Samir Chopra

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy , Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn (Appointed September 2002 to Department of Computer Science; transferred with tenure to Philosophy January 2010).

Doctoral Faculty, Department of Philosophy, City University Graduate Center, New York, New York (Appointed September 2008).

POSTDOCTORAL EMPLOYMENT

July 2000-August 2002: Australian Research Council Research Associate, Knowledge Systems Group, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

EDUCATION

• 1993-2000: City University of New York, Graduate School and University Center; New York, Ph.D Philosophy.

• 1987-1989: New Jersey Institute of Technology; Newark, New Jersey, M.S Computer Science.

• 1984-1987: Delhi University; New Delhi, India, B.A (with Honors) Mathematical Statistics.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

• A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents, (with Laurence White), University of Michigan Press, 2011
• Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software, (with Scott Dexter), Routledge, New York, May 2007
• The India-Pakistan Air War of 1965, (with PVS Jagan Mohan), Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2005

Edited Volumes

• Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics (ISSN 1166-3081; published by Èditions Hermés), (with Andreas Herzig) of Special Issue on Belief Change, 28(1-4), 2001.

Refereed Journals

• Double Preference for Generalised Belief Change, (with Richard Booth, Thomas Meyer and Aditya Ghose), Artificial Intelligence, 174(16-17): 1339-1368, (2010).

• Free Software and the Economics of Information Justice, (with Scott Dexter), Ethics and Information Technology, DOI 10.1007/s10676-010-9226-6. (Refereed conference proceedings version published as Free Software, Economic Realities, and Information Justice, ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 39(2): 12-26, 2009)

• Rights for Autonomous Artificial Agents, Communications of the ACM, 53(8): 38-40 (2010)

• Artificial Agents and the Contracting Problem: A Solution via an Agency Analysis, (with Laurence White), University of Illinois Journal of Law. Technology and Policy, 363, 2009.

• Rights for Autonomous Artificial Agents, Communications of the ACM, 53(8): 38-40 (2010)

• The Freedoms of Software and its Ethical Uses, (with Scott Dexter) Ethics and Information Technology, 11(4): 287-297 (2009).

• Free Software and the Political Philosophy of the Cyborg World, (with Scott Dexter), ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 37(2): 41-52, (2007).

• Building Bridges: The 2006 Summer Institute, (with Lori Scarlatos, Susan Lowes, Elizabeth Sklar, Simon Parsons, Ira Rudowsky and Heidi Holder), Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 23(3): 23-30, (2008). .

• Iterated Revision and the Axiom of Recovery, (with Aditya Ghose, Thomas Meyer and Ka-Shu Wong), Journal of Philosophical Logic 37(5): 501-520, (2008).

• Social Choice Theory, Belief Merging and Strategy-Proofness, (with Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer), Information Fusion, 7(1):61-79, (2006).

• The Political Economy of Open Source Software, (with Scott Dexter), International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, 1(1): (2005)

• Belief Liberation (and Retraction), (with Richard Booth, Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer), Studia Logica, 79(1):47-72, (2005).

• Non-prioritized Ranked Belief Change, (with Thomas Meyer and Aditya Ghose), Journal of Philosophical Logic, 32(4):417-443, (2003).

• Generalized Logical Consequence: Making Room for Induction in the Logic of Science, (with Eric Martin), Journal of Philosophical Logic, 28(31):245-280, (2002).

• Approximate Belief Revision, (with Rohit Parikh and Renata Wassermann), Logic Journal of the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics (IGPL), 9(6): 755-768 (2001).

• Relevance Sensitive Belief Structures, (with Rohit Parikh), Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, 28(1-4): 259-285 (2000).

• Relevance Sensitive Non-monotonic Inference for Belief Sequences, (with Konstantinos Georgatos and Rohit Parikh), Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, 11(1-2): 131-150 (2001).

• An Experimental Study Comparing the Effectiveness of Computer Graphics Data versus Computer Tabular Data, (with Richard Coll and Arun Thyagrajan), IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, July-August 1991.

Refereed Conferences

• Taking the Moral Stance: Morality, Robots, and the Intentional Stance, Proceedings of TILTing 2011.

• Free Software, Economic 'Realities', and Information Justice, (with Scott Dexter), Proceedings of CEPE 2009.

• Using AI to Motivate Greater Participation in Computer Science , (with Elizabeth Sklar, Simon Parsons, Ira Rudowsky and Richard Jansen), AAAI Spring Symposium 2008.

• Free Software and the Political Philosophy of the Cyborg World, (with Scott Dexter, Proceedings of CEPE-2007, July 2007

• Privacy and Artificial Agents, or, Is Google Reading My Email?, (with Laurence White), Proceedings of the Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, forthcoming.

• A Comparative Ethical Assessment of Software Licensing Schemes, (with Scott Dexter), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computer Ethics and Philosophical Enquiry, Enschede, July 2005.

• Attribution of Knowledge to Artificial Agents and their Principals, (with Laurence White), Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Professional Book Center, 1175-1180.

• Artificial Agents - Personhood in Law and Philosophy, (with Laurence White), Proceedings of the Sixteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, 636-639. Reprinted in Software Agents and the Law, published by Amicus Books Division, a constituent of ICFAI (Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India) University.

• A Unifying Semantics for Belief Change, (with Richard Booth, Aditya Ghose, Thomas Meyer), Proceedings of the Sixteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, 793-797¹.

• Distance Semantics for Relevance Sensitive Belief Revision, (with Pavlos Peppas and Norman Foo), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation-KR2004, AAAI Press, 319-328.

• Some logics of Belief and Disbelief, (with Johannes Heidema and Thomas Meyer), Proceedings of Australian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AI-03, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Number 2903 Springer-Verlag, 364-376.

• Belief liberation (and retraction), (with Richard Booth, Thomas Meyer and Aditya Ghose), in M. Tennenholtz (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK 2003), Morgan Kaufmann, pp 159-172, 2003.

• Attacking the Complexity of Prioritized Inference: A Preliminary Report, (with Renata Wassermann), Proceedings of Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, SBIA-02, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Number 2507 Springer, 31-40.

• Consistency of Action Descriptions, (with Dongmo Zhang), Proceedings of the Pacific Rim Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI-02, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Number 2417, pp 70-79.

• Iterated revision and the axiom of recovery, (with Aditya Ghose and Thomas Meyer), in Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI-02, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2002.

• Postdiction Problems in Dynamic Logic, (with Dongmo Zhang), Proceedings of the Fourteenth Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AI'01, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Number 2256, Springer-Verlag, pp 119-129.

• Encoding Solutions of the Frame Problem in Dynamic Logic, (with Norman Foo, Dongmo Zhang, Yan Zhang, Bao Quoc Vo), Proceedings of Logic Programming and Non-monotonic Reasoning, LPNMR 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Number 2173, Springer-Verlag, pp 240-253.

• Social Choice, Merging and Elections, (with Thomas Meyer and Aditya Ghose), Proceedings of Sixth European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty, ECSQARU-2001, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Number 2143, Springer-Verlag, pp 466-477.

• Non-prioritized Ranked Belief Change, (with Thomas Meyer and Aditya Ghose), Proceedings of Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, TARK-2001, 151-162 , Morgan Kaufmann.

• An Inconsistency Tolerant Model for Belief Representation and Belief Revision (with Rohit Parikh), Proceedings of Sixteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI-99, Stockholm, Sweden, Morgan Kaufmann. Abstract published in Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Vol 5, Number 3, September 1999.

• Non-Monotonic Inference on Belief Sequences, (with Konstantinos Georgatos and Rohit Parikh), Proceedings of 2nd Pan-Hellenic Symposium in Logic, eds. Phokion Kolaitis and George Koletsos, 1999.

• No Cognition Without Representation?, Electronic Proceedings at CogNet (MIT Press) (cognet.mit.edu) for New Trends in Cognitive Science, 1999 (NTCS-99 ).

Book Reviews

• Open Source: Technology and Policy. JASIST 60(11): 2382-2383 (2009)

• Comment on Floridi's ``Understanding Information Ethics" by Luciano Floridi, APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, 7(2), 2008.

• Cyberpunk and Cyberculture, Dani Cavallaro, Resource Center for Cybercultural Studies.

• Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, eds. Machamer et. al, Metascience, 11:1, 85-88, 2002.

• Frege by Anthony Kenny, APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, forthcoming.

• Philosophical Naturalism by David Papineau, APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, Volume 00, Number 2, Spring 2001.

• What Is This Thing Called Science? by Alan Chalmers, APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, Volume 99, Number 2, Spring 2000.

TALKS

• Personhood for Artificial Agents, St. Stephens College, Delhi University, January 2011

• Personhood for Artificial Agents, Chia-Yi University, Taiwan, October 2009

• Attribution of Knowledge to Artificial Agents, Taiwan Logic and Analytical Philosophy Conference, October 2009

• Free Software, Information Justice and Economic Realities, Eighth International Conference on Computer Ethics and Philosophical Enquiry, Corfu, 2009

• Attribution of Knowledge to Artificial Agents and their Principals, CUNY Cognitive Science Colloquium, 2009

• The Promise of Free and Open Source Software, Department of Philosophy, Union College, February 2008

• Attribution of Knowledge to Artificial Agents, Computers, Freedom and Privacy, Yale Law School, May 2008

• The Freedom Zero Problem, NA-CAP, Chicago, June 2007

• Free Software and the Political Philosophy of the Cyborg World, CEPE 2007

• Web 0.1 = Web 3.0, Turoff and Hiltz Festschrift, NJIT, October 2007

• Toward a Legal Theory for Artificial Agents, Yale Law School, September 2007

• The Freedom Zero Problem, NA-CAP, Chicago, June 2007

• Free Software and the Political Philosophy of the Cyborg World, CEPE 2007

• Privacy and Artificial Agents, or, Is Google Reading my Email?, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Hyderabad, 2007

• Attribution of Knowledge to Artificial Agents and their Principals, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh, 2005.

• A Comparative Ethical Assessment of Free Software Licensing Schemes, Sixth International Conference on Computer Ethics and Philosophical Enquiry, Enschede, July 2005.

• The Aesthetic Imperative of Free and Open Source Softwar, APA Conference on Computing and Philosophy, Oregon State University, August 2005.

• The Political Economy of Open Source Software, International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society, University of California, Berkeley, 2005.

• Artificial Agents - Personhood in Law and Philosophy, Sixteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Valencia, August 2004.

• Artificial Intelligence as Philosophy and Psychology, Brooklyn College Faculty Day Seminar on Cognitive Science.

• Does Cognitive Science Rest on a Mistake?, Joint International Conference on Cognitive Science, Sydney, July 2003.

• Social Choice and Belief Merging, Department of Computer Science, University of Wollongong, December 2002.

• Inconsistency Tolerant Belief Revision, Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University of South Africa, Pretoria, November 2001.

• Social Choice Theory and Artificial Intelligence, Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University of South Africa, Pretoria, November 2001.

• Social Choice Theory and Artificial Intelligence, Department of Economics Seminar Series, Sydney University, November 2001.

• Postdiction Problems in Dynamic Logic, Fourth International Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Action, and Change, Seattle, August 2001.

• Context based merging, International Workshop on Inconsistency in Data and Knowledge 2001, Seattle, August 2001.

• Postdiction problems in dynamic logic, Australian Workshop on Computational Logic, Bond University, February 2001.

• Inconsistency Tolerant Belief Revision, Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo, November 2000.

• Inconsistency Tolerant Belief Revision, Department of Information Systems Seminar, University of Wollongong, October 2000.

• Approximate Belief Revision, Computational Reasoning Laboratory Seminar, Macquarie University, Sydney, August 2000.

• Relevance Sensitive Non-Monotonic Inference on Belief Sequences, 8th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning, Breckenridge, April 2000.

• Ryan and Schobbens on Counterfactuals and Updates, Seminar for Computational Game Theory, NYU, January 2000.

• Relevance Sensitive Nonmonotonic Inference on Belief Sequences, New York City Logic Conference, November, 1999.

• Brewka on Preferred Subtheories, Seminar for Computational Game Theory, NYU, October 1999.

• Relevance Sensitive Models for Inconsistency Tolerant Belief Revision, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, New York, October 1999.

• Relevance Sensitive Models for Inconsistency Tolerant Belief Revision, University of Maryland, Logic and Artificial Intelligence Seminar, October 1999.

• Ryan on Ordered Theory Presentations, Seminar for Computational Game Theory, New York University, September 1999.

• Two Relevance Sensitive Models for Belief Revision, Belief Revision Workshop, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, August 1999.

• Foundations of Belief Revision, Seminar for Computational Game Theory, New York University, July 1999.

• Non-Monotonic Inference on Belief Sequences, 2nd Pan-Hellenic Symposium in Logic, Delphi, Greece, 13th-17th July, 1999.

• Preemption, Event Identity and the Naive Counterfactual Account of Causation, (with David Coady), British Society for the Philosophy of Science Summer Conference, University of Nottingham, UK, July 1999.

• No Cognition Without Representation? Dynamical Computationalism and the Emulation Theory of Representation at New Trends in Cognitive Science-1999-Vienna, Austria, May 1999.

• An Inconsistency Tolerant Model for Belief Representation and Belief Revision, 10th Biennial Boston Logic Conference, MIT, Boston, May 1999.

• Non-Monotonic Inference on Sequenced Belief Bases, Seminar for Computational Game Theory, New York University, June 1999.

• An Inconsistency Tolerant Model for Belief Representation and Belief Revision, Seminar for Logic and Game Theory, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York, April 1999.

• An Inconsistency Tolerant Model for Belief Representation and Belief Revision, Annual Meeting of The Association of Symbolic Logic, San Diego, March 1999.

• An Inconsistency Tolerant Model for Belief Representation and Belief Revision, Seminar for Recent Applications of Logic in Computer Science, CUNY Graduate Center, Spring 1999.

• Belief Revision, Language Splitting and Inconsistency Tolerance, Seminar for Logic in Computer Science, CUNY Graduate Center, Fall 1998.

GRANTS/AWARDS

• NSF Broadening Participation in Computing grant for "Building Bridges in Brooklyn" (with Simon Parsons, Ira Rudowsky, Lori Scarlatos and Elizabeth Sklar), $500,000
• PSC-CUNY Grant for Decoding Liberation, $4000
• PSC-CUNY FRAP, `Belief Revision and Merging', $3500
• PSC-CUNY FRAP, `Knowledge-Theoretic Properties of Strategy-Proof Voting', $4600.
• Research funded by ARC, IREX.
• IJCAI Travel Award for IJCAI-99 (Stockholm, August 1999).
• 2nd Pan-Hellenic Logic Symposium Grant (Delphi, July 1999).
• NSF/ASL Student Travel Grant for 1999 Annual Meeting in San Diego.
• NSF/MAMLS Student Travel Award for 1999 Boston Logic Conference (MIT).
• City University Student Travel and Research Fund/Alumni Association Award (Spring 1999).
• City University Graduate Center Tuition Fellowship (Fall 1995, Spring 1994, Fall 1999).
• Rutgers/NJIT Teaching and Research Assistantship, 1988-1990.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Member, Program Committee, International Conference on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems, 2008
• Program Committee, International Workshop on Logic and Collective Decision Making, 2007
• Member, Program Committee, International Workshop on Dynamic Logic and Belief Revision, ESSLI-2005.
• Member, Program Committee, International Conference on Foundations on Information and Knowledge Systems (FoIKS 2004).

• Member, Program Committee, Special Session on Changing and Integrating Information, International workshop on Non-monotonic Reasoning, 2002.

• Program Chair, International Workshop on Belief Change: Theory and Practice, at the Seventh International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2000).

• Association of Symbolic Logic (member), Association for Automated Reasoning (member).

• Referee for IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science 1999 (LICS-1999), International Conference on Tools for Artificial Intelligence 2000 (ICTAI-2000), AAAI Spring Symposium on Answer Set Programming-2001, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2001, 2005 (IJCAI-01, 05), International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory 2001 (ALT-01), Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS-01), Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI-01), Fifth Australian Computer Science Conference (ACSC-2002), Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2002,2004), European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2002,2004), European Conference on Logics for Artificial Intelligence (JELIA 2002), International Conference on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems (FoIKS 2004, 2008, 2010), Benelux Conference on Logic and Artificial Intelligence 2010.

• Referee for Studia Logica, Erkenntnis, Artificial Intelligence Journal, Ethics and Information Technology, International Journal for Foundations of Computer Science, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, MIT Press, Routledge Publishers

• Reviewer for PSC-CUNY Research Grants.

TEACHING

• Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Law, Brooklyn College, Spring 2011
• Pragmatism (CUNY Graduate Center), Scientific Revolutions, Philosophies of India and China, Brooklyn College, Fall 2010
• Computer Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Scientific Revolutions, Brooklyn College, Spring 2010
• Scientific Revolutions, Computer Ethics, Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, Brooklyn College, Fall 2009
• Core Computer Science, Brooklyn College; Personhood in Philosophy and Law (CUNY Graduate Center), Spring 2009
• Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property in the Digital Age, Brooklyn College, Fall 2008.
• Core Computer Science, Brooklyn College, Spring 2008
• Philosophy and Feminism, Science and Technology in New York City, Core Computer Science, Brooklyn College, Fall 2007
• Philosophy of Law, Core Computer Science, Brooklyn College, Spring 2007
• CUNY Honors College Seminar 3 (Science and Technology in New York City), Modern Philosophy, Brooklyn College, Fall 2006
• Computer Ethics, Representations of Artificial Intelligence in Film, Brooklyn College, Spring 2006
• CUNY Honors College Seminar 3 (Science and Technology in New York City), Computer Ethics, The Internet, Brooklyn College, Fall 2005
• Compiler Construction, Philosophy of Science, Brooklyn College, Spring 2005
• Theoretical Computer Science, Discrete Mathematics, Social Philosophy, Brooklyn College, Fall 2004
• Artificial Intelligence, Core 5.1, Brooklyn College, Spring 2004
• Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, Brooklyn College, Fall 2003
• Artificial Intelligence, Theoretical Computer Science, Brooklyn College, Spring 2003
• Discrete Mathematics, Brooklyn College, Fall 2002
• Modal Logic, Session II-2001, University of New South Wales. Guest Lecturer on Logics of Knowledge and Belief.
• Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Session I-2001, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales.
• Applied Logic II, Australian Logic Summer School (sponsored by Australian National University), Canberra, Dec 2000 (Material prepared by Maurice Pagnucco).
• Belief Revision: From AGM to Computational Models, with Renata Wasserman and Eduardo Ferme at SBIA-IBERAMIA 2000, Tutorial.
• Theory of Computation, Department of Computer Science, New York University, New York, Spring 2000
• Analysis of Algorithms, Department of Computer Science, Brooklyn College, New York, Fall 1999
• Discrete Structures, Department of Computer Science, Queens College, New York, Spring 1999
• Introduction to Philosophy, Department of Art, Music and Philosophy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, Spring 1997-Fall 1997
• Networking and UNIX, Graphical User Interface Design, School of Continuing and Professional Studies, New York University, New York, Fall 1997-Spring 1999
• Introduction to Computer Science, Department of Computer Science, Baruch College, NY, Fall 1994-Spring 1995.
• PASCAL Programming, The Virtual Classroom, New Jersey Institute of TTechnology, Fall 1993
• Database Management, Management Information Systems, Department of Computer Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, Fall 1988-Spring 1990

STUDENT SUPERVISION

• Doctoral Dissertation, Kamili Posey, CUNY Graduate Center
• Doctoral Thesis Committee, Chris Sula, Phyllis Liang, Michael Collins, Mark Zelcer, CUNY Graduate Center
• Prospectus Examination Committee: Ben Young, Mark Alfano, Hidenori Kurokawa, CUNY Graduate Center
• Doctoral Thesis Examination for University Of New South Wales: David Rajaratnam, Anne Cregan
• Honors Research Project, Naomie Delone, Brooklyn College
• Doctoral Independent Study, Yuri Cantor, CUNY Graduate Center.
• Undergraduate research project, Alex Hoffnung, Starr Bernard, Waseem Illahi, Morgan Ress, Maxim Titley, Brooklyn College, New York.
• Doctoral Committee, Chee-Fon Chang, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.
• Honours Thesis Supervisor, Marc Anthony Ahrens, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
• Doctoral Mentoring, Victor Jauregui, University of New South Wales.

SERVICE ACTIVITIES

• PSC-CUNY Delegate, Brooklyn College Chapter
• Search Committee for Carol Zicklin Chair
• Faculty Council Committee on Honorary Degrees
• Brooklyn College Pre-Law Advisory Council
• Brooklyn College Pre-Law Advisor
• Faculty Council Committee on Honors, Awards, and Scholarships
• Science Division Representative, Faculty Council
• CUNY Honors College Advisement
• Philosophy Department Appointments Committee
• Philosophy Department Technology Co-ordinator
• Philosophy Department Academic Integrity Committee
• Philosophy Department Graduate Fellows Co-Ordination
• Committee on Curriculum Design for Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies
• Department Undergraduate Curriculum Committee
• Department Seminar Co-ordinator
• CUNY Honors College Advisement
• Brooklyn College Arts of Democracy Project
• Brooklyn College Cognitive Science Colloquium