cognition
• Moral Dimensions of Human-Machine Interaction — training data and irresponsible inference, robotic responsibility, intimacy with robots, and the limits of human exceptionalism
• Trust, Privacy, and Justice — strict online anonymity, safety and security standards in the digital age, and the challenges facing digital democracy

Ethics That Begin With Working Systems

The ethically focused chapters tend to start from something concrete rather than from principle alone. Owen C. King asks how we should assess the datasets behind image recognition when the resulting inferences cause harm. Anna Frammartino Wilks examines where responsibility can reasonably settle when a robot acts. Jason Borenstein and Ronald Arkin consider why intimacy between people and machines deserves genuine scientific attention rather than anecdote. Frances Grodzinsky, Marty J. Wolf, and Keith Miller use the curious case of hitchBOT to test a social-relational model of moral standing, while Migle Laukyte presses environmental ethics into the debate about machines. Erica L. Neely closes that section by asking what choice even means inside a single-player video game.

Conceptual Foundations, Taken Seriously

Earlier chapters do the groundwork the later ones depend on. Paul Schweizer offers a normative mapping account of computation in physical systems; Francois Oberholzer and Stefan Gruner interrogate the notion of information itself; Luca Rivelli draws out the pragmatic consequences of computational complexity for scientific explanation; Teresa Numerico gives a critical assessment of big data’s politics and epistemology. Readers who care about how foundational choices ripple through applied work will find this ordering deliberate and useful.

Who Will Get the Most From This Volume

This is a research-level anthology. It suits philosophers of mind, logicians, and ethicists who want serious engagement with computing; computer scientists and roboticists curious about the conceptual assumptions beneath their tools; and graduate students looking for a snapshot of where the computing-and-philosophy conversation stood at a particular moment and how it has moved since. Because each chapter stands on its own, the book also works well for readers who prefer to sample by topic rather than read straight through.

Part of the Philosophical Studies Series

Published by Springer Nature Switzerland as Volume 134 of the Philosophical Studies Series, the collection preserves the conference’s interdisciplinary character without sacrificing analytical rigor. Berkich’s framing chapter ties the parts together, so the volume reads as a coherent argument about the dimensions of artificial intelligence rather than a stack of unrelated conference papers.