Unfit for the Future PDF Download

Author: Ingmar Persson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019965364X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Unfit for the Future argues that the future of our species depends on radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our nature. Population growth and technological advances are threatening to undermine the conditions of worthwhile life on earth forever. We need to modify the biological bases of human motivation to deal with this challenge.

Author: Stephen E Gottlieb
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814733018
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Asked if the country was governed by a republic or a monarchy, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Since its founding, Americans have worked hard to nurture and protect their hard-won democracy. And yet few consider the role of constitutional law in America’s survival. In Unfit for Democracy, Stephen Gottlieb argues that constitutional law without a focus on the future of democratic government is incoherent—illogical and contradictory. Approaching the decisions of the Roberts Court from political science, historical, comparative, and legal perspectives, Gottlieb highlights the dangers the court presents by neglecting to interpret the law with an eye towards preserving democracy. A senior scholar of constitutional law, Gottlieb brings a pioneering will to his theoretical and comparative criticism of the Roberts Court. The Roberts Court decisions are not examined in a vacuum but instead viewed in light of constitutional politics in India, South Africa, emerging Eastern European nations, and others. While constitutional decisions abroad have contributed to both the breakdown and strengthening of democratic politics, decisions in the Roberts Court have aggravated the potential destabilizing factors in democratic governments. Ultimately, Unfit for Democracy calls for an interpretation of the Constitution that takes the future of democracy seriously. Gottlieb warns that the Roberts Court’s decisions have hurt ordinary Americans economically, politically, and in the criminal process. They have damaged the historic American melting pot, increased the risk of anti-democratic paramilitaries, and clouded the democratic future.

Author: Julian Savulescu
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444393545
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 811

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Book Description
Enhancing Human Capacities is the first to review the very latest scientific developments in human enhancement. It is unique in its examination of the ethical and policy implications of these technologies from a broad range of perspectives. Presents a rich range of perspectives on enhancement from world leading ethicists and scientists from Europe and North America The most comprehensive volume yet on the science and ethics of human enhancement Unique in providing a detailed overview of current and expected scientific advances in this area Discusses both general conceptual and ethical issues and concrete questions of policy Includes sections covering all major forms of enhancement: cognitive, affective, physical, and life extension

Author: Harris Wiseman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262033925
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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An argument that moral functioning is immeasurably complex, mediated by biology but not determined by it. Throughout history, humanity has been seen as being in need of improvement, most pressingly in need of moral improvement. Today, in what has been called the beginnings of “the golden age of neuroscience,” laboratory findings claim to offer insights into how the brain “does” morality, even suggesting that it is possible to make people more moral by manipulating their biology. Can “moral bioenhancement”—using technological or pharmaceutical means to boost the morally desirable and remove the morally problematic—bring about a morally improved humanity? In The Myth of the Moral Brain, Harris Wiseman argues that moral functioning is immeasurably complex, mediated by biology but not determined by it. Morality cannot be engineered; there is no such thing as a “moral brain.” Wiseman takes a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, drawing on insights from philosophy, biology, theology, and clinical psychology. He considers philosophical rationales for moral enhancement, and the practical realities they come up against; recent empirical work, including studies of the cognitive and behavioral effects of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine; and traditional moral education, in particular the influence of religious thought, belief, and practice. Arguing that morality involves many interacting elements, Wiseman proposes an integrated bio-psycho-social approach to the consideration of moral enhancement. Such an approach would show that, by virtue of their sheer numbers, social and environmental factors are more important in shaping moral functioning than the neurobiological factors with which they are interwoven.

Author: Adam Hart
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472971019
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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'A gripping and sobering reminder of how much we are all governed by our genetic inheritance. So much for free will.' The Mail on Sunday Stress, obesity, poor mental health, drug addiction, bowel diseases, violence and fake news; a stark checklist of modern world problems and every one of them is an echo of our evolutionary past. In Unfit for Purpose, biologist and broadcaster Adam Hart explores the mismatch between our fundamental biology and the modern world we have created. In each chapter Adam reveals the many ways in which biological adaptations that evolved to help us survive and thrive now work against us. For example, in the modern world stress is a killer but how did 'fight or flight' instincts turn from life-savers to life-takers? Obesity is a disease now but is it also just a side-effect of our evolutionary past? Whether it's the derailing of microbes in our gut, the rise of gluten and lactose intolerance, problems of social media or drug addiction, we always seem to have one foot in the modern world and the other firmly in our evolutionary past. Adam explores science, archaeology, medicine, genetics, sociology and more, to show how, in a modern world of our own making, we find ourselves 'unfit for purpose'. But all is not lost! In unpicking the causes of our current woes, he unearths some secrets of evolutionarily informed treatments that will change the way we think about ourselves and our future.

Author: Julian Savulescu
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199299722
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
To what extent should we use technological advances to try to make better human beings? Leading philosophers debate the possibility of enhancing human cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and controlling aging. Would this take us beyond the bounds of human nature? These are questions that need to be answered now.

Author: Perri O'Shaughnessy
Publisher: Dell
ISBN: 0440236061
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
It’s the moment every attorney fears most...one careless moment that threatens careers, reputations, lives. For Nina Reilly, it will change everything—and ignite a case where her own clients are witnesses against her...and where the defendant is Nina herself. As an attorney championing desperate people, Nina Reilly has skirted the edges of legal ethics in pursuit of a just result, but she has never before broken the rule of absolute protection of her clients’ secrets. One September night in Lake Tahoe when her unlocked truck is stolen, her life changes forever. Gone are her most sensitive case files, complete with the sometimes brutally candid notes she took while interviewing her clients. It’s every attorney’s nightmare. And now the worst has happened: The secrets are being revealed, one by one, in ways that will cause the greatest harm. Nina’s own clients complain to the State Bar of California, and suddenly Nina is fighting for her license and her livelihood in a legal proceeding that may ultimately lead her to disbarment. In desperation, Nina turns to her ex-husband, celebrated San Francisco lawyer Jack McIntyre, to represent her. And as personal tensions erupt between McIntyre and Nina’s sometime boyfriend, private investigator Paul van Wagoner...as reputations are ruined and people begin to die...a chilling pattern of rage and revenge comes into focus. Someone is bent on destroying the lives of Nina’s clients and, in the process, Nina Reilly.

Author: Elof Axel Carlson
Publisher: CSHL Press
ISBN: 9780879695873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Carlson's history of degeneracy theory, the idea that certain people are biologically disposed to become socially unfit or "degenerate," examines the birth of both good and bad eugenics movements. While good eugenics movements focus on people whose needs may require intense social attention and expensive social investments, bad eugenics movements call for isolation if not eradication and genocide. He brings the history into the present day, where the potential misapplication of DNA science and social attitudes toward the human genome could lead to similar movements.

Author: Dean Reuter
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594035636
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
After the September 11, 2001 attacks the United States went to war. With thousands of Americans killed, billions of dollars in damage, and aggressive military and security measures in response, we are still living with the war a decade later. A change of presidential administration has not dulled controversy over the most fundamental objectives, strategies and tactics of the war, or whether it is even a war. This book clears the air over the meaning of 9/11, and sets the stage for a reasoned, clear, and considered discussion of the future with a collection of essays commemorating the 10th anniversary of the attacks. The contributors include supporters and critics of the war on terrorism, policymakers and commentators, insiders and outsiders, and some of the leading voices inside and outside government.

Author: Ingmar Persson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191632872
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Unfit for the Future argues that the future of our species depends on our urgently finding ways to bring about radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our own human nature. We have rewritten our own moral agenda by the drastic changes we have made to the conditions of life on earth. Advances in technology enable us to exercise an influence that extends all over the world and far into the future. But our moral psychology lags behind and leaves us ill equipped to deal with the challenges we now face. We need to change human moral motivation so that we pay more heed not merely to the global community, but to the interests of future generations. It is unlikely that traditional methods such as moral education or social reform alone can bring this about swiftly enough to avert looming disaster, which would undermine the conditions for worthwhile life on earth forever. Persson and Savulescu maintain that it is likely that we need to explore the use of new technologies of biomedicine to change the bases of human moral motivation. They argue that there are in principle no philosophical or moral objections to such moral bioenhancement. Unfit for the Future challenges us to rethink our attitudes to our own human nature, before it is too late.