Showing results for "Ethics and Science" in Science & Engineering

How much faith should we place in what scientists tell us? Is it possible for scientific knowledge to be fully "objective"? What, really, can be defined as science? In the second edition of this very short introduction, Samir Okasha explores the main themes and theories of contemporary philosophy of science and investigates fascinating, challenging questions such as these.

Artificial intelligence powers Google's search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues.

Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games.

In November 2018, the world was shocked to learn that two babies had been born in China with DNA edited while they were embryos - as dramatic a development in genetics as the cloning of Dolly the sheep was in 1996. In this book, Hank Greely, a leading authority on law and genetics, tells the fascinating story of this human experiment and its consequences. Greely explains what Chinese scientist He Jiankui did, how he did it, and how the public and other scientists learned about and reacted to this unprecedented genetic intervention.

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.

Green to Gold is an essential guide for forward-thinking business leaders who see the Green Wave coming and want to profit from it. This audio explores what every executive must know to manage the environmental challenges facing society and business. Based on the authors' years of experience and hundreds of interviews with corporate leaders around the world, Green to Gold, shows how companies generate lasting value.

In The Rights of Mice, Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, takes listeners inside the war between science and anti-vivisection raging across the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its great educational institutions, Harvard and MIT. As animal rights activists attempt to push through city council an ordinance restricting the use of animals in laboratory testing, leaders in the science and medical communities brace for a fight.

Humanism Now is the weekly podcast for everyone curious, interested or actively engaged in secular humanism. Each Sunday, host James Hodgson—founder of Humanise Live—welcomes scientists, philosophers, activists, authors, entrepreneurs and community leaders who are challenging the status quo and building a fairer, kinder world.Together we unpack today’s toughest ethical questions—using reason and compassion instead of dogma—and champion universal human rights and flourishing. Expect in-depth interviews on today's pressing issues, from climate action, protecting freedoms, equality & ...

The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, comprise an ambitious and sweeping agenda that unites economic, social, and environmental aims. What resources do the world's religious and secular traditions offer in support of these objectives? Which principles do these traditions hold in common? This book presents an in-depth and deeply engaged conversation among interfaith religious leaders and interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners in pursuit of an ethical consensus that could ground sustainable development efforts.

Described by Jeffrey Masson as "the single best introduction to animal rights ever written," this new book by Tom Regan will structure the animal rights debate for generations to come. In a style at once simple and elegant, Regan dispels the negative image of animal rights advocates perpetrated by the mass media, unmasks the fraudulent rhetoric of "humane treatment" favored by animal exploiters, and explains why existing laws function to legitimize institutional cruelty.

Beginning with the seemingly simple question "what is human?" Fr. FitzGerald investigates the implications of modern science. Several lectures are devoted to stem cells. What are they, where do they come from, and how are they used? Does it matter if a stem cell comes from an embryo versus bone marrow, the placenta, or skin? Examine the promise and dangers of stem cell research. The world marveled at Dolly, the first cloned sheep, and now cloning is widespread. What is cloning, how is it done, and are humans being cloned now?

For academic researchers, filling out an institutional ethics review form can sometimes feel like an administrative burden to clear before ‘actual research.’ But what if instead we had the opportunity to pause and reflect on what's currently relevant to the ethics of our research topics and disciplines. ‘Ethics, unboxed’ delves into these questions to consider how we can ‘unbox’ our approach to ethics beyond the ‘check box’ procedure in ways that inform and align with our research approaches. In this limited series, we interview a variety of university lecturers and ...

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?

In this highly original book, Russell Blackford discusses the intersection of science fiction and humanity’s moral imagination. With the rise of science and technology in the 19th century, and our continually improving understanding of the cosmos, writers and thinkers soon began to imagine futures greatly different from the present. Science fiction was born out of the realization that future techno-scientific advances could dramatically change the world.

Why social, racial, and economic justice are just as crucial as science in determining how humans can reverse climate catastrophe We are facing a climate catastrophe. A plethora of studies describe the damage we’ve already done, the droughts, the wildfires, the super-storms, the melting...

Among all life on Earth, we alone experience rich moral emotions, follow complex rules governing how we treat one another, and engage in moral dialogue. But how did human morality evolve? And can humans become morally evolved? In A Better Ape, Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell draw on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution.

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male?

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history. What is sustainability? Is it always about the environment? What science do we need to fully grasp what it requires? What does sustainability mean for business? How can governments plan for a sustainable future?

In the new essays collected here, an interdisciplinary group of scholars asks age-old questions about the nature and well-being of humans in the context of a revolutionary new biotechnology - one that has the potential to change the genetic make-up of both existing people and future generations. Welcoming listeners who study related issues and those not yet familiar with the formal study of bioethics, the authors of these essays open up a conversation about the ethics of gene editing.

From the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference there was a concerted international effort to stop climate change. Yet greenhouse gas emissions increased, atmospheric concentrations grew, and global warming became an observable fact of life. In this book, philosopher Dale Jamieson explains what climate change is, why we have failed to stop it, and why it still matters what we do.