Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 331956577X
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (195 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition by : Christian Baron

Download or read book Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition written by Christian Baron and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world, with the ethical dilemmas and consequences that this entails. This book is the result of the joint efforts of scholars and scientists from various disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach sets an example for those who, like us, have been busy assessing the ways in which fictional attempts to fathom the possibilities of science and technology speak to central concerns about what it means to be human in a contemporary world of technology and which ethical dilemmas it brings along. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate what can be achieved in approaching science fiction as a kind of imaginary laboratory for experimentation, where visions of human (or even post-human) life under various scientific, technological or natural conditions that differ from our own situation can be thought through and commented upon. Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction, as well as to a broader academic audience interested in ethical questions.

Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319616854
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (196 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination by : Russell Blackford

Download or read book Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination written by Russell Blackford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original book, Russell Blackford discusses the intersection of science fiction and humanity’s moral imagination. With the rise of science and technology in the 19th century, and our continually improving understanding of the cosmos, writers and thinkers soon began to imagine futures greatly different from the present. Science fiction was born out of the realization that future technoscientific advances could dramatically change the world. Along with the developments described in modern science fiction - space societies, conscious machines, and upgraded human bodies, to name but a few - come a new set of ethical challenges and new forms of ethics. Blackford identifies these issues and their reflection in science fiction. His fascinating book will appeal to anyone with an interest in philosophy or science fiction, or in how they interact. “This is a seasoned, balanced analysis of a major issue in our thinking about the future, seen through the lens of science fiction, a central art of our time. Everyone from humanists to technologists should study these ideas and examples. Blackford’s book is wise and savvy, and a delight to read as well.” Greg Benford, author of Timescape.

Science Fiction and Philosophy

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1118922611
Total Pages : 439 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (189 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction and Philosophy by : Susan Schneider

Download or read book Science Fiction and Philosophy written by Susan Schneider and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring numerous updates and enhancements, Science Fiction and Philosophy, 2nd Edition, presents a collection of readings that utilize concepts developed from science fiction to explore a variety of classic and contemporary philosophical issues. Uses science fiction to address a series of classic and contemporary philosophical issues, including many raised by recent scientific developments Explores questions relating to transhumanism, brain enhancement, time travel, the nature of the self, and the ethics of artificial intelligence Features numerous updates to the popular and highly acclaimed first edition, including new chapters addressing the cutting-edge topic of the technological singularity Draws on a broad range of science fiction’s more familiar novels, films, and TV series, including I, Robot, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Star Trek, Blade Runner, and Brave New World Provides a gateway into classic philosophical puzzles and topics informed by the latest technology

The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film

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Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813172810
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film by : Steven Sanders

Download or read book The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film written by Steven Sanders and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2007-12-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The science fiction genre maintains a remarkable hold on the imagination and enthusiasm of the filmgoing public, captivating large audiences worldwide and garnering ever-larger profits. Science fiction films entertain the possibility of time travel and extraterrestrial visitation and imaginatively transport us to worlds transformed by modern science and technology. They also provide a medium through which questions about personal identity, moral agency, artificial consciousness, and other categories of experience can be addressed. In The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, distinguished authors explore the storylines, conflicts, and themes of fifteen science fiction film classics, from Metropolis to The Matrix. Editor Steven M. Sanders and a group of outstanding scholars in philosophy, film studies, and other fields raise science fiction film criticism to a new level by penetrating the surface of the films to expose the underlying philosophical arguments, ethical perspectives, and metaphysical views. Sanders's introduction presents an overview and evaluation of each essay and poses questions for readers to consider as they think about the films under discussion.The first section, "Enigmas of Identity and Agency," deals with the nature of humanity as it is portrayed in Blade Runner, Dark City, Frankenstein, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Total Recall. In the second section, "Extraterrestrial Visitation, Time Travel, and Artificial Intelligence," contributors discuss 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, 12 Monkeys, and The Day the Earth Stood Still and analyze the challenges of artificial intelligence, the paradoxes of time travel, and the ethics of war. The final section, "Brave Newer World: Science Fiction Futurism," looks at visions of the future in Metropolis, The Matrix, Alphaville, and screen adaptations of George Orwell's 1984.

On Human Nature

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691183031
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis On Human Nature by : Roger Scruton

Download or read book On Human Nature written by Roger Scruton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound to them by obligations and rights. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant’s suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say “I”—by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today’s most fashionable ideas about our species.

Science Fiction and The Abolition of Man

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Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1498232353
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (982 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction and The Abolition of Man by : Mark J. Boone

Download or read book Science Fiction and The Abolition of Man written by Mark J. Boone and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis's masterpiece in ethics and the philosophy of science, warns of the danger of combining modern moral skepticism with the technological pursuit of human desires. The end result is the final destruction of human nature. From Brave New World to Star Trek, from steampunk to starships, science fiction film has considered from nearly every conceivable angle the same nexus of morality, technology, and humanity of which C. S. Lewis wrote. As a result, science fiction film has unintentionally given us stunning depictions of Lewis's terrifying vision of the future. In Science Fiction Film and the Abolition of Man, scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, and film explore the connections between sci-fi film and the three parts of Lewis's book: how sci-fi portrays "Men without Chests" incapable of responding properly to moral good, how it teaches the Tao or "The Way," and how it portrays "The Abolition of Man."

Humans, Animals and Biopolitics

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317119436
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis Humans, Animals and Biopolitics by : Kristin Asdal

Download or read book Humans, Animals and Biopolitics written by Kristin Asdal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human-animal co-existence is central to a politics of life, how we order societies, and to debates about who ’we’ humans think ’we’ are. In other words, our ways of understanding and ordering human-animal relations have economic and political implications and affect peoples’ everyday lives. By bringing together historically-oriented approaches and contemporary ethnographies which engage with science and technology studies (STS), this book reflects the multi-sited, multi-species, multi-logic and multiple ways in which lives are and have been assembled, disassembled, practised and possibly policed and politicized. Instead of asking only how control and knowledge are and have been extended over life, the chapters in this book also look at what happens when control fails, at practices which defy orders, escape detection, fail to produce or only loosely hang together. In doing so the book problematises and extends the Foucauldian notion of biopolitics that has been such a central analytical concept in studies of human-animal relations and provides a unique resource of cases and theoretical refinements regarding the ways in which we live together with more than human others .

Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137367636
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (373 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism by : E. Gomel

Download or read book Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism written by E. Gomel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism offers a typology of alien encounters and addresses a range of texts including classic novels of alien encounter by H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein; recent blockbusters by Greg Bear, Octavia Butler and Sheri Tepper; and experimental science fiction by Peter Watts and Housuke Nojiri.

Plants in Science Fiction

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Publisher : University of Wales Press
ISBN 13 : 1786835606
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (868 download)

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Book Synopsis Plants in Science Fiction by : Katherine E. Bishop

Download or read book Plants in Science Fiction written by Katherine E. Bishop and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants have played key roles in science fiction novels, graphic novels and film. John Wyndham’s triffids, Algernon Blackwood’s willows and Han Kang’s sprouting woman are just a few examples. Plants surround us, sustain us, pique our imaginations and inhabit our metaphors – but in many ways they remain opaque. The scope of their alienation is as broad as their biodiversity. And yet, literary reflections of plant-life are driven, as are many threads of science fictional inquiry, by the concerns of today. Plants in Science Fiction is the first-ever collected volume on plants in science fiction, and its original essays argue that plant-life in SF is transforming our attitudes toward morality, politics, economics and cultural life at large – questioning and shifting our understandings of institutions, nations, borders and boundaries; erecting and dismantling new visions of utopian and dystopian futures.

Personhood in Science Fiction

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030300625
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis Personhood in Science Fiction by : Juli L. Gittinger

Download or read book Personhood in Science Fiction written by Juli L. Gittinger and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the topic of personhood—who is a “person” or “human,” and what rights or dignities does that include—as it has been addressed through the lens of science fiction. Chapters include discussions of consciousness and the soul, artificial intelligence, dehumanization and othering, and free will. Classic and modern sci-fi texts are engaged, as well as film and television. This book argues that science fiction allows us to examine the profound question of personhood through its speculative and imaginative nature, highlighting issues that are already visible in our present world.

The Humans

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476727929
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis The Humans by : Matt Haig

Download or read book The Humans written by Matt Haig and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling, award-winning author of The Midnight Library offers his funniest, most devastating dark comedy yet, a “silly, sad, suspenseful, and soulful” (Philadelphia Inquirer) novel that’s “full of heart” (Entertainment Weekly). When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned him and hurry home to his own utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal. He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martin’s family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans’ imperfection, and begins to question the very mission that brought him there. Praised by The New York Times as a “novelist of great seriousness and talent,” author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subject—ourselves.

Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 303027893X
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction by : Zachary Kendal

Download or read book Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction written by Zachary Kendal and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction explores the ethical concerns and dimensions of representations of the future of global science fiction, focusing on the issues that dominate utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature. The essays examine recent visions of the future in science fiction and re-examine earlier texts through contemporary lenses. Across fourteen chapters, the collection considers authors from Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the UK and USA. The volume delves into a range of ethical questions of immediate contemporary relevance, including environmental ethics, postcolonial ethics, social justice, animal ethics and the ethics of alterity.

Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000750337
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love by : Peter Admirand

Download or read book Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love written by Peter Admirand and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Destruction, Ethics, and Intergalactic Love: Exploring Y: The Last Man and Saga offers a creative and accessible exploration of the two comic book series, examining themes like nonviolence; issues of gender and war; heroes and moral failures; forgiveness and seeking justice; and the importance of diversity and religious pluralism. Through close interdisciplinary reading and personal narratives, the author delves into the complex worlds of Y and Saga in search of an ethics, meaning, and a path resonant with real-world struggles. Reading these works side by side, the analysis draws parallels and seeks common themes around the four central ideas of seeking and making meaning in a meaningless world; love and parenting through oppression and grief; peacefulness when surrounded by violence; and the perils and hopes of diversity and communion. This timely and thoughtful study will resonate with scholars and students of comic studies, media and cultural studies, philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and popular culture studies.

Human Cloning

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139852108
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (398 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Cloning by : Kerry Lynn Macintosh

Download or read book Human Cloning written by Kerry Lynn Macintosh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Dolly the sheep was born, controversy has swirled around the technology of cloning. We recoil at the prospect of human copies, manufactured men and women, nefarious impersonators and resurrections of the dead. Such reactions have serious legal consequences: lawmakers have banned stem cell research along with the cloning of babies. But what if our minds have been playing tricks on us? What if everything we thought we knew about human cloning is rooted in intuition rather than fact? Human Cloning: Four Fallacies and their Legal Consequences is a rollicking ride through science, psychology and the law. Drawing on sources ranging from science fiction films to the Congressional Record, this book unmasks the role that psychological essentialism has played in bringing about cloning bans. It explains how hidden intuitions have caused conservatives and liberals to act contrary to their own most cherished ideals and values.

Technology and the Overturning of Human Autonomy

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031261593
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (312 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and the Overturning of Human Autonomy by : Simona Chiodo

Download or read book Technology and the Overturning of Human Autonomy written by Simona Chiodo and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-26 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an extensive historical, philosophical and ethical discussion on the role of autonomous technologies, and their influence on human identity. By connecting those different perspectives, and analysing some practical case studies, it guides readers to dissect the relationship between machine and human autonomy, and machine and human identity. It analyses how the relationship between human and technology has been evolving in the last few centuries. Last, it aims at proposing an explanation on the reason/s why humans have been keen on developing their own autonomy’s perfect avatar.

The Politics and Ethics of Identity

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139561200
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (395 download)

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Book Synopsis The Politics and Ethics of Identity by : Richard Ned Lebow

Download or read book The Politics and Ethics of Identity written by Richard Ned Lebow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are multiple, fragmented, and changing selves who, nevertheless, believe we have unique and consistent identities. What accounts for this illusion? Why has the problem of identity become so central in post-war scholarship, fiction, and the media? Following Hegel, Richard Ned Lebow contends that the defining psychological feature of modernity is the tension between our reflexive and social selves. To address this problem Westerners have developed four generic strategies of identity construction that are associated with four distinct political orientations. Lebow develops his arguments through comparative analysis of ancient and modern literary, philosophical, religious, and musical texts. He asks how we might come to terms with the fragmented and illusionary nature of our identities and explores some political and ethical implications of doing so.

Our Posthuman Future

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Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1847653707
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (476 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Posthuman Future by : Francis Fukuyama

Download or read book Our Posthuman Future written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.