Tent Talks

This is an episode from UMass Boston’s ‘Ethics in Action’ Podcast mini-series on brain-computer interfaces that I currently co-host with sociologist and bioethicist James Hughes. In this episode, we are joined by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. Dr. Sorgner is a philosophy professor at John Cabot University in Rome, Director and Co-Founder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), and Editor-in-Chief and Founder of the Journal of Posthuman Studies. Dr. Sorgner is well known for his work on transhumanism, Nietzsche, philosophy of music, and ethics of emerging technologies, and is the author of many books, including most recently We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism and Philosophy of Posthuman Art. In this episode, we discuss several aspects of Dr. Sorgner’s wide-ranging work, including Nietzschean philosophy and its connection to transhumanism, Sorgner’s concept of metahumanism and how it differs from transhumanism and posthumanism, his cyborg thesis, his critique of traditional utopianism, the differing data collection models in the U.S., China, and the EU, his critique of the EU’s GDPR privacy laws, and his proposal for government-managed anonymized medical data collection to enhance technological competitiveness and support universal healthcare, among other topics.

In this episode, I speak with my former student, Aiden Gilroy. Aiden is currently a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame, majoring in Political Science and Philosophy, and working as a research writer for the Notre Dame New AI Project. Aiden has a particular focus on digital privacy and is the founder of a research study Simply Privacy, which is built to educate and influence students on the importance of Data Privacy and why privacy still matters in our digital world.

In this conversation, we discuss many topics under the AI ethics sun, including AI and cognitive offloading, the future of work, AI and virtue ethics, Transhumanism versus Ludditism, existential risk, utopias and fully automated luxury communism, AlphaFold and the promise of AI in science, AI regulation, and the ethics of AI companions.

Here is a link to Aiden’s most recent post for the Notre Dame New AI Project:  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/the-new-ai_perplexityai-aisearch-futureofsearch-activity-7317932245804007426-7ZsC?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACx7INEBLI_

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Walter Veit, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Reading. Walter is a wide-ranging philosopher working primarily at the intersections of the philosophy of cognitive and biological sciences, the philosophy of mind, and applied ethics. His recent research focuses on animal minds, welfare, ethics, and evolution. His first book, A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness, was published in 2023 by Routledge. In this episode, we discuss a variety of topics, including the evolution and adaptive functions of consciousness, Walter’s concept of phenomenological complexity, artificial minds and AI consciousness, the possibility of superintelligent AI surpassing the need for consciousness, genetic algorithms and the idea of subjecting AI systems to simulated evolutionary pressures, studying introspection in animals versus AI,  leveraging AI to better understand animal minds and promote animal welfare, wild animal welfare, zoo ethics, and the challenge of measuring and weighing animal welfare across different species. Walter also has his own podcast, the Walter Veit Podcast.

This is an episode from UMass Boston’s ‘Ethics in Action’ Podcast mini-series on brain-computer interfaces that I currently co-host with sociologist and bioethicist James Hughes. In this episode, we are joined by Luke Roelofs. Dr. Roelofs is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of numerous articles as well as the 2019 book Combining Minds: How to Think about Compositive Subjectivity, published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Roelofs’ research explores the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of consciousness, including human consciousness, animal consciousness, and the possibility of artificial consciousness. In this episode, we discuss various aspects of Dr. Roelofs wide-ranging work, primarily as it relates to brain-computer interfaces. Some topics we focus on include brain-to-brain interfaces, the possibility of technological telepathy, the moral significance of shared mental states, split-brain and conjoined brain cases, the concept of neural mind melding, the unity of consciousness, insect colonies as possible real-life examples of hive minds, panpsychism, the problem of other minds, biopsychism and the possibility of AI consciousness, and integrated information theory.

This is an episode from UMass Boston’s ‘Ethics in Action’ Podcast mini-series on brain-computer interfaces that I currently co-host with sociologist and bioethicist James Hughes. In this episode,  we are joined by Steffen Steinert. Dr. Steinert is an Assistant Professor in the Ethics and Philosophy section at Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on fundamental theoretical issues of ethics and philosophy of technology – particularly the relationship between values and technology, and the link between emotions and technology. In this episode, we discuss various aspects of Dr. Steinert’s work, including the ethics of affective brain-computer interfaces, autonomy and BCIs, transformative experiences and informed consent, emotional contagion on social media, technology-induced value changes in society, and value-sensitive design approaches to emerging technologies.

This is an episode from UMass Boston’s ‘Ethics in Action’ Podcast mini-series on brain-computer interfaces that I currently co-host with sociologist and bioethicist James Hughes. In this episode, we are joined by Susan Schneider. Dr. Schneider is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University, where she is the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. She specializes in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, metaphysics, and the philosophy of cognitive science. Dr. Schneider has written several influential books, including most recently Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind.  In addition to being an academic philosopher, Dr. Schneider is a very successful public philosopher. She frequently writes opinion pieces for outlets like the New York Times and Scientific American, and appears on TV shows on stations such as PBS and The History Channel. This episode covers many topics, including philosophical questions about the self and consciousness in the context of future brain chips, the possibility of mind uploading, quantum mechanics and Susan’s new theory of consciousness that she calls ‘superpsychism’, surveillance capitalism and privacy concerns surrounding AI and brain-computer interfaces, AI digital twins, brain-to-brain interfaces and questions about the unity of consciousness, what Susan calls the Global Brain Hypothesis and the new control problem, AI regulation and the AI global arms race, the concept of AGI and what it takes to create it, and epistemological issues surrounding AI as they relate to the opacity of AI systems and the hallucination problem for large language models.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Kirsten Martin about her work on digital privacy. Kirsten is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of Technology Ethics at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. She researches privacy, technology ethics, and corporate responsibility, and has published on these topics in leading academic journals across various disciplines.  Kirsten is the Technology and Business Ethics editor for the Journal of Business Ethics and the recipient of three NSF grants for her work. Furthermore, she has been an expert witness for many government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. Treasury Department, the National Academy of Engineering, and the U.S. Department of Justice. On a personal note, Kirsten was also my supervisor for my previous postdoc position at the Technology Ethics Center at the University of Notre Dame. Watch Kirsten’s TED Talk on Digital Privacy here. 

In this episode, I speak with my friend Darian Spearman about phenomenology, and in particular, Edmund Husserl’s book The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Darian is currently an assistant professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University.: https://www.gonzagabulletin.com/news/philosophy-professor-brings-decolonial-and-africana-thought-to-gu/article_7f99d70a-accd-11ed-98a4-0b1ac5d53228.html

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Walter Veit about the science and philosophy of consciousness. Walter is an interdisciplinary scientist and philosopher who is currently completing his PhD dissertation at the University of Sydney, Australia. He has published on a wide range of topics, including the topic of animal consciousness and animal welfare, cognitive and genetic enhancement, nihilism, model pluralism, and other issues in evolutionary biology, the philosophy of science, and applied ethics. Here I speak with Walter about his PhD thesis which explores the evolutionary origins of consciousness and how different dimensions of consciousness are distributed throughout the animal kingdom. Some things that come up in the conversation include the hard problem of consciousness, different metaphysical approaches to consciousness, the question of whether consciousness has an adaptive function or is just an evolutionary byproduct, the integrated information theory of consciousness, and different dimensions of consciousness like self-awareness, sensory experience, evaluative experience, and the unity and temporality of experience. To learn more about Walter’s work, visit his website at the following link: https://walterveit.com

In this episode of Tent Talks, I speak with Dr. Heather Browning about animal ethics. Dr. Browning received her PhD from the Australian National University in 2020 and is currently a postdoctoral research officer at the London School of Economics working as a part of the Foundations of animal Sentience Project. Dr. Browning and I discuss a variety of general topics in animal ethics as well as some specific papers that she has published on the subject. Some topics that we discuss include the distinction between the rights view and the utilitarian welfare view of animal ethics, vegetarianism and the horrors of factory farming, the question of where to draw the line on animal consciousness, the natural behavior criteria for animal welfare and why it is flawed, the question of whether management euthanasia promotes animal welfare within the context of zoos, and the question of whether de-extinction projects promote animal welfare. To learn more about Dr. Browning’s work, visit her website at the following link: https://www.heatherbrowning.net