need to be fought for. and they are, there are wonderful people on the staff that support, but they are the dream come the extension and the work of robbie george, and he is a national treasure and the experience we've had you today -- [applause] >> thank you. >> i just paid you back. [laughing] >> well, i will get the final word then by saying leon, if any of what you just said is true, we have a small number of

people, and you at the top of that list, to thank above all for the inspiration. thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> more now from the recent conference at princeton university called a worthy life finding meaning in america. the next panel focuses on bioethics and the potential for technology to advance the physical and mental capabilities of human beings. this is about one hour 45 minutes. >> we turn rather abruptly from the prescientific to the scientific come from the human experience of a human to the scientific account of man, its implications and what we imagine to be its implications.

in book seven chapter one of the metaphysics aristotle says quote, in fact, the thing that is been sought both anciently and now, and always, and is always perplexing, is what is being? 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 and always is this, what is human being? our panelists are christopher tollefson come to see was professor of philosophy university of south carolina, charles rubin, associate professor of political science duquesne university, and author of eclipse of man, human extinction, and the meaning of progress. adam piper of the ethics and

public policy center, manager of the new atlantis. christopher. >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. unlike most of the panelist so far, i'm not a former student of leon. in fact, i feel the need to ask permission, can i call you leon? okay. with that, even though i'm not a student i didn't feel a special kinship with leon yesterday. my wife and i homeschool our children and i was very surprised to hear him describe so accurately at the end of the q&a session high school curriculum, first year bible. [laughing] but it might be at c-span so i

will not say more about that. [laughing] >> so our panel titled is bioethics and the transhuman future. in an e-mail to me, brad wilson also through into the subject heading the word post human future just for good measure. the question i'm going to ask today is what to post human and transhuman mean? i'm going to argue that they have no meaning. there is no condition they could raise only be described in either of these ways. all the conditions that we see these names are either impossibilities, efficient human conditions, or amplifications but not changes of human nature as that already exist. everything in category c is i think intrinsically permissible, but some of it might be impermissible because of its side effects and much of it is impermissible in approach. that is, the way it is readable to expect we get a cheap instances are themselves often

more in principle. that also just at the end tells us something familiar about our likely future. the terms post human and transhuman thought referred to a kind of being descended from or perhaps caused by or created by human beings but no longer of that species. we consider our generations living out and imagine various modifications and transformations of our descendents to the point at which looking forward we are no longer willing to say those descendents are human. this is the possibility that i denied because everything falls into one of the three categories i mentioned. so three imagine possibilities that seem to me to be instances of a on the following. and the first which leon yesterday referred to as the big enchilada, just by nature gets capitalize when i wrote it down, is posthuman to send will be immortal. the second possibility is related to my posthuman descendents might primarily be forms of information i can be

download onto various platforms. and third our descendents might be transformed over time by secession of neural prosthetics brain computer interfaces to the point their intelligence is in some important sense artificial. our posthuman future with into the future of a certain kind of machine. if there were entities of any of these three swords they would legitimately deserve to be called host or transhuman it as i think human beings are living animals and hence material beings whose form is nevertheless, an immaterial and intellect so which is not identical to the person that any of us is. this description gives us the essence of what we are, rational animals. anything that is not a rational animal cannot one of us and none of the three possibilities just mentioned would or could be rational animals. therefore they would that be one of us. so then could they constitute a different kind of person? rational beings that were not rational animals.

i think the answer is no fight it recognize these three imagine outcomes as real possibilities. no material persons could by their nature be immortal because we are bodily beings. we thus contain inevitable seas of her own dk anticline. said no animal in this world is immortal and no immortal thing in this world is an animal or indeed any material being at all. but now the could of principle or person rather in principle be replicable or downloadable as software because persons are as certain medieval theologians thought and some contemporary person was voted incommunicable. this idea the incommunicable of persons concerned their intrinsic uniqueness in an argument like this, persons can't be replicated because they are unique and they are unique because a person. the idea can be linked to the idea of human dignity as found in the capacity for reason and choice. choice is by its nature on

replicable and non-exchangeable. the choice that you make can always or can always only be your choice and it could be inherited a clone or repeated by the realization of a piece of software on multiple platforms. anything not numerically identical to you, that is, not the very same living organism as you that thinks that is made a choice that you made is in error. an error in fact, the compromise is that beings autonomy saddling them with the consequences of the choice that another made into which it is not consented. infants under an illusion. now since no person is communicable the idea of replicable persons, downloadable persons is an illusion. but it also i think probably the only possible way to think about immortal persons that are descended from us and snow building material being can be immortal. the project of keeping maternal beings of my forever just seems to me obviously chimerical but

the project of keeping persons in a state of pure information i think is conceptually incoherent. so the art apostle beings who could reasonably be called transhuman or posthuman who would be descended from us. .. so, the idea, the things that really would be post human, ever thinking into the future to something that would be reasonable to describe as post human, they are in fact

possibilities. one other possibility has argued that the possibility for any human enhancement should be moral and enhancement, making humans more poorly developed. otherwise the new powers we would develop would be used for ill with bad consequences. we would still be bad people but smarter bad people. the project, morality is about having an upright will and this isn't something that can be made to be the case for another person. the attempts to make human beings moral or more moral can succeed. what about b? their modifications to human beings that are conceivable and will be realized by some

accents in the future. prospects that are viewed as unambiguous benefits are not the thought of in that way. the most plausible, maybe, because in some cases it's already actual concern human reproduction. reproduction without sex is a reality with ivf babies. there are those who would like to see this process moved forward to be the norm both ethically and descriptively. those who have children should do so effectivel intentionally. failure to do so is a violation of social responsibility that most people will agree that the best way to have children is

the one which puts as much power as possible in the hands of parents and the doctors to bring about desired results. among the extreme proponents argue

avenues of pursuing these basic goods are always impermissible. those that threaten to degrade them as a side effect are to be treated with great suspicion. it directly threatens the good of marriage. there are threatening possibilities. they noted the possibility of using drugs or other techniques to block painful memories in the seems that good with knowledge and personal activity. use of drugs, one can imagine

enhancements are interventions that could be distorted of of these goods, deliberately creating human beings i couldn't see or hear would be an attempt to deprived capabilities that will be contrary to the good of health. by creating artificial boundaries between persons or by destroying natural but essential boundaries between persons, virtual realities and simulation technologies threatened to do the former. efforts to make human beings more transparent as in some forms of imaging threaten to do the latter. in a rolling humanism, it erodes the self.

these are technologies and not directed forms of evolution but maybe they could be made into direct forms of evolution. no longer they need to worry about the ability to pursue human goods such as friendship. if they were to erode that they would be intrinsically wrong but if it was only a side effect of something that was good in another way there would be reasons to view it as dehumanizing and no reason to think of it as transcending the human condition. still, fluidity is this category that indicates the existence of category c, forms of enhancement that are possible and not posed or trans- human. is there any principle of way of identifying that boundary or things to be weary of things in that category. i think there's both. the first is rudimentary and in the need of refinement.

enhancement to aspects of our body including our brains that are instrumental to our pursuit of basic goods are in themselves permissible. we consider a range of physical enhancements that might be possible, stronger, smarter, faster human beings, all these are possible ways of enhancing the human that would be conducive to the pursuit of genuine human goods. they might involve toward any of or all of these states and we have no reason to mourn that situation. there are some great areas. i'll mention one. the human form and human face are capable of great beauty. could human beings be modified in ways that enhance the beauty. i think they could. my argument would be permissible.

could they be modified for the worst aesthetically, yes. some of the possible motivations make the project intrinsically immoral. the desire to make human beings ugly, and the attempt to modify the human to be reptilian or something else all seem to be denials of that good and so intrinsically, impermissible. there will be a great area for the sake of the beautiful and what falls in the category of the most basic case of tattooin tattooing. returning to the general question of enhancing that which is instrumental to the pursuit of the good, in a sense it seems fairly wide-open. we could enhance them in the future in many ways that would come in the short and long run augment the realization of basic human goods. even if we did this radically

to the extent not currently imaginable, we would not be changing our nature. they are rational animals and of her descendents are rational and living beings, as they would need to be, then they would also be human beings, however different from us. rather than sowing the seeds for the post human we would be amplifying our capabilities. the field ought not to be quite open for two reasons. first, as i pointed out, side effects are always an issue. it can bring side effects that have moral countries that should be avoided. what effect on competition and sport wouldn't have which is a familiar instance. the general difficulty of even knowing what are the possible side effects of global enhancements makes responsible research in this area very difficult, almost to the point.

[inaudible] then there is the second reason. it's difficult for me to imagine significant progress being made on the project of genetically improving human beings that doesn't involve research, experimentation with human embryos in ways that are morally wrong. what's wrong includes all research on embryos and those suffered by embryonic human beings. embryos should be treated as research subjects in the absence of their consent except necessary when to save their lives or to help them avoid radical efficiencies. the only kinds of permissible interventions are those that are attempts to enhance.

it seems to me essential that there are illicit interventions to enable us to seek the good in new and superior ways in which are not attempts to cure disease or alleviate disability than those interventions should only be. [inaudible] some would be inheritable but most wouldn't be. if this guideline was followed i expect the path toward the modified but no way transcended human would be much slower than we might otherwise expect. my final point, i don't expect scientific research will go forward only in morally permissible ways. where genuine enhancements are at issue as opposed to futile attempts or well-intentioned but misguided attempts that results in dehumanization, i expect in the future our

situation will be this, some and perhaps many good things enjoyed by those human beings will be the result of the moral unjust and occasionally horrific actions of those human beings ancestors, and that is not a post or trans- human situation to be in. thank you. [applause] >> i am honored to be included in these panels and much appreciate the kindness of robbery --dash robbie and brad inviting me. unlike so many others on this panel, my face-to-face contact has been quite limited over the years. i thought i was going to win the least contact with him, but i am nonetheless the fully

deeply grateful. i hope what i'm about to say does justice to the gratitude i feel to him, but i guess i also have to say that the peter lawler's is the other guy in these interior monologues, he's usually considerably less patient than mr. kass, more critical, more likely to point out the weakness of my face but greatly valued for all that. today we see wide interest in ongoing research and development of artificially intelligent robots as companions, as caregivers, as

sexual partners. japan has become famous, but it'for dealing developing caregiver robots to look after an aging population. it's happening all over. indeed, the scientific american blogs had a posting headline, grandma's little robot, machine that can read and react to social cues may be more acceptable companions and caregivers. i know this audience will appreciate the great caution of that formulation. they may be more acceptable as companions and caregivers. meanwhile, it seems to be an truism that robots are the next big thing in the sex trade and creation of sex bots are ongoing.

results have quite a gap between the sensationalistic claims of headline and the actual achievements that are visible in photographs and videos that appear competing these stories on legitimate websites. [laughter] , but in nevertheless, the effort is ongoing and it is backed by powerful commercial and, in the case of the caregiving robots, medical motives. at the same time, there are impressive develop developments in artificial intelligence that has been highlighted a self driving cars, a program that plays go at the highest level, various high-quality medical diagnostic systems that have come online. these are admittedly not examples of what is usually called strong ai which is artificial intelligence that

shows something like the full range of the abilities of the human mind. increasingly, these expert systems are developed through programming techniques that allow them to teach themselves which, to me at least suggest the possibility of developing far more wide ranging intellectual abilities at some point in the future. in short, given the notoriously rapid rate of development, in the longer term it may well be that an effort to create an artificial humanlike mind is not a full errand and already it could be matched with a virtual body, and on-screen body that, under limited circumstances, might be mistaken for human in and on-screen encounter, and in the not distant future, i'm confident these avatars will become yet more convincing. talking to one of them will be

like talking to someone you are escaping with. real embodiment is further off than many of those working on the field seem to think. these people often seem to fall prey to a syndrome when promoting their own work, but i have no doubt of the ability of human ingenuity to ultimately try it as well. the achievement of a robot with a human like mind and a humanlike body would be a great advance from the perspective of those who advocate the trans- human or post- human future where intelligence is no longer bound to the constraints of the organic body that has been decreased us as they see it as the random process of evolution. note that the drive for these humanlike robots has little to do with these trans- human and post- human aspirations. now, in popular culture, it is

very firmly established that the future includes the development of these kind of robotic beings and has been for some time. it is my understanding that a great many of those engaged in the development of ai and robotics cringe at the notion that either ai or the robot itself would have to be humanlike. a self driving car, for example, does not need a robot taxi driver at the wheel in order to work, and even the emotionally rich applications of artificial intelligence i'm speaking about would not have to push the boundaries. after all, we know people are already engaged in sex act with objects and dolls. anyway, the tech blogs, many

of the emotionally supportive robots that are being developed model human and animal interaction rather than human human interactions and their embodiments are part of that. of course a nurse robot would not have to look like a human nurse to take a temperature or issue you your medications. yet, i think we should note and take popular culture seriously because our imaginations do push and it's our particular physicality that allows us to perform the many assistive functions that that same physicality calls for. our bodies in our mind allow us to use the tools and play the many roles that human beings require of each other because we are minded and embodied in the way that we are. the familiar form of our physicality provides a potential to be pleasurable in

and of itself. popular culture has also wondered about them moral status of these very humanlike robots. academic culture is beginning to catch on. more and more you are seeing articles with titles should robots have rights. if we sought moral grounds on which to distinguish robots from humans, we might think about distinctions between artificial intelligence or natural intelligence or behavior that appears to be conscience wort versus actually having self-conscious. these would be familiar categories with which to frame these kind of questions. today we want to propose we might do well to introduce what is a somewhat less familiar category in these contacts. it seems to me that they allow us to confront the challenges that humanlike robots will

present to us at least as well and even better than thinking about them in terms of ai or consciousness. we need to consider why people think about soul at all. it arises naturally out of various perennial human questions about perennial human experiences. how is it that we maintain a sense of identity despite physical changes over time. what accounts for our sense of being whole despite the fact that we experience all the time the fact that we are manifestly connected with parts that do not actually always work that well together. most fundamentally for our

present purposes, it seems to me, we wonder how it is we are different from cats and cats are different from stones. we talk about souls because we want to get to the fact that animals, embodied beings are unlike stones and to that extent is on a mess but we are unlike animals in our ability to make deliberate or intentional choices, to act creatively and compound expectations and be torn and have a moral longing. we have a soul that in some way probably with respect to intellect transcends the animal and allows us a certain kind of freedom. what this is may be mysterious. maybe not unlike the cosmologist dark matter that is to say, when we look at the heavens we are seeing the

results of this dark matter all-time even though we never see it. present company excepted there are lots of religious people who seem to have pretty much given up on it. that does not mean that we have stopped noticing that cats are not stones and people are not cats. there are some were working very hard not to notice that. today we talk of consciousness instead of soul, not because from the start the fundamental human experience that leads to

soul top have changed but largely because raymond martin and james have documented in their book naturalization of the soul, modern philosophers wanted to give an account of human things that was free of the mystery of the immaterial soul. they took this to be a direct attack at the notion of an immaterial soul. for those who followed locke, the concept was a promissory note. at some point it was going to be possible to explain human beings on purely materialistic and deterministic grounds.

this becomes a product of our ignorance of causes. someday we will come to see how illusory it is and our immortal longings will be replaced by sign science infinite task. consciousness ultimately promises to explain many of the things that soul tended to explain, but ultimately the explanations are explaining away. that they might be coming but it hasn't arrived.

[inaudible] the most telling impasse for me is that now there are some who in the face of these questions and uncertainties want to argue like soul is actually an allusion. soul is there to talk about and remains with us. those ongoing mysteries in the face of the replacement of soul by consciousness help us understand why ai developers turn away from talking in turn about consciousness. in so doing, they implicitly

or explicitly follow the lead of alan turing who separated the issue of intelligence from the issue of consciousness in his famous essay computing machinery and intelligence. he wrote i do not wish to get give the impression that i think there is no mystery about consciousness, but i do not feel these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question with which we are concerned in this paper. the question of this paper, following the behavior and rise of psychology could it be that a machine is thinking in the way that we think. hence the turing test, a simplified version of which confronts a person with an artificial intelligence to see

if the person can tell if he is talking to a computer or a fellow human being. if it has artificial intelligence by touring definition. if we cannot clarify consciousness, perhaps we are in firmer ground with ai. ai, from the point of its development could be seen as a kind of fulfillment of a material consciousness. it functions in a more or less deterministic way. it seems to vindicate the idea that we know what we make. ai thanks is we think by doing what we do is all around us and quite impressive. all but atomically driving cars and last airplane that you flew on was flown and landed, largely by an

artificial intelligence, they played chess and computer games at the highest level, they win jeopardy in the same computer that wins jeopardy wins recipes. it's an ai taking order. it looks to be growing more so, big tech companies are gobbling up ai companies. i. [inaudible] there is a notorious problem in this field nicely summarized in an interview with wendell wallace.

i am quoting him now. it has now become a bit more confusing, what the term ai does and doesn't mean. largely because every time a goal is reached, such as beating a human at chess, somebody says that wasn't really artificial intelligence in the way that it beat the human at chess, because it didn't really play the way a human chess player would pay play. even the folks in the more advanced fields of artificial intelligence feel today that we are just beginning to have true artificial intelligence that a lot of what we have done so far is largely automating systems that human beings have thought about in advance.

in this understanding, a system lacks something that true artificial intelligence might have. what might that be. one obvious difference is applicable he over a broad range of functions and texts. it cannot play a computer game and a system that flies a plane cannot drive a car but a human can potentially do all these things. there seem to be many types of intelligence and degrees of intelligence. what would we have to have to model what wallace is calling true artificial intelligence. again, wallace said automated systems follow routines and yet no small amount of the human knowledge we associate with on the basis of what our learned routine.

we heard about them yesterday in football and in the marines , playing the piano, studying engineering, there are many learned routines. what would we say? would we say we have an artificially intelligence artist if he could explain himself as badly as the wrap sewed ion does or would have to do better to be true artificial intelligence. the singularity, the point that which similarity exceeds hours as it becomes incomprehensible to us. some like enough to chimpanzees in relationship to this ai. this true artificial intelligence that he is talking about could educate

human intelligence. we would know that we were being genuinely educated if this true ai could explain itself to us and give an account. perhaps we could say we would have a dialogue with true artificial intelligence and hold a conversation with human beings that would be like a conversation between two human beings. contrary to appearances, the ghost of turing could still haunt our search for true artificial intelligence machines. the ghost is also the ghost of consciousness. of conversations with this machine suggested a self understanding or indeed and obliviousness that was comparable to discussions with real people because real people don't always know themselves very well, if it exhibited intentionality in its creativit creativity, or if it was clueless in its use

of cliché, if it understood its novel point of view as a point of view situated in relationship to other points of view, or indeed was just dogmatic and narrowminded, would we say it was not consciousness just because we made it? in practice, our preliminary judgment that we are dealing with a fellow conscious human being is based on communication and based on embodied appearanc appearance. is not the question more powerful if the machine could communicate with us in all the ways that human beings communicate with the tone of voice and body language and all of the aspect that is at work when we confront each other in a world, affects that depend on our embodiment. all such characteristics might convince us that we have true ai and they seem to force upon

us the question of consciousness. again, if we reach consciousness we are not so far away from seoul. it is only on assumption of modern materialism and determinism that we substituted consciousness for soul in the first place and that assumption did not get us as far as we had hoped. we could conclude that because a machine could appear to be very like a human being, a human being is nothing more than a machine as some of our trans- humanists would have it. we could wonder about the soul of this machine and wonder about its integrated power, it's in organic powers. we could think about its traffic with the world, about the signs by which we see it creating a lived space or an action space.

my intent is less to suggest that these as yet only imagined humanlike robots will have meaningful sense in that term than the thinking about them in terms of soul would be at the very least no less reasonable. it's more reasonable to think that soul allows us to have a less mediated pond text with the existential questions of our soulfulness in the first place. indeed to the extent that it opens us up to the possibility of gratitude directed to the giver of soul. it is from this point of view that our machines seem to be, thinking about our machines would give us the richest possible understanding of the human world, and understanding that extends beyond efficiency and convenience and choice and

the other dogmas of our age to question how exactly robots are going to fit into our lives. in my start us along the path to wonder what it means that so many souls among us and not among the least powerful and influential are longing to replace human relations of care, love and even pleasure with machine relationships. unless we can take a question like that seriously, it seems that we are setting ourselves up for a failure in the coming world of robot caregivers and partners. it could turn out badly if in some manner these machines disappoint their human users 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 relationship. they been narrowed with those whom we have relationships of love and care that the very satisfaction gains from the machine relationships or closes any desire for more human relationships. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much thank you for this wonderful

conference. thank all of you for your presence here, especially during this difficult hour before lunch. thank you chris for those comments and charlie written for your insight. for those of you who want to learn more about the subjects discussed by this panel, i commend to you the eclipse of man book, a very smart exploration of trans- humanism and what it means to be human. there is a display copy outside, the prettiest book on the table and it's 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. he was a teacher and a writer who did not shy away from difficult questions. he helped us to understand how

we americans could be religious and puritan enter county and all at once. he was warm and funny and joyful and the southern gentleman. like many of you in this room, i feel his loss sharply and i am deeply grateful to have known him and have worked with him. i am the editor of the new atlantis, a quarterly journal whose focus is the ethical social, cultural dimensions in modern science and technology. even before my colleagues and i will launched the journal 14 years ago this week, this conferences honoree were for us church teachers, mentors, friends and role models for how to be better thinkers,

better riders, better human beings, better citizens. in our work and our studies of science and technology, many was a time where we stumbled upon some new idea only to lift our lanterns and see that the things we've just begun to glimpse doctor cass had already seen clearly and described with wit and wisdom. writing the first issue in the very first essay we published, he explored the subjects related to this panel, the use of biomedical science and technology, not only to seek therapies and cures but also to pursue ageless bodies, happy souls and other dreams of enhancement and protectio perfection. i like to focus on something that is comparatively under discussed.

that is the notion of directly uniting computers with the human nervous system. our nerves, our sense organs, our brain. the existence of some technologies would presumably be a pre-requisite for the most radical scheme that wishes to download information directly into their mind or upload into their mind on two computers where they hope to live into perpetual alley. some of the other things we've talked about, the most far out dream of converting the entire universe into an extended thinking entity. these notions will strike most reasonable people as strange and exciting and bizarre. maybe juvenile, comical. that doesn't mean they are technically implausible. some smart people are betting on them or at least on precursor type technology. darpa, the advanced research

arm that gave the world other inventions like the internet have been working on several projects to merge mines and machines. on mosque, the billionaire who founded spacex and the tesla car company has announced he is starting a company that seeks to develop a narrow lace, reportedly believed that the only way we mirror human beings will be to avoid being outmatched by artificial intelligence and that is to become one with it. when it comes to robots and ai, i guess his thinking is, if you can't beat them, join them but i want to see a little bit about the true meaning of these technologies, but in order to do that please allow me to offer first a world tour of the history of neural electronics. by the late 18th century, it was well understood that the brain was the locust of thought and electricity affected the nervous system.

the 19th century brought an increasingly refined understanding of localized brain structures and functions. scientist learn to map parts of the brain to specific bodily activities as well as the cellular constitution and better techniques where we could see individual neurons. the 20th century brought new techniques for imaging the brain starting with x-rays and going all the way through to the brain scans that are wonderfully useful in medicine. the 20th century also saw major advances in another major much more invasive way of learning about and influencing the brain, by taking electrical measurements from or into the brain. research in this area got

cooking in the 1920s when the swiss physiologist began his studies and found that he could affect not only the motion and movements of animals by sending electrical charges or currents into the brain but he could even affect their mood. he received a nobel prize for his work and shared it with the father of lobotomy. among his successor was the neurologist who discovered the brain's pleasure center where the brain's river of reward. you probably recall hearing about his experiments on rats, the rats who would forgo opportunities for food and sex if they could just tap on a lever that would activate a jolt to their brains pleasure center. they would zap themselves again and again until they were exhausted. another researcher, robert heath started conducting similar experiments on human beings, often patients in louisiana state mental hospital. he found he could affect his

patients behaviors, sometimes to an astonishing degree so they would contravene for a time fundamental aspects of their character. and then there's josé manwell rodriguez who implanted a great variety of electrodes in early computer chips directly into the brains of animals and human beings. he was a spaniard through and through and is probably most famous for a stunt in which he played the part of a matador. he waved a red flag in the bull furious and angrily charges him. and then delgado, at the moment apparel pushes a button and the ball stops in its track. it had been implanted in advance with an electrode. he found he could instantly and drastically shift his

human subjects and mood making them feel happ happy and sad, anxious and so on. he came to believe that these techniques could be refined until they could be used to modify mines within the moral improvement of the world, by eliminating irrational violence. he thought microchips could get rid of all of that and achieve what he called a psycho civilized society. research hasn't progressed as far as he hoped, partly because it's not very easy to find people willing to have invasive brain surgery in order to have the personalities altered. go figure. for some people, today's neural electronics offer real hope, relatively simple technique called deep brain stimulation involved inserting

electrodes for irregular pulses like a pacemaker for the brain that allowed some patients with parkinson's disease and epilepsy to find relief from tremors and other symptoms. for amputees, including no small number of veterans of our recent war, recent advances in robotics have led to new kinds of prosthetics with impressive functionality and control like arms and hands with fully articulated fingers. several degrees of freedom and responsiveness to electric pulses. there's been advances in artificial sight and hearing and for a handful of patients for patients who can move just an eye or an eyelid who ha or who have even less control over their bodies, allowing very slow and minimal communication have offered at

least a partial escape from the greater state of dependency then and awake human being can experience. so, will these therapeutic applications lead eventually to the direct control of machines by the human mind as the trans- humanist hope? might we be able to enjoy a few of our surroundings augmented by whatever relevant information we need like the name of the acquaintance standing in front of you. might we make use of implanted cognitive modes such as the ability to learn and language by downloading the knowledge instantaneously or could we dispense with language altogether enjoying a machine enabled telepathy that lets us communicate with the fluidity and ease mankind supposedly enjoyed before battle. might we find eternal bliss

and the fully immersive realities. even setting aside the fact that again, it's hard to find volunteers for the research and there are several good reasons to be skeptical. just put my own cards on the table, i am joined in believing that there are more far out hopes that are more unlikely. here are three objections to the extremes of merging mines and machines, and just to be evenhanded, i will offer you objections to the objections. first. the brain is not a computer. computers are logical processing devices. they 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 simplistic technology about their inputs and outputs and so on. even the newer analogies like

the idea of a brain being a pattern matching machine, even they grossly understate what the human brain is and does. to this objection, the savvy trans- humanist would likely respond well, sure, the brain is not a computer, but all that really matters for the purpose of our project is if it's intelligible for an interface to result in useful action in the world. second closely related objection is that the brain is complex. the adult human brain has billions of neurons. since they are twisted and tangled with one another in three dimensions, that means the number of connections and spaces is vastly greater. there are perhaps some 100 trillion synapses in the brain and we will never invent

safe techniques for gathering up all of that information. to this objection, the savvy trans- humanist would likely respond well, sure but we need need not interface perfectly. many of those are in regular use and it would be enough to help us achieve most of our necessary purposes for what we hope to do. third objection is that this project are the most ambitious version of it is built upon a fundamentally mistaken understanding of mind. trans- humanist had inherited the dualism, the belief in the separation of body and soul, although they tend to substitute for the old-fashioned word soul, terms like pattern.

if the essence of who we are, but we are in fact psycho physical unities, a mind or soul where we can't just be moved to another substrate but it can be simulated in a course imitation of the original. personhood is incommunicable. to this objection, the savvy trans- humanist would likely respond sure, but our newer at hand purposes, that method doesn't really matter. we can do some pretty amazing things and for the more far out dreams, we don't have to be dualist who believe the mind can be transferred, we can merely be functionalists.

since science fiction has done so much to shift the popular imagination, creating a widespread exception that dreams will be possible, may be desirable, could be inevitable, i want to spend my remaining time discussing a novel that critically touches on some of these topics. now. much of the fiction makes it difficult to find how we live well together if they were to become reality anytime soon. movies like the matrix are a blast but they are distant from her everyday concerns. they do a good job of describing what it might look like. the novel is called feed.

from my own research and e-mail exchange, i gather that since publication in 2002 it has been assigned in schools fairly regularly. although it's quite approachable because it's a boy and a girl love story. the book narrator, a teenager is a high school student. nearly everyone we meet, he has an implant fully integrated in his brain. such implants are normally implanted in early childhood. the implant technology can't desensitize yourself to pain. you can use it to experience the same sort of effects of drinking or recreational drugs on demand.

it also connects you to the fee feed, system that feeds information directly into your brain. it allows people to communicate with one another without speaking aloud, it allows for the enjoyment of entertainment like virtual-reality games and movies very much like this, transmitting images and sensory expenses. it allows the sharing of your individual memories so that instead of pouring your friends with your vacation photos, you can bore them with your vacation experience. all of these wonders are made possible by and for the sake of stopping opportunities. our narrator titus go on vacation during spring break, taking a trip to the moon, a place that had already, by this point, we went to have

fun but it turned out to completely suc suck. since she has taught us so much about paying attention to the great minds, it's remarkable but that's its first sentence. makes you wonder immediately about what kind of people these are. it does not completely suck because they do meet a new girl by her charmingly weird wit and her beauty. not long after they meet her, the group of friends hanging out at a party spot encounters a terrorist who somehow disables several peoples implants including those of titus, veronica and their friends. as they await repairs, they have to spend several days in the hospital ward without the

constant flow of entertaining ads they typically enjoy. they make up games, they squabble, they grow frustrated and titus and rocco become closer to one another. when all finally reconnected to the feed, it is an ecstatic restoration. that's titus is narration. the feed was pouring in on us. all of it, all the feed we could feel all of our favorites and they came down on us like water like spring rain and we were dancing in it like rain and we couldn't stop laughing and we were running our hands across our bodies and i saw by lit almost hysterical with laughter. we found each other's hands through the like of the waterfall and holding hands we danced. the teenagers return home and titus embryonic or begin 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 is homeschooled. her father is a professor of the dead languages, not greek and latin but basic and fortran. [laughter] and they don't have much money. titus is bored by everything and unworried by anything. violet is curious about everything in worried about the world. his entire life has been shaped while violet received the implant very late, at age seven after her brain and mind had been shaped in important ways. this made her implant more sensitive to the hacking and since it's fully integrated into the brain, the slow degradation means for life is in danger. she is dying. titus doesn't know how to handle us news about the girl he likes and he responded by growing cold to her. they break up, painfully awkwardly and in the books

final chapter as hurt capacity dwindles, he visits her and with regret promises to remember her and tell her story. : >> >> approach to raising their kids. second you might expect he children with access would be smart and sophisticated

to enjoy a a a - - access to all of a region that was originally a missile to the public but here is the tide is the explanation people were really excited with this big it educational thing your child has the advantage closer of them that. that is one of the great things you can be super smart without ever working everybody is super smart you can look of things automatic like science and history. if day and are typical the presence has shallow children with based desires. any thing instantly needed rather heads were filled with information and so instead they learn how the

world could be used like how to use the feeds or find bargains in the best way to get a job and how to decorate her bedroom may be the next panel on education will take up this question but he agreed that his most eloquent when he was describing what you were shopping for. he is an excellent consumer it is in quite fair to say titus is failing to be hard-working but the fee has mobilized a lazy as. some virtues ceased to be a virtue or vice ceases to be vice. and while you think it would've been virtual reality is part of herbalife. as when friends meet one another and they cannot do

away with their social embodied major. and that idea of virtual sex is not even mention the book. budget titus although shallow and stupid is still not the slightest is friends and he has little observations of violets presents for when they first meet all the way to the end he will bestir slouch for her softness of her arm. even hear those observations are mediated and the first is attracted to her. and notices her spine is fetching. but if he did suggest to the

word is supple and shortly after that it sent him and advertisements for a card describing the supple upholstery. and we are left wondering was it edited instantaneously become is titus had sought out were door was that via -- very word that very thought itself a creation intended to direct or ned g. titus toward the act? i will return to that with civic and political life is made expect those with the widespread telepathic breed imprint's way to achieve a

harmony with one another. and like george gallup crazy dreams of democracy. in this is where the president is a demagogue speaking in platitudes with three new outlets to make it much less depressing with deliberation and persuasion. i hear the snicker. although it is largely in the background it is best not to look too closely you get the strong impression that people to live are not well-suited to political self-government.

and they may not be personally self-governing with those deep implications not just for this story but that nonfiction find. so we have seen already those buying -- brain implants can be hacked corporations to run the feed your that hackers could infiltrate the mind at night and with an external influence with the word supple leaves with the ambiguous sense of the mind integrity. our idea of human freedom is predicated on the understanding that preserves the integrity. so ebenezer scrooge is the

interlocutor with the blocked of mustard to study the effects of different colors of the mood. and then to make those decisions they prefer. and then to tell ourselves and to learn about those things and with that two-way communication is to permit the possibility that our minds integrity could be violated in ways to be the best position.

and with those relationships and our freedom and unfree them and rationality abound together to except in those brain implants with those narrow electronics in the hopes of becoming more rational to pure bodiless mines. if we to be the mind foldable and in leaving behind that suppose the age of the body with the strange prizm and lost the key. thank you. [applause]

>> questions? can you hear me?. >> for an informative talk by learn so much to day what scientists are even dreaming of doing. and what you think it is possible or permissible and was hoping you could address of question of the underlying motivations and from christopher we've learned to create something

that day to make them more human. please try to merge humans and artificial material into this monotonous fusion. and under this is a desire to create something of our own that transcends and then especially leading that conversation that in the end could get the scientists to glory in the humanity of the humans but until that happens can you give insight what is driving the motivation of the scientist?

>> i will take that first and to be tied up with bad deeply philanthropic project of medicine. in the ways that are very complicated. and we had dinner with a scientist working on the neuroscience who was hoping to invent with some sort of drug enhancing human intelligence so as we discussed this in with this

academic conference in doing this nice dinner with some type of intelligence already there are a lot of people out there. and to help raise their iq. there with that trans humanist project i say that the motive vacation is a natural outgrowth to relieve the state of man but i think you could argue that they ought to think more deeply expands the state ought to be really did its entirety?.

>> i was just add to that medical motive in a world where fighter pilots have to make split-second it decisions and anything that conveys that decision and then then also just plain commercial. and then to have that and keep it cutting edge over the advantage of the competitors they need to be no more or less than the

usual range some people do things for money or pleasure and for the sake of knowledge or for the sake of fran shepard go if we could really understand each other's minds. and every other case we are faced with different possibilities so which of these motivations are reasonable?. >> ambition, ego was there said the pride? and then to manipulate the brain matter.

>> it is the day question but a comment and there is one more motive to think about and it is a motive that i was first told about of human restlessness and our discomfort be alone in rooms by ourselves and the desire to get our mind off ourselves this is a very absorbing project you have been describing to us possess something to do with it?. >>. >> i will try re-entered the speeches to a question. but at the root of this is a

day reduction of intelligence to reduce human intelligence to manipulate and i was is it that they could pass that screen test pretty well but what they can do is gain that inside the that goes beyond the ability. in we're following that debate more recently than i have but along the lines to say that we could have insight into you a

mathematical truth every member has a successor to build a system that can see to have the inside. and to challenge that aspect in the sense that you described. >> i certainly don't have a response to the last part. i simply don't know enough but the first part of your remarks allows me to clarify those that had far more reductionist then i even made them out to be. there is no point if one wants artificial intelligence to see a body and all that is a distraction and.

so there is a very severe reduction of intelligence to communicate on any given day in topic one gauge of the conversation might want to communicate. so yes therein is a turning away from the things that's you really wanted to take a true the behavioral approach. but they just not interested. >> they will not disagree at all but to be easily appropriated machine on one side or animals on the other with that realization is in

sight and figuring out those those trees that canada cannot be done but not rational systems that is the big intellectual problem. >> they give very much for that fascinating presentation to the human being and he bin agency -- to the agency and following the comment about the intelligence the when

talking about the supple leather with the one - - job woman's back but it could say why do i have to deal with a simple woman with i can just buy a car with supple leather and not mess around? but then i thought i have heard people say variations of that. so can you speak of that?. >> if things were that easy question. [laughter] i thank you are right to see a connection between that question in the previous

question about creativity there is a deep connection with the kinds of creativity that both human beings and nonhuman animals engage. >> but the death in a story that has been told again and again it is hard to keep down a good air is. certainly you get the sense

and it has not gone away entirely. in with those concerns and have not disappeared as were four told. with those kinds of being set day are to overcome the given the nature with millions of years of evolution. antic is here to stay but

the question of the connection is very difficult we don't understand anything about creativity it is awful they don't understand creativity or win day talk about machines composing music or making paintings they just follow instructions and with those lovable son of randomness that came from a genuinely creative breeding that is not capable of the kinds of learning that creativity depends on, dependents upon

the world. that are the artificial intelligence creation. >> this interesting question that i have is a much broader sampling it than it adam keiper but there is no way of those more extreme pictures that our parasitic over in some cases what you would have if you have it all in some of those visions they are not all its entire erotic innocence you have little. and this is a difficulty figuring out the conception

of a person is true and what that means to find ones to assist -- truest fulfillment even in the finals -- final state of things we have nothing else to do or see or desire. >> but that has to be wrong. >> day wonder that specialist understand that point. >> i am available for consultation.

i am not surprised nor disappointed the group of intellectuals through their artificial intelligence that the academic could remind us that we are rational animals this is for herb kurtis or anybody else but to set aside that immortality that is impossible. and that might to be right for those who are in this business to feed the

opposite and i suppose we will have to wait and see. rather significant life extension with short and mortality with remarkable results and have been achieved by locating those trying to control the species specific lifespans so talk about the implications of the life span whether those generations are different with the meaning of time and the gift of time but that perception is extending out indefinitely and i am

wondering if all kinds of things if at the end is visible. >> that's is a great question and i am curious that illustrates the way you approach to this or i approach this. so put aside total immortality we can possibly get things but then my inclination is to approach that what are the side effects? because that state of affairs is good in that there is enough possibility that the horizon can be

opened into the future in terms of what goods are available to us but there are terrible social side effects about generations and the use of resources to put a giant caution but this is just an invitation you think more that there is good about that limited this and mortality of individual human lives to be respected and at the end of the day it is bad and close ally of that future that will have a horizon even when death is that my a door but that doesn't make me wrong to

want to live longer for go 1,000 years is a really long time. [laughter] but the things that would start to make it seem it was desirable to not keep going are accidental like one of the things after you die to have a relationship with your creator to postpone the is less desirable or if you think you're not a good enough person to sustain good relationships with people over 200 years which seems plausible that is a good reason to think there should be limits to how long you stick around but that seems to be accidental but just to have a longer life with more goods available.

>> to be as good or longer to be intuitively better but people living either of the of biology of aging or the social consequences dole paid enough attention to the psychological effects for go the best text on this that i know is aristotle's rhetoric to the young and the old. but the trouble with the old , and i will speak for them.

[laughter] is not just we cannot slide into second base anymore and have lost the desire even. [laughter] or that most people looked at us and cannot imagine that we were five. [laughter] but that's all kinds of things go to sleep bin us without realizing it to realize the passage of time that we have seen these things already. there really is something beautiful it few teachers have a tremendous privilege to see that openness and freshness of people who have not been jaded or hoover of ben around too long.

-- or who have been around too long. soties psychological effect people are blessed the older they are. they don't age. >> my friend here is an oyster but he is rare. isn't there some kind of sense we have a time of coming up, of flourishing flourishing, letting go?. >> i think this is a great question but it does implicate in interesting ways that i am suspicious of

to the extent we think of the constraints of the narrative should be the constraints of our life and i am a little suspicious of that notion that when the end comes it is not literary it is wrong with the novel is right written the right way it comes up the right time and place i am suspicious that is ever the case although i am sensitive to why you think it is and should be. >> one last question. >> maybe this is very good. [laughter] i am wondering what sort of policy regime you might want to recommend with those

challenges you have raised?. >> in living policy one does not want to get out ahead of those advances of technology that will stop true advances and yet one does not one to be so lax that you could permit those events in the way it would degrade. you have got to do it just right. that is very difficult in part because of a shade of uncertainty thinking about the future.

you do not know that just because we can conceive of something does not mean it is possible. just because it is possible does not mean it will happen. if it happens it doesn't mean it will happen as anticipated or even something like it was there are all kinds of of an anticipated and unintended consequences. that is eerie difficult for policy makers to get their heads around. in a democratic republic like ours forward thinking that is not one of our strong suits. so maya advice to you is read a policy journal called the new atlantis.

[laughter] subscriptions are available on-line. >> let's just say we will reassemble back here at 234 the panel on liberal education and contemporary truth. [applause] [inaudible conversations]