APA Newsletters

Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2

Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers

Event Handler

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Informational Privacy and Moral Values
Michael Scanlan, Oregon State University

Wittgenstein Nachlass
David Stern, University of Iowa

In November 2000, the Bergen Electronic Edition of the entire Wittgenstein Nachlass, the approximately 20,000 pages of manuscripts and typescripts that he left to his literary trustees, was published on CD-ROM by Oxford University Press. The edition includes both high-quality color pictures of every page in the papers, and a sophisticated and extremely full transcription of the source text, which can be displayed at customizable levels of sophistication, first draft only, final version only, all variant forms, etc. The reader can not only search and collate words in all the usual ways, but can also search the database of diagrams; every one of the several thousand diagrams and drawings that are an integral part of the writing.
The principal aim of this presentation is to show some of what the Bergen Electronic edition can do, and illustrate how it opens up new ways of reading the history of philosophy. I'll show how hyperlinks tie the search results and the source text, so that searching and reading are no longer separate activities. I'll also illustrate some interesting examples of revision and editing, and how one can trace the various stages in which a paragraph was revised as it moved from one manuscript and typescript to another.

The Embedded, Self-Aware Agent
Susan Stuart, University of Glasgow

The theme of this paper is the question of whether artificially engineered organisms, such as robots or purely virtual creatures, which we refer to under the umbrella term animats, could develop some rudimentary form of self-awareness; and, if so, what is the minimal set of conditions that such an animat would have to fulfil before we could ascribe such awareness to it.

Teaching Socrates in Cyberspace
Vikki Wetle, Chemekata Community College

A qualitative description of the pedagogy used to teach philosophy on-line; a brief overview of the issues inherent in this teaching medium and a qualitative comparison of student performance face to face and online will be presented.

Amy White, Bowling Green State University

The most robust arguments for internet censorship in the United States have been based on the claim that children could be harmed by the internet remaining uncensored. Proponents of this argument paint the internet as a dangerous place to minors where pornography and predators lurk around every virtual corner. Despite the popularity of the harmful to minors argument, it is seriously flawed. In this presentation II will explore the argument (and its sometimes humorous applications) and argue that it fails to justify internet censorship. Some of the reasons for its failure include: applying a narrow definition of harm, lack of concrete evidence of harm, subjectivity in its application and its inability to logically be applied to the internet.

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APA Newsletters

Spring 2001 Volume 00, Number 2

Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2