697 research outputs found
Singularity hypotheses: a scientific and philosophical assessment
No full textSingularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment offers authoritative, jargon-free essays and critical commentaries on accelerating technological progress and the notion of technological singularity. It focuses on conjectures about the intelligence explosion, transhumanism, and whole brain emulation. Recent years have seen a plethora of forecasts about the profound, disruptive impact that is likely to result from further progress in these areas. Many commentators however doubt the scientific rigor of these forecasts, rejecting them as speculative and unfounded. We therefore invited prominent computer scientists, physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists and other thinkers to assess the singularity hypotheses. Their contributions go beyond speculation, providing deep insights into the main issues and a balanced picture of the debate
Johnny Zee / Songs for Our Daughters / The Feelgood Factor
No full textBand, audience, dancers, photographs, cityscape, etc. John Mostyn, Music Publisher, talking about meeting Johnny and Kendall, and being excited by their mixture of bhangra and reggae music. Intercut with shots of band in changing rooms, Johnny in recording studio, all VO. Johnny Zee talking about his career, and how he composes; his collaboration with Kendall; the fusion of Punjabi and English in the lyrics. Intercut with shots of him playing with his dog, playing keyboards, Kendall, Johnny and Kendall in studio, all VO. Kendall talks about his own patois contribution, and taking his own sound to audiences, maintaining his identity. His VO street scenes, builder’s yard. Band playing in builder’s warehouse. Johnny about his background and the difficulty this caused with his family. Intercut with photos of his parents, the family builder’s yard, Johnny in studio, with his girlfriend, all VO. Mostyn says Johnny will have to get away from his family in order to find his audience. Johnny says he can’t abandon his music. The band in performance. Women talking. Pregnant woman in rocking chair. Lisa Crook says people always ask where she’s from – half Guyanese and half English. Mavis Crook-Massey says she’s much lighter-skinned than her other children. Woman and daughter playing hand-clapping game. Carolyn Ebanks talking about mixed-race children, how she wants to give hers a balance of both cultures, and how she points out to them that images in Africa will be of black people while those in Britain will be of whites. Woman reading in dialect to her daughter. Ebanks talking about the need to find books with black characters, black dolls, etc. Woman and daughter. Crook-Massey talking about the difficulties of replacing her hsuband’s potato diet with rice back in the 1950s. Ebanks on making Grenadan gungo pea soup. Woman and daughter shopping for fruit, confronted by black and white people who all complain about the mixed race child. Crook on being light skinned. Her mother tells a story about two women talking about the pair of them. Crook talking about going to Mexico with a Jamaican friend who was ignored by the local people. Ebanks on not wanting her children to believe they were better because they were lighter skinned. Crook doesn’t want to be categorised. Ebanks’s children; she says whatever choices they make, she’ll be there to support them. Woman and daughter. VO says there is a debate about the cultural value of crime thriller by black writers. Steve Pope, Publisher, the X Press, talks about a new style of crime writing Victor Headley’s Yardie, Donald Gorgon’s Cop Killer, Moss Side Massive. Dramatised sequence from Cop Killer. David Upshal, Critic, suggests these books are pulp fiction. Peter Kalu, Author of Lick Shot, also critical of the literary value of some of the books. Upshal: these books represent a very narrow part of black experience. Lee Pinkerton, Journalist, says no book can represent the whole of the black community, and people want to read about this small portion. Discussion continues with Upshall, Pinkerton and Kalu intercut giving opinions of on the undesirability of repeating stereotypes about black people as gangsters, the books being mainly about criminal activity, and there not being enough other books to balance; the universality of some of the themes in the books; one book offering the political message that black people need to organise in order to resist, having a high ranking policeman character being a good thing. Dramatised sequence from Lick Shot, in which DCI Patterson visits Frankie, a police informer. Kalu believes two major themes of his book are justice and the struggle to maintain moral integrity. Cast. Credits
How shall i compare thee? Comparing the prudential value of actual virtual friendship
No full textIt has become commonplace to hold the view that virtual surrogates for the things that are good in life are inferior to their actual, authentic counterparts, including virtual education, virtual skill-demanding activities and virtual acts of creativity. Virtual friendship has also been argued to be inferior to traditional, embodied forms of friendship. Coupled with the view that virtual friendships threaten to replace actual ones, the conclusion is often made that we ought to concentrate our efforts on actual friendships rather than settle for virtual replacements. The purpose of this paper is to offer a balanced and empirically grounded analysis of the relative prudential value of actual and virtual friendship. That is, do actual and virtual friendships differ when it comes to enhancing our subjective well-being? In doing so, I will discuss a number of presuppositions that lie behind common criticisms of virtual friendship. This will include, among other considerations, their potential for replacing actual friendship, as well as the possibility for self-disclosure, trust, sharing and dynamic spread of happiness in virtual worlds. The purpose is not to arrive at a firm, normative conclusion, but rather to introduce a number of considerations that we should take into account in our individual deliberations over which role virtual friendships ought to have in our unique life situations
SuchThatCast Episode 10: Kristin Shrader-Frechette
No full textKristin Shrader-Frechette is O’Neill Family Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She has previously held senior professorships at the University of California and the University of Florida. Author of 16 books and nearly 400 articles, Shrader-Frechette’s theoretical work appears in journals such as Biological Theory, Bioscience, Health Physics, Oikos, Philosophy of Science, Quarterly Review of Biology, Synthese, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Most of her work is concerned with the ethical problems in risk assessment, public health, and environmental justice – especially related to radiological, ecological, and energy-related risks. She has received the World Technology Award, the Global Citizenship Award, and the Catholic Digest named her one of 12 “Heroes for the US and the World”. She has served as an advisor to numerous governments and international organizations, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization. In this conversation, Shrader-Frechette talks about a childhood filled with activism, her fight to give a voice to the poor in the face of company greed (and the personal repercussions), and her use of service teaching to engage students. The red line throughout the episode is her genuine passion for creating a healthier and more just society, showing that philosophers can extend their voice beyond academia and contribute to real change in the world
SuchThatCast Episode 8: John Sutton
No full textJohn Sutton is Professor of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is currently head of the same department, having previously also been head of the Macquarie Philosophy department. He is author of Philosophy and Memory Traces:Descartes to Connectionism (Cambridge University Press, 1998), and co-editor of Descartes’ Natural Philosophy and the Sage journal and Palgrave Macmillan book series Memory Studies. Sutton and I discuss a range of topics, including the occult in literature, Descartes, shared memories, the extended mind hypothesis, identity, skills in sports, and what the role of a philosopher should be in an interdisciplinary setting. There were some audio issues in this episode, in particular some unfortunate rumbling coming from my microphone. I hope this won’t distract from the talk. I should also mention that I thought for a long time I had to label this episode with [explicit lyrics], but Sutton rightly pointed out to me that he did actually say “you folk are wrong”, not quite the same phrase I thought I heard
Well-Being in contemporary society
No full textThis anthology examines the practical role of well-being in contemporary society. It discusses developments such as globalization, consumerism, and the rapid innovation and use of new and emerging technologies, and focuses on the significant impact of these developments on the well-being of people living today. The anthology brings together researchers from various disciplines, including psychology, economics, sociology, philosophy, and development studies. It provides concrete insight on the role and importance of well-being in contemporary society, using a mix of empirical grounding, philosophical rigour, and an emphasis on real-world applications. It is unique in that it seeks to understand the relation between well-being research and its application towards real problems.
SuchThatCast Episode 1: Luciano Floridi
No full textIn the first episode of SuchThatCast, I sit down with Luciano Floridi – who currently holds the Research Chair in philosophy of information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics at the University of Hertfordshire, Department of Philosophy. He is also a Fellow by Special Election of St Cross College, Oxford University, Senior Member of the Faculty of Philosophy and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy at OUCL (the Department of Computer Science), University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on two areas of philosophical research: the philosophy of information and information ethics. In this episode, Floridi takes the opportunity to reveal a driving force behind his philosophy that has never been publicly announced before. For anyone with some knowledge of Floridi’s philosophy, this will come as a huge surprise, and it will change how you perceive his theories from now on. We also discuss the state of computer and information ethics as a field, and how philosophy and academia needs to change radically in order to stay relevant and timely. We also discuss Kant’s noumenon, especially the possibility to get a glimpse of it — and what that ‘it’ may signify, which is connected to the aforementioned revelation and its importance to ethics. We conclude by looking at what lies ahead for Floridi and a philosophical system that is increasingly taking on Germanic proportions
SuchThatCast Episode 4: Noel Sharkey
No full textNoel Sharkey is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield. He holds a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology and a Doctorate of Science, and lectures extensively across academic disciplines, including engineering, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, artificial intelligence and computer science. In addition to having published well over a hundred academic articles and books, Sharkey has worked closely with policy makers and the military to create awareness about the limitations of AI and the dangers of automated warfare. In addition to several media appearances (see below), Noel may be best known to some of you from his appearances as an expert on the BBC television series Robot Wars and Techno Games. We spend most of the episode talking about the dangers of autonomous robots in the battlefield, but we also get a glimpse into Noel’s multifaceted and unconventional background. The conviction, honesty and sense of urgency Noel brings to the table is important and contagious, so I hope it’ll prove inspiring to many of you as well
SuchThatCast Episode 9: John Dupré
No full textJohn Dupré is the director of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society and professor of philosophy at the University of Exeter. Dupré was educated at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge and taught at Oxford, Stanford University and Birkbeck College of the University of London before moving to Exeter. Dupré’s chief work area lies in philosophy of biology, philosophy of the social sciences, and general philosophy of science. Together with Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking, Patrick Suppes and others, he is often regarded as belonging to the “Stanford School” of philosophy of science. In 2010 Dupré was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of his work on Darwinism, and became President-Elect of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. Dupré’s seminal “The Disorder of Things” made a huge impact on me as a philosophy undergrad, and we spend quite some time discussing the background for the book as well as its advancement of a pluralistic model of science as opposed to the common notion of reductionism. We also discuss his complex path through academia, and his work on feminism, evolutionary psychology and other issues centred around the issue of essentialism and the disunity of science
- …
