Lecture Series: Philosophy of AI in Science and Beyond
Description
AI is currently transforming science and society. This lecture series investigates its philosophical underpinnings, bringing together philosopher of science and cognition to reflect on the status of AI as a new cognitive agent and on its role in science and beyond. Topics range from transparency and representation to questions of artificial cognition.
Time and Place
Wednesdays, 2:00pm – 4:00pm, Emil-Figge-Str. 50, room 0.442, 44227 Dortmund
Speakers
28.10.26 Giovanni Galli (University of Innsbruck and University of Urbino) & Annika Schuster (TU Dortmund University)“Can AI generate scientific representations of proteins?”
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25.11.26 Carina Prunkl (National Institute of for research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria), Paris & Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford)
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02.12.26 Ian Robertson (Centre for Philosophy and AI Research {PAIR}, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)
“Reversing the Philosophy of AI? Comparative Cognition and Detecting Artificial Cognition”
A growing (but still marginal) group of researchers argue that certain current AI systems exhibit cognitive activity. Among them, some have argued that scepticism towards said claim is often not taken sufficiently seriously in virtue of the fact that the philosophy of AI is largely retrograde and overly reliant on methods drawn from the philosophy of mind. They advocate for an alternative methodological strategy, one on which we afford a greater significance to our capacity to detect mental states through interacting with cognitive agents. In this talk, I argue that this attempted methodological reversal is misguided. More specifically, I argue that it ignores important principles of comparative cognition studies. As such, it fails to offer a tenable alternative to more traditional philosophy of AI.
16.12.26 Emanuele Ratti (University of Bristol)
“Predictions and Accomodations in Machine Learning”
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20.01.27 Claus Beisbart (University of Bern)
“Making Sense of Explainability: A Conceptual Engineering Perspective on XAI”
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03.02.27 Hadeel Naeem (Centre for Philosophy and AI Research {PAIR}, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)
“AI and the Situated Epistemic Agent”
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Main Organizers
Annika Schuster, Frauke Stoll, Riccardo Fracchioni and Florian J. Boge