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SERG – Semiotic Engineering Research Group
Department of Informatics - PUC-Rio
EMAPS – Ética e Mediação Algorítmica de Processos Sociais
PhiCET Syllabus
Philosophy, Computation, Ethics and Technology:
An Interdisciplinary Approximation
EMAPS Notas#01
Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza
Edgar B. Lyra Netto
June, 2021
How to cite this Document: de Souza, C.S. and Lyra Netto, E.B. (2021) PhiCET Syllabus:
Philosophy, Computation, Ethics and Technology: An Interdisciplinary Approximation.
EMAPS-Notas #01. Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Brasil: SERG, Departamento de Informática, PUC-Rio, 2021.
8 p. Available at:
http://www.hcc.inf.puc-rio.br/EMAPS/userfiles/downloads/Notas-PhiCETsyllabus.pdf
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www.serg.inf.puc-rio.br
PhiCET Syllabus
PhiCET Syllabus – Philosophy, Computation, Ethics and
Technology: An Interdisciplinary Approximation
Prepared by: Clarisse de Souza and Edgar Lyra
June, 2021
Abstract:
This document presents the syllabus for a graduate interdisciplinary course on Philosophy, Com-
putation, Ethics, and Technology, taught at the Department of Informatics of the Pontifical
Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), in 2021. The course was open for enrollment
to students from any of the other graduate schools of PUC-Rio. No pre-requisites applied.
Keywords:
Philosophy, Ethics, Digital Technologies, Artificial Inteligence, Interdisciplinarity.
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 1PhiCET Syllabus
1 About this Document
This document presents the syllabus for a graduate course taught by Clarisse de Souza (De-
partment of Informatics) and Edgar Lyra (Department of Philosophy) at the Pontifical Catholic
University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) from March 1st to June 28th 2021. Named as Philosophy,
Computation, Ethics and Technology: An Interdisciplinary Approximation (PhiCET, for short),
the course was a first-time experience in this kind of interdisciplinary initiative for both teachers.
With different research and teaching experiences in their respective fields (see below), Clarisse
and Edgar are part of EMAPS, a group of researchers from different areas in Computer Science
and Engineering, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities, interested in the study of Ethics and
Algorithmic Mediation of Social Processes.1 PhiCET focused specifically on philosophical and
ethical aspects of computational (or digital ) technologies, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) natu-
rally attracting much of attention in the program.
Clarisse followed a professional education in Languages and Linguistics. She obtained her
PhD in 1988, specializing in Computational Linguistics. In that same year she joined the Depart-
ment of Informatics where, for over three decades, her teaching, supervising and research activi-
ties spanned across such different sub-fields of Informatics as Natural Language Processing, Text
Generation, Knowledge Representation, Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Centered Com-
puting, and Computer Semiotics. The latter has been Clarisse’s main area of research. She is
internationally recognized as a pioneer in interdisciplinary work bringing together Semiotics and
Human-Computer Interaction. After her retirement in 2020, Clarisse is now Professor Emerita
of PUC-Rio’s Department of Informatics.2
Edgar was professionally educated as a Chemical Engineer. He obtained his Ph.D. in Phi-
losophy in 2003 from PUC-Rio, where he settled as a researcher in 2012. He has experience in
Contemporary Philosophy, especially in ethical, political, and pedagogical problems linked to the
current technological hegemony and its environmental effects. Strongly convinced of the need to
train philosophy teachers to deal with the demands of the technical age, he has dedicated himself
to the study of rhetoric with political-pedagogical intentions, starting from Aristotle’s Rhetoric,
towards its contemporary echoes. This work is portrayed in his 2021 book The Forgetting of an
Art – Rhetoric, education, and philosophy in the 21st century (published in Portuguese). His
attention to interdisciplinary issues is a consequence of the same work effort.
2 Course Description and Goals
PhiCET is an interdisciplinary graduate course with the duration of one school semester (i.e., four
consecutive months). The theme of the course is the relation between philosophy and computer
technology, touching on the nature, the importance, the role, and the practice of a philosophical
perspective on technology. Special attention is given to ethics and artificial intelligence, given the
intensification of public debate about AI Ethics, as it is sometimes called.
1
More about EMAPS at www.hcc.inf.puc-rio.br/EMAPS/.
2
More about Clarisse at www.inf.puc-rio.br/∼clarisse/.
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 2PhiCET Syllabus
As its official title – Philosophy, Computation, Ethics, and Technology: An Interdis-
ciplinary Approximation – suggests, PhiCET has been designed to promote a genuine inter-
disciplinary attitude among students from master and doctoral programs in PUC-Rio’s schools
of Science and Technology, Social Sciences, and the Humanities. A “genuine interdisciplinary
attitude” includes the ability to: listen to different disciplinary perspectives; engage in conver-
sations about such perspectives; develop some of the basic skills to address cross-disciplinary
audiences in empathetic, stimulating, and effective academic ways; and – last but not least –
know how to find and learn more.
To acquire a positive interdisciplinary attitude is a precondition to developing more elaborate
methodological and analytical skills that 21st -century researchers and specialists need to master.
Hence PhiCET is an introductory course that can be incorporated into a larger formative struc-
ture. It can also be the seed for parallel initiatives in undergraduate courses of this university.
The primary PhiCET audience is that of students from any of PUC-Rio’s master and doctoral
programs. No prerequisites apply. However, the course is also open for further audiences, which
include: undergraduate students from any department, formally qualified to enroll in PUC-
Rio’s graduate courses (an academic requirement); graduate students formally enrolled in other
institutions; and invited researchers, project collaborators, and professors, from any institution,
with a vivid interest in PhiCET’s interdisciplinary theme.
3 Course Content
PhiCET content includes three major units of content:
I Philosophy and Ethics
II Computer Technology (focusing on AI)
III Interdisciplinarity
Each unit is developed around the search for answers to the following questions:
a) What is it about? (Definition and Brief Historical Overview)
b) Which are the main concepts it can contribute to PhiCET theme and topics?
c) What concrete examples and issues can we identify of its relation with PhiCET theme and
topics?
The structure and detailed program of the course are presented in the next section.
4 Course Structure
PhiCET is structured as a spiraling approximation of core issues for interdisciplinary discussion
and work in contemporary Computer Science and, more broadly, in e-Science (see Figure 1).
The approximation is achieved in three cycles, over a total of seventeen class sessions on average
(see Table 1). Each cycle freely alternates the three major units of content (I, II and III), with
an emphasis on any one or more of the three questions for developing them (a, b and c) listed
in Section 3. The targeted end of the spiraling process is to achieve a truly interdisciplinary
perspective when examining and discussing such issues as AI ethics, the promises and limits of
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 3PhiCET Syllabus
Figure 1: A spiraling approximation of core issues
e-science, the impact of deep fake in law and history, and related topic.
The Program
Table 1 presents the entire program of PhiCET for one semester. The three cycles are sep-
arated by double lines. The first cycle (sessions 1 to 4) is an introduction to the goals, themes
and motivations of PhiCET contents. The second cycle (sessions 5 to 10) revisits contents from
the first one, providing more solid foundations for planned activities in the third cycle. This last
cycle (sessions 11 to 16) includes a mix of presentations by interdisciplinary groups of students
and lectures on specific texts or concepts allowing participants to identify and discuss some of the
core issues involving philosophy, computation, ethics, and technology from an interdisciplinary
perspective. Following the spiraling strategy, the program prepares students to manifest their
interests and preferences in the broad area of PhiCET studies, and to contribute effectively to
truly interdisciplinary debates around the topics covered during the semester.
Duration and Modality of Classes
The duration of each class is long; typically three hours divided in two or three blocks that
alternate audiovisual expositions, breakout group activities, class discussions, student presenta-
tions, and so on. Three-hour class slots are standard at PUC-Rio for graduate courses, although
an increasing number of them have been taught in flipped mode, with one hour of individual or
group study activities, followed by two hours of interaction with the teacher, or vice-versa. Be-
cause of the COVID pandemic in 2021, all sessions of the first edition of PhiCET have been held
online, with videoconferencing support. This proved to be a very successful alternative, allowing
for participants located in other cities and states of the country to follow the course assiduously.
Class sessions in physical buildings should be equally feasible, with potential limitations to the
size of the audience.
Enrollment
The enrollment of students in the first edition of this course was limited to 40 individuals
coming from PUC-Rio’s graduate schools in Science and Technology, Social Sciences, and the
Humanities. A number of guest participants, mostly senior researchers and professors from inside
and outside our university, have been invited to join classes and contribute to the debates. Some
of them followed the entire program of the semester, which in some classes raised the number
of participants to 50 or even more than 60 people. The number of officially enrolled students
proved to be appropriate for this kind of interdisciplinary graduate course.
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 4PhiCET Syllabus
Table 1: PhiCET Program
Session Content Unit Topic
1 Phil and Ethics Introductions and An overview of Ethics
2 Comp and Tech, Cybernetics, AI, and their relations with other disciplines
Interdisciplin
3 Phil and Ethics, Philosophy and technology
Comp and Tech
4 Phil and Ethics, Some practical challenges for a Philosophy of Technology
Comp and Tech
5 Comp and Tech An overview of Machine Learning
6 Phil and Ethics, AI Ethics
Comp and Tech
7 Phil and Ethics, Ethics and computer technology in the 21st century
Comp and Tech
8 Comp and Tech, Life in a hyper-connected era
Interdisciplin
9 Phil and Ethics, Rhetoric, Interdisciplinarity, Transdisciplinarity
Interdisciplin
10 Comp and Tech, Interdisciplinarity, e-science, and knowledge machines
Interdisciplin
One Session Interdisciplinary Group Presentations
11
Extra Session Interdisciplinary Group Presentations
12 Phil and Ethics Heidegger on technology
13 Phil and Ethics Intentionality
Aspects of philosophy and technology in the development of
14 Phil and Ethics,
Semiotic Engineering
Comp and Tech,
Interdisciplin
One Session Interdisciplinary Group Presentations
15
Extra Session Interdisciplinary Group Presentations
16 Phil and Ethics, PhiCET Synthesis: Reaching for Core-Issues
Comp and Tech,
Interdisciplin
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 5PhiCET Syllabus
5 Assignments and Assessment
In the first edition of PhiCET, enrolled students were given three short assignments. All con-
sisted of a 1-page commentary on the topics covered in any subset of five classes, not necessarily
sequential. Assignments were turned in at the end of each program block shown in Table 1.
Short commentaries were part of a strategy to encourage students to express their ideas in more
compact formats, as is often required in many social interaction contexts. Additionally, as part
of the practice to participate in longer productive conversations, students were encouraged to
volunteer for interdisciplinary group presentations, discussing any related topic of their choice.
As an alternative to the optionality of this activity (in which many students engaged), these
presentations can be mandatory in future PhiCET editions.
The final assessment of individual students was a qualitative evaluation of their performance
in: (a) assignments; (b) class participation; and (c) volunteer presentations and contributions.
Possible results of such assessment and their numerical equivalents are shown in Table 2.
Table 2: PhiCET Grading
Qualitative Assessment Numerical Equivalents Pass or Fail
Insufficient Less than 60% Fail
Sufficient 60% to 70% Pass
Good 71% to 84% Pass
Very Good 85% to 94% Pass
Excellent 95 to 100% Pass
6 On the Bibliography
The primary PhiCET biliography covers the three content units of the course and includes the
items listed below.
Primary Bibliography
Alpaydin, E. (2016). Machine Learning: The New AI. MIT Press.
Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press, Inc., USA,
1st edition.
Bynum, T. (2020). Computer and information ethics. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, pages 1–54. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, summer of 2020 edition.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2020a). AI Ethics. The MIT Press.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2020b). Artificial intelligence, responsibility attribution, and a relational justification
of explainability. Science and Engineering Ethics, 26(4):2051–2068.
Coleman, K. G. (2011). Computing and moral responsibility. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, summer, 2011 edition.
de Souza, C. S. (2005). The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction. Acting with Tech-
nology. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 6PhiCET Syllabus
Dennett, D. C. (1988). Précis of the intentional stance. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(3):495–505.
Dreyfus, H. L. (1992). What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA, USA.
Dreyfus, H. L. (2007). Why heideggerian ai failed and how fixing it would require making it more
heideggerian. Artificial Intelligence, 171(18):1137–1160.
Floridi, L. (1999). Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction. Routledge.
Floridi, L. (2013). Distributed morality in an information society. Science and Engineering Ethics,
19(3):727–743.
Floridi, L., editor (2015). The Onlife Manifesto - Being Human in a Hyperconnected Era. Springer Open.
Franchi, S. and Güzeldere, G. (2005). Machinations of the mind: Cybernetics and artificial intelligence
from automata to cyborgs. In Franchi, S. and Güzeldere, G., editors, Mechanical Bodies, Computa-
tional Minds, pages 15–149. The MIT Press.
Frodeman, R., Klein, J. T., and dos Santos Pacheco, R. C. (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Interdisci-
plinarity. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Harper & Row, New
York, translated by william lovitt edition.
Lyra, E. (2021). O Esquecimento de uma Arte - Retórica, educação e filosofia no século 21. Almedina
Brasil.
Meyer, E. T. and Schroeder, R. (2015). Knowledge machines : digital transformations of the sciences
and humanities. The MIT Press.
Nicolescu, B. (1996). La Transdisciplinarité - Manifeste. Editions du Rocher, Monaco.
Noorman, M. (2020). Computing and moral responsibility. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, spring 2020 edition.
O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens
Democracy. Crown Publishing Group.
Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3:417–457.
Shanahan, M. (2015). The technological singularity. The MIT Press essential knowledge series. The MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Siewert, C. (2017). Consciousness and Intentionality. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Spring 2017 edition.
Turing, A. M. (2009). Computing Machinery and Intelligence, pages 23–65. Springer Netherlands,
Dordrecht.
Winograd, T. and Flores, F. (1987). Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for
Design. Addison-Wesley, Boston, Ma.
In addition to the primary bibliography, a long list of new references has been compiled with
contributed items from all participants. Here is a small sample of items added in the secondary
bibliography of PhiCET’s first edition in 2021.
Arendt, H. (2013). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.
Birhane, A. (2021). Algorithmic injustice: a relational ethics approach. Patterns, 2(2), 100205.
doi:10.1016/j.patter.2021.100205
de Souza and Lyra (2021) p. 7PhiCET Syllabus
Bounegru, L., & Gray, J. (2021). The Data Journalism Handbook : Towards a Critical Data Practice.
Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789462989511
Cantwell-Smith, B. (2002). The foundations of computing. In M. Scheutz, Computationalism: New
Directions (pp. 23–58). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
de Souza, C. S., Cerqueira, R. F. G., Afonso, L. M., Brandão, R. R. M., & Ferreira, J. S. J. (2016).
Software Developers as Users. Semiotic Investigations in Human-Centered Software Development.
Springer International Publishing.
Debrock, G., & Hulswit, M. (1994). Living Doubt. Essays concerning the epistemology of Charles
Sanders Peirce. In “Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science” (Vol.
243). Springer Netherlands.
Floyd, C., Züllighoven, H., Budde, R., & Keil-Slawik, R. (1992). Software Development and Reality
Construction. Springer.
Gray, C. M., Kou, Y., Battles, B., Hoggatt, J., & Toombs, A. L. (2018). The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX
Design. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–14.
Montreal QC, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3173574.3174108
Kurzweil, R. (2014). The Singularity is Near. In R. L. Sandler, Ethics and Emerging Technologies
(pp. 393–406). Palgrave Macmillan
Magnani, L. (2005). An Abductive Theory of Scientific Reasoning. Semiotica, 153(1/4), 261–286.
Mittelstadt, B. D., Allo, P., Taddeo, M., Wachter, S., & Floridi, L. (2016). The ethics of algorithms:
Mapping the debate. Big Data & Society, 3(2), na. doi:10.1177/2053951716679679
Scheuerman, M. K., Paul, J. M., & Brubaker, J. R. (2019). How Computers See Gender: An Evaluation
of Gender Classification in Commercial Facial Analysis Services. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput.
Interact., 3(CSCW). doi: 10.1145/3359246
Segal, J. (2007). Some Problems of Professional End User Developers. Proceedings of the IEEE Sympo-
sium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, 111–118. doi:10.1109/VLHCC.2007.50
Steiner, P. (2013). C.S. Peirce and Artificial Intelligence: Historical Heritage and (New) Theoretical
Stakes. In V. C. Müller, Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 265–276). Springer
Berlin Heidelberg.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New
Frontier of Power. Profile.
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