THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN OSLO 2009
August 13-15, 2009

Keynote speakers: Kendall Walton, author of "Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts" (Harvard University Press, 1990), Miguel Sicart, author of "The Ethics of Computer Games" (The MIT Press, 2009) and Grant Tavinor, author of "The Art of Video Games" (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming in October 2009).

CALL FOR PAPERS

We hereby invite scholars in any field who take a professional interest in the phenomenon of computer games to submit papers to the international conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games 2009", to be held in Oslo, Norway, on August 13-15, 2009.

Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke "computer games" in general terms. We invite submissions focusing on, but not limited to, the following three headings:

• Fictionality and Interaction

Computer games are often conceived as a setting for fictional narratives, facts, objects and events, although the interactive setting is thought to give fictionality a special character and to be intertwined with non-fictional aspects in various ways. We invite papers on relevant discussions of fictionality, narrative, fictional objects, simulation, virtuality, and kindred cognitive notions like make-believe, pretense, and imagination.

• Defining Computer Games

Is it possible to point to some defining characteristic(s) of computer games? We are especially interested in discussions of formal definitions of computer games in terms of characteristics such as rules, play, representation, computation, affordances, interaction, negotiable consequences, and so on. We welcome both constructive and critical discussions, as long as they are directed at clearly articulated proposals.

• Ethical and Political Issues

What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in relation to individual gamers and society in general? What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics? Also, what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context, and what are the factors that allow or delimit philosophical justifications of their application there or elsewhere?

Your abstract should not exceed 1000 words. If your submission falls under one of the three headings, please indicate which one. Send your abstract to submissions@gamephilosophy.org. All submitted abstracts will be subject to double blind peer review, and the program committee will

make a final selection of papers for the conference on the basis of this. Full manuscripts must be submitted by August 8, and will be made available on the conference website.

Deadline for submissions is June 1, 2009.
Notification of accepted submissions will be sent out by June 10, 2009.


Olav Asheim
Miguel Sicart
Frans Mäyrä
Patrick Coppock
Sten Ludvigsen
Ole Ertløv Hansen
Stephan Güntzel
Runje Klevjer
John Richard Sageng
Ragnhild Tronstad


The conference is a collaboration between the following institutions:

• Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway
• Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway
• Digital Games Research Center, University of Potsdam, Germany
• Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Science at the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy
• Nordic Game Research Network
• Intermedia, University of Oslo, Norway
• Games Research Lab, University of Tampere, Finland
• Center for Computer Games Research at the IT-University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Philosophical Project Centre (FPS), Oslo, Norway
• Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

Two books for Oxford University Press

I have now completed the two projects for Oxford University Press.

One is a small book, entitled Information, written for OUP popular series Very Short Introductions.

The other is the book I had been writing for ten year: The Philosophy of Information. It will also be published by OUP.

Next project: the other book that complements PoI: Information Ethics. Hopefully it will not take me another decade.

Associate Professor in history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science

The Department of Science Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark (http://www.ivs.au.dk) invites applications for a permanent position as Associate Professor beginning January 1, 2010.

The Department of Science Studies forms part of the Faculty of Science, and is responsible for research and education in history and philosophy of science.

The Department seeks a historian or philosopher of mathematics and/or computer science with significant publications and research interest within the fields of history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science broadly conceived.

The requirements for a successful application are an strong record of research and teaching within history and/or philosophy of mathematics and computer science, and the ability to teach in English or Danish. Experience with academic administration and fund raising is desirable.

Duties will include instruction at the undergraduate and postgraduate level within the fields of history and philosophy of mathematics and computer science, preferably including mandatory courses in philosophy of mathematics and computer science for undergraduate students in mathematics and computer science. The Department offers courses in philosophy of science for all science programmes. All courses are based on extensive use of historical and contemporary cases, and faculty members from the Department collaborate on developing the course format.
The new Associate Professor is expected to participate actively in the strategic development of the departments research focus on studies of contemporary science. The Department is interested in developing new teaching initiatives in science studies.

The successful candidate will be expected to participate in all aspects of the Department’s activities and to be present on a daily basis.

Applications must be in English and include a curriculum vitae, a complete list of publications, a statement of future research plans and information about research activities, teaching qualifications and management experience, all in 4 copies (see http://www.nat.au.dk/default.asp?id=7842&la=UK for the recommended level of detail). If the applicant wants other material to be considered in the evaluation (publications and other documentation of research and teaching qualifications, as well as management experience) such material must be clearly specified and must either be enclosed in hardcopy (3 copies) or must be available electronically.

The Faculty refers to the Ministerial Order No. 92 of 15.02.2008 (http://science.au.dk/default.asp?id=7839&la=UK) on the appointment of teaching and research staff at the universities under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Salary depends on seniority as agreed between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Confederation of Professional Unions.

Applications should be addressed to The Faculty of Science, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade, Building 1520, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark, and marked 212/5-292.

The deadline for receipt of all applications is July 1, 2009, at 12,00 noon.

For more information please contact the head of the department Keld Nielsen, Department of Science Studies, Building 1110, CF Moellers Alle, DK-8000 Aarhus C., Denmark; phone +45 8942 3540; e-mail: keld.nielsen@ivs.au.dk, or vice head of department Hanne Andersen, phone +45 8942 3514; e-mail: hanne.andersen@ivs.au.dk

Aarhus University offers a good and inspiring education and research environment for 35,000 students and 8,500 members of staff, who produce academic results of a high international standard. The budgeted turnover for 2009 amounts to EUR 700 million. The university’s strategy and development contract are available at www.au.dk.

*************************
Henrik Kragh Sørensen
Associate professor, PhD
Department of Science Studies
University of Aarhus, Denmark

The Fourth Revolution

A one screen summary, just click on the title.
The text, based on my writings, is courtesy of Paul B. Davis.

Philosophy of Technology

A very nice book, which I had meant to read since a long time ago. Slightly oldish, it is clear, well written, balanced, accessible and reasonable.

The reasonableness is not to be underestimated. There are plenty of crazy, insane, mad, or otherwise ready for the asylum authors out there who will take the "technological discourse" as an excuse to vent platitudes, dispense oracular wisdom, and mumble non-sensical claims. If it were for them, not only we would still be living in the caves, which might still be an uncomfortably acceptable option, but we would still be listening to the local sibyls and magicians, and this is certainly not an improvement.

Against Readings

Inspiring, and it does indeed apply very well to philosophy (as it was suggested by Steve Clark on philos-l): "This is a paper by Mark Edmunson in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's about literary texts, but with some clear relevance to philosophical texts as well."

One may have reservations: what happens to literature (or indeed philosophy), once you're no longer young? Becoming who you are is an endless work in progress, but the point of the article seems to be that there is a stage when most of this work in progress is actually done and that then is when literature/philosophy can play a role. It seems like a Gaussian: texts begin by being irrelevant and end by being irrelevant, peaking in your youth. This is notthe case, or the common practice of re-reading would be meaningless.

And why listening to the professors, when you can read the masters? It is not true that they own the keys to the warehouse.

AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow

AHRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
• Salary: UH6
• Grade: £24,877-£29,704
• Ref Number: EN8899

We invite applications for the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, to work on the project “The Construction of Personal Identities Online”.

The position is full-time, fixed term (18 months). The project is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The principal investigator is Professor Luciano Floridi.

The aim of the project is to investigate the construction of personal identities (PI) when they are digitally mediated, that is, when individuals are embedded in virtual environments that provide unprecedented affordances and different constraints for PI development, as well as innovative opportunities of interactions with other agents, both human and artificial.

For further information about the project, please visit http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/grants/pio/index.html.

You will be based in the Philosophy Department and collaborate full time to the project. You will hold a doctorate or should do so by the starting date, in a relevant discipline such as Philosophy (preferably) or Computer Science. You will have a proven research record in philosophy, preferably some expertise in philosophy of mind or philosophy of AI, very strong IT skills, and an ability to work across disciplines.

For further information about the job description and how to apply, please visit
http://web-apps.herts.ac.uk/uhweb/apps/hr/job-advert.cfm?category=research&type=JD&jobid=EN8899

To apply, please complete an application form, submit your CV and a sample of recent work (preferably a published article).

You should arrange for references from two academic referees and the sample of recent work to be sent to l.floridi@herts.ac.uk

For further information please contact Luciano Floridi

preferably by emailing l.floridi@herts.ac.uk

or by sending ordinary mail to:

Professor Luciano Floridi
Research Chair in Philosophy of Information,
Department of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9AB
UK

Cyberwar

The story goes that when the Roman horsemen first saw Pyrrhus’ twenty war elephants, at the battle of Heraclea (280 BC), they were so terrorised by these strange creatures, which they have never seen before, that they galloped away and the Roman legions lost the battle. Today, the new elephants are electronic.

The phenomenon might have just begun to emerge in the public debate but, in post-informational societies, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are increasingly shaping armed conflicts. In terms of conventional military operations, ICTs have revolutionized communications, making possible complex new modes of field operations. Of course, ICTs have also made possible the swift analysis of vast amounts of data, enabling the military, intelligence and law enforcement communities to take action in ever more timely and targeted ways. But even more significantly, battles are nowadays fought by highly mobile forces, armed with real-time ICT devices, satellites, battlefield sensors and so forth, as well as thousands of robots. And the growing dependence of societies and their militaries on advanced ICTs has led to strategic cyber-attacks, designed to cause costly and crippling disruptions. Armies of human soldiers may not be needed. Cyber-attacks can be undertaken by nations or networks, or even by very small groups or individuals. ICTs have made asymmetric conflicts easier, and shifted the battleground more than an inch into the infosphere.

The scale of such transformations is staggering. For example, at the beginning of the war in Iraq, U.S. forces had no robotic systems on the ground. However, by 2004, they already deployed 150 robots, in 2005 these were 2,400; and by the end of 2008, about 12,000 robots of nearly two dozen varieties were operating on the ground (source: The New Atlantis, Winter 2009). And on April 26, 2007, Estonia experienced the first case of denial-of-service attack. This is a systematic attempt to make computer resources unavailable, at least temporarily, by forcing vital sites or services to reset or consume their resources or by disrupting their communications so that they can no longer function properly.

ICT-mediated modes of conflict pose a variety of ethical problems, for war-fighting militaries in the field, for intelligence gathering services, for policy makers and for ethicists. They tend to erase the threshold between reality and simulation, between life and play, and between conventional conflicts, insurgences or terrorist actions. A troubling perspective is that ICTs might make unconventional conflicts more acceptable ethically, by stressing the less deadly outcome of military operations in cyberspace. This might of course be utterly illusory: messing with ICT-infrastructures of hospitals and airports may easily cause the loss of human lives, even if in a less visible and obvious way than bombs do. Yet the impression remains that we might be allegedly moving towards a more precise, surgical, bloodless way of handling our disagreements.

Clearly, ICTs have caused radical changes both in how societies may come into conflict and how they may manage it. At the same time, there is a policy and a conceptual vacuum. For example, “America's Department of Defence wants to replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by 2015” (source: The Economist, 7 June, 2007), but it still lacks an ethical code for the deployment of these new, semi-autonomous weapons. This is a global issue. The 2002 Prague Summit marked NATO’s first attempt to address cyber-defence activities. Five years later, in 2007, there were already “42 countries working on military robotics, from Iran and China to Belarus and Pakistan” (source: The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2009), but not even a draft of an international agreement regarding their ethical deployment. There has been very little descriptive and conceptual analysis of such a crucial area in applied ethics, and no attempt to assess the effectiveness of the initial measures that have been taken to deal with the increasing application of ICTs in armed conflicts.

The issue could not be more pressing and there is a much-felt and quickly escalating need to share information and coordinate ethical theorising. The goals should be sharing information and views about the current state of the ethics of e-warfare, developing a comprehensive framework for a clear interpretation of the new aspects of e-war, building a critical consensus about the ethical deployment of e-weapons, and laying down the foundation for an ethical approach to e-warfare.

At a time when there is an exponential growth in R&D concerning ICT-based weapons and strategies, philosophers and ethicists could provide timely advice, by collaborating on the identification, discussion and resolution of the unprecedented ethical difficulties characterizing cyberwar. This is far from being premature. During the civil war, in the battle of Thapsus (46 BC), Julius Caesar’s fifth legion was armed with axes and was ordered to strike at the elephant’s legs of the enemy. The legion withstood the charge, and the elephant became its symbol. Interestingly, nobody at the time could even imagine that there might be an ethical problem in treating animals so cruelly. We should think ahead, because history likes to repeat itself.