Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Unit convenor and Lecturer
A/Prof Paul Formosa
Lecturer
Prof Richard Menary
Lecturer
Prof Jean-Philippe Deranty
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Credit points |
Credit points
3
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Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
12cp at 100 level or above
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Corequisites |
Corequisites
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Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
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Unit description |
Unit description
We live an increasing part of our lives online, playing videogames, and engaging with various technologies and virtual realities. Our workplaces are more automated, cars drive themselves, and robots take care of us. Is this a good thing? What is it doing to us? Where will it take us in the future? In this unit we draw on philosophical and ethical theories to explore the impacts of information and related technologies on humanity. Topics we will explore include issues around human-technology relations, such as: technological neutrality and technological determinism; embodiment, gender, and technology; and the co-evolution of mind and technology. We will examine ethical aspects of technology, such as: the impacts that online sharing has on our philosophical understandings of friendship; the right to internet privacy; how theories in moral psychology explain the ethical impacts of playing videogames; the ethics of self-driving cars and robotic care-workers; and the justice implications of the automatisation of work. Finally, we also look at topics surrounding the intertwining of humanity and technology and the future impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as: whether AI and the singularity is an existential risk to humanity; how technology will be used as a tool of human enhancement; and whether we will (and should) become cyborgs and stop being human.
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Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
Late Submission Policy “Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, (a) a penalty for lateness will apply – two (2) marks out of 100 will be deducted per day for assignments submitted after the due date – and (b) no assignment will be accepted more than seven (7) days (incl. weekends) after the original submission deadline. No late submissions will be accepted for timed assessments – e.g. quizzes, online tests.”
Name | Weighting | Hurdle | Due |
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Research Essay | 40% | No | 7/11/2019 |
Participation | 15% | No | On-going; closes 6/11/19 |
Weekly reflective blog | 30% | No | Part 1: 27/8/19. Part 2: 5/11/19. |
Weekly Quiz | 15% | No | On-going; closes 1/11/2019 |
Due: 7/11/2019
Weighting: 40%
The essay (2000 words) is designed to extend your understanding of a specific topic or topics and to test your ability to engage with that topic in depth. Essay writing tests your ability to synthesise material from a range of readings and to express, analyse and structure key ideas and arguments clearly, logically and systematically. It also tests your ability to develop your own view, and to argue for that view in a cogent and sustained way. You will be expected to read and incorporate into your essay extra secondary sources beyond the required readings.
Essay questions and rubric handed out: 11 September. Due by 11:59PM on Thursday November 7.
Due: On-going; closes 6/11/19
Weighting: 15%
Participation in discussions, both in-class (for internal students) and on-line (for all students), is an important part of studying philosophy. The quality, quantity, and timeliness of your participation will be graded.
Participation criteria and rubric handed out: Wednesday July 31.
Participation closes: November 6. Posts made after this date will not be read or graded.
Due: Part 1: 27/8/19. Part 2: 5/11/19.
Weighting: 30%
Weekly reflective blog (private).
You will receive your grade for this assessment in two parts to ensure that you receive some early feedback.
Part One - for weeks 1-4 (inclusive). Worth 10%. Due Tuesday 27 August, 11:59PM.
Part Two - for weeks 5-12 (inclusive). Worth 20%. Due Tuesday 5 November, 11:59PM.
Due: On-going; closes 1/11/2019
Weighting: 15%
There will be 10 weekly on-line quizzes worth a total of 15% (or a maximum of 1.5% for each of the 10 quizzes). Quizzes start in Week 3 and run until Week 12. Quizzes open after the relevant lecture. All quizzes close on Friday November 1 at 11:59 PM. You should do the quizzes weekly. It is not advisable to leave all the quizzes until the end to complete.
Required Readings.
All required readings can be downloaded from through Leganto and the iLearn site.
You must read the required readings BEFORE class.
W1 – Introduction: Philosophy and Technology (PF)
No Reading
MIND, BODIES AND TECHNOLOGY
W2 – What is technology? Optimist and pessimist views of technology (JPD)
Reading 1: Mary Tiles and Hans Oberdiek, “Conflicting Visions of Technology,” in Living in a Technological Culture (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 12–31.
Reading 2: Andrew Feenberg, “What is the Philosophy of Technology?”, in Defining Technological Literacy. Towards An Epistemological Framework, J. Dakers (ed.), (Palgrave McMillan, 2006), 5-16.
W3 –Artificial Intelligence (RM)
Reading 1: Margaret Boden (2016) “Chapter 2: General Intelligence as the Holy Grail", AI: Its Nature and Future, Oxford UP: Oxford.
Reading 2: Bringsjord, Selmer and Govindarajulu, Naveen Sundar, "Artificial Intelligence", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/artificial-intelligence/>.
W4 – The Singularity and Mind-uploading: Will humanity survive? (PF)
Reading: Chalmers, David J. “The Singularity.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 17, no. 9 (2010): 7–65.
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF TECHNOLOGY
W5 – Privacy on the Internet: Do we have any and should we care? (PF)
Reading 1: Reiman, Jeffrey H. “Driving to the Panopticon: A Philosophical Exploration of the Risks to Privacy Posed by the Highway Technology of the Future.” Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal 11 (1995).
Reading 2: Joinson, Adam N., and Carina B. Paine. “Self-Disclosure, Privacy and the Internet.” In Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, edited by Adam N. Joinson, Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, Tom Postmes, and Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, 2012.
W6 –Videogames and morality: Do virtual actions matter? (PF)
Reading 1: Luck, M. (2009). The gamer’s dilemma: An analysis of the arguments for the moral distinction between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia. Ethics and Information Technology, 11(1), 31–36.
Reading 2: Ryan, M., Staines, D., & Formosa, P. (2017). Focus, Sensitivity, Judgement, Action: Four Lenses for Designing Morally Engaging Games. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 3(2), 143–173.
W7 – Artificial moral agents: Can robots be persons? (PF)
Reading 1: Wynsberghe, Aimee van, and Scott Robbins. “Critiquing the Reasons for Making Artificial Moral Agents.” Science and Engineering Ethics, 2018, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-018-0030-8.
Reading 2: Moor, James H. “Four Kinds of Ethical Robots.” Philosophy Today, no. April (2009).
W8 – Autonomous Vehicles and Carebots: How to live with machines (PF)
Reading 1: Gogoll, Jan, and Julian F. Müller. “Autonomous Cars: In Favor of a Mandatory Ethics Setting.” Science and Engineering Ethics 23, no. 3 (June 2017): 681–700.
Reading 2: Vallor, Shannon. “Moral Deskilling and Upskilling in a New Machine Age: Reflections on the Ambiguous Future of Character.” Philosophy & Technology 28, no. 1 (March 2015): 107–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-014-0156-9.
W9 – Economy and politics of cognitive capitalism (JPD)
Reading 1: Nick Srnicek, extracts from Platform Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017) 36-50, 126-129.
Reading 2: Yves Citton, “Reflexive Attention”, in The Ecology of Attention, trans. B. Norman (Cambridge: Polity, 2017) 139-170.
TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY
W10 – Automation: dangers and solutions. (JPD)
Reading 1: Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage, chapter 4.
Reading 2: David Zoller, “Skilled Perception, Authenticity and the case against Automation”, in Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and Ryan Jenkins (eds) Robot Ethics 2.0. From Automated Cars to Artificial Intelligence, (Oxford University Press, 2017), chapter 6.
Reading 3: Andrew Feenberg, “Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads,” from Technology and the Good Life?, ed. Eric Higgs, Andrew Light, and David Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 294–315.
W11 - Mind and technology: co-evolution of mind and technology. (RM)
Reading 1: Sterelny K. (2011) "From hominins to humans: how sapiens became behaviourally modern". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 366: 809-822. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0301
W12 – Human enhancement: Where to from here? (RM)
Reading 1: Clark A. (2013). Chapter 2. Natural Born Cyborgs, Oxford UP: Oxford.
Reading 2: Kahane, G. and Savulescu, J. (2015), Normal Human Variation: Refocussing the Enhancement Debate. Bioethics, 29: 133-143. doi:10.1111/bioe.12045
W13 – No Lecture
Writing week.
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