Anna Strasser

Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Philosophy/Cognitive Science, Post-Doc

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Books by Anna Strasser

Anna Strasser (2008). Referenz in der Bedeutungstheorie von D. Davidson. Wie kann man sich mit Sprache auf die Welt beziehen. Verlag Dr. Müller.

"Eine immer wiederkehrende Frage der Analytischen Philosophie lautet: Wie kann man sich mit Sprac... more "Eine immer wiederkehrende Frage der Analytischen Philosophie lautet: Wie kann man sich mit Sprache auf die Welt beziehen? Um eine Antwort auf diese Frage zu bekommen, muss man untersuchen, was alles eine Rolle spielt, wenn man Bedeutungen von Äußerungen versteht.

Zu diesem Zwecke wird in dieser Arbeit der programmatische Vorschlag einer Bedeutungstheorie von Donald Davidson vorgestellt. Dazu ist es notwendig, sich mit der Wahrheitstheorie Tarskis zu beschäftigen. Interessant ist nun, welche Erkenntnisse unabhängig von Tarski in dieser Bedeutungstheorie enthalten sind. Hier kann man zum einen die These der Unerforschlichkeit der Referenz und zum anderen das Prinzip der Nachsicht nennen.
Durch die Voraussetzung des Prinzips der Nachsicht, nämlich größtmögliche Übereinstimmung zwischen Interpret und Sprecher anzunehmen, ist es einem Interpreten möglich, in die Interdependenzbeziehung zwischen Überzeugung und Bedeutung einzudringen. So kann der radikale Interpret erste Interpretationshypothesen aufstellen, die er später mit einem bedeutungsholistischen Ansatz auf logische Konsistenz in bezug auf die faktische Menge aller seiner Interpretationshypothesen überprüfen kann."

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Anna Strasser (2005). Kognition künstlicher Systeme. Ontos-Verlag.

- In dieser Arbeit wird die Frage nach der Handlungsfähigkeit künstlicher Systeme im Schnittfeld ... more - In dieser Arbeit wird die Frage nach der Handlungsfähigkeit künstlicher Systeme im Schnittfeld von Philosophie und KI behandelt. Eine positive Antwort auf Seiten der Philosophie hat deren anthropozentrischer Handlungsbegriff verhindert. Daher wird unterhalb des philosophischen Handlungsbegriffes der Begriff einer Quasi-Handlung entwickelt, welcher die Möglichkeit bietet, zwischen verschiedenen Kategorien des Verhaltens künstlicher Systeme zu unterscheiden. Als wesentliches Kriterium werden hierzu Unterschiede in der Flexibilität des Informationensverarbeitungs prozesses zur Differenzierung verschiedener Verhaltensklassen vor geschlagen. Dies führt auch zu einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Begriff der Kognition und den verschiedenen Arten des Lernens.

Papers by Anna Strasser

Persons and their digital replicas

by Jurgis Karpus and Anna Strasser

Creating a legacy is often seen as a way to circumvent mortality. At the very least, it is a way ... more Creating a legacy is often seen as a way to circumvent mortality. At the very least, it is a way to ensure that someone's ideas live on and their influence on others extends beyond their own lifetime. Common examples of such legacies are cultural products, such as books, music, or art, that one creates and leaves behind. In light of rapid advances in artificial intelligence research, it is conceivable that it will soon become possible-and, to some extent, it already is-to create a new type of legacy in the form of a virtual entity, such as a chatbot or an avatar, that acts as a digital replica of someone. In this paper, we investigate in what sense, if any, one could say that the original person continues to exist in their digital replica. Taking Derek Parfit's work on the nature of personal identity as our inspiration and starting point, we suggest under what circumstances one could (and should) perceive such replicas as genuine extensions of one's personhood.

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Pre-reflexive Self-Consciousness

Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, 2012

Facets of Self-Consciousness

Facets of Self-Consciousness, 2012

Towards an integrated theory of self-consciousness

Can artificial systems be part of a collective action?

ABSTRACT forthcoming

Facets of self-consciousness - special issue edited by Katja Crone, Kristine Musholt and Anna Strasser

A Functional View Toward Mental Representations

Computer-Based Diagnostics and Systematic Analysis of Knowledge, 2009

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How Minimal Can Self-Consciousness Be?

Facets of Self-Consciousness, 2012

ABSTRACT In many cases the ascription of self-consciousness is uncontroversial. For example, the ... more ABSTRACT In many cases the ascription of self-consciousness is uncontroversial. For example, the ability to use the first person pronoun &#39;I&#39; in the right way is obviously related to self-consciousness, although this is not true in all cases. The ascription of self-consciousness to infants, to persons with psychopathological syndromes or to animals is controversial. In this paper I will focus on the question of how ascribing self-consciousness to infants can be justified. There are two main subjects relevant to this debate. Firstly, the conceptual question: What notion of self-consciousness should be under discussion regarding infants? In other words: how minimal can a feasible notion of self-consciousness be? Positions in this debate vary from presuming innate abilities such as the postulation of pre-reflexive self-consciousness (cp. Frank 1991) and the claim that language has to be developed and the right use of the personal pronoun &#39;I&#39; has to be proven (cp. Castaneda 1966). Claiming that self-ascription abilities are an essential condition for all notions of self-consciousness, I begin by analyzing self-ascription abilities using the terminology of the sense of ownership, the sense of agency, and the sense of authorship. Equipped with this clarification, I suggest a minimal notion of self-consciousness that may serve as a foundation of a broader notion of self-consciousness. Secondly, the epistemological question: How can we know when ascribing self-consciousness is justified? This question is combined with an additional problem concerning the ascription of self-consciousness to infants. Infants show impressive behavior that seems to be tied to self-consciousness, but in some cases there are convincing alternative explanations for such behavior. Such alternatives do not refer to self-consciousness and still provide satisfying explanations. Finally, I will discuss several paradigmatic cases regarding the question of whether the ascription of self-consciousness is justified in such cases.

Can only adult humans be agents? Can artificial systems be part of a collective action?

Abstract Many philosophers claim that actions are always ‘intentional under some description’. Th... more Abstract Many philosophers claim that actions are always ‘intentional under some description’. There is wide agreement that this is true for individual human actions. But I claim that this is an open question whether this is true for all kinds of action. Imagine a collective action of a mixed group consisting of human beings and artificial systems: Looking at the asymmetric distributions of abilities the question remains open whether we have to claim that every agent has to have intentionality in the deep philosophical sense and consequently describe the artificial systems as merely tools used in a collective action. Beside the question of intentionality social abilities plays an essential role. Collective actions demand successful interactions (coordination), therefor we need social cognition. Successful interactions request that we ‘understand’ what the other agent wants, plans and feels. We need to be able to anticipate the behavior to coordinate with each other. Looking at cases...

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Facets of Self-Consciousness

Kognition künstlicher Systeme

ABSTRACT Thesis (doctoral) - Univ., Freiburg (Breisgau), 2004.

Facets of self-consciousness - Special issue of Grazer Philosophische Studien (84)

Social norms for artificial systems.

• Anna Strasser (2020). Social norms for artificial systems. In: Nørskov, M., Seibt J., Quick O. Culturally Sustainable Social Robotics – Proceedings of Robophilosophy 2020. Series Frontiers of AI and Its Applications, IOS Press, Amsterdam., 2020

This paper investigates reasons to argue for social norms regulating our behavior towards artific... more This paper investigates reasons to argue for social norms regulating our behavior towards artificial agents. By problematizing the assertion that moral agency is, in principle, a necessary prerequisite for any form of moral patiency, reasons are examined which are independent of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but which speak for morally appropriate behavior towards artificial systems. Suggesting a consequentialist strategy, potential negative impacts of human-machine interactions are analyzed with a focus on factors that support a transfer of behavioral patterns from human-machine interactions to human-human interactions.

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In-between implicit and explicit.

Anna Strasser (2020). In-between implicit and explicit, Philosophical Psychology, 33 (7), 946-967., 2020

Research in social cognition aims to illuminate how agents can understand, communicate, and inter... more Research in social cognition aims to illuminate how agents can understand, communicate, and interact with other agents. When defining socio-cognitive abilities, standard cognitivist approaches tend to require demanding representational information processing. Thereby, they describe rather ideal cases. However, interdisciplinary research indicates multiple forms of how socio-cognitive abilities can be realized. Recent minimal approaches offer notions accommodating different kinds of cognitive processing. Nevertheless, the introduction of minimal cases of cognition raises new questions of how to account for commonalities and differences with respect to the standard concepts. It seems to be a widespread strategy to adapt ideas of a two-system approach in order to distinguish less demanding instances from more demanding cases. This paper critically explores such an interpretation of a two-system approach and argues that a dichotomous understanding fails to capture the actual diversity of cognitive processes.

From tools to social agents

Anna Strasser (2020). From tools to social agents. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio (RIFL), 14 (2), 76-87, 2020

Up to now, our understanding of sociality is neatly tied to living beings. However, recent develo... more Up to now, our understanding of sociality is neatly tied to living beings. However, recent developments in Artificial Intelligence make it conceivable that we may entertain social interactions with artificial systems in the near future. With reference to minimal approaches describing socio-cognitive abilities, this paper presents a strategy of how social interactions between humans and artificial agents can be captured. Taking joint actions as a paradigmatic example, minimal necessary conditions for artificial agents are elaborated. To this end, it is first argued that multiple realizations of socio-cognitive abilities can lead to asymmetric cases of joint actions. In a second step, minimal conditions of agency and coordination in order to qualify as social agents in joint actions are discussed.

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Minimal Mindreading and Animal Cognition

Anna Strasser (2018). Minimal Mindreading and Animal Cognition. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 95(4), 541–565., 2018

Human and non-human animals are social beings, both have social interactions. The ability to anti... more Human and non-human animals are social beings, both have social interactions. The ability to anticipate behavior of others is a fundamental requirement of social interactions. However, there are several ways of how agents can succeed in this. Two modes of anticipation, namely mindreading and behavior-reading, shape the animal mindreading debate. As a matter of fact, no position has yet convincingly ruled out the other. This paper suggests a strategy of how to argue for a mentalistic interpretation as opposed to a behavioral interpretation. The first step suggests considering a pluralistic approach in order to allow for shortcomings such as not having a natural language. Second, a critical examination of the principle called Morgan’s Canon will show that this principle cannot be used as a final argument to rule out mentalistic approaches. Finally, the author argues that the setting of current experiments is responsible for the indistinguishability of mindreading versus behavior-reading and she suggests alternative experimental designs.

Social Cognition and Artificial Agents.

Strasser A. (2018) Social Cognition and Artificial Agents. In: Müller, V. (ed.) Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2017. PT-AI 2017. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics (SAPERE), 44, 106-114, Berlin, Springer., 2018

Standard notions in philosophy of mind have a tendency to characterize socio-cognitive abilities ... more Standard notions in philosophy of mind have a tendency to characterize socio-cognitive abilities as if they were unique to sophisticated human beings. However, assuming that it is likely that we are soon going to share a large part of our social lives with various kinds of artificial agents, it is important to develop a conceptual framework providing notions that are able to account for various types of social agents. Recent minimal approaches to socio-cognitive abilities such as mindreading and commitment present a promising starting point from which one can expand the field of application not only to infants and non-human animals but also to artificial agents. Developing a minimal approach to the socio-cognitive ability of acting jointly, I present a foundation for future discussions about the question of how our conception of sociality can be expanded to artificial agents.

Can artificial systems be part of a collective action?

Anna Strasser (2015). Can artificial systems be part of a collective action? In: Misselhorn, Catrin (Ed.). Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Explanation, Implementation and Simulation. Series: Philosophical Studies Series, Vol. 122. Springer., 2015

In this paper I will question whether being an agent in a collective action necessarily presuppos... more In this paper I will question whether being an agent in a collective action necessarily presupposes the demanding conditions that common views in philosophy postulate as necessary for being an intentional agent. Artificial systems will serve as a showcase where we can ascribe collective actions without necessarily claiming the ability of individual intentional agency.
To argue for this claim I will clarify the conditions that a possible participant of a collective action necessarily has to fulfill. In the case of collective actions, it is not primarily intentionality that matters, but social abilities that play a crucial role, since social cognition enables participants of a collective action to successfully interact.
I will argue that successful interaction requires that we are able to anticipate the behavior of others, and to coordinate with them. However, it may not require higher-order representational abilities - including joint attention, theory of mind and theory of emotion.
The behavior of artificial systems may be interpreted as if they are able to ‘read’ social hints and behave in such a way that we tend to treat them as if they had mental or even emotional states. This leads to cases of collective agency where it is at least extremely counter-intuitive to describe the participating artificial system as merely a tool. In this paper I will argue for a position showing that less demanding conditions like pure goal-directedness plus certain social and cognitive abilities may be sufficient to participate in a collective action.

Anna Strasser

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