Hale Ethics Series, 2005-06

Fall

September 22, 2005

"Cyborg Ethics and Cognition Enhancing Technologies"

Evan Selinger (Philosophy, RIT)

4 p.m. Imaging Science (76), 1116

Winter

December 8, 2005

“Zealous Advocacy or Racism?
A Practicing Attorney's Dilemma”

Bobby Colón, Esq.

2005 RIT Minett Professor
Assistant Attorney General in Charge, Rochester

The United States Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky held that an attorney was prohibited from precluding members of a particular race when selecting a jury in a criminal trial. But an attorney is required by the Canons of Ethics to be a zealous representative of his client. If the attorney represents a white defendant and believes that his client's chances of success would be greater with an all white jury, don't the Canons require conduct in contradiction of Batson? What’s a good lawyer to do?

4 p.m. Xerox Auditorium (09-2580)

Spring

March 23, 2006

"Human Genetic Enhancement: On Our Way to the Post-Human?"

Inma de Melo Martin
Research Ethicist
Cornell College of Medicine

As with many other biomedical technologies, the progress of research on genetic enhancement technologies has been received with both dismay and excitement because of its implications for human beings and their communities. For some, the enhancement of human beings is repugnant, while others see it as a way to solve many of the problems that plague us. Some see this new biomedical technique as a challenge to our human dignity, while others see it as a way to improve the human species. We will be reflecting here on whether there are good grounds for these fears and hopes.

4 p.m. Carlson Imagining Science, Auditorium (76-1125)

April 13, 2006

"Nature and Culpability"

Benjamin Hale
Department of Philosophy
University of Colorado

It was not so terribly long ago that nature stood as an imposing reminder of an external world over which humans had little control. In recent years, environmental ethicists have sought to better understand the nature of nature, carving it up into cultural constructs, metaphysical states, ontological furniture, and even, at times, an interactive subject. Yet with all of this theoretical exploration, philosophers have come to no agreement about what nature is. In this paper I take a different, and somewhat divergent, tack on the nature of nature. I argue that determinations of naturalness ought not to be tied to the ontological status (or lack thereof) of the surrounding environment. I argue instead that talk of the naturalness of things is talk, in the end, about what we humans are responsible for. Acknowledging this, I believe, can bear the right sort of fruit for an environmental ethics. If nature is viewed not so much as some real object or metaphysical construct, as much as a component of the question of what we should do, then questions about the value of nature fall into place without the cumbers of ontology.

4 p.m. Carlson Imaging Science, Auditorium (76-1125)

May 4-5

Conference on Adam Smith's

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Location to be announced

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