Transcripts For CSPAN2 Bioethics And Transhumanism 20170810

Now to Princeton University in new jersey for a look at the bioethics of medical technology aimed at enhancing the physical and mental capabilities that human beings. This is about an hour and a half. We turn rather abruptly from the prescientific to the scientific, from the Human Experience of the human to the scientific account of man, simplifications and what we imagine to be its implications. In book seven, chapter one of the metaphysics, aristotle says, quote, in fact the thing that has been sought both anciently and now and always and is always perplexing is what is being, end quote. Does this question apply to the being that is asking to us . If so, and it seems so, then to paraphrase aristotle, the inquiry and perplexity in early times and now always exist, what is human being . Our panelists are christopher tollison, distinguished professor of philosophy at the university of south carolina. Charles rubin come associate professor of Political Science at Duquesne University and author of the clips of man, Human Extinction in the meaning of progress. Adam kuiper of the ethics and Public Policy center, editor of the new atlantis. Thank you berry match. It is a pleasure to be here. Unlike most of the panelists so far, i am not a former student. In fact, i was introduced yesterday morning. I feel the need to ask permission. Can i claim leon . Okay. Even though im not a student, i did feel a special kinship with leon yesterday. My wife and i homeschool our children and i was very surprised to hearing them describe so accurately at the end of the q a session are high school curriculum, firstyear bible. [laughter] i might be on cspan, so im not going to say more about that. [laughter] so, our panel title is bioethics in the transhuman future. In the email to me, brad wilson also threw into the subject heading the posthuman future, just for good measure. The question i will ask today is what you posthuman and transhuman mean . I am going to argue that they have no meaning, no condition that could be described in either of these ways. All the conditions that see these names are read during possibilities, deficient human conditions or amplification, but not changes of human nature that already exist. Everything in category c. Is, i think im intrinsically permissible, but some of it might be impermissible because of its side effects and much of it is impermissible and approach. The way it is reasonable to expect weekend achieve are themselves often morally impermissible and that all suggest that the end something familiar about her likely future. It turns posthuman and transhuman are thought to refer to a kind of being descended from or perhaps caused by or created by human beings, but no longer of that species. We consider generations now and imagine various modifications and transformations of our descendents to the point at which looking forward, we are no longer willing to say that those descendents are humane. This is the possibility that i denied because everything falls into one of those three categories ive mentioned. Spavone imagined possibilities that seem to me to be instances that are the following. The first, which leon yesterday referred to as the big enchilada , just by nature gets capitalized when i wrote it down as better posthuman defendant will be a mortal. The second related or posthuman descendents may primarily be forms of information downloaded onto various platforms. Third, our descendents might be transformed over time by succession of prosthetics or brain computer interfaces to the point that their intelligence is that some artificial pit or posthuman future would be the future of a certain kind of machine. Now, if there entities that many of these resorts, they legitimately deserve to be postor transhuman if as i think human beings are living animals and have material beings from his farm is nevertheless an immaterial and intellect and soul, which itself is not identical to the person any of us is. The description of ourselves as is the essence of what we are a rational animals. Anything not a rational animal can be one of us and none of the three possibilities mentioned would or could be rational animals or they would not be one of us. So could they constitute a different kind of person, rational beings that were not rational animals . The answer to this is no poor i dont recognize the three dont recognize these three imagine outcomes has real possibilities. No material persons could by their nature be a mortal because we are bodily beings and does contain the inevitable seeds around decay and decline peers to no animal in this world is immortal and no immortal thing in this world is an animal or indeed any material being at all. Later could a principal or person in principle be replicable or Downloadable Software because persons are certain medieval thought and some contemporary personal thought incommunicable. The communicability of persons concerns their intrinsic uniqueness into the circular argument like this. Persons cant be replicated because they are unique because they are persons. The idea can be linked to the idea of Human Dignity i found and reason and choice. Choice is by its nature on replicable and nonexchangeable. The choice that you make can always only be your choice and it couldnt be inherited by a cloner repeated by realization of a piece of software multiple platforms. Anything not numerically identical to you, that is not the very same living organism as you that thinks its made a choice you made is in error an error in fact the compromises they been economy saddling the consequences of the choice the mother made into which it is not consented under allusion. Since no person is communicable, deity of replicable persons, downloadable persons is an illusion. But it is also probably the only possible way to think about immortal persons since no material being can be immortal. The project of keeping them is obviously a miracle, but the project of keeping persons in a state of pure information is conceptually incoherent. There are no possible beings who could reasonably be called transhuman two men who would be to send from us. I think these reasons also rule out future machine persons have been Artificial Intelligence scenarios. Merely material things are replicable and not capable of free choice and rational thought that they are entirely determined by the laws of nature. I am not really worried about the rise of the machines, although i found many of the movies that are raised on that promise enjoyable. [laughter] so, the idea, the things that really would be posthuman, thinking of the future and something that would be reasonable to describe his posthuman, immortal persons or persons that are not rational beings are in fact impossibilities. One other impossibility related to what we just discussed, and julians alaska would admire a person have argued any human Enhancement Program should be moral enhancement come in making to be a more morally developed pcs. Otherwise the vast new powers who might develop would likely be used for ill with extremely bad consequences. Add people, but smarter bad people. This is also premarital. Morality in the final analysis about having analysis about how to operate well in this isnt something made to be the case for another person. Only ones own choices and act of self constitution can make one to be a person with morally upright character. The attempts to make the moral or more moral is one that by its own nature can succeed. What about beef. Modifications to human beings by the prophets of the posthumans that are conceivable and will be realized to some extent to the future. Prospects are ball veered prospects have all feared often as unambiguous benefits to human beings by defenders very think not thought of in that way. The most plausible maybe because in some cases are actual concern parameters of human reproduction is the specifically process. Reproduction without sex is reality with ivf babies comprising not an insignificant part of the population. Those would like to see the process moved forward to become more the norm both ethically and descriptively. Those who undertake in how children should do so responsibly from the screen not affect her children and eventually modifying embryos are game is ensure desired qualities. Failure to do so is viewed as a clear violation of moral responsibilities. Most people will agree that the best way to have children is one which puts as much power as possible into the hands of the parents and their doctors in order to bring about the desired results. Among the more extreme proponents of the posthumans, sometimes suggest or argue the process inevitably will or should give rise to human beings be nonreproducing species. Here utopian philosophy means dystopian fiction as pointed out. For a variety of reasons, but shouldnt think of a widespread loss of reproduction as again, even if it meant only healthy, smart, goodlooking children were the result. As has already been indicated to a certain extent the last days of the work that thinkers like leon, cs lewis, paul ramsey and many catholics give reason for thinking the activity of between loving spouses is the uniquely appropriate way for human persons to come to existence. The manufacture of persons is incompatible with their dignity as being what they should not miss the existence is to be called into being at well. Loving can proceed in the hope that it will come to fruition. This is incompatible with confidence that one will get 11 wants them to fester in the singular case or as i think in vitro fertilization is much more so thinking about the future of our species. Human beings to evolve in such a way that their reproductive capacities fall into destitute would be not in evolution but a disaster. So it is not a posthuman to use the word refined and lands work is not used posthuman. What makes a proposed enhancement beyond the side of the boundary between decided dehumanization and see it, that which is intrinsically permissible, even if that might be practically ill advised or amoral in its pursuit. Almost 10 years ago with Ryan Andersen in an article edited by adam keper, those basic goods of human flourishing. Such goods include life help, knowledge, work, play, friendship, marriage, personal integrity and religion. Each offers the foundational reason for action increments about what the other is. Each reflects an aspect of our complex nature which has potentialities pointing in many different directions. Hence enhancement proposals and projects, the point of which is to block, damage or destroy avenues the pursuit of basic goods we argued are always impermissible and those that threaten to be Greater Avenues to pursue it as a side effect or to be treated with great suspicion. Any effort to make us a nonreproducing species falls into the first category and directly threatened the good of marriage is the first the realization averted the good is to be found in children conceived in the marital act. They noted the possibility and other techniques to block painful memories that seems at odds with the goods of knowledge and personal integrity. Use of such drugs isnt even necessarily a step on the road to the posthuman, but one could imagine enhancements or interventions that could be distorted of these goods. Deliberately creating a line of human beings that couldnt see or hear, for example would be an attempt to deprive some persons of capacities intrinsic to our priority to seek knowledge and also be contrary to good health. Less directly, some proposals or possibilities we could imagine could destroy the boundaries between persons that enable friendship on one hand and unnecessary forms of privacy on the other. Some current or evolving technologies do this by creating artificial boundaries between persons or by destroying natural but essential boundaries between persons. Virtual realities and simulation technologies threaten to do the former. Efforts to make human beings more or even maximally transparent as in some forms of bureau imaging or threatening the latter. Eroding privacy, these technologies erode the sovereignty of the south that is necessary for self giving in the form of truthful communication and interpersonal trust. These are technologies and not direct forms of evolution, but could be made into direct forms of evolution. They dont need to worry about fact ton capacity to pursue human goods such as friendship. We are intended to erode the capacity intrinsically wrong but isnt only a side effect of something good in another way there would be good reasons to be the enhancement is dehumanizing and no real reason still, the fluidity of this category indicates the existence of category c. Of and enhancement possible and yet in no real way of poster transhuman. Is there a principled way of identifying the boundary . Any reasonable grounds in which to be wary of possibilities in that category. They think there is both. My proposal, which is rudimentary and in need of refinement might be Something Like this, enhancements to aspects of our bodies including our brains that are instrumental to our pursuit of basic goods are in themselves permissible. We consider range of physical enhancement that might be possible. Stronger, smarter faster human beings, more fertile human beings, diseaseresistant human beings are a possible way of enhancing the human that would be conducive to the pursuit of genuine human goods. Moreover, they might involve towards any or all of these states and would have no real reason to mourn that situation. There are probably very gray areas here and i will mention just one that i think is kind of interesting. The human form in the human day start each and sometimes both together capable of great beauty. Could human beings be modified in ways that enhance the beauty . They could and by argument, that would in itself be permissible. Could they be modified for the worst aesthetically . Again, yes. As some motivations here, they make the product intrinsically immoral. The desire to make human beings ugly, the attempt to deny in the human beings are human beings. And these all seem to me to be denials and are impermissible. The enhancement for the sake of the beautiful and its opposite disagreement about what falls into this category. The most basic. Returning to the general question of enhancing. In many ways in the short enron went out and are pursued for basic human goods. Yet even if we think of this radically to the extent not even currently imaginable, we would not be changing our nature. Human beings are rational animals and are living beings as they would need to be and they like us would also be human beings, however different from us. We would be merely amplifying our naturally given capacity. The field ought not to be quite so open for quite two reasons. As i pointed out in discussing the second category, side effects are always an issue in even intrinsically permissible could bring side effects that should obviously be avoided entirely. Many concerns of what effect on competition would enhancement but the capacities have good and knowing what the possible side effects of conceivable enhancement makes research very difficult and then there is the second reason. And doesnt involve research, experimentation with research on experimentation with an interventions upon human embryos in ways that are morally wrong. Its morally wrong here includes all research that didnt realize that the andreozzi research performance. Also include embryos and the purpose of which conditions suffered by embryonic human beings. That is embryos ought not to be treated as Research Subjects in the absence of their consent, et cetera necessary to save their lives and help them to avoid radical deficiencies. The only kinds of permissible therapeutic intent to those to enhance. The enhancement therapy is notoriously vague and also mentioned yesterday. It seems to me essential. If there are to be listed interventions in human beings that affect our individual or species as part of an attempt to enable us to speak the good and new superior ways which are not attempts to cure disease, then those interventions should only be pursued with subjects. Some such modifications may be inheritable, but i would suspect most wouldnt be. So the guideline were to be followed, i expect the past are modified but no way transcended human would be much lower than we might otherwise expect. Here is my final point. I dont expect the Scientific Research will go forward only immoral permissible ways. We are genuine enhancement that issue as opposed to futile attempts to create the impossible or perhaps wellintentioned but misguided attempt that resulted dehumanization. I expect in the future our situation will be this. Some good things enjoyed by those human beings will be the result of the immoral unjust and horrific action of those human beings ancestors. That is not opposed for transhuman situation to be in at all. Thank you. [applause] charles rubin. I am honored to be included in these panels honoring dr. Kass and therefore much appreciate the kindness of robbie and brad inviting me. Unlike so many others on these panels, my facetoface contact with dr. Kass has been quite limited over the years. I thought it was going to win the lease contact with him, but i am nonetheless deeply and gratefully indebted to him. His voice is one of those that i am in dialogue with in my head as i am writing the presentation like i am making for you today and i hope what im about to say does justice to the gratitude i feel for him. But i guess i also have to say that the peter lawlers voices the other. Hes the other guy in the interior monologues. Hes usually considerably less patient than mr. Kass. More critical, more likely to point out the weakness of my faith, but greatly valued for all of that. Today we see wide interest in an Ongoing Research and development of artificially intelligent robots as companions, caregivers , partners. Japan has become famous, for developing caregiver robots to deal with the ongoing deficit of its own citizens for looking after an aging population. But its happening all over. Indeed, just yesterday the Scientific American is a posting headline grandmas little robot. Machines that can read and react to social cues may be more acceptable companions and caregivers. And i know that this audience will appreciate the great caution of that formulation. They may be more acceptable as companions and caregivers. It seems to be academic future is. The robots are the next big thing in the sex trade and creation of sex bots is ongoing. Actual results so far have quite a gap between the sensationalistic claims that the headlines and the actual achievements that are visible in the photographs in the videos that appear a Company Named these stories on legitimate website. [laughter] but nevertheless, the effort is ongoing and is backed by powerful, commercial and in the case of the caregiving robots, medical motives. At the same time, their impressive developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence as has been highlighted recently by self driving cars did you see them knocking frequently on the streets of pittsburgh these days from a program that plays well at the highest level, various highquality medical diagnostic systems that have come online as it were. These are admittedly not examples of what is usually called strong a. I. , Artificial Intelligence that shows that a mike the full range of the abilities of the human mind. Increasingly these expert systems style a. I. Are developed through programming techniques that allowed them in effect to teach themselves, which to me at least suggest the possibility of developing far more wideranging intellectual abilities at some point in the future and i think not necessarily a very distant point. In short, given the rapid rate of Technological Development in the longerterm may well be that an effort to create an artificial humanlike mind is not a fools errand and already it could be matched with a virtual body, and onscreen body that under limited circumstances might be mistaken for human and an onscreen encounter and in the not distant future, im confident that these avatars will become yet more convincing. Talking to one of them will like talking to someone youre escaping with. Real embodiment they think is further off than many of those working on the field seem to think. These people often team to have a 2 million syndrome when promoting their own works. But i have no doubt of the ingenuity to try and appear as well. The achievement of the robot with a humanlike mind in a humanlike body would certainly be great advance from the perspective of those who advocate a posthuman future and is no longer bound to the organic body that has been decreased by the random processes of evolution. Note that the drive for these humanlike robot has little for the most part to do with these transhuman and posthuman aspirations. In Popular Culture, it is very firmly established the future includes the development of these kinds of robotic beans and has been for some time. It is my understanding that a great many of those engaged in the development of a. I. And robotics cringe at the notion that either a. I. Or the robot itself would have to be humanlike. A self driving car, for example, does not need a robot taxi driver chomping on artificial cigar at the wheel in order to keep the emotionally rich applications of Artificial Intelligence im speaking about would not have to push the boundaries of modeling as closely as possible to both human and intellectual physical capacity. After all, we know the people already engage in sex acts with objects, inanimate objects and dolls. Anyway, they are real education in this sort of thing. Many of the emotionally supportive robots that are being developed model human and animal interactions rather than human Human Interaction in their embodiments are corresponded to that. Of course a nurse robot would not have to look like a human nurse to take a temperature or give an injection or issue you your medication. Yet i think we should not take Popular Culture seriously because our imaginations do push not unreasonably in the opposite direction. It is our particular physicality that allows us to perform the function that the same physicality calls for asset sales. Our bodies and minds allow us to use the tools in play than many rules of human beings require of each other because we are minded and embodied in the way that we are. In addition of course the familiar form of our physicality provides potential for being comforting or pleasurable in and of itself. Popular culture has also wondered for many decades about the morals that is of these very humanlike robot. Academic culture is beginning to catch on. More and more you are seen articles with the title will robots have rights or should robots have right . That is kind of the common rubric so far. If we sought moral grounds on which to distinguish robots from humans, we might think about distinctions between Artificial Intelligence and natural intelligence or behavior that appears to be conscious versus actually having selfconsciousness. These at any rate with the familiar categories with which to frame these kinds of questions. Today i want to propose that we might do well to introduce the somewhat less familiar category and these contacts, seoul. It seems to me and the soul allows us to confront the challenges of humanlike robot will present to us at least as well and probably better than thinking about a. I. Or consciousness. To start out, we need to consider albeit schematically why people think about souls at all. Without meaning the role of revelation, talk of soul it seems to me arises that is in my head, by the way, citing the role of revelation. Talk of soul arises pretty naturally out of the various perennial human question about perennial Human Experiences. How was that we maintain a sense of identity despite physical changes over time. What accounts for a sense of being whole, despite the fact that we experience all the time the fact that we are manifestly collections apart that do not actually always works out well together. And most fundamentally for present purposes, it seems to me we wonder how it is that we are different from cats and that are different from stones. That is to say we talk about soul because first of all we want to get in some way at the fact that animals embodied beings as they are our unlike stone in the mens and to that extent out on the merits. But we are we think unlike animals in our ability to make deliberate or intentional choice is coming to act creatively, to confound experts addition, to be torn, have immortal longings in a few possible points of distinction. So we have a soul that is some way probably with respect to intellect transcends the animal, allows us a certain kind of freedom. What this soul is maybe mysterious. It may be not unlike the cosmologists dark matter. That is to say when we look at the heavens, we are seeing the results of this dark matter all the time, even though we never see the dark matter itself, at least not so far. So too is a soul which may be present to us all the time and still be elusive. Now, present company excepted, it is fair to say that just now the sole is not an interesting concept for most errors. Still for scientists and even loss of religious people seem to have pretty much given up on it. But that did not mean that most of us have stopped noticing that caps are not stones and people are not cats. There are some working very hard not to notice that. This is still our experience in the world. Today we try to explain those experiences that led us to seoul by talking about consciousness are selfconsciousness in that of soul. We speak of consciousness today not because from the start to fundamental Human Experiences have changed, but largely because theres Raymond Martin and john have documented in their book naturalization of the soul, moderate philosophers wanted to give an account of human beings that was free of the mysteries of the immaterial soul. Here they argue it was particularly important introducing a concept of consciousness that his critics at least took to be a direct attack at the notion of an immaterial soul. Seems to me the authors might have said more about hobbes than they do, but in any case for those who follow, it can be said that the cant type of consciousness was the kind of promissory note. At some point it was going to be possible to explain human beings on truly materialistic and deterministic grounds. Human consciousness like capstones and Everything Else we observed in nature ought to be explicable in terms of matter in motion, what we call human freedom than arguably becomes a product of our ignorance of causes. Someday we will come to see just how illusory it is in our mortal longings pay infinite task of determining the causes of being spared consciousness ultimately promises to explain many of the things that soul attempted to explain, but the explanations are explaining away. Now bad day may be coming, but it certainly has not yet arrived. The promissory note to still is out. People deeply schooled in the topic of consciousness argued this differs to you about what it is and where it comes from. A harcourt and under free of the Supreme Court justice famously observed that even if he could not define it, i know it when i see it. And it is the lively debate over animal consciousness suggests that we are not all that sure that we no consciousness even when we see it. The most telling indication of this impasse for me seems to be for me as now there are some who in the faith that these uncertainties want to argue that consciousness like soul is actually an illusion. So they can only be quite conscious of the fact we have little understanding of consciousness. To that extent, most of the mysteries of the human way of being in the world that the soul was to talk about remaining with us. Now, those ongoing mysteries in the faith of the replacement of soul by consciousness help us understand i think white a. I. Developers turn away from talking and term about consciousness. In so doing they implicitly or explicitly followed the lead of alan turing who separated the issue of intelligence in the issue of consciousness in his famous essay computing machinery and intelligence. He wrote, i do not wish to give the impression that i think there is no mystery about consciousness. But i do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be followed before we can answer the question of which we are concerned in this paper. The question of this paper, following the behavioral orientation than on the rise in psychology was good they are the not could there be a conscious machine or even a thinking machine, but rather an effect could people be convinced that the machine was thinking in the same way that we think. Hence the turing test, simplified version confronts a person with an Artificial Intelligence to see if the person can tout if he is talking to a computer or to a fellow human being. If he cannot, the computer has Artificial Intelligence by touring definitions. If they cannot clarify consciousness then, perhaps we are on firmer ground with a. I. Its further useful to a. I. From the point of view of its developers could be seen as a kind of fulfillment of the materialist promise with respect to consciousness. We understand more or less the materialistic foundations upon which it is built, its function and make any more or less deterministic way. It seems to vindicate the draconian idea that we know what we make. A. I. That appears to think as we think by doing what we do is all around us and quite impressive. Again, all but autonomously driving cars, but the last airplane that you flew on was flown and landed largely by an Artificial Intelligence. They played chess computer Computer Games at the highest levels here they win jeopardy in the same computer that was jeopardy develops recipes. It is taking order for your phone pharmacy, providing customer service, correcting spelling, finding restaurant and movie times. A. I. Is already legion and looks to be growing only more so in the Big Tech Companies are busy gobbling up smaller promising a. I. Developing companies. Told by people who know this world much better than i know it, that some of these successes have been one by abandoning the turing behavioral definition of discursive after congregational Artificial Intelligence. And yet, there is a notorious problem in this field nicely summarized in an interview with theo wendell wallace, quoting him now. It is now become a bit more confusing, let the term a. I. Actually does and does that mean. Largely because every time a goal is reached, such as beating a human at chess, the bargain is raised. Someone says that wasnt really Artificial Intelligence and the way it didnt really play the way a human chess player would play. But even the folks in the more advanced field of Artificial Intelligence that we are just beginning to have true Artificial Intelligence. Iraq should Pay Attention to that phrase it is largely Automated Systems, largely programming through procedures that human beings have thought about in advance. So when misunderstanding, and Automated System on something that true Artificial Intelligence would have. What might that be . One obvious difference is applicability over a broad range of functions and tasks. The prescription taking a. I. Could not play Computer Games come and assistant offensive plane cannot drive a car. An intelligent human can at least potentially do all those things. Potential is an important word however. Many types of intelligence, many degrees of intelligence. What form and degree of intelligence would we have to have two model what wallace is calling true Artificial Intelligence. Automated systems follow routines as a product of previous human thought. And yet no small amount of the Human Knowledge we associate with intelligence arises only on the basis of what i render learned routines. We heard about them yesterday in football and the marines, playing the piano, studying engineering. There are many learned routines. What would we say . Would we say we have an artificially intelligent artist . If you could explain a thought to socrates says badly as the eye and doesnt platonic dialogue of the same name. Or would it have to do better to be true Artificial Intelligence . Now what were it not for pervasive discussion in singularity, and is so far exceeds ours as to become incomprehensible to us. Some liken mans two chimpanzees and relationship to this coming a. I. Virus in relation to the coming a. I. Way beyond us. You might think that this kind of true Artificial Intelligence that wallace is talking about could educate and enhance human intelligence. We would know that we were being genuinely educated if its true i could explain it tells to us, could give an account of the fruits of its intelligence. Perhaps we should say that we could have a dialogue with true Artificial Intelligence and could hold a conversation with a human being that would be like a conversation between two human beings. Contrary to appearances then, the ghost could still haunt our search for true Artificial Intelligence machines that go beyond our native systems. But the ghost of touring is also the ghost of consciousness. His conversations with this machine suggested a self understanding or you need an oblivious menace that was comparable with discussions with a real person because real people dont always know themselves very well. If it exhibited intentionality in this creativity or if it was clueless in its use of cliches, if it understands its novel point of view situated in relationship with other point of view or indeed was just dogmatic and narrowminded, would we say it was not consciousness just because we made it. The turing behavioral model has at least as much going for it. In practice, our plenary judgment that we are dealing with a fellow conscious human being is based on communication, based on embodied appearance. So what not to question the rise all the more powerfully if the machine could communicate with us in all the ways that human beings over 38 with the tone of voice, body language and all the aspects at work when we confront each other in a world and depends upon our embodiment. All such characteristics might convince us that we have true a. I. And they seem to force upon us the question of consciousness again. But if we reach consciousness, we are not so far away from seoul. For it is only on assumption of modern materialism and determinism that we substituted consciousness for soul in the first based on that assumption did not get us as far as we hope. We could conclude that because the machine could appear to be very like a human being, a human being is nothing more than a meat machine that some of our transhumanists would have it. Or we could wonder about the soul of this machine. We could wonder about its integrated powers, its an event is likely and organic powers. We could think about its traffic with the world about the signs by which we see a creating a live to space or inaction space. My intent is blessed to suggest that we have humanlike robots will have stolen some meaning all sense of the term been thinking about them in terms of soul would be at the very least no less reasonable than discussions framed by consciousness or a. I. Indeed, it is more reasonable to the extend that thinking about soul allows us to have a less mediated content with the fundamental Human Experiences that prompt the existential questions of soulfulness in the first place or indeed to the extent that opens us up to the possibility of gratitude directed to the giver of soul. It is from this point of view that are machine they were the richest possible human world and understanding that extend beyond efficiency, beyond convenience and how robots are going to fit into our lives. It might start us along the path to wonder what it means that so many sold among us and not among the least powerful and influential are longing to replace intimate human relations of care, love and even pleasure with machine relationships. Unless we can take a question like that seriously, the kind of question taught to ask him it seems we are setting up for a double failure in the coming world of caregivers and partners. Those relationships could turn out badly if in some manner these artificially Intelligent Machines and the with their human users. For some eventually revealed lack of humanity or they could turn out badly if the machine never disappoints because it is just good enough because our expectations have been lowered just enough about our relationships. Theyve been narrowed just enough about our relationships with those with whom we have relationships of love and care. The very satisfaction gained from the machine relationship forecloses any desire for more complex human relationships. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, professor hassing, george, brad wilson and the undecidable staff at this wonderful conference. I thank you all for your presence here, especially during this difficult hour before lunch. Thank you, Chris Tollefsen for those bracing comments and Charlie Rubin for your insights. For those discussed by this panel i commenced to you Charlie Rubins book, eclipse admin, transhumanism and what it means to be human. There is a display copy outside, the prettiest book on the table. And it is available for sale at an amazon near you. I want to take a moment before starting to say just a few words about peter lawler. Peter was a teacher and a writer who did not shy away from difficult questions. In fact, like in his hero, he relished paradox. He would help us understand how for example we americans could be kryptonian and darwinian and religious. Even not one. He was a warm and funny and joyful and convivial southern gentleman. Like many of you in this room, i feel applies sharply and i am deeply grateful. I am the editor of the new atlantis, a quarterly journal whose focus is the ethical, social, cultural and policy dimensions of modern science and technology. Even before my colleagues and i launched the journal 14 years ago this week, this conference honoree, dr. Leon kass and his wife, amy, were first cherished teachers, mentors, friends and role models for how to be better thinkers of the better writers, better human beings that are citizens. In our work and studies about science and technology, many at the time when we stumbled upon some new idea only to lift our lanterns and see that the things weve just begun to glimpse, dr. Kass saturday seen clearly with wit and wisdom. Writing the first issue of the new atlantis and the very first essay was published in the new atlantis, dr. Kass had the use of biomedical science and technology, not only to seek therapies, but also to pursue ageless bodies, happy souls and dreams of enhancement imperfection. I wish to focus my remarks on a specific technology, one that is central to many transhumanist visions of the future, but under discussed among bioethicists. That is the notion of directly uniting computers with the human nervous system. Our nerves, sense organs, brains. The existence of some such technologies would presumably be a prerequisite for transhumanist most radical schemes for the wish is to download information directly from their minds or to upload their minds into computers where they hope to live on indefinitely in virtuality. Did the world other inventions. Has been broken sewer projects to merge minds into machines. And elon musk the billionaire who founded paypal, spacex and the Tesla Car Company has announced hes starting near a link company that seeks to develop a neural lace. He believes the only way we mere human beings will be able to avoid being entirely outmatched by Artificial Intelligence will be to become one with it. When it comes to robots and ai i guess his thinking is if you cant beat them, join them. I want to say a little about the human meaning of the technologies but please allow me to offer first just a whirlwind tour of the history of neuroelectronics. By the late 18th century is well understood that the brain was the locus of thought and that electricity affected the nervous system. The 19th century brought an increasingly refined understanding of localized brain structures and functions. Scientists learn to map parts of the brain to specific bodily activities. As well as of the cellular constitution of the nervous system. With the aid of better microscopy techniques we could see the shape of individual neurons and the 20 century brought new techniques or imaging the brain starting with xrays and going all the way through to the brain scans that are wonderfully useful in medicine and that make marvelous props for neuroscientists hoping to be explained by claiming they can do much in evidence for the physical workings of some aspect of human nature. Thats when the center also some advances in another much more invasive way of learning about and influencing the brain by plunging electrodes and wires into the living brain and taking electrical measurements from orson electrical impulses into the brain. Research in this area really got cookie in the 1920s when the swiss physiologist Walter Rudolf hess began his studies and found he could effect on the motions and movements of animals by sending electrical charges or currents into the brains but he could even affect their moods. He received a nobel prize for his work by the wit and shared it with the father of lobotomy. Among his successes was james the neurologist who in 1950 discovered the brains Pleasure Center or is he preferred to call it the brains river of reward. You probably recall hearing about his experiment on rats, the reds would forgo opportunities for food and for sex if they could just tap on a lever activating, that would activate a jolt to their brains Pleasure Center. They would sap themselves again and again until they were exhausted. Another researcher in the 1960s started conducting similar experiments on human beings. Often patients in louisianas state mental hospitals. He found he could affect these patients behaviors sometimes to an astonishing degree so that they would contravene for a time seemingly fundamental aspects of their character. And then theres Jose Manuel Rodriguez delgado who in the 1960s implanted a great writing electrodes and early computer chips directly into the brains of animals and human beings. Rodrigue is no doubt it was a spaniard through and through and is most, of the most famous or a stunt in which he played the part of the matador. He weighed a red flag to go bull into charging him. The bull angrily charges and then dell got up at the moment of peril pushes a button and the bull stopped in the strike. Its brain had been applied in events with an electrode. Rodriguez delgado that are needed instantly and hes human subjects behaviors in moods making them feel happy, sad, sexual aggressive, anxious, relax and so on. He came to believe that these techniques could be refined until they could be used to modify minds for the moral improvement of the world. At a bare minimum eliminating irrational violence. He thought microchips could get rid of all that and achieving what he called a psycho civilized society. Research has a progressed as far as Rodriguez Delgado had hoped partly because it turns out its not very easy to find people willing to have invasive brain surgery. [laughing] in order to have the personalities altered. Go figure. Go figure. However, for some people suffering from certain diseases or severe injuries, todays neuroelectronics offer real hope. Relatively simple technique called deep brain stimulation, youre probably out of this comment also inserting electrodes into the brain to commit regular pulses like a pacemaker for the brain that allows some patients with parkinsons disease and some kinds of epilepsy and certain kinds of dyskinesia to find relief from tremors and some other symptoms. For amputees, including no small number of veterans who are recent wars, recent advances from neuroelectronics and robotics have led to new kinds of aesthetics with impressive functionality and control like arms and hands with fully articulated fingers. Several degrees of freedom and responsiveness to electrical impulses sent to muscles and nerves. There have been advances in artificial sight and hearing as well, and for a handful of patients suffering from locked in syndrome, that is, patients who can move just there i or an eyelid or who have even less control over their bodies, brain computer interfaces allowing even very slow and minimal communication have offered at least a partial escape from the greatest state of dependency, awake and sound minded human being can experience. So will these therapeutic applications lead eventually to the direct control of machines by the human mind as the transhumanist hope . Might we be able to enjoy a view of our surroundings thats augmented by whatever relevant information we want or need, the name of the acquaintance standing in front of you, or the identity of the cultivar of rows that you stop to smell . Might we make use of implanted cognitive enhancement such as the ability to learn a language by simply downloading the knowledge instantaneously, or could we dispense with language altogether enjoying a machine in the book lets us communicate with the fluidity and ease mankind supposedly enjoyed before babel. Might we find eternal bliss in fully immersive Virtual Realities . Even setting aside the fact that again its hard to find volunteers for the research, there are several good reasons to be skeptical of these possibilities. Just to put my own cards on the table, i joined chris in believing that transhumanist more far out hopes emerging minds and machines are pretty unlikely. Here are three objections to the transhumanist dreams emerging minds and machines just be evenhanded, i will offer you objections to the objections. First objection. The brain is not a computer. Computers are logical processing devices to operate with Digital Software and hardware but brains, even though their workings rely on the transmission of biochemically generated electrical impulses, brains are not computers no matter how often we hear some plastic and allergies about the brain inputs and outputs and circuits and so on. Even the new analogies i get idea that brains are pattern matching machines or even they still grossly understate what the human brain is and does. To this objection that savvy transhumanist would likely respond well, sure, the brain is not a computer but all that really matters for the purposes of our project is that its workings be sufficiently intelligible and an attributably computers for interface to result in useful action in the world. Second, second closely related objection is that the brain is complex, staggeringly complex. The adult human brain has tens of billions of neurons, billions with a b. Since the neurons are twisted and tortuous entangled with one another, in three dimensions, that means the number of connections and spaces between them, the synapses is vastly greater. There are perhaps some 100 trillion synapses in the brain and we will never invent safe and sufficiently sensitive techniques for gathering up all of that information. To this objection that savvy transhumanist would likely respond well, sure, but we neednt interface perfectly with all those neurons and synapses. Many of those neurons and synapses are in regular use and an intruder by many orders of magnitude would be enough to help us achieve most of our necessary purposes for what we hope to do. Third objection is that this project, released the most ambitious version of it, is built upon a fundamentally mistaken understanding of mind. The transhumanists have inherited a cartesian dualism, a belief in the constitutional separation of body and soul. Although as mark brut pointed at the tender substitute for the oldfashioned world soul, terms like pattern, charlie spoke about this a bit and if the essence, as if the essence of who we are resides in the particular shifting in pattern of the electrochemical signals of the brain. But we are, in fact, psychophysical unities, a mind or soul or Living Pattern cant just be sucked up and moved to another substrate. It can at most be simulated in a course imitation of the original as Chris Tollefsen put it, personhood is incommunicable. To this objection that savvy transhumans would likely respond well, sure, but for our near at hand purposes of emerging minds and machines, that objection doesnt really matter. We can do some Pretty Amazing things without attending to these deep debates about dualism. For the more far out dreams that event substantiating ourselves with machines we dont have to be told us who believe the mind can be transferred. We can barely be functionalists who think replication of the machine would still be a pretty good deal. Since Science Fiction has done so much to shift the popular imagination, creating a widespread acceptance that sometimes humanist dreams will be possible, may be desirable, could be inevitable, i want to spend the money time discussing a novel that hopefully critically touches on some of these topics. Now, much of the fiction about brain implants is distant in ways they can make it difficult to find lessons applicable to out we ought to live well together if they were to become a reality anytime soon. Cyberpunk novels are fun, movies like the matrix are a blast, but they tend to depict worlds quite distant from our everyday concerns. But i knew a least of one book that is a good job of exploring wildlife with the brain implants might look like if they were to become a reality the day after tomorrow. The novel is called feed. From your own research and from an email exchange with author, m. T. Anderson, i gather since its publication in 2002 the book is been assigned reading in school fairly regularly and is the subject of parental protests occasionally, too. Although feed is a darkly, dystopian satire, its quite approachable since at its heart its a boy meets girl love story. The books narrator, a teenager named titus, is a high school student. Like everyone, nearly everyone we meet in the story he is an implant fully integrated into his brain. Such implants are normally inserted during very early childhood, perhaps very soon after birth. This implant technology does away with the need for certain pharmaceuticals since you can desensitize yourself to paint if you got a headache, for example. And you can use to experience the same sort of the facts of drinking or recreational drugs might offer, on demand. The implant also connects you to the feed, system that feeds information directly into your brain. The feed unless people to communicate with one another without speaking aloud to get a lot of enjoyment of entertainment like Virtual Reality games and movies very much like transmitting not just images but full sensory experience. It allows the shaping and storing and sharing of your individual memories so that instead of pouring your friends with your vacation photos, you can bore them with your fully physically felt vacation experiences. [laughing] and all of these wonders are made possible by and for the sake of the feeds constant stream of advertising and shopping opportunities. Our nader raider titus and a small group of his friends go on vacation during spring break taking trip to the moon come place that is already by this point passe. First light of the book, we went to the need to have fun but the moon turned out to completely suck. [laughing] since dr. Kass has told so much about paying attention to the first line of great books, its remarkable that thats the brooks first sentence. It makes you wonder me immediately about what kind of people they are. But the mood is not in fact, completely suck because they do meet a new girl, a new girl violet who attracts titus and is merely the girlfriend by her charmingly weird with and by her beauty. She is as they say not long after they meet her the group of friends hanging out at his lunar party spot encounters a terrorist who some house disables several people some plants including those of titus, veronica and their friends. As they await repairs the dina titus been shown days in hospital ward without the constant flow of entertainment of ads they typically enjoy. They gang horses around, makeup games, squabble, grow frustrated and titus and veronica become closer to one another. When they are all finally connected to the feed it is an ecstatic restoration. Titus narration, the feed was pouring in on us now, all of it come all of the feed that we could feel all of our favorite and our files and chat lines came down as like water. Came down like spring rains and we are dancing in it, dancing in it like rain and we couldnt stop laughing and were running her hands across our bodies feeling delicate and i saw violet almost hysterical with laughter. We found each others hands through like a waterfall and Holding Hands we danced. The teenagers return home and titus in veronica the game going out, getting to know one another and their families, and the differences between them. Titus we learn is normal. He goes to a Normal School and has normal friends and does normal things. Violet though is homeschooled. Her father is a professor of the dead languages. Not greek and latin but basic and fortran. [laughing] and they dont have much money. Titus is bored by everything and unworried by anything. Violet is curious about everything and worried about the world. And most importantly tied his entire life has been shaped by the feed while violet received the implant very late at 87 after her brain and mind have been shaped in important ways. This major implant more sensitive to the hacking attack and since he implant is fully integrated into the brain, the slow degradation and failing of her implant means her life is in danger. Shes dying. Titus doesnt know how to handle this emotionally jarring news about the girl he likes and the response by growing cold towards her. They break up, painfully awkwardly, but in the books final chapter as her implants capacity dwindles, when she is at home comatose before the end, titus visitor and with regret promises to remember her and to tell her story. Thats a quick sketch of the novels plot, just a barebones account. Its a far richer and more haunting story than that hurried summary suggests. But here were a few of the surprising lessons the novel offers row we might live in the together if brain implants were to be a reality. First you might expect these implants in the feed technology enable the worst most intense kind of helicopter parenting. Imagine the able to stoop in on your childs most intimate thoughts and feelings directly. But in the novel it seems the feed makes possible very handsoff parenting. Parents we encountered we seem to take a blase fair approach to raising the kids. Second, you might expect children with access to the feed would be smart and sophisticated sense they enjoy access to all the world information. That is how the technology was originally sold to the public, at least thats how titus recounted. Heres his expedition. People were really excited when they first came out with feeds pick it was all this big educational thing, your child will have the advantage, encyclopedias at their fingertips, close offender fingertips et cetera. Thats one of the great things about the feed that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic like site in history like if you want to know which battles of the civil war George Washington fought in. [laughing] is titus and his friends are typical, the presence of the feed has created in curious shallow children with flat souls and base desires. If you cannot anything instantly, what need is it for the kinds of schools where heads are filled with information . And so instead at school titus industry and learn about how the world can be used, like maine have used our feeds come had to Work Technology and how to find bargains and whats the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom. Maybe the next panel on education will take up this question. Indeed, titus is at his most eloquent when hes describing products that he is shopping for. Hes very attentive to the look and feel of the things he wants to buy. He is an excellent consumer. At any rate it isnt quite fair to say that titus and his friends are failing to be hardworking. Its just that the feed has normalized laziness. Some virtues ceased to be virtues when vices cease to be vices. Third, while you might think that people be tempted to live entirely in Virtual Reality, his account is still very much part of normal life in the novel. Most of the story takes place as friends meet with one another or travel to be together. The enticement of virtuality apparently cannot wholly do away with our social embodied nature which leads us to seek out the bodily presence of others, and interestingly, the idea virtual sex is not even mentioned in the book, which is a fascinating omission. Titus, shallow and stupid though he may be, is still less loudest than his friend and his account of violent is filled with little observations of her ethical presence. Starting with when they first meet, all the way through to the end he notices a slouch of her posture or the softness of her arm. Although even here his observation seem in some way to be mediated by the presence of the feed. In the initial meeting when they first meet he is attracted to her. And one of the odd telling details that lovers will recognize he finds her back, her spine to the particularly fetching. But he cant quite think of the right word to describe it. The feed suggests the word supple. And shortly after that the feed send him an advertisement for a car describing it supple upholstery and ergonomically designed dash. [laughing] and we are left wondering was the ad called that because titus one of the word supple, or was the ad edited instantaneously with the word supple inserted because titus had sought that word . Or whe very thought about violet and her back, and its suppleness, was that very thought itself a creation of the feed intended to direct, to nudge titus towards the ad, towards the purchase . Ill return to the disturbing possibility in just a moment but lets put in the context of a a political life. You might expect people with widespread telepathic brain implants capable of directly sharing their minds deepest feelings and longings might achieve some kind of wonderful harmony with one another, like a grand accommodation of the general will and him or sends oversoul and like george gallops craziest dreams of democracy i polen, right . But the america depicted in feed is a place for politics is stupid, or the president is a demagogue who speaks in platitudes intended to sidestep rather than confront crises that matter, when news outlets often the coverage to make it less depressing, where deliberation and persuasion have given way to banal slogan protests. I hear the snicker. [laughing] i hear the snicker. Although politics is largely in the background of the story, and as with other satires its best not to look to close at the politics and economics of the world being depicted in the novel. You get the strong impression that the people who live with the feed are not wellsuited to political selfgovernment. That makes good sense since they may not be personally selfgoverning anymore. A fact that has deep implications not just for the story but for the nonfiction rain implant project. This is where i will end. We have seen already covering implants in the novel can be violated to hacking attacks. There are hints that corporations around the feed and perhaps hackers can infiltrate minds at night during dreams. And the suggestion of external influence in the story of the word supple leaves us with an ambiguous sense of the minds integrity. Our idea of human freedom is predicated on the understanding that humans can be rational beings and understanding that in turn presumes the integrity of our rational minds. To be sure, our rational mind to him susceptible to extra material influences. Ebenezer scrooge thought that his ghostly interlocutor might just be undigested beef, a fragment of undone potato. Study the effects of different colors on our moods here packard what is about subliminal advertising. Cass sunstein and the behavioral economists want to nudge us into making decisions they prefer. But we could always respond to these sorts of things by telling ourselves that yes, and such things might affect us but our rational minds can rise intact above them. We can learn about those things and learn to overcome them. But to accept brain implants permitting twoway communication as depicted in feed would be to permit the possibility that our minds integrity could be violated in ways we would not always ourselves be in the best position to know. We human beings are enmeshed in complex webs of relationships and embodied in flash that grows and ages and dies. And our freedom and unfreedom, rationality and sub rationality are bound up together. To accept the kinds of brain implants that would permit direct manipulation of mental states were the kinds of neuroelectronics that the transhumanists long for in the hopes of becoming more rational or taking one step further towards becoming pure bodiless mind is just as likely to leave our minds and vulnerable to physical manipulations that subvert our rationality. In leaving behind the supposed did age of the body, we may find that we have created for ourselves a strange new prison, and lost the only key. Thank you. [applause] questions . Can you hear me . Is this mic working . Its a dead . Can you hear me . Who cannot hear me . [laughing] the microphones position. Questions, please. The lady in the center. Thank you for both a very thought provoking and also informative talk. I have learned so much debate about what scientists are even dreaming of doing. Whereas all of you have addressed this question of what you think is possible and what you think is permissible, i was hoping that you could all address the question of what the underlying motivations are that are driving it. From christopher we learned that scientists are trying to take human subjects and create something that is artificial and nonhuman. And from charles we learned that scientists are trying to take materials that are artificial and nonhuman and make them more like humans. And then from adam we learn that scientists are trying to merge humans and artificial materials into this fusion of the two. And underlying all of this is the desire to create something of our own that transcends and is different from what is actually given, and it leads one to think it would be just get all of the scientists into one room for a conversation, especially if leon kass were leading that conversation, that we bite in the end be able to get these scientists who glory in the humanity of the humans and artificiality of the nonhuman. But until that happens could you give us some insight into what is driving the motivations of the scientists so that we can learn how to converse with them . I guess ill take that first. The motivations are, as you would imagine, complicated. In some ways they are tied up with the deeply philanthropic project of medicine, of healing. In ways that are very complicated. I remember i was at a conference maybe a decade ago now, charlie was in there, and had dinner with the scientist who was working on the neuroscience of intelligence, and was hoping to invent, as i recall, some sort of drug i could enhance human intelligence. And as we discussed this and i think even challenged the possibility and wondered about his motivations, he said look, here you are at this table, at this academic conference enjoying this nice dinner. Youve got some kind of intelligence already, but there are lots of people out there who dont have it. My motivation is entirely charitable. I want to help raise their iqs. For other researchers doing other parts of the transhumans project i would say it is, their motivation is a natural outgrowth of the draconian mission to relieve the estate of man, but i think you could argue that maybe they ought to think more deeply about whether mans estate ought to be relieved in its entirety, which i think is arguably the most distant goal, the transhumanists and the posthumanist. I would just add to the medical motive that add a mention. As he sat in his talk there are military motivations as well. In a world where Fighter Pilots have to make splitsecond that decision were quickly to the Artificial Intelligence already flying the plane is going to be extremely useful. And then there are just plain commercial motivations, right . Ai is an important element of commerce, and so just to have a profitable company, to keep at the cutting edge, to have an advantage over ones competitors, thats a very powerful motivation. I would you say that it doesnt seem to me that there need to be any more nor less than the usual range of motivations that human beings do everything for. Some people do things for money, for pleasure, for the good of their fellow human beings across and long range of different possibilities, for the sake of knowledge, or the sake of health, sometimes for the sake of friendship we have this vision if we could usually understand each others mind they will really get along although that is probably not true. And as with every other case in which w were faced with lots of different possibilities, the question is is i wish of these motivation is reasonable and what other reasonable ways to pursue the ones that are reasonable . Well, ambition, ego, the desire to be great, what was their sin but pride, says st. Augustine about the fallen angels. So that seems to be human also and i dont know if theres a fix for that by manipulating brain matter. Benjamin. Let me just, this is not a question but a comment in response to that very good question back there. Theres one more motive we might want to think about with respect to this, and its a motive that peter lawler first taught me about, which is the motive of human restlessness. Our discomfort at sitting alone in rooms by ourselves and our desires to get our minds off ourselves in more absorbing projects. This is a very absorbing project that you all have been described to us, and that might have something to do with it. Okay. Robert. Ill try and turn this speech into a question real quick if i can. Maybe i will direct it to charlie. I was wondering if, whats the root of this, is reductionistic view of human intelligence that is to reduce human intelligence to the ability to manipulate the true world around us and ignoring the idea in the greek sense understanding or insight. I was thinking about plato and the cave analogy again that the folks anchored in the cave, they can respond appropriately to the images. What ai system can do is go up and see the idea of the goods. I can gain the insight that goes beyond that kind of the billy just to manipulate the environment around us. One last thought. I wanted to see, you have been following the debate will reason that i have, and if jr lucas, lucas in the 60s try to build on the arguments along these lines to say that what makes us not machines is exactly the fact that we can have insight into, in mathematical truth. You can design a system to believe every number has a successor, but we dont have any idea how to build a system that can see that every number has a success, has it insight. Im just wonder if we can challenge that aspect of the project and to defend the soul in the sense that you described . I certainly dont have a response to the last part to your, i mean, i simply dont know enough. But the first part of your work allows me to clarify that i did give a somewhat version of touring who is, in fact, for more reductionist even than the native out to be as reductionistic as far as hes concerned, that is no point if one wants Artificial Intelligence to worry about a body at all. That is just a distraction. And so there is a very severe reduction of intelligence to just ability to communicate on any particularly given topic that the wine engaged in the conversation might want to communicate in. I think that yes indeed, i mean, theres a tremendous turning away in turing from things that if you really wanted to take a truly behavioral approach, right, to understand human things youd have to pay a tremendous amount of attention. Turing just wasnt interested. I dont think you will disagree with this at all, but i think it is, theres a danger in words like insight because theyre so easily appropriated to describe things that effect cant be done by machines same one side or animals on the other side. The realization that you can stick the piece of grass into the anthill looks like insight. It is a kind of insight, think of what the boundaries between the kinds of insight they can and cant be done by mitosis is on one side and since the end but not rational systems or animals on the other side i think thats really where the big intellectual problem is. Thank you very much, all of you, for the fasting presentation. We spoke yesterday about arrows being somehow central to the human being and human agency and human logging and perhaps freedom. And following on the gentleness comment about insight and intelligence being central to humanity, i wonder how these murder genes may affect the death of eros. One last note come when adam talked about the supple leather and the car advertisement and the suppleness of the young womans back, it seemed to me that a mind with an implant could say why do i have to deal with the supple woman when i can just buy a car supple leather and not have to mess around with the nastiness of love . And then i thought, ive actually heard people say variations of that to me. So i wondered if you could speak about the death of eros from these technologies . Thank you. Thanks for that easy question. [laughing] i think you are right to see connection between that question, your question, in the previous question about creativity. There is a deep connection between eros and the kind of creativity that both human beings and nonhuman animals engage in. If we can use the word creativity, and i think we can come to describe certain kinds of animal activities. You know, the death of eros is a story thats been told again and again, and its hard to keep a good eros down. [laughing] certainly in feed, the novel, you get the sense that while it may sometimes be misdirected, it hasnt gone away entirely. I think that some of the worries about erotic misdirection, im thinking here of some of our once concerns, have not disappeared but have not been as civilization ending only diet as may be were foretold. In no small part because of the kinds of beings we are, right, its not easy to overcome our given nature, or if you prefer to overcome millions of years of evolution. And eros is here to stay. But the question of its connection to different kinds of creativity is a very difficult one, for all the reason chris just mentioned we dont understand anything about reactivity. If you read the literature about creativity and Artificial Intelligence, its awful pick the people who write the stuff dont understand, human creativity and they dont understand ms. Shaheen creativity, and they dont understand that when you talk about machines that are composing music or making paintings, thats not at all what, they are just following instructions, sometimes instructions removed at some degrees and sometimes with levels of randomness built in but theyre following instructions that came from a genuinely creative being outside and because the machine itself is not something capable of the kinds of longing that creativity depends on. Longing that is dependent upon actually being in the world in a way that we animals are and in a way that our artificially intelligent creations are not. I think its a really interesting question. I just want to Say Something from a much broader standpoint than adam. I think that there is a way in which some of these, the more extreme pictures, and obvious way in which the more extreme pictures are parasitic on christian and maybe in some cases visions of the final tell off. What would you have if you had it all. And in some of those visions even some of the christian visions, although not all of them, ar, are antierotic in the sense that theres this thought when you have it all, you have it all. Theres nothing else to want. This is a real difficulty in figuring out what conception of the person is true and goes with the conception of what it would mean to find ones truest fulfillment is being an erotic being as part of our essence, then it cant be the case that even in the final state of things we have it all in such a way that we have nothing else to do or seek or to pursue or to desire. The idea that our final resting place is one that in some ways static which is the picture of the singularity is a kind of static picture. I think that has to be wrong if it really does mean as it seems the end of erotic longing. Well said. One wonders if the specialist pursuing this Research Even understands your point. Thats whats kind of worry summer. On available for consultation. [laughing] leon. Thank you really for a wonderful panel and im not surprised and not disappointed that a group of intellectuals would come at the possible transhuman future primarily through Artificial Intelligence and brain machine interactions that an academic would remind us that using one greek source, that we are rational animals. After all, but theres an older greek source that use call human beings the mortals. And i was, this is really for chris buffer anybody else. You rather quickly set aside immortality as one of the dreams thats impossible. And that may very well be right, though there are people at work and in this business who think seriously the opposite. I suppose someone will have to wait and see. But it seems to me that, it seems to me that rather significant life extension, short of immortality is very likely in the offing, given the already remarkable results that have been achieved by locating various kinds of genes that control the species specific lifespan. And could we talk about the implications for what it means to be human for a rather large extension of life span, where the relations among the generations would be different, the meaning of time as lived. I mean, the gift of time is very great, but the perception of time extending out indefinitely before you, may be a curse. Im wondering whether all kinds of things that matter to us dont depend upon the fact that the end is rather visible if weve got eyes enough to see it. I think thats a great question and i think, im curious myself whether it illustrates the difference between the way you approach this and the way that i would approach this. You put aside total immortality and just think so we could possibly get thing so we could live a lot longer and not just in the state of decrepitude but really live. My inclination is to approach that entirely in terms of what are the side effects . It seems to me that state of affairs just as such really is good. That there is enough, enough possibility and potentiality for human beings that can be open into the very, very indefinite future in terms of what goods are available to us in a life that we could live for one of years, maybe c200 euros, maybe 400 years. But there are some terrible social side effects assumed the pretty obvious about the relationship between generations and the use of resources between those generations that should put a giant caution all things. It seems to me in your work and the way you think about this, and this is just an invitation for you to correct me. You think more in terms of there being something good about the limited nist and mortality of individual human lives that need to be respected. I guess at the end of the day i dont see that. Death to me is bad. Close off the future that will still have a horizon even when death is right there on my door. And just to that point, so far forth it seems to me not wrong to want to live longer and even much longer. [inaudible] 1000 years . I i really long time. [laughing] you know, again the things that would start to make it seem that it was desirable to not keep going are in some sense there are ask them to be keeping going to ask her if you think that one of the thing so happen after you die is that you have a relationship with your creator, then postponing them for a long time may seem less desirable. And if you think that youre not a good enough person to be able to sustain the relationships with people for 200 years which seems to me quite possible [laughing] then also thats a good reason to think that there should be some limits to how long you should stick around. Though seemed to me to be accidental to the project of just sticking around, just having a longer life and having more goods available to you seems to be good. Last question. [inaudible] ive had more than my say, but look, to be good, to live longer seems intuitively better. But the thing that people who think either biology of aging or the social consequences of aging dont pay enough attention to the psychological effects of the passage of time. The best text on this that i know is aristotle rhetoric book two, the young, the old and those in their prime. And the trouble with the old, and i will speak for them [laughing] is not just that we cant slide into second base anymore and, in fact, have lost the desire even. [laughing] or that most people look at us and cant imagine that we were ever 25. But that all kinds of things go to sleep in us without our even realizing it, owing to the fact that the passage of time, and we have seen all of these things already, i mean, there really is something beautiful about, if you teach you have a tremendous privilege. You see the kind of openness and newness and freshness of people who have not in jaded by having been around too long. And thats quite apart from the society that would welcome you in all sorts of things. The psychological effect, theres some people who are blessed, the older they are, the more eager they are, they dont age. My friend here, my friend here is a youngster, but he is rare. He is rare, and the question is, isnt there some kind of sense that is going to the fact that we have a time of coming up, time a flourishing, time of winding down, a time of letting go, making way . Can i just say one more thing . This ithis is a great question. Its really interesting topic and i think one thing that it does implicate an interesting way come in a way im a little bit suspicious of is the extent to which we think the constraints of narratives should summa be the constraints of our life. Im a little suspicious of that notion. It seems when the incomes is not a literary end. Its a long end. When the incomes is not a literary and it is always the wrong end. When the incomes to the novel, the right novel, if its written the right way the incomes at the right time at the right place. Im suspicious thats ever the case for us. Although im sensitive to why you think that it is and should be. Do you want to take one last question . [inaudible] maybe this is a very good last question. Im wondering what sort of policy regimes you might want to recommend to deal with the problems and challenges that you have raised . I think thats for you. In formulating policy, one does not want to get out ahead of the fences in science and technology in a way that will stultified true humane and beneficial advances, and yet one doesnt want to be so lax that you can permit the advancement of science and technology in a way that would degrade or dehumanize. Youve got to do it just right. And thats very difficult in part because of what i think of as a kind of chain of uncertainties. When we think about the future. The future is not knowable. Just because we can conceive that something, that doesnt mean that its possible. Just because something is possible, that doesnt mean that it will happen. Even if it happens that does mean that is going to happen anything like the way it was anticipated to happen. And even if it happens in Something Like the way it was anticipated to happen, there will be all kinds of unanticipated unintended consequences. Thats very difficult for policymakers to get their heads around, and in a democratic republic like ours, forward thinking is not always one of our strong suits. So my advice to you and to everyone in the room to read a policy journal called the new atlantis in which we are exploring these questions on a quarterly basis and subscription Available Online at the new atlantis. Com. Before i invite you our distinguished panel, let me just say that we have lunch now and then we will reassemble right actor at 2 30 for our panel on liberal education in contemporary truth seeking. So please do join me in thanking our panelists. [applause[applause][inaudible conversations] we will bring another conversation from that conference at princeton in just a moment. First a look at the knights programming on the cspan networks