Work in Progress by Liat Lavi
Papers by Liat Lavi
Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 184–195., 2022
The history of western philosophy and art reveals a complex relation drawn between sight and know... more The history of western philosophy and art reveals a complex relation drawn between sight and knowledge, light and truth, the human gaze and subjectivity. In the 21st century this relationship takes a new turn, with the introduction of new technological means, especially in computational neuroscience and machine vision, that aim at recording, quantifying, analyzing, reproducing and automating the gaze. This pictorial essay is a multilayered investigation applying new modes of technological objectification to creative representations of eery, uncanny images of blindness and displaced eyeballs, in the history of art and cinema. It highlights the problematic nature of this form of objectification, and calls into question the means, assumptions and conclusions that are brought about in the process of objectifying the gaze, by pointing out the culturally saturated substrate already embedded in the act of viewing.
Indexicality has become a key term in the discourse on photography. It stands to mark the direct ... more Indexicality has become a key term in the discourse on photography. It stands to mark the direct relation a photograph has to an outer reality, the way the photographic image is a physical trace or consequence of the world it depicts. The indexical nature of the photograph is challenged time and again by critics who point out that the use of indexicality as the mark of photography, portrays it as passive, while in fact, photographs are the result of an active agent, favoring and singling out a distinct and chosen perspective. We may no longer regard photographs as documentation, but rather as manufacturing, but indexicality remains a key term in the field of photo-theory, for it seems to capture a distinct feature of photography that sets it apart from other forms of art, such as painting and sculpture. The peculiar way in which photography makes use of light (existing light, light that is ‘out there’) in producing an image is something that simply cannot be denied.
Automata's inner Movie, 2019
author proofs
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STRETCHING PERSONHOOD BEYOND
HUMANS: WHAT RECENT DISCUSSIONS
ON A... more author proofs
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STRETCHING PERSONHOOD BEYOND
HUMANS: WHAT RECENT DISCUSSIONS
ON ANIMAL RIGHTS CAN TEACH US
ON THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL
TREATMENT OF ROBOTS1
Liat Lavi
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design
Introduction
For centuries reigned on earth the idea that the humankind stands at the
heart of creation, that only humans are endowed with subjectivity and are
worthy of the title moral agents, that humans alone are born with natural,
inalienable rights. The ethical discussions concerning animal rights,
emerging in their current form in the 1980s and flourishing in the twenty-
first century, and the related idea of ‘anti-speciesism’, namely the notion
that the human species should not be given moral priority, shake this
ground. Subjectivity and moral agency are attributed in these discussions
to animals as well. Animals too on some of these views are born with
inalienable rights (Regan, 1983), are moral agents, or, more often, ‘moral
patients’ (Singer, 1975), have interests to be considered in the utilitarian
framework (Singer, 2009), have capabilities they are seen as entitled to act
on (Nussbaum, 2011), etc. This idea seems to be growing more and more
popular in the Western world.
author proofs
298 Chapter Sixteen
In parallel, and especially in recent years, we are witnessing machines
and robots becoming more and more complex. We hear that they are
‘intelligent’ and ‘cognitive’, even ‘creative’. We witness them communicate
and interact, express preferences, possibly even emotions, and surely, we
see them as endowed with certain capabilities. We are also starting to
empathize with them and anthropomorphize them, as expressed for
instance by the public sentiments arising in response to publications
suggesting robots ‘learned to lie’ (Trevelyan, 2017), have become ‘racist’
(Vincent 2016) or independently ‘developed a private language’ (Field,
2017), and to videos showing robots being beaten and ‘abused’ (Grifantini,
2009; Newsy Tech, 2016).2
Already we are hearing of robots being granted citizenship (Griffin, 2017)
and witness both institutional and public discussions on whether robots
should be granted rights or be seen as endowed with rights (European
Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs, 2017; Falk, 2017; Williams, 2017). In
philosophy there has formed a field of ‘roboethics’ which hosts a lively
debate on the question of robot rights, with most authors taking part in the
debate assuming the day is near that machines will be considered subjective
and conscious, and many arguing that society should acknowledge their
moral patiency, include them in our social contracts and recognize their
interests as worthy of consideration (see Gunkel, 2018).
This chapter takes the two developments, in the field of animal rights
and in the emerging field of ‘robot rights’, as interrelated. Both extend the
notions of personhood, citizenship and, most importantly for the present
context, moral agency, beyond the human realm, and both thereby
challenge the humanistic tradition that still stands at the heart of our
political and moral systems.
More specifically, the paper argues that both developments are
grounded in the physicalist metaphysical framework and the functionalist
interpretation of human nature and suggests that these should be rejected
in the context of the discussion over morality and ethics.
Foucault Studies, 2018
In this Paper I examine Wittgenstein’s appeals to madness in On Certainty in light of Foucault’s ... more In this Paper I examine Wittgenstein’s appeals to madness in On Certainty in light of Foucault’s Histoire de la folie. A close look at these works, usually conceived as disparate, belonging to entirely different schools of thought, reveals they actually have much in common. Both can be read as investigations into the grounds of reason, and while they offer quite different and distinct perspectives on the matter, share some central insights. In both we find that the boundaries of reason are not only vague but are also largely founded upon the relations - social in Foucault, socio-linguistic in Wittgenstein - between the reasonable man and the unreasonable man. Both perspectives reveal a curious state of affairs, whereby the reasonable man is the one who dominates discourse, and yet, in his claim for reason, remains forever dependent upon the unreasonable man and his rejection. The pressing question triggered by Foucault's account is whether the boundary between reason and unreason is at all necessary. This undermines Wittgenstein’s thesis that this boundary is a matter of logical necessity, upon which discourse depends. I flesh this point out in the paper also by examining the differences in Wittgenstein’s and Foucalt’s treatments of Descartes’ Meditations. I conclude that Wittgenstein’s criticism of Cartesian skepticism presented in On Certainty loses much of its fortitude once examined in light of Foucault's Histoire de la folie.
Forthcoming paper presented at The North American Society for Early Phenomenology conference: Ear... more Forthcoming paper presented at The North American Society for Early Phenomenology conference: Early Influences of Phenomenology, 4-6 April, Boston College.
Drafts by Liat Lavi
It’s been about 15 years already that the idea that cognition is radically embodied has been taki... more It’s been about 15 years already that the idea that cognition is radically embodied has been taking central stage in cognitive science. Radical Embodiment has also gained footing in the field of AI and robotics, largely thanks to the work of Rodney Brooks (Brooks, 1991; 1999; 2002). It has also been suggested that ‘radical embodiment’ should be integrated into neuroscience (see e.g. Thompson and Varela, 2001;). However, despite the fact the radical embodiment has been gaining growing attention, it is still the case that clarity and agreement are missing on what ‘radical embodiment’ even means. As Alsmith and Vignemont note, while “Embodied cognitive science has become an industry… its unity is questionable” (Alsmith and Vignemont, 2012, p. 1). Shaun Gallagher recently suggested that “it may be too early in the game for there to be anything like a unified theory of what counts as embodied cognition” (Gallagher, 2015, 97), but it is certainly not too early to try to get more clarity into this picture, and point to some obstacles standing in the way of such an attempt. This is the central aim of this paper. After discussing radical embodiment and its challenges in sections 1-4, the fifth and closing section presents an outline for a body-centric theory of embodiment. My primary aim in this section, in the context of the present paper, is to exemplify what a body-centric account of cognition might look like, and to point out its main tasks, and the challenges it faces.
Unpublished Papers by Liat Lavi
The debate over the existence and nature of mental images is ages old. Through its history this d... more The debate over the existence and nature of mental images is ages old. Through its history this debate turned quite technical and complex, but here I wish to strip it from its technical form, go back to its roots and try to shed new light on the matter with the aid of photography.
Both sides of the debate on whether mental images exist can be grasped quite intuitively. The argument for the existence of mental images surely draws much of its power from intuition – we all experience mental images, we can imagine visual objects at will, have visual recollections and so on. But the case against mental images also draws from intuition – we can sense that mental images are different from other images, are “less clear”, “less stable”, elusive perhaps. This feeling is strengthened when one’s mental images are put under interrogation. If we are asked to imagine a dog, for instance, and do so, we may still find it difficult to answer questions about the looks of the dog, let alone the background against which it appears in the supposed “image”.
I will suggest in this paper that mental images do not exist, or at the very least that our appeals to them are flawed and illusory, but in joining this side of the debate over the existence of mental images I will draw relatively little from the current discussions of the matter in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, and will instead make a broader appeal to photography, esp. to artistic practices that investigate vision and representation through photography.
The discussion will follow these lines:
I open by making some further comments on the appeals of mental images (section 1). This is important because we need to always keep in mind that abolishing mental images from our vocabulary comes at a high price.
In section 2 I discuss some general features of photographs. I will use photographs to draw more attention to the difference between how photographs are experienced and how mental images are supposed to be experienced. More specifically I will suggest that mental images cannot be replaced with photographs, although we intuit them as such.
In section 3 I contrast the view of photography as representation (section 3.1) and as ‘data’ (section 3.2) with the view that photography is an indexical physical sign that requires physical stratum to be actualized. I suggest we reject the view of photography as a ‘nonmaterial, representational image’, and following, suggest that the notion of ‘image’ (in ‘mental image’) is itself incoherent.
In this short paper I address the question of how we come to think of, intend, and believe in, no... more In this short paper I address the question of how we come to think of, intend, and believe in, nonexistent invisible objects. I will do so by examining the case of invisible tigers (sections 1-2). I use this example to point to certain difficulties that arise from a variety of conceptions of knowledge (section 3) and the appeal to mental images in explaining knowledge acquisition (section 4). I suggest that this special case has broader implications on understanding in general, and will offer an alternative account of knowledge as based on 'consequences schemes' that draws from classical pragmatism (sections 5-6).
Texts on Photography by Liat Lavi
The text looks into the phantasmatic nature of photography and its relation to time, and points t... more The text looks into the phantasmatic nature of photography and its relation to time, and points to the radical nature of the series "Vanishing Zones", by photographer Roi Kuper in this context.
Published in:
Roi Kuper, Vanishing Zones (Tel Aviv: Self Published, 2013).
A short text on New Vision, Moholy-Nagy and the passion to see/know.
Published in:
Luma, Mod... more A short text on New Vision, Moholy-Nagy and the passion to see/know.
Published in:
Luma, Modern Photography in the First Half of the 20th Century (Tel Aviv: The Shpilman Institute for Photography, 2012)
A short text on the works of photographer Boaz Aharonovitch, and on photography in general.
Publ... more A short text on the works of photographer Boaz Aharonovitch, and on photography in general.
Published in:
Boaz Aharonovitch (Tel Aviv: Dan Gallery, 2011)
Texts on Photography and Art in Hebrew by Liat Lavi
מחשבות על צילום, אינדקסקיליות וזמן ועל סדרת ״אתרי היעלמות״ של רועי קופר.
המאמר דן בפוטוגרמות של מוהולי נאג׳ וזרם ה״ראייה החדשה״, ומציע לחשוב עליהן כחקירות פנומנולוגיות על... more המאמר דן בפוטוגרמות של מוהולי נאג׳ וזרם ה״ראייה החדשה״, ומציע לחשוב עליהן כחקירות פנומנולוגיות על אודות טבעה של התפיסה.
על צילום בכלל ועל עבודותיו של בועז אהרונוביץ׳ בפרט
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Work in Progress by Liat Lavi
Papers by Liat Lavi
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STRETCHING PERSONHOOD BEYOND
HUMANS: WHAT RECENT DISCUSSIONS
ON ANIMAL RIGHTS CAN TEACH US
ON THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL
TREATMENT OF ROBOTS1
Liat Lavi
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design
Introduction
For centuries reigned on earth the idea that the humankind stands at the
heart of creation, that only humans are endowed with subjectivity and are
worthy of the title moral agents, that humans alone are born with natural,
inalienable rights. The ethical discussions concerning animal rights,
emerging in their current form in the 1980s and flourishing in the twenty-
first century, and the related idea of ‘anti-speciesism’, namely the notion
that the human species should not be given moral priority, shake this
ground. Subjectivity and moral agency are attributed in these discussions
to animals as well. Animals too on some of these views are born with
inalienable rights (Regan, 1983), are moral agents, or, more often, ‘moral
patients’ (Singer, 1975), have interests to be considered in the utilitarian
framework (Singer, 2009), have capabilities they are seen as entitled to act
on (Nussbaum, 2011), etc. This idea seems to be growing more and more
popular in the Western world.
author proofs
298 Chapter Sixteen
In parallel, and especially in recent years, we are witnessing machines
and robots becoming more and more complex. We hear that they are
‘intelligent’ and ‘cognitive’, even ‘creative’. We witness them communicate
and interact, express preferences, possibly even emotions, and surely, we
see them as endowed with certain capabilities. We are also starting to
empathize with them and anthropomorphize them, as expressed for
instance by the public sentiments arising in response to publications
suggesting robots ‘learned to lie’ (Trevelyan, 2017), have become ‘racist’
(Vincent 2016) or independently ‘developed a private language’ (Field,
2017), and to videos showing robots being beaten and ‘abused’ (Grifantini,
2009; Newsy Tech, 2016).2
Already we are hearing of robots being granted citizenship (Griffin, 2017)
and witness both institutional and public discussions on whether robots
should be granted rights or be seen as endowed with rights (European
Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs, 2017; Falk, 2017; Williams, 2017). In
philosophy there has formed a field of ‘roboethics’ which hosts a lively
debate on the question of robot rights, with most authors taking part in the
debate assuming the day is near that machines will be considered subjective
and conscious, and many arguing that society should acknowledge their
moral patiency, include them in our social contracts and recognize their
interests as worthy of consideration (see Gunkel, 2018).
This chapter takes the two developments, in the field of animal rights
and in the emerging field of ‘robot rights’, as interrelated. Both extend the
notions of personhood, citizenship and, most importantly for the present
context, moral agency, beyond the human realm, and both thereby
challenge the humanistic tradition that still stands at the heart of our
political and moral systems.
More specifically, the paper argues that both developments are
grounded in the physicalist metaphysical framework and the functionalist
interpretation of human nature and suggests that these should be rejected
in the context of the discussion over morality and ethics.
Drafts by Liat Lavi
Unpublished Papers by Liat Lavi
Both sides of the debate on whether mental images exist can be grasped quite intuitively. The argument for the existence of mental images surely draws much of its power from intuition – we all experience mental images, we can imagine visual objects at will, have visual recollections and so on. But the case against mental images also draws from intuition – we can sense that mental images are different from other images, are “less clear”, “less stable”, elusive perhaps. This feeling is strengthened when one’s mental images are put under interrogation. If we are asked to imagine a dog, for instance, and do so, we may still find it difficult to answer questions about the looks of the dog, let alone the background against which it appears in the supposed “image”.
I will suggest in this paper that mental images do not exist, or at the very least that our appeals to them are flawed and illusory, but in joining this side of the debate over the existence of mental images I will draw relatively little from the current discussions of the matter in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, and will instead make a broader appeal to photography, esp. to artistic practices that investigate vision and representation through photography.
The discussion will follow these lines:
I open by making some further comments on the appeals of mental images (section 1). This is important because we need to always keep in mind that abolishing mental images from our vocabulary comes at a high price.
In section 2 I discuss some general features of photographs. I will use photographs to draw more attention to the difference between how photographs are experienced and how mental images are supposed to be experienced. More specifically I will suggest that mental images cannot be replaced with photographs, although we intuit them as such.
In section 3 I contrast the view of photography as representation (section 3.1) and as ‘data’ (section 3.2) with the view that photography is an indexical physical sign that requires physical stratum to be actualized. I suggest we reject the view of photography as a ‘nonmaterial, representational image’, and following, suggest that the notion of ‘image’ (in ‘mental image’) is itself incoherent.
Texts on Photography by Liat Lavi
Published in:
Roi Kuper, Vanishing Zones (Tel Aviv: Self Published, 2013).
Published in:
Luma, Modern Photography in the First Half of the 20th Century (Tel Aviv: The Shpilman Institute for Photography, 2012)
Published in:
Boaz Aharonovitch (Tel Aviv: Dan Gallery, 2011)
Texts on Photography and Art in Hebrew by Liat Lavi
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STRETCHING PERSONHOOD BEYOND
HUMANS: WHAT RECENT DISCUSSIONS
ON ANIMAL RIGHTS CAN TEACH US
ON THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL
TREATMENT OF ROBOTS1
Liat Lavi
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design
Introduction
For centuries reigned on earth the idea that the humankind stands at the
heart of creation, that only humans are endowed with subjectivity and are
worthy of the title moral agents, that humans alone are born with natural,
inalienable rights. The ethical discussions concerning animal rights,
emerging in their current form in the 1980s and flourishing in the twenty-
first century, and the related idea of ‘anti-speciesism’, namely the notion
that the human species should not be given moral priority, shake this
ground. Subjectivity and moral agency are attributed in these discussions
to animals as well. Animals too on some of these views are born with
inalienable rights (Regan, 1983), are moral agents, or, more often, ‘moral
patients’ (Singer, 1975), have interests to be considered in the utilitarian
framework (Singer, 2009), have capabilities they are seen as entitled to act
on (Nussbaum, 2011), etc. This idea seems to be growing more and more
popular in the Western world.
author proofs
298 Chapter Sixteen
In parallel, and especially in recent years, we are witnessing machines
and robots becoming more and more complex. We hear that they are
‘intelligent’ and ‘cognitive’, even ‘creative’. We witness them communicate
and interact, express preferences, possibly even emotions, and surely, we
see them as endowed with certain capabilities. We are also starting to
empathize with them and anthropomorphize them, as expressed for
instance by the public sentiments arising in response to publications
suggesting robots ‘learned to lie’ (Trevelyan, 2017), have become ‘racist’
(Vincent 2016) or independently ‘developed a private language’ (Field,
2017), and to videos showing robots being beaten and ‘abused’ (Grifantini,
2009; Newsy Tech, 2016).2
Already we are hearing of robots being granted citizenship (Griffin, 2017)
and witness both institutional and public discussions on whether robots
should be granted rights or be seen as endowed with rights (European
Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs, 2017; Falk, 2017; Williams, 2017). In
philosophy there has formed a field of ‘roboethics’ which hosts a lively
debate on the question of robot rights, with most authors taking part in the
debate assuming the day is near that machines will be considered subjective
and conscious, and many arguing that society should acknowledge their
moral patiency, include them in our social contracts and recognize their
interests as worthy of consideration (see Gunkel, 2018).
This chapter takes the two developments, in the field of animal rights
and in the emerging field of ‘robot rights’, as interrelated. Both extend the
notions of personhood, citizenship and, most importantly for the present
context, moral agency, beyond the human realm, and both thereby
challenge the humanistic tradition that still stands at the heart of our
political and moral systems.
More specifically, the paper argues that both developments are
grounded in the physicalist metaphysical framework and the functionalist
interpretation of human nature and suggests that these should be rejected
in the context of the discussion over morality and ethics.
Both sides of the debate on whether mental images exist can be grasped quite intuitively. The argument for the existence of mental images surely draws much of its power from intuition – we all experience mental images, we can imagine visual objects at will, have visual recollections and so on. But the case against mental images also draws from intuition – we can sense that mental images are different from other images, are “less clear”, “less stable”, elusive perhaps. This feeling is strengthened when one’s mental images are put under interrogation. If we are asked to imagine a dog, for instance, and do so, we may still find it difficult to answer questions about the looks of the dog, let alone the background against which it appears in the supposed “image”.
I will suggest in this paper that mental images do not exist, or at the very least that our appeals to them are flawed and illusory, but in joining this side of the debate over the existence of mental images I will draw relatively little from the current discussions of the matter in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, and will instead make a broader appeal to photography, esp. to artistic practices that investigate vision and representation through photography.
The discussion will follow these lines:
I open by making some further comments on the appeals of mental images (section 1). This is important because we need to always keep in mind that abolishing mental images from our vocabulary comes at a high price.
In section 2 I discuss some general features of photographs. I will use photographs to draw more attention to the difference between how photographs are experienced and how mental images are supposed to be experienced. More specifically I will suggest that mental images cannot be replaced with photographs, although we intuit them as such.
In section 3 I contrast the view of photography as representation (section 3.1) and as ‘data’ (section 3.2) with the view that photography is an indexical physical sign that requires physical stratum to be actualized. I suggest we reject the view of photography as a ‘nonmaterial, representational image’, and following, suggest that the notion of ‘image’ (in ‘mental image’) is itself incoherent.
Published in:
Roi Kuper, Vanishing Zones (Tel Aviv: Self Published, 2013).
Published in:
Luma, Modern Photography in the First Half of the 20th Century (Tel Aviv: The Shpilman Institute for Photography, 2012)
Published in:
Boaz Aharonovitch (Tel Aviv: Dan Gallery, 2011)