Dr Russell Blackford

Intelligence Unbound explores the prospects, promises, and potential dangers of machine intelligence and uploaded minds in a collection of state-of-the-art essays from internationally recognized philosophers, AI researchers, science fiction authors, and theorists. ¿ Compelling and intellectually sophisticated exploration of the latest thinking on Artificial Intelligence and machine minds ¿ Features contributions from an international cast of philosophers, Artificial Intelligence researchers, science fiction authors, and more ¿ Offers current, diverse perspectives on machine intelligence and uploaded minds, emerging topics of tremendous interest ¿ Illuminates the nature and ethics of tomorrow's machine minds-and of the convergence of humans and machines-to consider the pros and cons of a variety of intriguing possibilities ¿ Considers classic philosophical puzzles as well as the latest topics debated by scholars ¿ Covers a wide range of viewpoints and arguments regarding the prospects of uploading and machine intelligence, including proponents and skeptics, pros and cons.

50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists presents a collection of original essays drawn from an international group of prominent voices in the fields of academia, science, literature, media and politics who offer carefully considered statements of why they are atheists. Features a truly international cast of contributors, ranging from public intellectuals such as Peter Singer, Susan Blackmore, and A.C. Grayling, novelists, such as Joe Haldeman, and heavyweight philosophers of religion, including Graham Oppy and Michael Tooley. Contributions range from rigorous philosophical arguments to highly personal, even whimsical, accounts of how each of these notable thinkers have come to reject religion in their lives. Likely to have broad appeal given the current public fascination with religious issues and the reception of such books as The God Delusion and The End of Faith. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists presents a collection of original essays drawn from an international group of prominent voices in the fields of academia, science, literature, media and politics who offer carefully considered statements of why they are atheists. Features a truly international cast of contributors, ranging from public intellectuals such as Peter Singer, Susan Blackmore, and A.C. Grayling, novelists, such as Joe Haldeman, and heavyweight philosophers of religion, including Graham Oppy and Michael Tooley. Contributions range from rigorous philosophical arguments to highly personal, even whimsical, accounts of how each of these notable thinkers have come to reject religion in their lives. Likely to have broad appeal given the current public fascination with religious issues and the reception of such books as The God Delusion and The End of Faith. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the content discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. Machine or artificial intelligence (AI), might well have the ability to understand, modify, and improve its own source code, carrying it by great leaps into domains of ability that unaided flesh can never hope to reach. AI uses engineered electronic or photonic neural nets operating a million times faster. Uploading need not imply a world of bloated grubs lying in the dark with their brains wired to spreadsheets and simulated worlds. The initial goal of uploaders would be to emulate and enhance the brain, and that requires rich connections to external reality. The artificial system is not merely simulating but actually emulating or replicating the relevant functioning of a human brain. The book shows enthusiasm about the prospects of machine intelligence and mind uploading, and expresses skepticism or concern.

Transhumanism has an intellectual core. It makes large claims - large enough and clear enough to provoke anxieties. One core idea is of human beings in transition: this word provides the "trans" in "transhumanism," "transhumanist," and their cognates. In the past, technology has extended the human body, providing it with tools to act upon the world. Transhumanism adds one more core idea: that the Great Transition is beneficial, something to be welcomed. Prophecies of redesigned human bodies are not entirely new, and nor is the widespread disquiet that they evoke. Some anxieties relate to practical issues, timeframes, and possible abuses. There is no need for transhumanists to adopt any implausible or politically troublesome account of the relationship between evolution and morality. Some transhumanists may be naive about the ease with which the Great Transition will, or can, take place, and some may specify unworkable schemes. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The proper role, if any, for religion-based arguments is a live and sometimes heated issue within the field of bioethics. The issue attracts heat primarily because bioethical analyses influence the outcomes of controversial court cases and help shape legislation in sensitive biopolicy areas. A problem for religious bioethicists who seek to influence biopolicy is that there is now widespread academic and public acceptance, at least within liberal democracies, that the state should not base its policies on any particular religion's metaphysical claims or esoteric moral system. In response, bioethicists motivated by religious concerns have adopted two identifiable strategies. Sometimes they rely on slippery-slope arguments that, sometimes at least, have empirically testable premises. A more questionable response is the manipulation and misuse of secular-sounding moral language, such as references to "human dignity,"and the plights of groups of people labeled "vulnerable."

Peter Singer has argued that we should not proceed with a hypothetical life-extension drug, based on a scenario in which developing the drug would fail to achieve the greatest sum of happiness over time. However, this is the wrong test. If we ask, more simply, which policy would be more benevolent, we reach a different conclusion from Singer's: even given his (admittedly questionable) scenario, development of the drug should go ahead. Singer's rigorous utilitarian position pushes him in the direction of an implausible "total view" utilitarianism when it encounters the problems presented by certain thought experiments. A more pluralistic account of the nature of morality promises to solve these problems, and in this case it reaches a benevolent recommendation on life extension technology.

Anxieties about the creation and destruction of human embryos for the purpose of scientific research on embryonic stem cells have given a new urgency to the question of whether embryos have moral rights. This article uses a thought experiment involving two possible worlds, somewhat removed from our own in the space of possibilities, to shed light on whether early embryos have such rights as a right not to be destroyed or discarded (a "right to life"). It is argued that early embryos do not have meaningful interests or any moral rights. Accordingly, claims about the moral rights of embryos do not justify restrictions on stem cell research.

Debates about the moral and political acceptability of particular sexual practices and new technologies often include appeals to a supposed imperative to follow nature. If nature is understood as the totality of all phenomena or as those things that are not artificial, there is little prospect of developing a successful argument to impugn interference with it or sinning against it. At the same time, there are serious difficulties with approaches that seek to identify "proper" human functioning. An alternative approach is to understand interference wit nature as acting in a manner that threatens basic background conditions to human choice. Arguably, the theory of background conditions helps explain much of the hostility to practices and technologies that allegedly sin against nature. The theory does not, however, entail that appeals to nature are relevant or rational. Such appeals should be subjected to sceptical scrutiny. Indeed, the theory suggests that arguments against practices and technologies that can be seen as contrary to nature sometimes exercise a psychological attraction that is disproportional to their actual cogency.

Since early 1997, when the creation of Dolly the sheep by somatic cell nuclear transfer was announced in Nature, numerous government reports, essays, articles and books have considered the ethical problems and policy issues surrounding human reproductive cloning. In this article, I consider what response a modern liberal society should give to the prospect of human cloning, if it became safe and practical. Some opponents of human cloning have argued that permitting it would place us on a slippery slope to a repugnant future society, comparable to that portrayed in Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World. I conclude that, leaving aside concerns about safety, none of the psychological or social considerations discussed in this article provides an adequate policy justification for invoking the state's coercive powers to prevent human cloning.

Opponents of human cloning typically argue for the prohibition of therapeutic cloning and a permanent prohibition of reproductive cloning, even if a safe cloning technology should become available. In a recent article in this journal, "Legal and Ethical Problems of Human Cloning" (2000) 8 JLM 31, Judith Thomson develops an ethico-legal analysis that would justify prohibitions or restrictions on both therapeutic and reproductive cloning, irrespective of any safety issue. This article criticises Thomson's analysis in detail and suggests, in particular, that it relies upon an intellectually unacceptable understanding of personhood.