NOTE to Bioethics students

Amazon has the paper edition of Richard Powers' Generosity: An Enhancement, one of our required texts, for just $6 ,& the e-book for $10. (There's also a terrific audio version at audible.com.) It's the last thing we'll read, in April. But you'll probably want to get a jump-start on it. It integrates many of the themes of our course, especially the question of species perfectability through genomic engineering.

I just joined Goodreads to post a little review in its support. 

I was already a Powers fan, when "Generosity" came along just in time for my "Future of Life" philosophy class (Gen1, Gen2). It served our purposes well there, and I'm going to try it next semester in Bioethics. And then in Philosophy of Happiness. 

Those who like the more cerebral Powers but think this is comparatively conventional or mainstream may be missing levels of complexity that present themselves on second and third reading. My present focus, pedagogically, is on the crucial bioethical choices we'll be making in the near future that promise great or terrible consequences for what the Aussie humanist calls the future of "human nature." Powers does a great job of setting those problems & questions in motion, leaving us with a story still to be written. I'd love to see his sequel, and am even more curious to anticipate ours.

“But this is when the story is at its most desperate: when techne and sophia are still kin, when the distant climax is still ambiguous, the outcome a dead heat between salvation and ruin.”

Coming to MTSU, Spring '13

PHILOSOPHY 3345, Bioethics

Description. This course explores ethical issues arising from the practice of medical therapeutics (conventional and “alternative”), from the development of new biomedical technologies, and more largely from reflections on life’s meaning and prospects. 

      The course aims at clarifying relevant bioethical and medical issues and debates, representing various perspectives in application to present and future human possibilities and concerns (for example: genetic engineering and biochemical “enhancement,” longevity and life extension, end-of-life decisions, health care access, nanotechnology, cloning, stem cell research, mood and performance-enhancing pharmaceutical use, animal research, and reproductive technologies). 

      “Bio” means simply life, but questions about life’s goals, about appropriate means for attaining them, and about the professions devoted to sustaining life, give rise to the most complex and enduring ethical problems.

Objectives. The course compares many approaches to the urgent human preoccupation with life and its many challenges (biological, environmental, social, technological) ,  in order to articulate the appropriate uses of emerging technologies, therapies, pharmacological interventions etc., in ameliorating and possibly altering the human condition.

Other objectives include exploring the future of life (human, nonhuman, and possibly post-human) and reflecting constructively on what it can mean to be human in an age of rapidly advancing technologies and bioengineering.

The course’s ultimate objective is to provide students with critical resources and tools they can apply in making crucial life-choices.