Paperback : £37.77
Science, Virtue, and the Future of Humanity addresses each of the key public policy issues of our techno-future from the perspective of deeply informed and philosophically inclined public intellectuals. Among the issues addressed are the detachment of our idea of justice from any credible foundation; Tocqueville's prescience on how a "cognitive elite" might be the aristocracy to be most feared in our time; robotization and the possibility of being ruled by morally challenged robots; organ markets; the degradation of liberal education by obsessive techno-enthusiasm; biotechnology and biological determinism; the birth dearth and the inevitable erosion of our entitlements; the possibility that our techno-domination is basically an unfolding of the Lockean logic of our foundation; and the future of the free exercise of religion in an aggressively libertarian time. All in all, this book should provoke widespread discussion about the relationship between scientific/technological progress and the one true moral/spiritual progress that takes place over the course of every particular human life.
Science, Virtue, and the Future of Humanity addresses each of the key public policy issues of our techno-future from the perspective of deeply informed and philosophically inclined public intellectuals. Among the issues addressed are the detachment of our idea of justice from any credible foundation; Tocqueville's prescience on how a "cognitive elite" might be the aristocracy to be most feared in our time; robotization and the possibility of being ruled by morally challenged robots; organ markets; the degradation of liberal education by obsessive techno-enthusiasm; biotechnology and biological determinism; the birth dearth and the inevitable erosion of our entitlements; the possibility that our techno-domination is basically an unfolding of the Lockean logic of our foundation; and the future of the free exercise of religion in an aggressively libertarian time. All in all, this book should provoke widespread discussion about the relationship between scientific/technological progress and the one true moral/spiritual progress that takes place over the course of every particular human life.
Introduction. Observations on American Liberty: My Report from the
Front, Peter Augustine Lawler
Chapter 1. Pensions and Health Care in an Aging Society, James C.
Captretta
Chapter 2. The Demographic Challenge to Entitlements: A Comment,
Criticism, and Caveat, William English
Chapter 3. An Earned Humility: Reflections on Professional
Obligations to the Living Kidney Donor, Benjamin Hippen
Chapter 4. The Science of Politics and the Conquest of Nature,
Patrick J. Deneen
Chapter 5. The Problem with 'Friendly' Artificial Intelligence,
Adam Keiper and Ari N. Schulman
Chapter 6. The Case for Enhancing People, Ronald Bailey
Chapter 7. Justice without Foundations, Robert P. Kraynak
Chapter 8. Blame It on My Genotype (if Not My Criminal Brain):
Materialist Metaphysics and the Loss of Human Dignity, J. Daryl
Charles
Chapter 9. Libertarians vs. Liberal Learning, Peter Augustine
Lawler
Chapter 10. Machine Morality and Human Responsibility, Charles T.
Rubin
Chapter 11. Tocqueville on Technology, Benjamin Storey
Chapter 12. The Place of Liberal Education in Contemporary Higher
Education, Marc D. Guerra
Peter Augustine Lawler is Dana Professor of Government at Berry
College.
Marc D. Guerra is associate professor and chair of theology at
Assumption College.
This is a book about the future—the future of liberty, love, and
learning in a scientific age. Ranging from the techno-utopian to
the techno-wary, the authors explore the possible shape of the
world to come. Can we expect an unbounded, creative future? Or is
it true, as Abraham Lincoln said, that ‘This is a world of
compensations,’ a world where both human and cosmic nature (not to
mention divine justice) set limits and establish relations that
have a logic all their own? If even robots need morality, as the AI
theorists are beginning to realize, then we really are ‘stuck with
virtue.’ This insightful and eloquent collection helps us think
more deeply about permanence in the midst of change.
*Diana J. Schaub, Loyola University Maryland*
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