GUEST EDITORS
J. Mark Bishop and Yasemin J. Erden
 
INTRODUCTION
Turing’s famous question ‘can machines think?’ raises parallel questions about what it means to 
say of us humans that we think. More broadly, what does it mean to say that we are thinking beings?
In this way we can see that Turing’s question about the potential of machines raises substantial 
questions about the nature of human identity. ‘If’, we might ask, ‘intelligent human behaviour 
could be successfully imitated, then what is there about our flesh and blood embodiment that need 
be regarded as exclusively essential to either intelligence or human identity?’ This and related 
questions come to the fore when we consider the way in which our involvement with and use of 
machines and technologies, as well as their involvement in us, is increasing and evolving. This 
is true of few more than those technologies that have a more intimate and developing role in our 
lives, such as implants and prosthetics (e.g. neuroprosthetics). 
 
Fertile areas for investigation include how new developments in AI look set to develop implant 
technology (e.g. swarm intelligence for the control of smaller and smaller components); the impact 
of developments of implants and prosthetics for use in human, primate and non-primate animals; the 
nature of human identity and how implants may impact on it (involving both conceptual and ethical 
questions); the identification of, and debate surrounding, distinctions drawn between improvement 
or repair (e.g. for medical reasons), and enhancement or “upgrading” (e.g. to improve performance) 
using implants/prosthetics; what role other emerging, and converging, technologies may have on the 
development of implants (e.g. nanotechnology or biotechnology); what role ‘animat’ devices (robotic
machines with both active biological and artificial components;  whether the convergence of 
different biotechnological hybrid systems will be accompanied by a corresponding convergence of 
their respective teleological capacities (and what might be the limits of this).
 
CALL
The Fifth AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy was held at the joint AISB/IACAP World 
Congress 2012 in Birmingham from 2nd to 6th July 2012 
(http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/index.php) on the topic of Computing, Philosophy and the 
Question of Bio-Machine Hybrids. The Congress was co-organised by AISB (http://www.aisb.org.uk) 
and IACAP (http://www.iacap.org), and was held in honour of Alan Turing, as part of the Centenary 
celebrations of his life and work. Following this symposium, a special issue of Springer’s 
Philosophy & Technology journal (http://www.springer.com/13347) is now being planned. We invite 
all those working in these (typically interdisciplinary) areas to participate in the project by 
contributing a paper for consideration to the special issue. In this call we particularly encourage
submissions that address one or more of the themes discussed above. Authors who presented a paper 
at this conference are invited to submit an original, recently revised, version of that paper, 
while other interested authors are invited to submit original papers related to the topics 
mentioned below. All submissions will be double peer-reviewed according to usual standards. 
Submitted papers must not have been previously published, and where work has featured elsewhere 
(e.g. in AISB conference proceedings), this must be cited, and these ideas be further developed 
for the purposes of this new and original submission. 
 
TOPICS 
Cognitive science; Artificial intelligence; the Turing test; machine understanding; Searle’s 
Chinese Room argument; Foundations of computing; Simulation of behaviour and agency; Ambient 
intelligence; Artificial life; computational biology; Implant technology; Biosemiotics; 
Constructivism; Second order cybernetics; Enactivism and sensorimotor theories of perception; 
Converging technologies (e.g. ICT, Nanotechnology, etc.); Information / computer / nanotechnology 
ethics; Cognitive / epigenetic robotics.
 
TIMETABLE 
February 28, 2013: Deadline papers submissions 
April 30, 2013: Deadline reviews papers 
June 28, 2013: Deadline revised papers 
2013: Publication of the special issue  
 
SUBMISSION DETAILS
To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the journal’s Editorial Manager 
http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/  
The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- authored papers) must 
register into EM. 
The author must then select the special article type: “SI ON THE QUESTION OF BIO-MACHINE HYBRIDS” 
from the selection provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the 
submissions to the Guest Editors.  
Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure:  
New Submissions ---> Journal Editorial Office ----> Guest Editor(s) ---> Reviewers  ---> Reviewers’
Recommendations ---> Guest Editor(s)’ Recommendation ---> Editor-in- Chief’s Final Decision---> 
Author Notification of the Decision. 
The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.
 
For any further information please contact:
J. Mark Bishop m.bishop@gold.ac.uk 
Yasemin J. Erden erdenyj@smuc.ac.uk