LMU Munich Philosophy Faculty

LMU Munich's Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy, Peter Adamson (@histphilosophy.bsky.social), will give a number of talks in California in March & early April. More info here: www.historyofphilosophy.net/going-to-cal... #philosophy

I am excited that my new book - The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction - is currently Amazon's number 1 best-seller in the category "ethics". The book is coming out on March 23, but pre-orders are already possible: #aiethics #philosophy

Interview with LMU Munich's Professor of the Ethics of AI, @svennyholm.bsky.social, about some ideas from his new book that's out next month: "The hidden cost of letting AI make your life easier. Philosopher Sven Nyholm on reclaiming achievement from the machines." bigthink.com/philosophy/t...

Glücklich ohne Gott Spiritualität braucht keine Kirche, keine Religion, sagt Forscher Sebastian Gäb. Aber er warnt vor Tarotkarten, Manifestieren und anderer Esoterik auf Tiktok.

New interview with Professor of the Philosophy of Religion Sebastian Gäb in Süddeutsche Zeitung: www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/art... #philosophy #religion

Applications open for the summer school on Reasoning & Agency in AI (Venice International University) organised by LMU Munich's chair of phil of mind Ophelia Deroy, together with Hermann Cappelen (HKU), Rachel Stern (HKU), Alex Grzankowski (KCL), & Barry Smith (IP): forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

"Agentic Advances and Annoying Slop: What’s Next for Generative AI?", article by Karen Emslie, and for which I was one of the people interviewed:
cacm.acm.org/news/agentic... #aiethics

Great Research Day of my Faculty at the Siemens Stiftung on Friday: excellent talks by Hannes Leitgeb, Andrew Stephenson, Christof Rapp, Ignacio Ojea Quintana, and Thomas Oehl, plus a PhD poster session and a discussion on AI in philosophy led by Sven Nyholm. Thanks to all who contributed.

Newly published: "Unreasonable Doubt. How Strategic Science Skeptics Exploit the Argument from Disagreement", by Alexander Reutlinger (@lmumuenchen.bsky.social), Philosophy of Science (@philscijournal.bsky.social), 2026
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

On today's new episode we look at some of the most memorable passages from the Zhuangzi, the so-called "skill stories," in which butchers, wheelmakers, etc are shown to have a special kind of knowledge.

www.historyofphilosophy.net/zhuangzi-ski...

#HoPWaG #philosophy #philsky #podcast #daoism

The LMU Munich chair of metaphysics is advertising a PhD position. For details, see below: #phdopportunity #philosophy #metaphysics

Had our Faculty Research Day today at the LMU Philosophy Dept (@lmuphilosophy.bsky.social) with great papers from colleagues - among others, our new Kant specialist Andrew Stephenson who just joined this semester. We also had an interesting session discussing use of AI in philosophy research.

Author copies extravaganza: today I received copies of two new books I have co-edited: *Contemporary Debates in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence* (w/ Atoosa Kasirzadeh & John Zerilli) and *Social Robots and Cultural Sustainability* (w/ Raul Hakli, Marco Nørskov, & Sladjana Nørskov). #aiethics

In the philosophy lab Hannes Leitgeb is an LMU philosopher and winner of the Leibniz Prize. He investigates truth and rationality and under which conditions artificial intelligence arrives at reasonable decisions.

"In the philosophy lab" - new interview with Professor Hannes Leitgeb (Chair of Logic and Philosophy of Language), here: www.lmu.de/en/newsroom/... #philosophy #mathematics #mathematicalphilosophy

In a new blog post, LMU Professor Peter Adamson (Chair of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy) suggests "Ten Rules for Writing about the History of Philosophy". Check out Prof Adamson's recommendations here: www.historyofphilosophy.net/rules-writin...
#philosophy #writing #history

Robustness and trustworthiness in AI: a no-go result from formal epistemology - Synthese Synthese - A major issue for the trustworthiness of modern AI-models is their lack of robustness. A notorious example is that putting a small sticker on a stop sign can cause AI-models to classify...

New paper in Synthese: 'Robustness and trustworthiness in AI: a no-go result from formal epistemology'

❓When does AI model M, on input x, show behavior φ robustly?
💡In modal logic: M,x⊧□φ
➡️Exposes limit on robustness & trustworthiness

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
philpapers.org/rec/HORRAT-13

Coming soon: new book from LMU Munich's Professor of the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Sven Nyholm (@svennyholm.bsky.social‬): *The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction* (Hackett): hackettpublishing.com/new-forthcom...

Out now: *Social Robots and Cultural Sustainability*, edited by Raul Hakli, me, Marco Nørskov, & Sladjana Nørskov. My chapter is called "Social Robots: Culturally Sustainable or Socially Disruptive? The Case of Humanoid Robots": link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #aiethics #philosophy #socialrobots

A look ahead at what's coming in 2026 on the History of Philosophy podcast!

www.historyofphilosophy.net/whats-coming...

#philsky #philosophy #podcast

The third installment of my series of blog posts giving advice on writing about the history of philosophy: GO NARROW.

www.historyofphilosophy.net/rules-writin...

#philsky #philosophy #writingtips

Second installment of my series of blog posts giving advice on writing about history of philosophy: in this one I discuss the need to reflect not just on your own position but also on the possible opposing argument.

www.historyofphilosophy.net/rules-writin...

First of a series of "rules" giving advice on academic writing about history of philosophy. I'll be posting this as a series over the coming days. Hope people will find this useful and interesting! Feedback more than welcome.

www.historyofphilosophy.net/rules-writin...

#philsky #philosophy

Out now: the e-book version of *Contemporary Debates in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence*, co-edited by me, Atoosa Kasirzadeh @atoosakz.bsky.social & John Zerilli. Print version out on Jan 21: www.amazon.com/Contemporary... #aiethics #philosophy

Zwei neue LMU-Projekte im Akademienprogramm der BAdW Ein Vorhaben zur arabischen Überlieferung des Alten Testaments sowie ein Vorhaben zum Werk des Philosophen Rudolf Carnap werden 2026 im Akademienprogramm ihre Arbeit aufnehmen.

🙌 Zwei neue #LMU-Projekte im Akademienprogramm der #BAdW: Ein Vorhaben zur arabischen Überlieferung des Alten Testaments sowie ein Vorhaben zum Werk des Philosophen Rudolf Carnap werden 2026 im Akademienprogramm der Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften ihre Arbeit aufnehmen.

Coming soon: *Contemporary Debates in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence* (Wiley, 2026) - new edited collection, co-edited by LMU's professor of the ethics of artificial intelligence, Sven Nyholm (see below). The book will be published in January. #aiethics #philosophy #book

Goodie DeepMind Build Al responsibly to benefit humanity Al has the potential to be one of the most important and beneficial technologies ever invented

Our vision for the future of AGI OpenAI

Then we went to a Christmas market

Thanks @svennyholm.bsky.social for speaking to my Science & Ethics of Intelligent Technology Policy course @hertieschool.bsky.social #AIEthics

The Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy is hiring two post-doctoral researchers to work on a project on the logic of reasons, under the supervision of Professor Hannes Leitgeb, Chair of Logic and Philosophy of Language. More info below: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/7... #postdoc #philosophy

Congratulations to LMU Munich philosopher Dr. Tom Sterkenburg, who has just received the Karl-Heinz Hoffmann Award from the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. For more information, see below:

New edited volume by Michael Cuffaro & LMU Munich's @stephanhartmann.bsky.social, out soon from OUP: "Open Systems: Physics, Metaphysics, and Methodology", available for pre-order here: global.oup.com/academic/pro... #philosophy

Excited to share that our edited volume "Open Systems: Physics, Metaphysics, and Methodology" (with Michael Cuffaro) is coming out soon with OUP.

Details here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

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!