LMU Munich Philosophy Faculty

Closing the responsibility gap: allocating responsibility according to prerequisite control and expectations for personal benefits - Ethics and Information Technology Some authors argue that responsibility gaps can open up when no one has sufficient control over negative outcomes. With recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, the responsibility gap is thought to have grown since AI technologies can produce negative outcomes over which people do not have sufficient control. This paper aims to close the responsibility gap by recommending allocating responsibility according to a strategy constituted by two conditions: in scenarios where no one seems to be responsible for negative outcomes, responsibility should be primarily allocated to people who have (1) intentionally and voluntarily exercised prerequisite control that causally makes the current situation uncontrolled, and (2) expected personal benefits when exercising the prerequisite control. Theoretically speaking, every case of the responsibility gap contains at least one agent meeting these two conditions, and the responsibility gap could thus be closed.

New article by my PhD student Dilin Gong: "Closing the responsibility gap: allocating responsibility according to prerequisite control and expectations for personal benefits". In Ethics and Information Technology: link.springer.com/article/10.1... #aiethics Congratulations Dilin!

How did Avicenna’s legacy ignite a century of philosophical transformation in the Islamic East, reshaping debates on metaphysics, knowledge, and divine freedom? @histphilosophy.bsky.social, @lmumuenchen.bsky.social, @lmuphilosophy.bsky.social discusses: faculti.net/the-heirs-of...
#philosophy

Master in Logic and Philosophy of Science Our Master (MA) program in Logic and Philosophy of Science was founded in October 2012. It is an international MA program of the Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Religious Studies at L...

The 2026 application round for the MA in Logic and Philosophy of Science at @lmumuenchen.bsky.social is now open. Please help us spread the word. www.philosophie.lmu.de/en/study/deg...

Newly published: "Metabolic considerations for cognitive modeling", by Philipp Haueis and David Colaço, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2025, www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

#ai | Sabina Leonelli Looking forward to hosting Sven Nyholm and his group later today, for what will no doubt be an eye-opening discussion of #AI

The Ethics (and History) of Defining Artificial Intelligence www.linkedin.com/posts/sabina... with @svennyholm.bsky.social and @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social

Engraving of Gassendi

On today's new episode we begin to look at Pierre Gassendi, focusing on the evolution of his thought from skepticism to “baptized Epicureanism.”

www.historyofphilosophy.net/gassendi

#philsky #podcast #philosophy #earlymodern #gassendi #atomism

AI & Consciousness at LMU Date: November 21st, 2025 (09:30 until 17:30) Location: LMU München, Leopoldstraße 13, 80802 München, Room 2102. Please register until 18th of November 2025.

Coming up at LMU Munich: workshop on AI & consciousness, organized by Prof. Sven Nyholm (@svennyholm.bsky.social) & colleagues, on Nov 21. Speakers include Prof. Joanna Bryson (@j2bryson.bsky.social) & Prof. Tobias Schlicht (Bochum). Register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #aiethics

Thanks for the question! It means both. But importantly: there is also a requirement that candidates should have at least 3 years of experience teaching philosophy at a high-school/secondary education level. This has to do w/ the German educational system and the role of philosophy in it.

LMU Munich is advertising a new W2 Professorship in Philosophy Education. Deadline: 15 Nov 2025. For more information, and to apply, follow this link: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/b... #philosophy #education #professorship #academicjob #lmumunich

LMU Munich is looking to fill a W2 Professorship in Philosophy Education. The role involves research, teaching, and the design of a new study program in philosophy/ethics.
Deadline: 15 Nov 2025.
Apply here: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/b...

Join us for a talk by @svennyholm.bsky.social (LMU): "Moral Principles for Human-Human Interaction, Human-AI Interaction, and AI-AI Interaction"

Mathematikon (Lecture Hall), Heidelberg
Wednesday, 12 November, 6pm
Details:
www.uni-heidelberg.de/de/veranstal...

New publication by LMU philosophy researcher Benjamin Lange: "We need accountability in human-AI relationships": doi.org/10.1038/s443...

#aiethics

Today I received a physical copy of the Korean translation of my book This is Technology Ethics. Thanks to Yongwoo Yi for bringing it to me all the way from South Korea! Thanks again, most of all, to Junsik Yoon and Joseph HB Park for translating the book! #AIEthics #philosophy

Philosophy of Religion

New book from LMU's Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Sebastian Gäb: Philosophy of Religion, out now from Nomos: www.nomos-shop.de/en/p/philoso... #philosophy #religion

LMU Munich Metaphysics Colloquium
David Papineau (Kings College London)
'Causal Inference and the Metaphysics of Causation'
22.10.2025, 16:00 to 18:00, in Ludwigstraße 31, Room 021

Out now: *The Ethics of Behavior Change Technologies*, edited by Joel Anderson, Lily Frank & Andreas Spahn, featuring "Control, personal autonomy and behaviour change technologies", by me: www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-de... #philosophy #technologyethics #aiethics

LMU Munich invites applications for a W2 Professorship in Philosophy Education, starting in October 2026. We are looking for candidates with an outstanding research record in philosophy and a strong profile in philosophy education.
Deadline: 15 November 2025:
job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/b...

LMU Munich's Chair of Metaphysics, Prof Dr Alyssa Ney, joins Roger Penrose and Jacob Barandes in a debate about one of quantum theory's biggest mysteries: the collapse of the wave function, here: iai.tv/video/the-co... #philosophy

Newly published: "Learning How to Vote with Principles: Axiomatic Insights Into the Collective Decisions of Neural Networks", by Levin Hornischer and Zoi Terzopoulou, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2025, doi.org/10.1613/jair...

Factual Difference-Making In this paper, we analyse causation in terms of factual difference-making. Factual difference-making is an alternative to counterfactual difference-making which does not face the problem of redunda...

Newly published: Lead article “Factual Difference-Making”, by Holger Andreas and Mario Günther, Australasian Philosophical Review, 2025, doi.org/10.1080/2474...

Can AI systems have free will? - Synthese While there has been much discussion of whether AI systems could function as moral agents or acquire sentience, there has been very little discussion of whether AI systems could have free will. I sket...

Newly published: "Can AI systems have free will?", by Christian List, Synthese, 2025, link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Technology Ethics Podcast A podcast-based introduction to the philosophy and ethics of technology

Are you teaching or taking an ethics of technology course this fall? Whether or not you're using my *This is Technology Ethics* book, you might find this 10-episode podcast (w/ the same title as the book) by ‪@johndanaher.bsky.social‬ & me useful: technologyethicspod.wordpress.com #aiethics

YouTube video by MCML_Munich Center for Machine Learning What is intelligence—and what kind of intelligence do we want in our future? With Prof. Sven Nyholm

🎥 Who gets the credit, or the blame, when AI makes decisions? Sven Nyholm ( #LMU/ #MCML) reflects on how AI challenges our ideas of agency, credit, and blame — and why we need new ways of thinking about authorship, justice, and decision-making.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUqi...

#AI #Ethics

Newly published: "The Worrisome Potential of Outsourcing Critical Thinking to Artificial Intelligence", by Ron Aboodi, Educational Theory, 2025, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

YouTube video by Center for Advanced Studies LMU George Ellis - CAS Lecture Series Cosmology - A Fine Tuned Universe: Issues, Evidence, Implications

Georg Ellis explains his ideas about a "Fine Tuned Universe". A wonderful highlight of this summer's lecture series at CAS!
(Re)Watch now on YouTube:

#cosmology
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Xw...

Quantenphysik: Gibt es eine objektive Realität? Die Quantenmechanik bleibt selbst Physikern ein Rätsel. Gibt es eine Realität auch ohne Beobachtung? Und wo bleibt da der freie Wille?

Dazu wie die Quantenmechanik funktioniert, gibt es in der Wissenschaft unterschiedliche Positionen.
Stephan Hartmann, #CASSchwerpunkt "Bayesian Methods" sagt @szde.bsky.social: "Die Wellenfunktion ist nichts, was da draußen existiert."
@lmu-mcmp.bsky.social
www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/art...

ABSTRACT. A probability aggregation rule assigns to each profile of probability functions across a group of individuals (representing their individual probability assignments to some propositions) a collective probability function (representing the group’s probability assignment). The rule is ‘non-manipulable’ if no group member can manipulate the collective probability for any proposition in the direction of his or her own probability by misrepresenting his or her probability function (‘strategic voting’). We show that, except in trivial cases, no probability aggregation rule satisfying two very mild conditions (non-dictatorship and consensus preservation) is non-manipulable.

Just accepted:

‘The Impossibility of Non-manipulable Probability Aggregation’
– Franz Dietrich & Christian List

Abstract in alt text or read the full paper here:
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#philsci #philsky

Bender from Göttingen to LMU Munich - Daily Nous Sebastian Bender, currently "juniorprofessor" at the University of Göttingen, will be moving to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), where he will be professor of early modern philosop...

Congratulations and all the best wishes to our author Sebastian Bender @lmuphilosophy.bsky.social
dailynous.com/2025/07/10/b...

Proofs and Research Programmes: Lakatos at 100 This open access book offers new insights into issues raised in philosophy of mathematics and in philosophy of science by Imre Lakatos.

Excited to share that the volume Lakatos @ 100 has just been published (open access)! It’s a great collection on Lakatos’s legacy.

📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Grateful to the editors for including me!

#Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess

Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics (Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI) Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics (Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI) [Hakli, Raul, Nyholm, Sven, Nørskov, Marco, Nørskov, Sladjana] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics (Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI)

Coming soon: *Social Robots and Cultural Sustainability*, edited by Raul Hakli, me, Marco Nørskov & Sladjana Nørskov. Featuring chapters by @coeckelbergh.bsky.social, @davidgunkel.bsky.social @annapuzio.bsky.social etc. Planned publication date: Oct 27, 2025 www.amazon.com/Culturally-S... #aiethics