At the turn of the 21st century, Susan Leigh Anderson and Michael Anderson conceived and introduced the Machine Ethics research program, that aimed to highlight the requirements under which autonomous artificial intelligence systems could demonstrate ethical behavior guided by moral values, and at the same time to show that these values, as well as ethics in general, can be representable and computable. Our discussion with the two inspirers and originators of Machine Ethics highlights the epistemological, metaphysical and ethical questions arising by this project, as well as the realistic and pragmatic demands that dominate artificial intelligence and robotics research programs. [CONATUS, 2021]

Symposium: Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: Needs for New Foundations on the 4th National Conference on the Philosophy of Science, December 2016, Athens, Greece. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.21523.12325

Following the critique of Dreyfus, this announcement focuses on the argument that terms such as “processing”, “calculation” or “flow” of information etc, when used -literally and not figuratively- in order to describe mechanisms that govern systems of different nature, lead to an abusive multiplication of entities without offering (at least until now) any satisfactory solutions towards the convergence of the HC and AI scientific fields.

The debate over the attribution of personhood to non-human entities is of an increasing concern to both academia and institutions. The intelligence, autonomy and efficiency exhibited by modern AI systems, raise pressing questions regarding the moral responsibility issues their use entails. In our paper we focus our discussion on autonomous war machines, as their actions, design, production and use cause philosophical controversies. [PERSONHOOD, 2020]

3rd National Conference on the Philosophy of Science, November 2014, Athens, Greece. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18587.11041

Today, the problem of intentionality is becoming again relevant in the realm of cognitive science, as during the past decade, important views on embodied cognition attract interest, eliminating mental phenomena and internal representations, broadening the horizon of eliminative theories at the same time. However, the philosophical tradition of these positions on embodied cognition, situated largely on phenomenology, gives intentionality a key role.

Presentation for the 6th Panhellenic Conference in Philosophy of Science | Department of History and Philosophy of Science, NKUA, Athens, Greece, 03-05 December 2020 |DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13671.47520

Distinguishing between a quasi moral agent and a literally moral agent, I will attempt to describe those conditions beyond autonomy and behavior that must be met, in order to attribute the traits of a moral agent to an artificial intelligence system. Such a system, in addition to duties, could potentially have rights, obligations and responsibilities, coexisting with other intelligent beings or systems in a possibly revised form of social fabric. [NKUA, 2020]

4th National Conference on Cognitive Science, June 2013, Athens, Greece. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17433.67681

While trying to detect common principles and fundamental differences between Human Cognition (HC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is often expedient to look back into the philosophical foundations to face questions that we tend to casually bypass. Such questions, mainly of an epistemological and ontological character, are related to the “nature” of knowledge and signification and more specifically to the way the world has -or can acquire- meaning for cognitive beings.

Life in the second half of the chessboard is expected to be exciting and scary at the same time. New challenges and opportunities will soon give prominence to new masters of the game, new services, new products, new lifestyles –and we will all adapt and embrace these developments, making them an integral part of our daily lives, just about as we did in the past with cars, mobile phones and the internet.

 2nd National Conference on the Philosophy of Science, November 2012, Athens, Greece. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12610.22723/1

This announcement includes: [a] a brief critical survey of the main characteristics that various scientific and philosophical views accredit to embodied cognition and the process of signification, [b] the consequences of these positions regarding the definition of the concept of meaning and [c] a new interpretation for “meaning” as a systemic property of embodied cognition.

The question "What is it like to be a machine?" refers to the subjective experience of a cognitive agent, that happens to be a thinking machine, consisting of microchips, transistors, cables, sensors etc. At first we may assume that the subjective experience of being a machine will be different from the subjective experience of being human, therefore a human cannot "experience" the world as a machine, neither a machine can "experience" the world as a human.

3rd National Conference on Cognitive Science, June 2011, Paros, Greece

In this announcement I focus on embodied cognition and skillful coping, and especially the way man, while using tools and objects, interacts with his world and renders himself at the same structural level with it, eliminating -in a sense- the distinction between agent and the world. 

Most of us met HAL 9000 as the lead character in Stanley Kubrick's film "2001, A Space Odyssey", which was based on Arthur Clarke's screenplay and short stories. HAL, a Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer –a sophisticated form of Artificial Intelligence (AI)– decides to kill the spaceship crew and gain control of the spaceship in which it was stationed, in order to ensure the success of its mission, when it realized it was under threat.

Philosophy and Neurosciences, Dasein Lab Workshop, April 2011, Athens, Greece. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.21334.70727

In my paper I present the convergence of Heideggerian theory and Cognitive Neurosciences and at the same time I attempt to formulate a hypothesis for the naturalistic foundation of meaning, as a property of human intelligence.

Philosophia -  Annual Journal of the Research Centre for Greek Philosophy of the Academy of Athens, v.41, pp 319-321, 2011. ISSN 1105-2120

In my thesis I attempt, on one hand, to classify certain basic problems of the philosophy of mind (as intentionality, the mind - body problem, qualia and the subjective experience of the world), while on the other hand, I am trying to formulate a hypothesis for the naturalistic foundation of human mind and intelligence.

According to Sartre, people experience a constant state of existential anxiety, because being "condemned" to freely define our own purpose, at every moment of our lives we must make choices that ultimately determine who we are.

Dasein Lab Workshop, 2010

An introduction to Heideggerian Artificial Intelligence on the occasion of the translation in Greek of the proposal by Hubert Dreyfus (2007): “Why Heideggerian AI failed and how fixing it would require making it more Heideggerian”.