Friday, January 16, 2009

Ought Implies Kant

Joel Marks, friend, emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Haven, Yale Bioethics Center member and Yale Technology & Ethics study group participant, has a new book "Ought Implies Kant: A Reply to the Consequentialist Critique," (Lexington Books). In the book Joel provides an original defense of the ethical theory of Immanuel Kant and develops an extension of that theory's account of moral duty to include direct duties to nonhuman animals. Check it out.

Talking Heads: embodied cognition and ethics

Philip Rubin, CEO of Haskins Laboratories, Professor Adjunct of Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, and IS Group co-founder, was the featured speaker at the December 3, 2008 meeting of the Yale Technology and Ethics Working Group. His presentation, "Talking Heads: embodied cognition and ethics" provided an historical overview of speaking machines and computational models of speech production. In addition, he discussed the importance of considering biological constraints on language and cognition and the ethical implications of research and technological developments related to embodied cognition.