Description

This is also the third meeting of the annual theme "Are the devices taking over?"

Friends and protectors of animals, nature or life tend to condemn some forms of interference with their conservation - especially interventions involving technology - as violating the "intrinsic value" of animals, nature or life. Indeed, purely intuitively at least, most of us cannot imagine that replacing real trees with technically more perfectly functioning plastic trees respects that intrinsic value.
Intrinsic value is also attributed to humans; nature lovers derive the term from this idea originally introduced for humans in Immanuel Kant's Enlightenment thinking. Without attributing intrinsic value to man, human rights are unthinkable and indefensible.
Plastic trees and plastic people seem like lead to scrap. However, providing humans with technical attachments, even if eventually the whole body would be plastic, can meet that same criterion of respect for intrinsic value.
Can we give a clear meaning to the moral intuition of intrinsic value, and set workable limits to the application of technology on humans and nature?

ROUTE DESCRIPTION
From the station hall of Utrecht CS, walk through the entire passage through Hoog Catharijne towards the city centre. When you arrive at the square, the Vredenburg 19 meeting centre is on your left, above C & A. When you get down, walk diagonally left along the walls of the building site, the square and the street (Vredenburg) have to be crossed. On the ground floor there is only an entrance hall with lifts and a notice board with the hall number, to the left of the C & A shop windows, next to the shoe shop Breugel.
Parking is available at NH hotels, among other places.

ATTENDANCE
The hall will be open from 6.30 pm for free coffee or tea and a social chat.
Given the interest in the topic, potential interested parties other than from the Philosophy & Engineering Department are also invited. However, the room capacity is limited to 30 seats.
Due to this limited room capacity, please pass on declarations of participation until Tuesday 12 May at the latest.

Speaker(s)

Marcel Wissenburg (1962) studied political science and philosophy. In 2004, he became Socrates Professor of Humanistic Philosophy, particularly with regard to the relationship between man and nature. at Wageningen University; in September 2009, his appointment there expires. He is also professor of Political Theory at Radboud University in Nijmegen, where his research also often deals with the themes of humanism, enlightenment, autonomy, and nature and the environment - but not always: his latest book, Political Pluralism and the State (2008), deals with the changing meaning of the state. He has also regularly advised the Telders Foundation, the scientific bureau of the VVD, on philosophical questions concerning liberalism and nature and the environment since 2006.

Location

Meeting Centre, Vredenburg 19

Utrecht

Organiser

Philosophy & Technology

Name and contact details for information

Further information from Henk Uijttenhout, tel: 070-3875293/06-42505844 or via the e-mail address below.

hbmuijttenhout@hotmail.com

More information about the speaker