dr. D. Babushkina PhD (Dina)

I am an assistant professor in philosophy of technology & society, Section of Philosophy (BMS), University of Twente. I am also a research fellow at the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies (Gravitation Program). I have a PhD in History of Philosophy (Dr. Phil; focus on Idealism and existentialism) and a PhD in Ethics (Dr. SocSc; focus on moral psychology and normative ethics). 

Key words: 

(responsible) moral agency;
moral psychology (beliefs, desires, motivation, moral judgements);
value theory;
personal identity (and technology: digital self);
hybrid agency;
ethics-through-epistemology of AI (https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/aiethicsandepistemology/);
responsible decision-making with AI;
cognition and technology;
the human and AI;
narratives;
existentialism (Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky);
history of philosophy (especially, neo-hegelianism, F.H. Bradley https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bradley-moral/)

Organisations

My primary research interest is in philosophy of artificial intelligence and “smart” robotics. My approach combines ethics, epistemology, psychology, philosophical anthropology, and computer science. One of the core elements of my approach can be called "ethics-through-epistemology", a claim that for the solution of ethical problems with AI, we must understand how AI transforms information and how its outcomes relate to knowledge.

More specifically, I am looking into questions about:

• the interaction between AI and humans, esp. AI as a player in interpersonal relationships; 
• the ways in which personhood and agency change due to our interactions with AI and data-mining technologies (incl. digital twins, digital identity, hybridization of personhood and cognitive agency, esp. the ways in which AI is integrated into decision making processes);
• the ways in which life experiences (e.g. interpersonal relationships, phenomenology of living environments) transform as a result of the integration of artificial agents as mediators of such experiences.

Domain-wise, I primarily focus on AI and robotics in healthcare & social care, psychotherapy (esp. patent’s perspective) and companionship, and AI for cities (esp. citizens’ perspective & lived experiences).

I am the coordinator of the UT's Ethics and Epistemology of AI Initiative (EthEpi of AI). Feel free to get in touch!

Publications

Other contributions

Please note that the system shows only selected publications during last five years. For the full list of publications, please inquire by email. 

Research profiles

My main teaching areas are: ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, history of ideas, philosophy of art and culture. Feel free to contact me for a teaching collaboration or a course offer on:

- philosophical topics in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. For example (but not limited to): responsibility, agency; values; normatively; duties and obligations; transparency; cognition, intelligence, knowledge; cultural aspects; societal aspects; humanistic aspects (dignity, self-realisation, well-bing, fulfilment etc); identity; ethics-through-epistemology approach; reality and mind (real, non-real, ideal, hyperreal)
- philosophical aspects of human-machine interaction. For example (but not limited to): relationships between persons vs relationships with artefacts; emotive computing; norms and values; care; respect; trust; reasonable expectations 
- symbolism: the nature of signs, cultural aspects of signs; semiotics; AI and symbolic systems; real, non-real, hyper-real; mind and the world
- existentialism and philosophical anthropology: What matters for the human in the age of AI? How core human experiences are being disrupted by modern technology?
- moral philosophy: responsibility; values (especially, moral vs social); norms; duties; meta-ethics (moral motivation, moral judgement); moral agency and moral self; normativity of our relationships with others; moral reasons (justification vs explanation); role of emotions; moral beliefs; ethics of beliefs; virtues; dignity
- philosophical aspects of art and narratives;
- cultural determinants of sustainability and our relationship with the environment
- history of philosophy and history of ideas.

Affiliated study programs

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2023/2024

Organisations