Job: Dean of Research and Director of the Institute for Social Inclusion

Announcement below and complete here:

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BEA679/dean-of-research-and-director-of-the-institute-for-social-inclusion/

Do you know any philosopher who could be a potential candidate? If so, please let me know (s.baiasu@keele.ac.uk) – self-nominations are welcome too.

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Keele University has ambitious plans for its future growth and development, building upon its reputation as a research-led campus University with a broad academic base. The University is large enough to have high impact and profile, but small enough to sustain its commitment to community and individuals. Whilst being rooted in its locality, the University is international in outlook and character and in the reach and impact of its education and research programmes.

Reporting to the PVC and Executive Dean, Professor Shane O’Neill, the Dean of Research and Director of the Institute for Social Inclusion will shape, in two important ways, the approach the Faculty, Institute and University will take in delivering on its research strategy. Firstly, the Faculty is seeking to ensure that each of the Schools is well equipped to provide a suitable foundation of disciplinary excellence, by demonstrating qualities in their outputs and partnerships that will impact positively on national and international debates on a wide range of relevant subjects. Secondly, through the launch of the Institute for Social Inclusion, the Faculty is seeking to provide a thriving context for interdisciplinary research of contemporary relevance that will establish Keele as a global leader in producing research that is explicitly focused on the need to create more inclusive societies in local, regional, national and global contexts.

Candidates will be of professorial status with a strong current personal research track-record and successful history of grant funding. They must demonstrate the confidence and creativity to lead research across a broad and diverse Faculty, which has set itself ambitious targets. They must demonstrate strategic vision and well-honed leadership skills, with a proven ability to work collaboratively. Experience of leading a substantial team of researchers to successful outcomes over a sustained period, as a Head of School, Director of a Research Institute, or in some comparable role, will be expected. This is an opportunity to join the leadership team of an ambitious Faculty, and to drive a significant improvement in research performance. The successful candidate will take on a mission-critical role.

Keele University strives to ensure that its workforce is representative of broader society and therefore actively welcomes applications from under-represented groups, including women and Black, Asian and minority ethnic, for this role.

For further details on the role, please visit www.minervasearch.com/keele. To apply, please send a full curriculum vitae and a covering letter outlining how you meet the job description and person specification, by close of business on 5 October 2017, to keele@minervasearch.com.

Kant and Artificial Intelligence

Credit: unknown

On the 4th of September, I gave a presentation on Kant and AI as part of a panel on “Recent Kant Scholarship” organised for the 2017 UK Kant Society Annual Conference at the University of St Andrews (organiser of the conference, Michael Walschots). For the presentation, I referred mainly to the general problem of the possibility of constructing artificial intelligence starting from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and I drew mainly on texts 2 and 3 below.

In case you are aware of other relevant literature, could you let me know? Many thanks in anticipation!

I. KANT AND AI (GENERAL)

1. Chalmers, D.; French, R.; Hofstadter, D. (1992): “High-Level Perception, Representation, and Analogy: A Critique of Artificial Intelligence Methodology”, in Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 4(3):185–211.
2. Evans, R. (2016): “Kant on Constituted Mental Activity”, APA Presentation.
3. Evans, R. (2017[2016]): “A Kantian Cognitive Architecture”, IACAP Presentation. Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.
4. Evans, R.; Sergot, M. (2017):  “Interpreting Kant’s Rules as Conditional Imperatives”, unpublished manuscript.

II. KANT AND AI (PATTERN RECOGNITION)

1. Krausser, P. (1976) “Kant’s schematism of the categories and the problem of pattern recognition”, in Synthese 33 (1):175–192.
2. Castagnoli, A; Pelilloa, M; Scantamburloa, T; Turoldo, F. (2017) “A Kantian Reads Pattern Recognition Letters”, in Pattern Recognition Letters. Forthcoming.