Foundations of Artificial Intelligence

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, which brings together scholars from various disciplines working on artificial intelligence (AI). As AI technology continues to evolve and to integrate into society at a fast rate, we must try to maintain a healthy fundamental connection between research in the laboratory and purely theoretical research on the one hand and their real-world applications and potential broader consequences on the other. To this end, the Special Issue provides a platform to discuss from a foundational perspective the latest advancements and possible future directions in engineering and programming as well as the corresponding legal, ethical, and governance challenges. Individual contributions may focus on either theoretical or practical issues. Contributions are encouraged from researchers in various fields including computer science, linguistics, logic, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and more, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of AI research.

This Special Issue aims to create a dialogue between theoretically and practically oriented specialists, aligning with the journal’s goal to promote the integration of philosophy, science, technology, and culture. We invite papers that are aimed at an interdisciplinary audience—even if these works may be predominantly theoretically or practically oriented—thereby fostering a deeper understanding and broader collaboration within the AI research community.

Interdisciplinary approaches are therefore strongly encouraged. At the same time, it is essential not only that all contributions are self-sufficient in the sense of being readily intelligible to non-specialist scholars but also that they include a substantive amount of philosophical discussion; that is, they contain at least one fairly extensive subsection that explains in sufficient detail the significance of the results with regard to relevant philosophical issues.

Prospective contributors who are in doubt with respect to this requirement of sufficient philosophical content are welcome to contact us. In the meantime, the following passage from the Editor-in-Chief’s recent editorial may serve as further orientation:

The journal Philosophies is firmly committed to high-quality publishing. In the context of the mission to bridge philosophy and other forms of inquiry, this means that the minimum expectation in the works bridging philosophy and scientific, technological, and cultural studies is a balance between the rigor of philosophical reflection and the rigor of scientific methodology. The typical error in submissions transcending the domain of philosophy is the poverty of the philosophical content of the work. Sometimes, the only philosophical content of submissions is a sole paragraph in the introduction listing references to philosophical works on a similar or the same subject. It does not matter that the list of a dozen or more references indicates that some philosophers wrote extensively on the subject. The authors are expected not to list such works but to engage in the discussion of the content of these works, to justify their relevance to the content of the submission. … This issue has a mirror occurrence in philosophical papers devoid of sound scientific methodology or argumentation despite addressing science, technology, or culture. (Schroeder, Editorial, 2024, p. 4 https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010016).

In this Special Issue, both original research and review articles are welcome. Co-authored papers by interdisciplinary teams are especially encouraged. Research topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Affective computing;
• AI alignment;
• AI and human values;
• AI and society;
• AI methodology;
• AI safety;
• AI-driven cognitive enhancement;
• Algorithmic fairness;
• Anthropocentrism;
• Anthropomorphism;
• Artificial general intelligence;
• Artificial life;
• Artificial minds;
• Autonomous weapons;
• Cognitive architecture;
• Computational creativity;
• Computational neuroscience;
• Computer vision;
• Connectionism;
• Cybernetics;
• Deep utopia;
• Dynamical systems;
• Embodied cognition;
• Enactivism;
• Evolutionary computation;
• Existential risk;
• Explainability;
• Foundations of machine learning;
• Generative AI;
• Gödelian arguments against AI;
• Human–machine interface;
• Humanoid robots;
• Human–robot interactions;
• Intelligence explosion;
• Interpretability;
• Knowledge representation and reasoning;
• Large language models;
• Legal status of artificial systems;
• Machine consciousness;
• Machine ethics;
• Meta-learning;
• Metaphysics of machine learning;
• Mind uploading;
• Minimal cognition;
• Moral status of artificial systems;
• Multi-agent systems;
• Nanocomputing;
• Neuromorphic computing;
• Probabilistic reasoning;
• Quantum machine learning;
• Self-improving AI systems;
• Simulation hypothesis;
• Singularity;
• Superintelligence;
• Swarm intelligence;
• Symbolic AI;
• The Chinese room;
• The frame problem;
• The nature of AI;
• The nature of intelligence;
• The Turing test;
• Theory of mind in AI;
• Trust in AI systems;
• Uncanny valley;
• World models.

If you are interested in contributing, please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Sebastian Sunday Grève
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• artificial intelligence
• philosophy of AI
• AI governance
• AI ethics
• cognitive science
• interdisciplinary collaboration
• metaphysics of AI
• foundational research
• future perspectives
• theoretical innovation