MachineMachine /stream - tagged with ethics http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com Daphne Koller: when machines are almost human http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-11-16-building-smarter-machines-that-serve-humanity/daily-maverick-daphne-koller-when-machines-are-almost-human Daphne Koller: when machines are almost human - http://t.co/pYs9zvvH – Dan R.D. (Ddrrnt) http://twitter.com/Ddrrnt/status/187448712191152130 ]]> Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:42:57 -0700 http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-11-16-building-smarter-machines-that-serve-humanity/daily-maverick-daphne-koller-when-machines-are-almost-human The Enlightenment, Naturalism, And The Secularization Of Values http://secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=kors_32_3/council-for-secular-humanism The Enlightenment, Naturalism, And The Secularization Of Values : http://t.co/VVPManIW cc @tomcolls ]]> Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:20:24 -0700 http://secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=kors_32_3/council-for-secular-humanism Bioconservatives vs. Bioprogressives http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/17/bioconservatives-vs-bioprogressives/singlepage/bioconservatives-vs-bioprogressives-reason-magazine Bioconservatives Vs Bioprogressives : http://t.co/DtFlk1Zq #bioethics ]]> Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:36:22 -0700 http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/17/bioconservatives-vs-bioprogressives/singlepage/bioconservatives-vs-bioprogressives-reason-magazine Neuroscience Challenges Old Ideas about Free Will: "Human knowledge can’t help itself in the long run." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=free-will-and-the-brain-michael-gazzaniga-interview Do we have free will? It is an age-old question which has attracted the attention of philosophers, theologians, lawyers and political theorists. Now it is attracting the attention of neuroscience, explains Michael S. Gazzaniga, director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of the new book, “Who’s In Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain.” He spoke with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. ]]> Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:53:13 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=free-will-and-the-brain-michael-gazzaniga-interview Does Pinker’s “Better Angels” Undermine Religious Morality? http://whywereason.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/does-pinkers-better-angels-undermine-religious-morality/ It is often argued that religion makes individuals and the world more just and moral, that it builds character and provides a foundation from which we understand right from wrong, good from evil; if it wasn’t for religion, apologists say, then the world would fall into a Hobbesian state of nature where violence prevails and moral codes fail. To reinforce this contention, they point out that Stalin, Hitler and Mao were atheists to force an illogical causal connection between what they did and what they believed. One way to answer the question of if religion makes people and the world… ]]> Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:58:44 -0700 http://whywereason.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/does-pinkers-better-angels-undermine-religious-morality/ Can religion tell us more than science? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion.

This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study… ]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:12:00 -0700 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 Implications of 'uplifting' http://t.co/cPe2LGJ/implications-of-uplifting-explored-by-thealexknapp-is-it-ethical-to-make-animals-as-smart-as-people-httptcocpe2lgj-forbes-x Implications of 'uplifting' explored by @TheAlexKnapp: Is it Ethical to Make Animals as Smart as People? http://t.co/cPe2LGJ @Forbes #x ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 05:52:00 -0700 http://t.co/cPe2LGJ/implications-of-uplifting-explored-by-thealexknapp-is-it-ethical-to-make-animals-as-smart-as-people-httptcocpe2lgj-forbes-x Regulations proposed for animal–human chimaeras http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110721/full/475438a.html The increasingly sophisticated blending of different species to create chimaeras is pushing biology into a new ethical dimension. Last year, scientists used new stem-cell technologies to create a mouse with a functioning pancreas composed entirely of rat cells. So might it soon be possible to create a monkey with a brain composed entirely of human neurons? And would it think like a human?

Such an animal might be useful to researchers studying human cognition or human-specific pathogens. But it would be ethically unacceptable and should be banned, argues a government-commissioned report from the UK Academy of Medical… ]]> Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:30:09 -0700 http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110721/full/475438a.html Foucault, Deleuze, and the Ethics of Digital Networks http://www.fims.uwo.ca/people/faculty/frohmann/Documents/ICIE%20IV%20Foucault%20Deleuze.pdf Information ethics has become a scholarly growth industry in recent years, especially through the work of Rafael Capurro, the  founder of the International Center forInformation Ethics (ICIE). The maturity of the debate is reflected in the leading question of the International ICIE Symposium 2004 in Karlsruhe, Germany: how isembodied human life possible within local cultural traditions and the horizon of a global digital environment? The Symposium  explores ethical ramifications of thisquestion by encouraging research and reflection on effects of the Internet and postInternet developments of digital networks on a wide range of phenomena, includingcommunity, democracy, customs, language, media, economic development,… ]]> Sat, 11 Jun 2011 02:32:11 -0700 http://www.fims.uwo.ca/people/faculty/frohmann/Documents/ICIE%20IV%20Foucault%20Deleuze.pdf The last stand of the Amazon http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/03/last-stand-of-the-amazon The best way to think about the remaining tribes in 2011 is to imagine a series of concentric circles, all of which interact on each boundary. There are the tribes that stay on their own homelands in the forest (or seek to do so), but who have regular relations with the outside. These retain a strong tribal identity, but they are coming to know the world all too well; they will travel to fight legal battles for their territories and their children will leave for the cities. Then there are a good number of tribes (or parts of tribes) who… ]]> Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:07:07 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/03/last-stand-of-the-amazon The Shadow Scholar http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/ In the past year, I've written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won't find my name on a single paper.

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online… ]]> Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:56:00 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/ Against humanism http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-11-03-midgley-en.html by Mary Midgley

Does the term "humanism" really stand for a new and better form of religion? If so, what is that religion? Or is it something designed as a cure for religion itself, a way to get rid of it on Christopher Hitchens's principle that "religion poisons everything"?

Many people, no doubt, agree with Hitchens. But Auguste Comte, the founding father of modern humanism, would not have been one of them. For him, "humanism" was a word parallel to "theism". It just altered the object worshipped, substituting humanity for God. He called it… ]]> Thu, 04 Nov 2010 06:58:00 -0700 http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-11-03-midgley-en.html The Off-Modern Mirror http://e-flux.com/journal/view/175 by Svetlana Boym

Critic and writer Viktor Shklovsky proposes the figure of the knight’s move in chess that follows “the tortured road of the brave,” preferring it to the master-slave dialectics of “dutiful pawns and kings.” Oblique, diagonal, and zigzag moves reveal the play of human freedom vis-à-vis political teleologies and ideologies that follow suprahuman laws of the invisible hand of the market or of the march of progress.

The twentieth century began with futuristic utopias and dreams of unending development and ended with nostalgia and quests for restoration. The twenty-first century cannot seek… ]]> Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:49:00 -0700 http://e-flux.com/journal/view/175 Matters of life and death http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/10/ethics-trolley-problem/ Trolleyology encapsulates the deepest tensions in our moral outlook. To tease out our moral intuitions, philosophers have come up with ever more ingenious scenarios. The trolley is usually racing towards five unfortunates and the reader is presented with various means to rescue them at the cost of another life, involving props such as obese gentlemen, footbridges, trapdoors and lazy Susans. Some of the examples are so complex that, in the words of one exasperated philosopher, this branch of ethics “makes the Talmud look like Cliffs Notes [a US brand of study guides].” But at its root the trolley problem is… ]]> Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:39:00 -0700 http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/10/ethics-trolley-problem/ The Anthropology of Hackers http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2010/09/the-anthropology-of-hackers/63308/ A "hacker" is a technologist with a love for computing and a "hack" is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means. It doesn't mean to compromise the Pentagon, change your grades, or take down the global financial system, although it can, but that is a very narrow reality of the term. Hackers tend to value a set of liberal principles: freedom, privacy, and access; they tend to adore computers; some gain unauthorized access to technologies, though the degree of illegality greatly varies (and much, even most of hacking, by the definition I set above, is actually legal). But… ]]> Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:08:00 -0700 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2010/09/the-anthropology-of-hackers/63308/ You're Dead. Now What? http://chronicle.com/article/Youre-Dead-Now-What-/123759/ Will my enduring ghost be a mute witness to the goings-on down here, waving its vapory arms frantically at the undead? Or will it be an agent, endowed with the capacity to act? Put differently, if someone chooses to immortalize me in lyric, will I get to sing along?

Extremely odd queries of this sort kept leaping to mind as I perused four recently released books about the afterlife. Two examine what science has to say about the possibility that we persevere even after our bodies have ceased to function. One amasses perceptions of heaven and hell… ]]> Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:29:00 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/Youre-Dead-Now-What-/123759/ Your Move: The Maze of Free Will http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/your-move-the-maze-of-free-will/ You may have heard of determinism, the theory that absolutely everything that happens is causally determined to happen exactly as it does by what has already gone before — right back to the beginning of the universe. You may also believe that determinism is true. (You may also know, contrary to popular opinion, that current science gives us no more reason to think that determinism is false than that determinism is true.) In that case, standing on the steps of the store, it may cross your mind that in five minutes’ time you’ll be able to look back on the… ]]> Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:19:00 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/your-move-the-maze-of-free-will/ Inside Code: A Conversation with Dr. Lane DeNicola and Seph Rodney http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/06/inside-code-a-conversation.html
posted by Daniel Rourke

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to take part in a panel discussion on London based, arts radio station, Resonance FM. It was for The Thread, a lively show that aims to use speech and discussion as a tool for research, opening up new and unexpected angles through the unravelling of conversation.

The Thread's host, London Consortium researcher Seph Rodney, and I were lucky enough to share the discussion with Dr. Lane DeNicola,…

]]> Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:25:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/06/inside-code-a-conversation.html The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: What happens when three men who identify as Jesus are forced to live together? http://www.slate.com/id/2255105/ In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled. "I will not worship you! You're a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!" another snapped back. "No two men are Jesus Christs. … I am the Good Lord!" the third interjected,… ]]> Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:18:00 -0700 http://www.slate.com/id/2255105/ Should This Be the Last Generation? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/ Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself.… ]]> Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:45:00 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/