This paper explores the interrelationship between maize farming, the discourse of modernity, and the performance of a modern farmer in southern Zambia. The post-colonial Zambian government discursively constructed maize as a vehicle for expanding economic modernization into rural Zambia and undoing the colonial government’s urban modernization bias. The pressures of neo-liberal reform have changed this discursive construction in ways that constitute maize as an obstacle to sustained food security in southern Zambia. Despite this discursive change, maize continues to occupy a (...) central position in the farming systems of the region. I argue that the continued prevalence of maize in southern Zambia can be understood as a performance that allows farmers to maintain their identities as modern rural subjects. The paper concludes with the policy implications of the field of performance on two contemporary debates in Zambian food security: the use of GMO crops and the promotion of cassava as a drought tolerant alternative to maize. (shrink)

There is a debate about the possibility of mind-uploading – a process that purportedly transfers human minds and therefore human identities into computers. This paper bypasses the debate about the metaphysics of mind-uploading to address the rationality of submitting yourself to it. I argue that an ineliminable risk that mind-uploading will fail makes it prudentially irrational for humans to undergo it.

In 2009, the United States Air Force aired a series of science fiction-themed recruitment commercials on network television and their official YouTube channel. In these advertisements, the superimposition of science fiction imagery over depictions of Air Force operations frames these missions as near-future sci-fi adventure, ironically summarized by the tagline: “It’s not science fiction. It’s what we do every day.” Focusing on an early advertisement for the Air Force’s Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle, this essay explores how themes essential to the (...) science fiction genre play a role in influencing contemporary attitudes about autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic weapons, as well as the way in which the aesthetic and functional qualities of these advanced technologies are used to frame moral arguments about their use. As a reconfiguration of the near-future battleground in the guise of science fiction, the “Reaper” ad reveals the way in which science fiction has come to serve as a functional-aesthetic benchmark and cultural sounding board, against which “every day” technologies can be measured and claims about their value, ethos, and social appeal are made. This essay explores the ethical entanglements between science fiction film and video games, and military technology, and the complex role science fiction plays in influencing public attitudes towards military technologies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper examines three arguments that use the concept of potential to identify embryos that are morally suitable for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). According to the first argument, due to Ronald Green, the fact that they are scheduled for disposal makes embryos left over from IVF treatments morally appropriate for research. Paul McHugh argues that embryos created by somatic cell nuclear transfer differ from those that result directly from the meeting of sperm and egg in having potential especially (...) conducive to the therapeutic use of their stem cells. I reject both of these arguments. According to the way of making distinctions in embryonic potential that I defend, it is the absence of a functional relationship with a womb that marks embryos morally suitable for ESCR. (shrink)

Transformation is a memorable feature of some of the most iconic works of science fiction. These works feature characters who begin as humans and change into radically different kinds of being. This paper examines transformative change in the context of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies. I discuss how humans should approach the prospect of being body snatched. I argue that we shouldn’t welcome the transformation even if we are convinced that we will have very positive experiences as pod (...) aliens. When considering a transformative change, it is appropriate to give priority to your pre-transformation attitudes to potential future experiences and achievements over your predicted post-transformation attitudes. (shrink)

This paper responds to Nick Bostrom’s suggestion that the threat of a human-unfriendly superintelligenceshould lead us to delay or rethink progress in AI. I allow that progress in AI presents problems that we are currently unable to solve. However; we should distinguish between currently unsolved problems for which there are rational expectations of solutions and currently unsolved problems for which no such expectation is appropriate. The problem of a human-unfriendly superintelligence belongs to the first category. It is rational to proceed (...) on that assumption that we will solve it. These observations do not reduce to zero the existential threat from superintelligence. But we should not permit fear of very improbable negative outcomes to delay the arrival of the expected benefits from AI. (shrink)

This paper addresses two examples of overconfident presentations of utilitarian moral conclusions. First, there is Peter Singer’s widely discussed claim that if the consequences of a medical experiment are sufficiently good to justify the use of animals, then we should be prepared to perform the experiment on human beings with equivalent mental capacities. Second, I consider defences of infanticide or after-birth abortion. I do not challenge the soundness of these arguments. Rather, I accuse those who seek to translate these conclusions (...) into moral advice of a dangerous overconfidence. This paper offers an insurance policy that protects against some of the costs of mistaken moral reasoning. An interest in moral insurance is motivated by the recognition that, in the event that overconfident ethicists have reasoned incorrectly, some actions recommended by their conclusions are not just bad, but very bad. We should reject suggestions that we conduct medical experiments on humans or kill newborns. (shrink)

The question of the existence (or otherwise) of has been debated for thousands of years. The position that there are no such truths comes in several varieties. In this, the first of two consecutive articles by Alchin, we hear a debate on the most common form of relativism: moral relativism.

. Getting and spending. Cultural Values: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 374-382.

This is a response given at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The response considers the gap between the textual Kant (as set out by Insole), and the received Kant, and reflects on how theologians have been too quick either to condemn and dismiss (a poorly interpreted) Kant, (...) or to rehabilitate Kant for theological projects, which Kant would have been opposed to, given his deepest philosophical commitments. (shrink)

This handbook charts and explores recurring themes and approaches to this broad and complex topic, particularly with regard to Theology.

This chapter contains section titled: Two Kinds of Eugenics Technological Possibilities Moral Perplexities Hither Posthumanity?

This chapter contains section titled: Two Biotechnological Tendencies: Polarization and Homogenization Distributing Access to Enhancement Technologies Reducing the Burden of Universal Access Biotechnology's Threat to Citizenship The Importance of Reciprocity The Threat of Homogenization Prejudice and Enhancement Kitcher and Buchanan Et Al. on Resisting Morally Defective Environments A Parallel Between GM Humans and GM Food The Ethics of Shifting Bigotry's Burden.

This paper summarizes a couple of the main arguments from my new book, Humanity’s End. In the book I argue against radical enhancement – the adjustment of human attributes and abilities to levels that greatly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. I’m curious to see what reaction this elicits in a journal whose readership includes some of radical enhancement’s most imaginative and committed advocates.

We can contrast moral relativism, which was discussed in the previous article, with cognitive relativism, which holds that there are no universal truths about the world at all; that the world has no universal characteristics and that there are only different ways of interpreting it. Cognitive relativism is the subject of this article.

Tonti-Fillipini, Nicholas We all have friends or family who are gay or lesbians. These are people we know and love and are a part of our families. The Rudd government's removal of laws that discriminated against them was most significant in ending inequality in the law. Now though we face something very different: the redefinition of marriage to exclude the words "a man and a woman" from what marriage means.

Tacitus is writing about Ireland. In 1967 Ogilvie commented, ‘In melius cannot be taken either with differunt, since it contradicts haud multum, nor with cogniti, since it cannot be imagined that Tacitus was so ignorant of the truth as to suppose that Ireland was better known than England.’ He therefore followed earlier editors in deleting in melius as a possible interpolation by ‘patriotic Irish monks’.

The paper argues a certain parallelism between the perception and the conception of real-world objects. Just as the former is always incomplete, perspectival, and error-prone, so is the latter. We can never claim ultimate correctness for our conception of things. This fact is crucial for communication, because if our own conceptions were claimed as definitive, then we could never be secure in our confidence that we are in communicative touch with one another regarding a common, shared object of communication.

Philosophers traditionally see the task of philosophy as providing rational guidance to thought and action—as answering “the big questions” about the world, ourselves, and our place in its scheme of things. But does philosophy provide such answers? The motto of Phi Beta Kappa, America’s oldest academic confraternity, is the proud dictum “Philosophy is the guide of life”. But is this claim defensible? Does philosophy indeed provide a satisfactory guide to decision and action in the practical affairs of life?

Unter den Stichwörtern 'palingenesis' und apokatastasis studierte Leibniz die Grenzen menschlichen Wissens. Er betonte dabei den Unterschied zwischen unserem menschlichen Wissen, welches begrenzt ist, sowohl im Umfang als auch in seinen Einzelheiten, und dem Wissen Gottes, welches in beiderlei Hinsicht grenzenlos ist. Leibniz betrachtete eine korrekte Einschätzung dieses Umstandes als wesentlich für die Metaphysik. Denn es bedeutet, dass unser theoretisches Wissen nicht in der Lage ist, mit den Einzelheiten der Welt Schritt zu halten - und nicht allein mit ihren tatsächlichen (...) Einzelheiten, sondern auch mit den beobachteten Einzelheiten. Dies bedeutet aber, dass ein gewisser Grad an Verworrenheit unausweichlich für unser perzeptuales und konzeptuales Wissen über die Realität sein wird. (shrink)

Philosophy is shaped by life and life is shaped by philosophy. This is reflected in The Philosophical I, a collection of 16 autobiographical essays by prominent philosophers.