USUPhilosophy

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.

The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology will hold its annual conference this week here in Logan.  Conference runs from Thursday through Saturday.  Full schedule of talks and events here.  Of note: philosophy alumnus Mark Rasmussen (now studying law at Ava Maria) will be presenting Saturday on passibility and knowledge in God.  All events and talks are free and open to the public.

(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.”