Download or read book Species and Machines written by Martyn Hudson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a re-examination of the relationship between humans and nature with a new methodology: by examining our entanglement with machines. Using central ideas of critical theory, it uncovers the suppression of nature through technology, tools and engines. It focuses on the ways in which human social forms have actively subjugated and destroyed other species in order to enhance their own social power and accumulation, leading to a new Anthropocene epoch in which human intervention is signalled in the geological record. Beginning with an account of the interactions between humans and other species, the book moves on to explore the hidden history of Marx and his obsession with machines, as well as new attempts to rethink a Marxist ecology, before proceeding to examine the manner in which technologies were used to suppress and destroy one particular species - the Whale of what we call the Cetacean Holocaust. Following this, there are analyses of the emergence of the ‘human encampments’ of the cities and the rise of mobile, locomotive cultures, and consideration of the relationship between machines of memory, and the ‘capturing’ of nature. A radical rethinking of classical social theory that develops new ways of thinking about ecological catastrophe and nature, this book will appeal to scholars of social theory and environmental sociology.
Download or read book Can Animals and Machines be Persons written by Justin Leiber and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1985-01-01 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Written in a lively and entertaining style, this little book, which deals with topics such as 'personhood,' animal rights, and artificial intelligence . . . makes some rather difficult philosophical points clear in an unpedantic fashion." -- M E Winston, Trenton State College
Download or read book Beyond the Creative Species written by Oliver Bown and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary introduction to the field of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. As algorithms get smarter, what role will computers play in the creation of music, art, and other cultural artifacts? Will they be able to create such things from the ground up, and will such creations be meaningful? In Beyond the Creative Species, Oliver Bown offers a multidisciplinary examination of computational creativity, analyzing the impact of advanced generative technologies on art and music. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, design, social theory, the psychology of creativity, and creative practice research, Bown argues that to understand computational creativity, we must not only consider what computationally creative algorithms actually do, but also examine creative artistic activity itself.
Download or read book Human Error written by Dominic Pettman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that humanity can be seen as a case of mistaken identity.
Download or read book Morpho functional Machines The New Species written by F. Hara and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morpho-functional Machines are a set of tools for investigating the design of embodied intelligence in autonomous bio-artifact systems. The focus in Morpho-functional Machines is on the balance of morphology, materials, and control; intelligent behavior emerges from the interaction of an autonomous system with a real-world environment. How, then, should body morphology, body materials, and sensory systems be designed to achieve a certain set of tasks or desired behaviors in a particular environment? This and other questions were addressed at the International Workshop on Morpho-functional Machines held in Tokyo in 2001. Collected here are the revised papers from the workshop, providing a new perspective for understanding embodied intelligence. Presenting the innovative concept of Morpho-functional Machines, this book is a valuable source for scientists and engineers working in ethnology, cognitive sciences, robotic engineering, and artificial intelligence.
Download or read book Ways of Being written by James Bridle and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings— beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us. At the same time, we’re only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we’ve failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others—the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us—are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world? The artist and maverick thinker James Bridle draws on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to answer these unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the fascinating, strange, and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and being that make up the world, and that are essential for our survival. Includes illustrations
Download or read book Divine Machines written by Justin E. H. Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "his book provides a comprehensive survey of G. W. Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the sciences of life, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. It is shown that these sundry interests were not only relevant to his core philosophical interests, but indeed often provided the insights that in part led to some of his most familiar philosophical doctrines, including the theory of corporeal substance and the theory of organic preformation"--
Download or read book The New Breed written by Kate Darling and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of The Second Machine Age or The Soul of an Octopus, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robots—inspired by how we interact with animals—could be the key to making our future with robot technology work There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, suggesting that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. From a social, legal, and ethical perspective, she shows that our current ways of thinking don’t leave room for the robot technology that is soon to become part of our everyday routines. Robots are likely to supplement—rather than replace—our own skills and relationships. So if we consider our history of incorporating animals into our work, transportation, military, and even families, we actually have a solid basis for how to contend with this future. A deeply original analysis of our technological future and the ethical dilemmas that await us, The New Breed explains how the treatment of machines can reveal a new understanding of our own history, our own systems, and how we relate—not just to nonhumans, but also to one another.
Download or read book When Species Meet written by Donna J. Haraway and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-11-30 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending more than 38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.” In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal–human encounters. In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending-socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.” Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal–human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.
Download or read book God Human Animal Machine written by Meghan O'Gieblyn and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
Download or read book Rights for Robots written by Joshua C. Gellers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing a unique perspective to the burgeoning ethical and legal issues surrounding the presence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, the book uses theory and practice on animal rights and the rights of nature to assess the status of robots. Through extensive philosophical and legal analyses, the book explores how rights can be applied to nonhuman entities. This task is completed by developing a framework useful for determining the kinds of personhood for which a nonhuman entity might be eligible, and a critical environmental ethic that extends moral and legal consideration to nonhumans. The framework and ethic are then applied to two hypothetical situations involving real-world technology—animal-like robot companions and humanoid sex robots. Additionally, the book approaches the subject from multiple perspectives, providing a comparative study of legal cases on animal rights and the rights of nature from around the world and insights from structured interviews with leading experts in the field of robotics. Ending with a call to rethink the concept of rights in the Anthropocene, suggestions for further research are made. An essential read for scholars and students interested in robot, animal and environmental law, as well as those interested in technology more generally, the book is a ground-breaking study of an increasingly relevant topic, as robots become ubiquitous in modern society. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/ISBN, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans written by Jakob von Uexküll and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-11-30 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject?” With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexküll “a high point of modern antihumanism.” A key document in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans advances Uexküll’s revolutionary belief that nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worth its name; it also contains his arguments against natural selection as an adequate explanation for the present orientation of a species’ morphology and behavior. A Theory of Meaning extends his thinking on the umwelt, while also identifying an overarching and perceptible unity in nature. Those coming to Uexküll’s work for the first time will find that his concept of the umwelt holds new possibilities for the terms of animality, life, and the framework of biopolitics.
Download or read book The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon written by Lawrence Nolan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 1642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon is the definitive reference source on René Descartes, 'the father of modern philosophy' and arguably among the most important philosophers of all time. Examining the full range of Descartes' achievements and legacy, it includes 256 in-depth entries that explain key concepts relating to his thought. Cumulatively they uncover interpretative disputes, trace his influences, and explain how his work was received by critics and developed by followers. There are entries on topics such as certainty, cogito ergo sum, doubt, dualism, free will, God, geometry, happiness, human being, knowledge, Meditations on First Philosophy, mind, passion, physics, and virtue, which are written by the largest and most distinguished team of Cartesian scholars ever assembled for a collaborative research project - 92 contributors from ten countries.
Download or read book The Boundaries of Humanity written by James J. Sheehan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the age-old debate over what it means to be human, the relatively new fields of sociobiology and artificial intelligence bring new, if not necessarily compatible, insights. What have these two fields in common? Have they affected the way we define humanity? These and other timely questions are addressed with colorful individuality by the authors of The Boundaries of Humanity. Leading researchers in both sociobiology and artificial intelligence combine their reflections with those of philosophers, historians, and social scientists, while the editors explore the historical and contemporary contexts of the debate in their introductions. The implications of their individual arguments, and the often heated controversies generated by biological determinism or by mechanical models of mind, go to the heart of contemporary scientific, philosophical, and humanistic studies. Contributors: Arnold I. Davidson, John Dupré, Roger Hahn, Stuart Hampshire, Evelyn Fox Keller, Melvin Konner, Alan Newell, Harriet Ritvo, James J. Sheehan, Morton Sosna, Sherry Turkle, Bernard Williams, Terry Winograd This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.
Download or read book Nature s Machines written by David E. Alexander and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature’s Machines: An Introduction to Organismal Biomechanics presents the fundamental principles of biomechanics in a concise, accessible way while maintaining necessary rigor. It covers the central principles of whole-organism biomechanics as they apply across the animal and plant kingdoms, featuring brief, tightly-focused coverage that does for biologists what H. M. Frost’s 1967 Introduction to Biomechanics did for physicians. Frequently encountered, basic concepts such as stress and strain, Young’s modulus, force coefficients, viscosity, and Reynolds number are introduced in early chapters in a self-contained format, making them quickly available for learning and as a refresher. More sophisticated, integrative concepts such as viscoelasticity or properties of hydrostats are covered in the later chapters, where they draw on information from multiple earlier sections of the book. Animal and plant biomechanics is now a common research area widely acknowledged by organismal biologists to have broad relevance. Most of the day-to-day activities of an animal involve mechanical processes, and to the extent that organisms are shaped by adaptive evolution, many of those adaptations are constrained and channelized by mechanical properties. The similarity in body shape of a porpoise and a tuna is no coincidence. Many may feel that they have an intuitive understanding of many of the mechanical processes that affect animals and plants, but careful biomechanical analyses often yield counterintuitive results: soft, squishy kelp may be better at withstanding pounding waves during storms than hard-shelled mollusks; really small swimmers might benefit from being spherical rather than streamlined; our bones can operate without breaking for decades, whereas steel surgical implants exhibit fatigue failures in a few months if not fully supported by bone. Offers organismal biologists and biologists in other areas a background in biomechanics to better understand the research literature and to explore the possibility of using biomechanics approaches in their own work Provides an introductory presentation of the everyday mechanical challenges faced by animals and plants Functions as recommended or required reading for advanced undergraduate biology majors taking courses in biomechanics, supplemental reading in a general organismal biology course, or background reading for a biomechanics seminar course
Download or read book Ways of Being written by James Bridle and published by Allen Lane. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans - or do we share it with other beings? Recent years have seen rapid advances in 'artificial' intelligence, which increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, unrecognized. These other beings are the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us, and are slowly revealing their complexity and knowledge - just as the new technologies we've built are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours. In Ways of Being, writer and artist James Bridle considers the fascinating, uncanny and multiple ways of existing on earth. What can we learn from these other forms of intelligence and personhood, and how can we change our societies to live more equitably with one another and the non-human world? From Greek oracles to octopuses, forests to satellites, Bridle tells a radical new story about ecology, technology and intelligence. We must, they argue, expand our definition of these terms to build a meaningful and free relationship with the non-human, one based on solidarity and cognitive diversity. We have so much to learn, and many worlds to gain.
Download or read book Robo Sapiens written by Peter Menzel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information about intelligent robots and their makers, including photographis, interviews, behind-the-scenes information and technical date about machines that is easy to understand.
