Lecture by Junji Tsuchiya, Waseda University, Japan
Date: 12 MARCH 2019 from 17:30 to 19:30
Event location: Sala Rossa (first floor), Palazzo Marchesini, via Marsala 26, Bologna
Seminars organized by ISA are recognized within complementary training programme of each PhD student.
The lecture will be held in Italian language
The relationship between machinery and humans has spun the history of fear. Since the middle Ages, especially the Early Modern era, the development of science and technology has been achieved on the basis of the idea of Cartesian dualism which opposes "man and machine", "material and spirit". This dualistic thought originates a human-centered viewpoint (anthropocentrism) that makes machines oppose humans, and any invasion of machines into the human world has been generated "fear" in a human society. Today, in the frontiers of advanced science and technology engineering including robotics, AI technology, neurosciences and biotechnology in recent years, the ontologicaland epistemological issue of human existence has been rapidly changing. Under the latest development of science and technology, it is necessary to reconsider now the Cartesian dualistic view on the definition of human category which has been the ideological base of modern scientific philosophy and to rethink of human condition and sociocultural belief on its characteristics based on the traditional dichotomy of <material (matter, body) / mental (mind)> substances and <man / machine> relations. The ongoing evolutionary advance and innovation which especially pushing forward "robotization" of human (cyborg) and "humanization" of robot (humanoid) results in the ambiguity of human category to be transgressed into the new ontological existence, id est post-human. The technological engineering has been trying to incorporate more and more qualities that have been deemed inherent to humans like sensitivity, intelligence and emotion to not-human artificial substances. In fact, in robotics and bioengineering, the human-inherent properties, innate abilities and capacities, whether sensitive, affective, emotional or spiritual, could be believed reproducible in humanoid other synthetic bio-organisms made by the parts of any kind of artifacts, AI and regenerative cells. The ontology with preferential distinction of human superiority to not-human characterized as the definitive paradigm of the philosophy of modern science has been strongly shaking since last few decades in the world of advanced science and technology. Our time is an era of fear which is generated by invasions to the category boundary of man/machine and nature/artificial. In this light, the lecture discusses sociological problems caused by the situations of advanced science and highest technology, so as to explore the characteristics of our age of fear.