IN THE FORUM
This week’s feature essay, Moral Camouflage or Moral Monkeys? continues our series on the philosophical and ethical implications of Darwinism. Written by Peter Railton, the article is being published collaboratively with The New York Times’s opinion series, The Stone, moderated by Simon Critchley. As our agreement with the Times prevents us from publishing the complete essay for thirty days, begin reading here and watch for the link to the Times. Remember to return to the OTH Forum, however, to discuss the piece with Professor Railton and our readers.
Peter Railton is the John Stephenson Perrin Professor at the University of Michigan where he conducts research in ethics and philosophy of science, focusing especially on questions about the nature of objectivity and value.
This year he will be in residence at the National Humanities Center as the William C. and Ida Friday Fellow.
In addition to his interest in the bearing of empirical research in psychology and evolutionary theory on questions of objectivity, Professor Railton also works in aesthetics, moral psychology, and the theory of action. A collection of some of his papers in ethics and meta-ethics, Facts, Values, and Norms, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2003. He has been a visiting professor at Berkeley and Princeton, and he has received fellowships from the Society for the Humanities (Cornell), the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the 2009 D’Arms Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities.
Please join us for the discussion.
Bonus: a debate on the essay between Railton and Robert Wright from Bloggingheads.
Previous Contributors
Bateson, Sir Patrick. Hunting and Science
Batson, Dan. Empathic Concern and Altruism in Humans
Beer, Dame Gillian. Late Darwin And The Problem Of The Human
Benzon, William L. Cultural Evolution: A Vehicle For Cooperative Interaction Between The Sciences And The Humanities
Blier, Suzanne Preston. Animalia: The Natural World, Art, and Theory
Boden, Margaret Can Computer Models Help Us To Understand Human Creativity?
Carroll, Joe. The Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts
Churchland, Patricia and Christopher Suhler. Control: Conscious And Otherwise
Deacon, Terrence. On the Human: Rethinking the Natural Selection of Human Language
Doris, John. Do You Know What You’re Doing?
Gillespie, Michael Allen. Science and the Humanities
Hacking, Ian. Commercial Genome Reading
Hayles, Katherine N. Distributing/Disturbing the Chinese Room
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes
Leiter, Brian. Moral Skepticism And Moral Disagreement: Developing An Argument From Nietzsche
Lenoir, Tim. Contemplating Singularity
Lycan, William. Qualitative Experience in Machines
Marks, Stuart A. Wild Animals and a Different Human Face
McCarty, Willard. Who Am I Computing?
Pippin, Robert. Participants and Spectators.
Rabinow, Paul. Biopower, Dignity, Synthetic Anthropos
Ritvo, Harriet. Humans And Humanists (And Scientists)
Rosati, Connie S. Narrative and Personal Good
Rosenberg, Alex. The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality
Sober, Elliott. Common Ancestry And Natural Selection In Darwin’s Origin
Stoneking, Mark. Does Culture Prevent or Drive Human Evolution?
Strier, Karen B. The Challenge Of Comparisons In Primatology
Suhler, Christopher and Patricia Churchland. Control: Conscious And Otherwise
Tallis, Raymond. Does Evolution Explain Our Behavior?
Tabbi, Joseph. On Reading 300 Works Of Electronic Literature
Turner, Mark. The Scope of Human Thought
Forum Calendar
Scroll ahead to see which week you’ll be able to engage your favorite Contributor. It’s a distinguished list, including:
Kim Sterelny
Susan Blackmore
Simine Vazire
Jeff McMahan
Leslie Kaufman
Recent events
The New York Times is running a series of articles exploring developments in AI. “Smarter Than You Think” is particularly interested in the social and cultural implications of advances in information technology and computer robotics. Computers Make Strides in Recognizing Speech features a picture of the receptionist outside Eric Horvitz’s Microsoft office. It is a computer monitor featuring a female avatar capable of recognizing guests’ faces and asking appropriate questions of them. In What is I.B.M.’s Watson? we read of a computer that beats human competitors in Jeopardy-style trivia contests even when the questions are posed in natural language.
Update
Bill Benzon has posted a concluding response to those who commented on his “Cultural Evolution.”
In the News
In the News is a monthly round-up of recent developments in the study of humans, animals, and machines. We provide links to two references for each story: first, to the scholarly record in the professional literature and, second, to a popular media account illustrating how the research is being presented to the public. Compiled by Stephen Zachary. Read more.
