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wolven7Tool - [Reflection]--- So I just submitted my application for the Research Fellowship in Ethics (Mind and Machine) at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
Yes I did.
Ayeron - Day Nineteen: Disclosure--- What's that? You want to read my personal statement? Well here you go then:
Damien Williams' Personal Statement
My interest in biotechnology and human enhancement began when I was a child. Reading comic books and science fiction novels, I dreamed of what it would take to bring the kinds of wonderful advancements I saw there into reality. As I grew older, I understood that so many of the fascinating scientific elaborations I saw in my favourite works found their roots within existing science—that they were shaped by current understandings, even as they shaped those very same. Eventually, as an undergraduate student, I found a class called Great Questions of Philosophy, wherein we discussed the concepts of identity, metaphysical possibility, and the ethical implications of those efforts toward altering what it meant to be human. I clearly remember one of my most well-received papers, at this time, being a discussion of the implications of identity raised by cloning and cybernetic enhancement. This theme would find itself replicated throughout the rest of my academic career.
As an undergraduate, I spent the majority of my college education taking classes in both philosophy and comparative religious traditions. With an eye toward the intersection of these fields, I felt—and still feel—that there was something important to be understood in the ways in which conceptual realms such as Ritual Studies, Metaphysics, Theory and Method in the Comparative Study of Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy of Mind often overlapped. In these courses, I observed a fundamental reflexivity in the nature of interactions between human beings and the conceptual systems they create, be those religious, philosophical, or, most especially, about human beings themselves. This reflexivity seemed to mirror the nature of cybernetic loops, wherein a biological organism is both augmented by and in control of some technological intervention into its makeup. Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid was instrumental in developing my thinking toward the nature of any eventual interface of human minds and machines, especially interactions with so-called artificially intelligent agents. As I thought and wrote about what this reflexivity meant for both the conceptual considerations and practical applications of human activity, I realised that I would need to spend a great deal more time studying.
In 2005 I graduated from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, after which I immediately undertook a Master of Arts program in Philosophy and Comparative Religion. In the course of my study, I worked with two of the associate professors in the then-new Brains and Behaviour program—a collaboration between the Neuropsychology and Philosophy departments—assisting them in research duties and in such projects as the development of the 2006 conference for the International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE). The completion of the ISRE conference taught me a great deal about facilitating the needs of many diverse groups of people, from vending publishers and presenters to regional hotels and producers of promotional materials. This would greatly aid me in years to come, as I would many more times find myself in the position of conference organizer. In my role as research assistant, I learned the ins and outs of a great many online databases, such as EBSCOhost, JSTOR, and the University System of Georgia’s own Georgia Library Learning Online (or “GALILEO”), all of which became useful in the completion of my Master Thesis.
In the Spring of 2008, I graduated with my Master of Arts degree, following the successful defence of my thesis, “A Description of the Natural Place of Magic in Philosophy and Religious Studies.” The production of my thesis was hard-won, but well worth it, as I was able to discuss systematic investigations and applications of specifically occult systems and, more generally, conceptual systems of all types. That same year, I became involved with the Comics and Popular Arts Academic Conference (CPAAC) in Atlanta, the focus of which is on unifying popular media such as graphic novels, comic books, films, television, and genre novels with various academic disciplines. As a philosopher with a deep interest in pop-culture, I felt that this venue had much to offer both the academy and those non-academics who might share our interests, providing to both a perspective and understanding which may not otherwise be available to them. Helping to organize CPAAC for the past three years has been extremely rewarding and a great teacher of how to juggle many very different groups of interests in the service of the same ultimate goal, skills which have been very useful within a teaching environment. In 2011, I was contacted by Kennesaw University in Kennesaw, Georgia with an offer for placement as a part-time instructor. Since January of 2012, I have taught second-level introductory courses aimed at providing undergraduates with a conceptual overview of the philosophical project from Western and non-Western perspectives.
In July of this year, I was afforded the opportunity to present a poster at a joint session of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) and the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP). This joint session was held in celebration of the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth and contained within it many distinct symposia. The symposium to which I was admitted was named “The Machine Question: AI, Ethics and Moral Responsibility,” and the poster I presented was from a paper titled “Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point: The Implications of Autonomous Created Intelligence [(ACI)] in Speculative Fiction Media.” In the paper, I investigate the reflexive relationship between portrayals of ACI in human fiction and the expectations we have of its behaviour, positing, among other things, that the more we approach the endeavour with fear rather than respect, the more likely we are to encounter a self-fulfilling prophecy. I am currently in the process of editing this paper for submission to the published volume being arranged as a special issue of the journal Philosophy and Technology. The issue will be titled, “The Machine as Moral Agent and Patient.”
As a working academic professional, I have made use of the opportunities to explore those interests in biotechnology and human enhancement which began in my youth. I have come into contact and collaboration with individuals who work to bring to life the kinds of wonderful technology which previously would only have been found in science fiction. Questions of quantum mechanical interactions with the mind, time travel, autonomous created intelligence, human augmentation and the manipulation of perception, reality, and the will are my concerns now, as they have ever been, with the only difference being a better understanding of how to unify these themes. My goal is still to explore the ways in which our conceptions and their pop-cultural expressions impact our so-called practical and theoretical engagements—that is, how what we make shapes and is shaped by what and how we think. I have grown through my efforts, and I have at my disposal an ever-greater understanding of research methods and discursive techniques, as well as a wide range of experiences, all of which will allow me to be an asset to any department I inhabit.
So there you go. This is the last ten years of my life, summed up pretty neatly.
What else to do today...? Oh that's right, grade roughly 120 papers, write a craigslist add for a complicated car situation, go to the store, and maybe get a haircut.
Sneaker Pimps - [Bloodsport]--- Simple enough.
Yes I did.
Ayeron - Day Nineteen: Disclosure--- What's that? You want to read my personal statement? Well here you go then:
Damien Williams' Personal Statement
My interest in biotechnology and human enhancement began when I was a child. Reading comic books and science fiction novels, I dreamed of what it would take to bring the kinds of wonderful advancements I saw there into reality. As I grew older, I understood that so many of the fascinating scientific elaborations I saw in my favourite works found their roots within existing science—that they were shaped by current understandings, even as they shaped those very same. Eventually, as an undergraduate student, I found a class called Great Questions of Philosophy, wherein we discussed the concepts of identity, metaphysical possibility, and the ethical implications of those efforts toward altering what it meant to be human. I clearly remember one of my most well-received papers, at this time, being a discussion of the implications of identity raised by cloning and cybernetic enhancement. This theme would find itself replicated throughout the rest of my academic career.
As an undergraduate, I spent the majority of my college education taking classes in both philosophy and comparative religious traditions. With an eye toward the intersection of these fields, I felt—and still feel—that there was something important to be understood in the ways in which conceptual realms such as Ritual Studies, Metaphysics, Theory and Method in the Comparative Study of Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy of Mind often overlapped. In these courses, I observed a fundamental reflexivity in the nature of interactions between human beings and the conceptual systems they create, be those religious, philosophical, or, most especially, about human beings themselves. This reflexivity seemed to mirror the nature of cybernetic loops, wherein a biological organism is both augmented by and in control of some technological intervention into its makeup. Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid was instrumental in developing my thinking toward the nature of any eventual interface of human minds and machines, especially interactions with so-called artificially intelligent agents. As I thought and wrote about what this reflexivity meant for both the conceptual considerations and practical applications of human activity, I realised that I would need to spend a great deal more time studying.
In 2005 I graduated from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, after which I immediately undertook a Master of Arts program in Philosophy and Comparative Religion. In the course of my study, I worked with two of the associate professors in the then-new Brains and Behaviour program—a collaboration between the Neuropsychology and Philosophy departments—assisting them in research duties and in such projects as the development of the 2006 conference for the International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE). The completion of the ISRE conference taught me a great deal about facilitating the needs of many diverse groups of people, from vending publishers and presenters to regional hotels and producers of promotional materials. This would greatly aid me in years to come, as I would many more times find myself in the position of conference organizer. In my role as research assistant, I learned the ins and outs of a great many online databases, such as EBSCOhost, JSTOR, and the University System of Georgia’s own Georgia Library Learning Online (or “GALILEO”), all of which became useful in the completion of my Master Thesis.
In the Spring of 2008, I graduated with my Master of Arts degree, following the successful defence of my thesis, “A Description of the Natural Place of Magic in Philosophy and Religious Studies.” The production of my thesis was hard-won, but well worth it, as I was able to discuss systematic investigations and applications of specifically occult systems and, more generally, conceptual systems of all types. That same year, I became involved with the Comics and Popular Arts Academic Conference (CPAAC) in Atlanta, the focus of which is on unifying popular media such as graphic novels, comic books, films, television, and genre novels with various academic disciplines. As a philosopher with a deep interest in pop-culture, I felt that this venue had much to offer both the academy and those non-academics who might share our interests, providing to both a perspective and understanding which may not otherwise be available to them. Helping to organize CPAAC for the past three years has been extremely rewarding and a great teacher of how to juggle many very different groups of interests in the service of the same ultimate goal, skills which have been very useful within a teaching environment. In 2011, I was contacted by Kennesaw University in Kennesaw, Georgia with an offer for placement as a part-time instructor. Since January of 2012, I have taught second-level introductory courses aimed at providing undergraduates with a conceptual overview of the philosophical project from Western and non-Western perspectives.
In July of this year, I was afforded the opportunity to present a poster at a joint session of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) and the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP). This joint session was held in celebration of the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth and contained within it many distinct symposia. The symposium to which I was admitted was named “The Machine Question: AI, Ethics and Moral Responsibility,” and the poster I presented was from a paper titled “Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point: The Implications of Autonomous Created Intelligence [(ACI)] in Speculative Fiction Media.” In the paper, I investigate the reflexive relationship between portrayals of ACI in human fiction and the expectations we have of its behaviour, positing, among other things, that the more we approach the endeavour with fear rather than respect, the more likely we are to encounter a self-fulfilling prophecy. I am currently in the process of editing this paper for submission to the published volume being arranged as a special issue of the journal Philosophy and Technology. The issue will be titled, “The Machine as Moral Agent and Patient.”
As a working academic professional, I have made use of the opportunities to explore those interests in biotechnology and human enhancement which began in my youth. I have come into contact and collaboration with individuals who work to bring to life the kinds of wonderful technology which previously would only have been found in science fiction. Questions of quantum mechanical interactions with the mind, time travel, autonomous created intelligence, human augmentation and the manipulation of perception, reality, and the will are my concerns now, as they have ever been, with the only difference being a better understanding of how to unify these themes. My goal is still to explore the ways in which our conceptions and their pop-cultural expressions impact our so-called practical and theoretical engagements—that is, how what we make shapes and is shaped by what and how we think. I have grown through my efforts, and I have at my disposal an ever-greater understanding of research methods and discursive techniques, as well as a wide range of experiences, all of which will allow me to be an asset to any department I inhabit.
So there you go. This is the last ten years of my life, summed up pretty neatly.
What else to do today...? Oh that's right, grade roughly 120 papers, write a craigslist add for a complicated car situation, go to the store, and maybe get a haircut.
Sneaker Pimps - [Bloodsport]--- Simple enough.
