Virtual Reality: The Ethics of Future Technology (Spring 2021, Tufts ExCollege)↓

Syllabus

Humanity has expressed a remarkable capacity to invent and manipulate new realities. From dreams and ancient storytelling to modern 3d superhero movies and VR video games, we are all captivated by the process of losing ourselves in different worlds and different possibilities.

Nowhere is this drive more pronounced than in the rapid rise of modern “alternate reality” technologies. In this course, we will begin to explore some of the philosophical and ethical implications of the development of virtual reality in light of the meteoric rise of modern technology and the tremendous impact it has had on the human experience. In addition to investigating the history and technology of VR, MR (mixed reality), and AR (Augmented Reality), we will seek answers to difficult questions concerning the phenomenology, metaphysics, and social and ethical implications of VR technologies. What does it mean for something to be “virtual?” What is “real” about virtual reality? Are we all in a giant simulation? Would it matter if we were? Can we model consciousness and even develop robust artificial intelligences using lessons learned from VR technologies? Are we destined for a virtual future and what would it mean if we could change our appearance as easily as we can change a VR avatar? Can VR technology allow us a special window into the embodied experience of others? How will VR change the way we communicate, work, and learn?

In addition to classic texts in the philosophy of virtuality and technology by thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, and Martin Heidegger, we will also read seminal texts in the history of the technological development of VR by thinkers like Ivan Southerland and Michael Heim and cutting edge philosophical research by David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, and Thomas Metzinger. Over the course of this semester, students will select and pursue their own semester-long research project on a subject in the philosophy of virtual reality. This project will be developed in several steps and with several different expressions, culminating in a class conference and an online class journal (you can find an example from a past semester at www.techandethics.com). During the second half of the semester and as student projects develop, a portion of our readings for each week will be selected by students from their independent research projects. This format invites collaboration between students on their research projects and provides important opportunities for students to discuss their findings. Public health situation permitting, we will also get some hands-on experience with VR equipment through the Brookline Interactive Group.

Ethics (Summer 2021, Boston University)↓

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Digital Writing & Research: Future, Futurism, & Technology (Spring 2020, Boston University)↓

Syllabus

Although we are often encouraged to write what we know, the best research writing is motivated by our interest in the unknown: What do we want to discover, how can we discover it, and what are the most effective ways to communicate our discoveries? These questions will drive our work in WR 152. Building on WR 120 or its equivalent, this class will help you cultivate your writing and research skills through a range of assignments, including a scholarly research essay in which you will be responsible for identifying and refining a topic, devising research questions, and answering those questions by finding and using a range of scholarly and non-scholarly sources. As a course that earns a Hub Unit in Digital/Multimedia Expression, WR 152 will also give you an opportunity to analyze different media and modes, such as podcasts, websites, and artwork, and to compose them yourself as you translate your academic writing into different forms for different audiences. Even as it will draw on the principles of traditional rhetoric, this is a course about the ways twenty-first century writers can communicate both ethically and effectively. No special technological knowledge is required.

The specific topic of this section is “Future, Futurism, and Technology: Philosophizing the Unknown” In this course, we will begin to investigate the meteoric rise of modern technology, the tremendous impact it has had on the human experience, and what it might mean for our future as individuals and as a species. Rather than providing an historical overview of a particular technology or set of technologies, this course will investigate the more general role technology plays in human life, its benefits, the damage it can cause, its moral weight, and its implications for the future. The question of this class is not simply “what will happen,” but “what should we do next?” We will be reading texts regarding important figures in the history of technology such as Alan Turing, futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil, and theorists who are more wary, such as Martin Heidegger and Danah Boyd.

This class culminated in the first edition of the Online Journal of Philosophy and Technology, a class journal dedicated to exploring the ethical implications of emerging technologies.

Writing & Phil. Seminar: Art, Existentialism, & Authenticity (Fall 2019, Boston University)↓

Syllabus

In this class, we will take a journey the history of Western Existential thought by focusing on one of its driving questions: what does it mean to be me? What is authenticity? Is it possible to be an “authentic self,” or are demands for authenticity hopelessly confused? In what ways do the experiences involved in creating and encountering works of art reflect or require authenticity? If art can be “authentic,” what would that authenticity entail?

Over the course of the semester, we will explore these questions and others like them through close engagements with literature, film, and other works of art that are themselves responses to the existential questions of freedom and authenticity. In addition to reading central existential figures, such as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir, we will analyze films such as Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly and Ron Fricke’s Samsara; novels like Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; performance art like The Artist is Present by Marina Abromovic, and the paintings of Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Caravaggio. We will also consider how conversations are able to cross genres, media, and generations and how the practices of writing and producing art are themselves existential projects.

Research & Phil. Seminar: Future, Futurism, & Technology (Spring 2019, Boston University)↓

Syllabus

In this course, we will begin to investigate the meteoric rise of modern technology, the tremendous impact it has had on the human experience, and what it might mean for our future as individuals and as a species. We will be reading texts regarding important figures in the history of technology such as Alan Turing, futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil, and theorists who are more wary, such as Martin Heidegger and Danah Boyd and asking questions about the role algorithms play in daily life, the growing power of social media and surveillance capital, the promising and startling future of artificial intelligence, and the potential world changing effects of genetic engineering.

Through a Glass Darkly: Art, Existentialism, & Freedom (Fall 2018, Boston University)↓

Syllabus

What is freedom? In what sense are we free to act? In what ways do the experiences involved in creating and encountering works of art enable or subvert human freedom? In this course we will explore these questions and others like them through close engagements with literature, film, and other works of art that are themselves responses to the existential question of freedom. In addition to reading central existential figures such as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir, we will analyze films such as Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, Ron Fricke’s Samsara, and Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre; plays such as Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit; novels like Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha; and the paintings of Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Caravaggio. We will also consider how conversations are able to cross genres, media, and generations and how the practices of writing and producing art are themselves existential projects.

Great Philosophers (Summer 2015, Boston University)↓

Syllabus

This course will take a somewhat unusual approach to introducing philosophy by engaging with Immanuel Kant's famous "three questions" as outlined in his Critique of Pure Reason (A805/B833): "1. What can I know? 2. What ought I do? 3. What may I hope?" Rather than approaching these questions directly, we will take a somewhat meandering course through the history of philosophy, engaging with several of the most important philosophers of the Western tradition, most notably Martin Heidegger, and Fredrich Nietzsche. We will also be investigating (albeit more briefly) with the works of Plato, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Søren Kierkegaard. As will be demonstrated throughout the semester, the answers to the above three questions blur together quite interestingly for many of these philosophers.

Justice in an Age of Pandemic and Racial Reckoning (Fall 2020, Harvard University, Prof. Michael Sandel)↓

This course explores classical and contemporary theories of justice and applies them to the ethical issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example: Should we be willing to accept a certain number of deaths to re-open economic activity? Should the state use surveillance tracking of citizens to enforce social distancing? Is it wrong to pay people to submit to certain risks, such as testing new vaccines? What, if anything, does the experience of the pandemic suggest about how our economy and society should be organized?

The course addresses debates about equality and inequality, individual rights and the common good, the role of markets and government. Readings from Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls, and articles on contemporary controversies. This course invites and equips students to reflect critically on their moral and political convictions in relation to the pandemic and beyond.

Democracy and its Discontents (Spring, 2020 Harvard Extension, Prof. Sean Gray)↓

What does democracy mean to ordinary citizens today? Over the past few decades, our understanding of democracy has evolved significantly. There is a renewed debate about democracy’s meanings, as well as the institutions and practices that democracy requires. This interest has been inspired by a third wave of democratization in developing countries, as well as growing concerns about populism and political disaffection within established liberal democracies. Contemporary democratic theory is now diverse, expansive, and exciting, offering multiple opportunities for students to combine normatively significant problems and perspectives with empirical research.

This survey course is intended to acquaint students with some of democracy’s possibilities. Each week, we will explore a different theoretical component of modern democratic institutions and practices, including: elections, civil society, participation, representation, disagreement, deliberation, equality and diversity, the role of the judiciary, and institutional design. Students will gain an appreciation of the varieties of democratic thought, a knowledge of the key concepts and debates in the field, and a sense of how democratic ideals are approximated in institutional forms. Our energies in the final weeks of the course will be devoted to considering the practical possibilities for democratic institutional design and reform. If the ideal of democracy is to thrive in the 21st Century, it is essential for us to continue to find ways of making democratic forms of governance meaningful and relevant to people’s everyday lives.

Tech Ethics: AI, Biotech, and the Future of Human Nature (Fall 2019, Harvard University, Profs. Michael Sandel and Doug Melton))↓

Syllabus

The course explores the moral, social, and political implications of new technologies. Will biotechnology and AI enable us to hack humanity? Should we edit the genes of our children, extend the human lifespan, and genetically enhance our athletic ability and IQ? Can algorithms be fair? Will robots make work obsolete? Can smart machines out think us? In an age of big data and social media, is privacy over? Is democracy?

The course will ask how science and technology are transforming the way we work, learn, make friends, raise children, care for our health, conduct our politics, and understand what it means to be human.

Existentialism (Spring 2018, Boston University, Prof. Walter Hopp)↓

The central philosophical and literary figures commonly regarded as existentialists are a diverse bunch, but are united in their skepticism concerning the power of traditional philosophical or scientific analysis to render human thought and action intelligible, the value they place on individual authenticity, and the importance they assign to emotionally exceptional states of mind for the full disclosure of human (and even non-human) reality. In this course we will examine works by Kierkegaard, Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Kafka, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. We will be especially concerned with what these thinkers have to say about the condition of modern humanity, the ability of science to explain human action, the authority of moral laws, the importance of individual “authenticity,” and the“ absurdity” of human life, either with or without God.

Politics and Philosophy (Fall 2017, Boston University, Prof. Charles Griswold)↓

This course is an introduction to several major themes and questions in political philosophy, such as: What is justice? Does a free and fair society include a free market? What, if anything, legitimizes the exercise of governmental power? What are the arguments for and against the "social contract"? Are anarchism and utopianism defensible? What are the foundations of property rights, liberty, and equality? Can and should politics be conducted philosophically? While quite a bit of attention will be given to modern European thought (and so to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx, for example), we will also examine works both by contemporary authors and by Plato. Current topics (likely concerning immigration and global justice) will be discussed as well. Throughout, we will cultivate the fundamental philosophical skills of analysis and argumentation as we delve into issues of great contemporary importance.

Intro to Ethics (Spring 2016, Boston University, Prof. Paul Katsafanas)↓

Many of us want to have meaningful lives. But what is it for a life to be meaningful? What makes some lives better or more meaningful than others? Can life as a whole have some significance or meaning? In exploring these questions, we’ll ask whether the happy life is different than the meaningful life; we’ll study the nature of happiness and satisfaction; and we’ll look at the way in which questions about meaning relate to questions about value.

Philosophy and the Arts (Spring 2015, Boston University, Prof. Allen Speight)↓

What makes something beautiful? How do different arts (music, dance, painting, sculpture and architecture) relate to different aspects of our aesthetic experience of the world? In this course, we will explore several famous philosophical theories of art and discuss them in connection with numerous specific examples of artwork in the various genres.

We'll start (syllabus section I) with a look at some of the earliest human artworks ever created (the drawings in the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc, which have been elegantly filmed by the director Werner Herzog) and with the question of how we recognize art in our current world (an interesting experiment with whether people on the Washington Metro would recognize a master violinist playing during their commute, along with a consideration of what Walter Benjamin calls art in the "age of mechanical reproduction").

In the theoretical part of the semester (syllabus sections II-IV), we'll examine several famous theories of art and aesthetics, from the notion of art as imitation in Plato and Aristotle to the articulation and critique of aesthetics in figures such as Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schiller, Tolstoy, Heidegger, Dewey and Collingwood. In the last half of the semester (syllabus section V), our attention will turn to specific artistic genres themselves—music, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, drama and film—and what makes them similar to and different from one another. A final unit (section VI) will take up the question of what the late critic Arthur Danto called the “end of art” and its relation, among other things, to institutional processes and commercialization.

Art is experiential and not confined to a classroom, so this course will make use of a number of excursions and occasions for engaging art. Since one goal of the course is to think about how to cultivate a sense of what art matters, part of course participation will include the creation of individual student portfolios of significant art (these can include not only works that you appreciate but works that you may create, if you wish). We will also try to draw on the specific expertise of students who engage in various arts, so in-class presentations are also welcome. There will be two papers (one on a figure in the history of aesthetics from the first half of the semester and one that is a narrative accompaniment to the portfolio assignment).

Medical Ethics (Fall 2014, Boston University, Prof. Benjamin Sherman)↓

In this course we will consider the situations medical professionals sometimes face that raise distinctly ethical question, explore ways to respond to ethical dilemmas, and discuss some important ethical controversies in modern medicine. Students will learn to distinguish ethical questions from other sorts of tough questions medical professionals face, including scientific and legal questions. By studying the major ethical principles and theories that guide medical practice, students will develop their ability to engage in moral reasoning when faced with difficult decisions. And by covering important contemporary controversies, the course will prepare students for some of the debates they are likely to face in their professional lives, and give them a clear understanding of the different ethical positions that motivate these debates.