Ethical sensitivity is best cultivated through examples. To test this proposition I ran a class in which ethical matters were addressed through a series of contemporary case studies. There were 50 masters students in the class. Before the students broke into their groups to discuss the case studies I asked them all some simple binary questions,…More
Monthly Archives: November 2015
The hermeneutical intractability of Asimov’s three laws of robotics
In his sci-fi detective mystery, I, Robot, Isaac Asimov writes: “Powell’s radio voice was tense in Donovan’s ear: ‘Now, look, let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics — the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain.’ The rules follow. A robot may not injure a human being or,…More
How to make a case out of a post
“A case presents an experience or situation that makes at least one point or teaches one lesson,” said Janet Kolodner in a book on automated case-based reasoning during the ascendancy of artificial intelligence in 1993 (554). Cases abound online in news reports and blogs ready to be mined by big data analytic algorithms. In the mean time here’s…More
How animals make us think
Dog, cat, sheep, fox, hen, Pokémon — we don’t only classify animals and their surrogates, but animals are a primary means by which we develop the very idea of categories — and their denial. That’s the main thesis of Paul Shepard’s fascinating book: The Others: How Animals Made Us Human. Classification Shepard argues that animals are “unusual parts of our…More
Stupidities (Why cartoons have animals 3)
We don’t just consume animals for nutrition, but consume them culturally. They are “painted, written, construed, arranged, stuffed, chained, trained, dissected, imagined,” according to cultural theorist Randy Malamud, and this happens “with an iron-fisted sense of entitlement and control on the part of the cultural hegemons, that is, us” (2). Malamud outlines evidence of the “digital approximation of taxidermy”…More