Philosophy Commons^™

New Technologies And Constitutional Law, Thomas Fetzer, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Philosophy As Engineering, Lynn Stein

Lynn Andrea Stein

Ours is a field in crisis. Artificial Intelligence cannot make up its collective mind whether it is a discipline of Science or of Engineering. It is unclear from our literature and from our research whether our goals are to explain intelligence or to create it. A researcher who hypothesizes about the structure of intelligent behavior is accused of constructing theories without hope of instantiation; one who creates a seemingly intelligent artifact often sees it derided as "mere hackery." The theorists among us confer in an ever more arcane language, grasping for the idealized agents and environments for which our formal …

On-Farm Water Management Game With Heuristic Capabilities, Mohammed Z. Shaban

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Improved on-farm irrigation practices can result in more economical farming, and better productivity. Very little has been done with regard to improved training tools that can be used to promote better and more effective on-farm irrigation practices. Games considered as an effective decision support tools in which players are able to test alternatives, and demonstrate the effects of their decisions, in a short time, and without being afraid of making mistakes. Training tools in the form of games promotes what is called “learning based on experience” through a schematic version of reality, and observing the effects.

The WaterMan game was …

The Theological Origins Of Engineering, Brad Kallenberg

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Knowledge of our roots can sometimes help us figure out how we ought to proceed. Many claim that engineering began in ancient antiquity with the Egyptian pyramids, Archimedes' inventions, or the Roman aqueducts. Others give contemporary engineering a more recent history, tracing its origins to the Industrial Revolution or the Enlightenment. Yet what is often overlooked is the fact that contemporary engineering owes part of its identity to medieval monasticism.

The advantage of remembering this history is the bearing it has on the questions "What is engineering for?" and "How ought engineering be practiced?"

Michael Davis makes the claim that, …

A Systems View Of Time-Dependent Ethical Decisions, Hamid A. Rafizadeh, Brad Kallenberg

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Every ethical situation has a "system" characteristic with a group of human and nonhuman elements linked in a variety of interactions and interdependencies. The system allows the elements to act in part or as a whole towards achieving a spectrum of goals, objectives, or ends. The systems view asserts that any local and bipolar understanding of an ethical situation would be deficient as it would neglect certain interactions and interdependencies as well as overlook differing orientations of agents towards different goals and objectives. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the need for a systems-based view of ethics.