Author: Huenemann

Philosophy Club Guardian Justin Solum bids me to advertize that I will be offering a short talk on the topic of philosophy and information this Wednesday, September 26th, at 5 p.m., in Main 227. This will be a presentation in preparation for a similar talk I plan to give later on, at the Intermountain Philosophy Conference. The abstract for that talk is as follows:

“It from Bit” – philosophical reflections

In this presentation I will reflect on a fascinating intersection of physics, information theory, and philosophy. Some physicists (beginning with Zuse 1967; more famously Wheeler 1990) have asserted that the ultimate substance in the universe is not matter, mind, or energy, but information: all of “it” is built from “bits.” Even earlier, the founder of modern-day information theory, Claude Shannon, employed the physical concept of entropy in order to sort information from noise in code strings. The proposed intersection of these fields is captured neatly in a provocative slogan: “Information theory is the thermodynamics of code strings, and thermodynamics is the information theory of particles in space” (Adriaans & van Benthem 2008). My presentation will not contain anything distinctively new or critical on the topic; this talk is more of an exploration for me, and so my aim is to be able to provide a competent and interesting overview of the topic, while pointing out possible philosophical consequences.

 

 

Anyone is welcome.

… he would rewrite the economics textbooks. Excerpt:

If market values sometimes crowd out attitudes and values worth caring about (such as the love of learning for its own sake), then market reasoning must answer to moral reasoning. Standard economic models assume that markets are inert, that they do not touch or taint the goods they exchange. But if buying and selling certain goods changes their meaning, then the case for markets cannot rest on efficiency considerations alone. It must also rest on a moral argument about how to value the goods in question.

Read the rest here.

(Hat tip to pleasandexcuses.com)

Interesting article here about the development of intelligent drones who would make better moral calls on the battlefield than humans. Excerpt:

A year after seeing the Apache helicopter video in 2005, Mr. Arkin, the Georgia Tech roboticist, won a three-year grant from the U.S. Army Research Office for a project with a stated goal of producing “an artificial conscience” to guide robots in the battlefield independent of human control. The project resulted in a decision-making architecture that Mr. Arkin says could potentially lead to ethically superior robotic warriors within as few as 10 to 20 years, assuming the program is given full financial support.

“I’m not talking about replacing war fighters one for one,” he says. “I’m talking about designing very narrow, very specific machines for certain tasks that will work alongside human war fighters to carry out particular types of operations that humans don’t do particularly well at, such as building-clearing operations.”

You should present something! Here is the announcement (the official site is here):

Welcome To The 21th SLCC Undergraduate Student Philosophical Conference Website!

We are thrilled to announce the 3rd annual International Philosophy Conference and the 21st Undergraduate Philosophical Conference held by Salt Lake Community College! This year’s conference will be a two day event in which we will explore ‘Education as a Creative Production of Culture.’

The academic portion of the conference will take place on Friday, November 9th, 2012. It will begin with a one-hour plenary session featuring our keynote speaker Dr. James Faulconer. This will be followed by a two-hour panel session in which students will present their work inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche and Pierre Bourdieu.

The artistic portion of the conference will take place on Monday, November 12, 2012. In this session we will enjoy a presentation by Utah Symphony Music Director Thierry Fischer. He will be speaking about, ‘Noise and Noises: Being Surrounded by Noise Affects Our Perception and Creativity.’

We are currently seeking undergraduate students to present papers at the breakout panels. These panels will be conducted and moderated by SLCC and/or visiting professors. Each student will read their paper (maximum of 15 minutes), after which a discussion Q/A will take place. We hope to have 5-7 papers presented at each panel.

The papers may be broader in scope than just Friedrich and/or Bourdieu alone. Furthermore, they need not be exclusive to our conference (enabling students to present at more than one conference). The deadlines are as follows: October 1, 2012 for Abstracts and October 31, 2012 for final papers. Please use the Paper Submission Form to submit your entry to the conference. We will accept papers from anyone in the world that wishes to participate.