07654 - Bioethics

Learning outcomes

asic knowledges, specific methodologies and critical abilities with regard to the most relevant bioethical issues.

Course contents

Common Good and Individual Freedom. Eugenics, Environmental Ethics, Artificial Intelligence

The concepts of individual freedom and common good are increasingly invoked in bioethical debate and, indeed, in international instruments concerned with biotechnology and biomedicine. While some commentators consider appeals to human dignity, autonomy, and collective utility to be little more than rhetoric far away from dominant economic interests. The Course takes such appeals seriously, in the First Part, through a historical, theoretical and practical analysis of the fundamental tension between science and power.

Starting point is the Second Post War Period and the connected philosophical reflection, which played a crucial role in the later moral debate on scientific research, technological applications and the ambiguity of the related idea of progress.

In the Second Part, the Course will pay particular attention to the following bioethical questions: eugenics, environmental ethics, ethics of artificial intelligence, because they show more than others the complexity, the relevance and the necessity of the controversy on the relationship among science, power and morality.

Class Schedule

I Semester: Mo, Tu, We 5 - 7 p.m., class. IV (str. Zamboni 38) and on TEAMS.

Start date: 9.21.2019.

Readings/Bibliography

Hans Jonas, Tecnica, medicina ed etica. Prassi del principio responsabilità, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, Chap. I, II, III, IV, V (or English translation).

Marina Lalatta Costerbosa, Scienza. Ambivalenze, insidie, prospettive, in Dimensioni del diritto, eds. Alberto Andronico,Tommaso Greco, Fabio Macioce, Turin, Giappichelli, 2019, p. 371-398. 

Serenella Iovino, Filosofie dell’ambiente. Natura, etica, società, Milan, Carocci, 2008.

Jürgen Habermas, Il futuro della natura umana. I rischi di una genetica liberale, Turin, Einaudi, 2010 (or English translation).

David Lyon, La società sorvegliata, Milan, Feltrinelli, 2002 (or original edition) or Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon, Liquid Surveillance. A Conversation, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2013.

Nathalie Weidenfeld and Julian Nida-Rümelin, Umanesimo digitale. Un'etica per l'epoca dell'Intelligenza Artificiale, Milan, FrancoAngeli, 2019 or Guglielmo Tamburrini, Etica delle macchine. Diemmi morali per robotica e intelligenza artificiale, Rome, Carocci, 2020.

The Syllabus is valid for both attending and non-attending students.

Teaching methods

Lectures, seminars and discussion on bioethical themes.

Interdisciplinary seminars will be hold by experts working in the field.

Assessment methods

Final oral examination. Room 5.01 (str. Zamboni 38) or TEAMS. On September there will be an examination schedule. 

Evaluating criteria:

1. Expertise; practical reasoning ability; critical competence.

Notes:

18-21/30 basic level

22-25/30 moderate level

26-28/30 good level

29-30/30 excellent level.

Teaching tools

http://www.governo.it/bioetica/ Žhttp://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/bioethics/bioethics_ethics http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/ [http://www.governo.it/bioetica/%20%C3%82%C2%8Ehttp://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/bioethics/bioethics_ethics%20http://bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/]

Office hours

See the website of Marina Lalatta Costerbosa