islington
A new Bite Size Discussion Group which will follow a course in
human psychology and the ethics of artificial
intelligence by Carnegie Council called “All Things
Have Standing”. The idea, for those new
to this type of learning, is that you watch by
yourself the videos relevant to the next meeting and
then discuss it in the group at that meeting.
|
| When At 2.30pm on (2023) 6 October, 3
November, 1 December, (2024) 2 February, 1 March, 5
April, 3 May, 7 June, 5 July
|
| Where In-person session from 2:30 pm at a
public venue in Islington on 6 October 2023 to get
to know each other followed by discussions on Zoom
on the first Friday of the next 8 months.
|
Programme
6
October 2023: In-person
session from 2:30 pm at a public venue in Islington to
get to know each other.
3
November 2023: To discuss the
following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 1.1 - Our Stories - Introduction
From
birth and the beginnings of thought, to a future now
upon us, we seek to comprehend radical things in our new
world: changes in the Earth and smart machines in human
form. Is this a cause for wariness, wonder, or abject
terror? Has meaning abandoned us? Or, have we abandoned
meaning? Confronted with complex psychological,
technical, ethical, and legal challenges, we search for
a practical conception of the notion of “being” itself
All
Things
Have Standing: 1.2 - Our Stories - Being
In
this beginning we ponder the foundations of our
humanity. What is the basic psychology of human nature?
What is the essence of the human being, and being human?
What is time? What is the relationship between being and
time? How does addressing these vital questions help us
understand everyday life?
All
Things
Have Standing: 1.3 - Our Stories - Becoming
Human
development is a path. How is our path different from
other animals? What are our instincts for emotional
attachment? Why are humans hyper-social uber-cooperative
collaborators? What is culture? Why does culture engage
our loyalties and stir our passions? And how does
culture help us find meaning amidst existential anxiety?
All
Things
Have Standing: 1.4 - Our Stories - Not Being
Human
beings can envision the future. How does this affect our
thinking, feeling, and being? Is self - awareness a
dreadful burden or the ultimate joy of being human, or
both? What is the impact of the uniquely human awareness
of personal mortality on behavior and motivation? Are
there grounds for hope?
1 December 2023: To
discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 1.5 - Our Stories - Storytelling &
the Self Panel
Narrative
is thought to be the first use of human language. People
have been telling stories and listening to stories since
the inception of our species. Four storytellers from
different cultures describe and discuss the rich
heritage of stories in the human community.
All
Things
Have Standing: 1.6 - Our Stories - Uncertainty
A
musical musing on the usefulness of human uncertainty
2 February
2024: To
discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 2.1 - Others' Stories - Introduction
Helping
find our relationship to others is the central challenge
of ethics. Since antiquity, humans have debated what
that relationship should be. What is good and evil? What
is caring? With a world in pain, care and goodness seem
inadequate to meet the challenges of our time. Is there
a way of ethical thinking–a way of being–that might
serve as a starting point for confronting the great
existential problems of our time?
All
Things
Have Standing: 2.2 - Others' Stories - A Bold
Proposition
Beginning
with the question “How can all things have ethical
standing?” Prof. DiBona introduces traditional ideas
behind Western thinking about otherness and how this has
led to a culture of violence against each other and the
natural world.
All
Things
Have Standing: 2.3 - Others' Stories - Welcoming
Others
What
is
the “other”? How does altering our way of thinking about
the other change how we anticipate – or expect – others
to be and act? What is radical hospitality? What are its
benefits?
All
Things
Have Standing: 2.4 - Others' Stories - Letting Things
Be
Starting
with the question “What is an ethics of things?” Prof.
DiBona describes Prof. Benso’s joining of two traditions
of Western thought. What does an examination of our way
of talking about things teach us about our relationship
to those things? What does “thing” mean? Are language
and behavior conjoined?
All
Things
Have Standing: 2.5 - Others' Stories - An Ethics of
All Things
In
this culminating lecture in the story of the “other,” we
reach the end of the beginning. Drawing on the powerful
thinking of his contemporaries, Prof. DiBona guides us
to an optimistic, life - affirming celebration of
difference, and with Prof. Benso, calls for a daily life
of tenderness and festivity. Is this a reason to hope?
1 March 2024: To discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 2.6 - Others' Stories - On Tenderness
Panel
Scholars
from African, Pacific Indigenous, and Asian cultures
share their professional and personal insights about
what “all things have standing” means in their lives, to
their emotional well-being, and in their fears and joy.
What do these traditions have in common? What can
Western culture learn from them? Our scholars share
their wishes for humanity.
5
April 2024: To
discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.1 - Earth's Stories - Introduction
Prof.
Solomon recaps the ethical framework developed in Part 2
– that all things have standing – and introduces us to
one of its major applications, the care of our Earth. We
explore what that ethical and legal landscape looks like
with scholar and activist Dianne Dillon-Ridgley and
legal respondent, Kathy Robb.
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.2 - Earth's Stories - It's Time to
Mother Earth
Dianne
Dillon-Ridgley proposes a relationship with our physical
environment that replaces what Martin Heidegger
critically called “standing reserve” – the widely
believed notion that all things have meaning only to the
extent that they prove useful to humans.
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.3 - Earth's Stories - What is
Standing?
Environmental
lawyer Kathy Robb explains the relationship between
ethics and the law. What do we mean when we say that our
physical environment has standing?
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.4 - Earth's Stories - Re-Membering
the Future
Dianne
Dillon-Ridgley calls for a thoughtful, deliberate
process of designing our fate by “re-membering our
future,” that is, populating our lives with specific
elements of character like humility and justice.
3
May 2024: To
discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.5 - Earth's Stories - Legal
Challenges to Fresh Thinking
Kathy
Robb addresses the question: As we shift from a human
centric to an ecocentric view of ethical and legal
standing, which rights of personhood might be applied to
things in our environment?
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.6 - Earth's Stories - The Justice
Century
Dianne
Dillon-Ridgley explores the nature of tenderness applied
to the physical world and its relationship to justice.
Using historical examples, she asks us to consider how
making difficult decisions today can bring justice to
what may be legal, but lacks morality and inclusion.
All
Things
Have Standing: 3.7 - Earth's Stories - Momentum &
Urgency
What
is environmental justice? Environmental lawyer Kathy
Robb explores the notion that, in addition to standing,
entities need voice, information, and access to give
power to enforcement on their behalf.
All
Things Have Standing: 3.8 - Earth's Stories - Yosemite
Arches
A
satirical look at the morality of property rights and
the environment.
7
June 2024: To
discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.1 - Future Stories - Introduction
Lead
scholar Prof. Sheldon Solomon introduces Part 4, an
exploration of the ethics of creating, deploying, and
living with artificial general intelligence (AGI) –
machines with human level cognition and emotional
intelligence, or better. Is designing a moral machine
possible? If all things have standing, how should we
listen to and see these new beings in our world, perhaps
misleadingly called “inanimate”? Or at least, can trying
to answer that question guide us in designing machines
that can live safely and with benevolent purpose in
human society?
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.2 - Future Stories - Ethics and
Machines
Scholar
Wendell Wallach, who has spent decades exploring the
development of roboethics, is a “friendly skeptic” with
regard to the advent of true artificial general
intelligence (AGI). But he is very aware that we are
moving into a period of functional morality for machines
and, thus, may need to accept moral standing for these
new beings.
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.3 - Future Stories - Design
Challenges
Wendell
Wallach explores capacities beyond reason – the
suprarational – that are required for moral agency:
hybrid systems that learn from the bottom up and apply
moral models from the top down.
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.4 - Future Stories - Humans as Models
Wallach
looks at the commonalities and differences between
humans and advanced thinking machines to identify where
the biggest challenges and strengths arise in AGI
development – what humans have that machines do not, and
what humans lack.
5
July 2024: To
discuss the following videos:
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.5 - Future Stories - Machine Morality
What
kind of morality could machine morality be? Prof.
Shannon Vallor raises complex ethical issues: Does
rule-following constitute morality? What is the role of
moral understanding in ethical standing? and more.
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.6 - Future Stories - Personhood
What
would it take for intelligent machines to attain
personhood? Prof. Shannon Vallor explores this question,
deeply troubling to many and yet for others, a cause for
a promising reassessment of what it means to be a
person.
All
Things
Have Standing: 4.7 - Future Stories - Machine Virtue
In
this closing chapter of our journey through the ethics
of artificial intelligence, Prof. Shannon Vallor
explores the fundamental philosophical and practical
question humanity must answer if we are to live
harmoniously with smart machines: Is it possible to
build a machine that has virtue?
Moralities of Everyday Life
2022:
7 October: Introductions from Week 1 of the course with 22 min. of videos
- Introduction to the Course.
- What is Morality?
- Philosophical Approaches.
- Reason vs. Emotions.
- The Case of Disgust.
- Cute and Sexy.
- Return to the Trolley Problem.
- The Big Questions.
- Caring About Others.
- How Do We Treat Strangers?
- Empathy and Concern.
- Empathy and its Limits.
- Moral Diversity.
- Moral Universals.
- Evolution of Morality.
- Reciprocal Altruism.
- Development of Morality.
- How Much Can Evolution Explain?
- Guest Lecture, Laurie Santos@1h 10m.
- Discussion with Laurie Santos@28m.
- Moral Differences.
- Kinds of Societies.
- Conservatives and Liberals.
- Disgust and Honor I.
- Disgust and Honor II.
- Religion and Morality I.
- Religion and Morality II.
- Moral Circles.
- The Morality of Group Preference.
- What Groups Matter?
- Stereotypes.
- Economic Games.
- Criticisms of Economic Games.
- How Do We Naturally Respond to Strangers?
- The Problem of Kindness.
- Morality as Part of Our Nature.
- Skepticism About the Self.
- Free Will and the Situation.
- Conclusion.
