Reflecting the dangers of irresponsible science and technology, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein quickly became a mythic story that still feels fresh and relevant in the twenty-first century. The unique framework of the Frankenstein myth has permeated the public discourse about science and knowledge, creating various misconceptions around and negative expectations for scientists and for scientific enterprises more generally. Using the Frankenstein myth as an imaginative tool, we interviewed twelve scientists to explore how this science narrative shapes their views and perceptions of (...) science. Our results yielded two main conclusions. First, the Frankenstein myth may help scientists identify popular concerns about their work and offer a framework for constructing a more positive narrative. Second, finding optimistic science narratives may allow scientists to build a better relationship with the public. We argue that by showing the ethical principles and social dimensions of their work, scientists could replace a negative Frankenstein narrative with a more optimistic one. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the moral status of agricultural biotechnology and, more specifically, genetically modified crops by employing the hubris argument. The old notion of hubris, given to us by the ancient Greeks, provides a narrative from which we can understand ourselves and technology. Ronald Sandler offers us an understanding of hubris he claims gives us a prima facie reason and a presumption against the use of GM crops. I argue that Sandler’s hubris argument fails for several reasons: Sander (...) and many others fail to have a proper understanding of agriculture as an inherently technological practice which is radically different from ‘nature’; the notions of control and manipulation which are central to the concept of hubris are difficult to understand and use in the context of agriculture; trying to establish a prima facie reason against GM crops runs into serious difficulty since many GM crops are profoundly different from each other; and even if we accept Sandler’s argument of hubris, it actually plays no role in the reasoning and evaluation of the moral status of different GM crops. (shrink)

Are digital subjects in virtual reality morally equivalent to human subjects? We divide this problem into two questions bearing, respectively, on cognitive and emotional equivalence. Typically, cognitive equivalence does not hold due to the lack of substantialist indistinguishability, but emotional equivalence applies: digital subjects endowed with face or language elicit emotional responses on a par with real-world pleasure, desire, horror, or fear. This is sufficient for projecting moral traits on avatars in the metaverse or on dialog systems based on large (...) language models. Our main case study is a chatbot trained on the chat history between a Canadian man and his deceased fiancée. To demonstrate emotional equivalence and the mechanism of moral transfer, we compare digital devices with the functioning of oracles in a story by Plutarch and in a narrative that draws on the book of Genesis. Finally, we note that, along with the projections of ethical issues, humans also tend to bring real-world solutions of moral conundrums into extended reality. We argue that the lack of cognitive equivalence makes such projections problematic as they lead to overpolicing and a sanitized metaverse. (shrink)