AUTHOR
Andra Gumbus,Frances S. Grodzinsky and Stephen Lilley

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Has technology caused a generational divide between current college age users who have no problems posting intimate details of their personal life on the Web and more traditional older users? When Scott McNealy, chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, pronounced that “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” (Sprenger, 1999) he was speaking to middle-aged journalists. Supposedly there is no need to tell this to the younger generation. Many adults are shocked by what they see on Facebook and Myspace and believe that most teenagers don’t take the risks seriously. In an article written for the New York Times “When Information Becomes T.M.I.”, Warren St. John writes, “Through MySpace, personal blogs, YouTube and the like, this generation has seemed to view the notion of personal privacy as a quaint anachronism. Details that those of less enlightened generations might have viewed as embarrassing — who you slept with last night, how many drinks you had before getting sick in your friend’s car, the petty reason you had dropped a friend or been fired from a job — are instead signature elements of one’s personal brand. To reveal, it has seemed is to be” (St. John, 2006).

Gross and Acquisti (2005) found that users may be at risk both online and offline when using social networking sites. Most users, irrespective of age, have little knowledge and don’t understand where their information goes nor consider the consequences of clicking without thinking. They make the mistake of thinking that privacy settings guarantee confidentiality of information posted. But when applications are used, they are downloaded allowing the developer access to the downloader’s information. Issues of ownership of data surfaced in February 2009 when Facebook asserted rights over members’ content even after an account was terminated. (Associated press, 2009). Although Facebook backed down in the face of online protests and bad publicity, the episode demonstrated its potential reach.

Research Questions and Methodologies

Given the important issues at stake, the authors decided to conduct an exploratory study on this generation’s view on privacy and their use of social networking. Is it true that young men and women don’t care about privacy? Do they have little regard for controlling personal information? Are frequent users of social networking sites naïve and acquiescent? To address such questions regarding attitudes toward privacy and knowledge about security of data on social networking sites, we conducted a survey of 251 college students and follow-up focus groups with 16 of those students. We compare younger and older respondents in the Millennial generation and light and heavy users of social networking sites on their survey responses to privacy issues. Focus group participants, aged 18-22, were asked both written and open ended verbal questions regarding their use of social networking sites. Written questions focused on frequency and duration of sites visited, number of various categories of friends, and features of Facebook, such as virtual gift, news feed, social ads, status update, wall, Facebook Connect, random 25, and beacon. To assess the respondents’ awareness about control and ownership of content, we questioned them about Facebook’s terms of service and business practices. The legitimate and illegitimate use of social networking in both work and university contexts were explored as well as harm that can be caused by overuse.

Facebook Nation: Our Findings

From our survey, we found that a majority of students frequently access social networking sites, although non-traditional age students (over 21 ) are much less likely to do so. Heavy users as compared to light users were significantly more likely to take a cavalier attitude about computer use. However, heavy and light users were not significantly different on their attitudes to privacy and internet monitoring. The majority favored privacy protections especially when it comes to sites and communication mediums (e.g., email) deemed part of their personal realm.

Focus groups revealed hours per day on Facebook vary between 1 and 5. Less use of MySpace, LinkedIn, AIM and blogs were reported. All who use Facebook expressed fears regarding invasion of privacy, however, many were ignorant of the specific ways that their content and activities on Facebook could be exploited. They want control over who sees their site and what is on it and all were worried about employer searches. A few seniors (final year students) described steps to “clean up” their sites, as well as, dramatically reduce the number of friends as they approach graduation.

In conclusion, the respondents in this study value privacy and do recognize, in general, the risks of using social networking sites. Some practice caution and avoid the sites or limit their exposure. Still, we find that those who have become dependent on the sites appear to be more passive. One respondent stated that “Facebook is a great network to get in contact with friends… [but] many of its features invade people’s privacy.” Some, but not all, are willing to accept this trade off.

REFERENCES

Associated Press, “Facebook Tries Its Hand at Democracy” February 27, 2009 Accessed 3/2/2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29414725/from/ET/

Gates, Anita “For Baby Boomers, the Joys of Facebook” New York Times, March 22, 2009 CT7

Gross, Ralph and Acquisti, Allesandro “Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks” in Proceedings of the 2005 Workshop on privacy in the Electronic Society ( WPES), ACM, 71 – 80, 2005.

Sprenger, P. (1999) “Sun on Privacy: ‘Get Over It”, Wired. http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/01/17538, Accessed July 2, 2009.

St. John, Warren (2006) “When Information is T.M.I.” New York Times, September 10,2006,

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/fashion/10FACE.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22When%20 Information%20Becomes%20T.M.I.%22%20%20sept%202006&st=cse/ Accessed February 21, 2009.

AUTHOR
FS Grodzinsky, K Miller and MJ Wolf

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

This paper explores different phenomena that have been discussed in the literature as “trust,” “e-trust” and “reliance”. The ambiguous nomenclature confuses the discussion, and is detrimental to a dialogue about important issues involving these terms. We claim the modest goal of devising a model that will help us to describe more precisely and analyze more carefully scenarios involving trust. We will isolate two aspects of trust or, as we prefer, processes related to trust, to come up with a working definition of trust and then present an object-oriented model that delineates trust and e-trust in a superclass / subclass model.

Two Aspects of Trust:

To focus our exploration of trust processes, we first isolate two aspects of any such process: a means of communication and the identity of the agents involved.

1. Means of communication: We will focus on two general modes of communication involved in trust processes. We do not claim that these two are the only possible forms of communication, or that our classification is the only way to characterize these kinds of communication. But these two “modes” are convenient for our discussion of trust and e-trust.

We define the transfer of information between A and B as a “communication.” That is, we will be careful not to argue about the effect of the arrival of information on an agent. Such arguments might be important, but we will simplify our discussion by not debating about how humans and artificial agents “communicate” beyond noting the means of conveying information between A and B.

Communication mode #1: Communications that use telecommunications and computing as mediating. These would include at least telephone communications, email, instant messaging, Skype communications, blogging, electronic bulletin boards and so forth. We will call these Ecommunication.

Communication mode #2: Communications that require physical proximity, including talking, touching, and sign language. We will collect all these kinds of communication under the label Pcommunication.

2. Human or Artificial Agents? The two entities A and B could be human or artificial. We will call silicon-based, computer controlled interactive entities AA’s for “artificial agents.” For the first part of our discussion we will limit ourselves to single agents A and B. Later we will generalize to allow either A or B to be a group of entities.

A Working Definition of Trust:

Taddeo (2009) analyzes different definitions of trust and e-trust and discusses definitional problems that remain. Despite the remaining questions that Taddeo identifies, we require at least an outline of trust and e-trust to advise software developers involved in AA projects about issues of trust. Following Taddeo’s analysis, we will assert the following principles about trust and e-trust. First, about trust:

• Trust is a relation between A (the trustor) and B (the trustee). A and B can be human or artificial.
• Trust is a decision by A to delegate to B some aspect of importance to A in achieving a goal. We assume that an artificial agent A can include “decisions” (implemented by, for example, IF/THEN/ELSE statements). These decisions involve some computation about the probability that B will behave as expected.
• Trust involves risk; the less information A has about B, the higher the risk and the more trust is required. This is true for both artificial and human agents. In AAs, we expect that risk and trust are quantified or at least categorized explicitly; in humans, we do not expect that this proportionality is measured with mathematical precision.
• A has the expectation of gain by trusting B. In AAs, “expectation of gain” may refer to the expectation of the AA’s designer, or it may refer to an explicit expression in the source code that identifies this expected gain, or both.
• B may or may not be aware that A trusts B. If B is human, circumstances may have prevented B from knowing that A trusts B. The same is true if B is an AA, but there is also some possibility that an AA trustee B may not even be capable of “knowing” in the traditional human sense.
• Positive outcomes when A trusts B encourage A to continue trusting B. If A is an AA, this cycle of trust – good outcome – more trust could be explicit in the design and implementation of the AA, or it could be implicit in data relationships, as in a neural net.

Second, about e-trust:

• E-trust occurs through Ecommunication, where physical contact is not required between A and B, and where there may or may not be social norms.
• “Trust needs touch” is not a requirement.
• Referential trust (based on recommendations) is often important in e-trust.

The Model: Nine Classes for Trust and E-trust

In the remainder of the paper we define a naming convention for several distinct types of trust based on the two aspects previously introduced. The naming convention is based on the superclass/subclass idea common in object oriented programming. We overlay the working definitions above onto the model and then propose that a particular, contextualized instance of trust can be described. The paper will discuss the importance of the social-technical context and the instantiation of the superclass/subclasses. It will conclude with a demonstration of how this model can be used to improve discussions of e-trust.

REFERENCES

Taddeo, M. (2009) Defining trust and e-trust: from old theories to new problems. International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction 5, 2, April-June 2009.

AUTHOR
Peggy Gregory, Karen Whittaker, Danielle Binns and Katie Taylor

ABSTRACT

We describe the development and evaluation of a prototype DVD designed for use by parents and adolescents together and aimed at improving communication within the family.

The prototype DVD, called APE (Adolescent & Parent Experiences), contains a cartoon-based interactive story in which a teenager comes home late. The DVD was developed by a multi-disciplinary team from three different Schools within the University – Computing, Nursing and Media – as well as participants from outside bodies – Action for Children (a charity), Central Lancashire PCT (a health body) and Lancashire Youth Offending Team (a statutory body). The purpose of working in a multi-disciplinary team was so that each team member could bring knowledge to the project from their own area of expertise. A particular feature of the project was that as it involved developing an innovative piece of software the specification was a creative process which emerged as the project progressed. The animation and software were undertaken by a group of Media students who completed the work as part of a third year module. Part of the team involved in developing the product went on to do the evaluation.

The DVD was developed so that it could be watched by the whole family on television, with both parents and adolescents able to make choices about how the story progressed by choosing responses that most closely matched their own. We used three different types of cartoon apes to play the characters – gorillas, orang utangs and chimpanzees – with a parent and adolescent character for each type. The three ape families were based on a model of three parenting styles: authoritarian (gorilla), laissez faire (orang utang) and democratic (chimpanzee). Adolescent responses to those parenting styles were based on experiences of experts in the development team. An example of different choices that could be made is that when the teenager eventually arrived home the parents could choose whether they a) felt angry and told the teenager they couldn’t go out for a month (authoritarian response), b) were unconcerned and let the teenager creep in quietly and go to bed (laissez-faire approach) or c) were relieved and told the teenager they’d discuss appropriate punishment the following day (democratic response). A combination of humour and real-life choices in the story aimed to bring a light touch to the serious process of reflection about different ways of responding.

The aim of the evaluation was to explore reactions to the DVD, to investigate how it could stimulate family communication and to evaluate the suitability of its content. We evaluated the DVD with young people in schools and with parents and parenting experts through parenting groups and at the University. We used a questionnaire to gather data from these diverse groups but also gathered data by observation, interviewing and group discussion.

The DVD was evaluated with 122 young people, 23 parents and 22 parenting practitioners. Of the questionnaire respondents 103 responded to the DVD positively, 19 responded negatively and 30 felt neutral about it. The most common response to the DVD from young people was that it made them think about their parents’ viewpoint, whereas for parents it made them think about how they communicated with their child. Over half of the participants felt that the DVD would help encourage communication with family members about coming home late. Problems were identified with the voice over, and there were mixed responses to the question of whether human or animal characters were most appropriate for the content.

A number of interesting issues arose from this work that we would like to discuss in more detail at the conference. From the social perspective our software represents a way in which computer games and interactive software can be used for the purpose of encouraging social change. We were surprised to find that despite the UK government’s agenda to improve family cohesion and outcomes for young people by improving parenting skills, there is very little interactive material of this type available. For instance much of the material already available uses film media and is primarily designed to be shown to parents. However films can be ethically contentious when the real lives of families are exposed, also they may not prompt active engagement of viewers and parents and young people may not watch them together. Our DVD was specifically developed with the aim of encouraging interaction between parents and adolescents. We designed the product so that both parents and young people could have equal input into the story and we also deliberately used cartoon characters to avoid some of the regional, ethnic and social stereotyping that is difficult to overcome when using real characters. This type of interactive software also provides a potential for personalisation that can make the product more relevant to a particular situation – for example by users being able to make selections about voice and gender.

From an ethical perspective we needed to carefully consider the consequences of the DVD causing problems within families rather than easing them. For the prototype we deliberately chose the ‘neutral’ but commonly occurring scenario ‘coming home late’. However the intention for the next version of the software is to develop several scenarios with different topics such as alcohol, drugs, sexual relationships, talking about feelings. As developers we need to consider whether this may cause more harm than good in some families and whether the product may be better used by professionals working with families rather than being accessible for use without professional support.

One common criticism of ICT is that as it becomes more widespread it can lead to isolation and lack of social skills. Our software is designed to encourage communication and family cohesion. In this sense we believe it is a ‘forwards’ change for ICT.

AUTHOR
Philippe Goujon, Marco Marabelli, Catherine Flick, Alesssia Santuccio and Federico Rajola

ABSTRACT

The impact of techno-scientific developments on societal evolution and lifestyles no longer needs to be demonstrated. In particular the last half of the twentieth century has witnessed a considerable acceleration of the integration of technological elements into the means of economic production and social life in general. The profound transformations that have taken place in the last few decades equally involve energy, transportation, construction, telecommunications, administration, medicine, pharmacy and agricultural sectors. These transformations are closely linked to techno-scientific developments and particularly to stunning developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

The rapid change and evolution of ICTs presents opportunities for social interaction and the management of life activities in new and often unfamiliar ways. The diversity of use and application areas brought about by the convergence of different media offers great potential for enhancing many aspects of living. At the same time, the main characteristics of these technologies that lend themselves to inspiring visions of the future (such as the Ambient Intelligence environment) also hold for potential negative ethical impacts. Some ethical issues are now familiar, privacy for example, but even so it might be hard to identify potential risks in new applications and contexts, especially if we take into account the extent to which new technologies are now enveloped in every day human activities. Others are less obvious and likely to become harder to identify since nowadays ICT is becoming ‘seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible’. In other words, the growing process of incorporating ICT into human activities conditions behaviors and apparently the process is often unconscious or not clearly perceived by the users.

Unfortunately not all projects with technical development sufficiently integrate the ethical issues that arise. In particular, the governance of ethics is often missing and no guidelines have been provided so far both at the EU and international level. These difficulties have been recognized at EU level, resulting in the attention paid to ethics and ICT in EU Seventh Framework Program (FP7), and to some extent in UE Sixth Framework Program (FP6) -for instance the ETHICBOTS project, the MIAUCE project, and the SWAMI project). Approaches that address the challenges vary, and are often presented as different ways to identify potential ethical issues at some stage in the research project.

It is insufficient to determine and address the ethical problems raised by the ICT from a theoretical perspective if such approaches have no practical impact and remain external to the development of the technical project itself. Ethical considerations are by themselves insufficient to settle the problem of the relationship between ethics technologies and society, above all in the field of ICT and emerging technology such as ambient intelligent systems, and the alignment between projects development and ethics is far from being achieved. In addition, the positive approaches of the social sciences, even in their applied versions to an ethics of technology (e.g. ‘sociology of morals’), even if doesn’t encourage cognitive and normative reflexivity, can reinforce the efficiency of instrumental methods which are typically those of the ‘social engineering’.

The risk is that by not addressing the conditions (institutional, rules, cognitive) for the effective integration of those considerations in the context of a technical project, the ethical considerations will be excluded from the technical rationale and treated as a totally separate domain. The consequence of this separation is a loss of impact, and an undermining of the integral role of ethics in the application of technology (I would rewrite this last sentence. I got the message but I think should be more clear since I feel this is a fundamental point, we should ask Catherine to rewrite it since she’s mother language. I would change the word “undermining”)

Thus, this article aims to address the conditions to identify the ethical issue incorporated into ICT, and takes into consideration the problem of the ethical issues resolution, which is based on the consideration of assuring the efficiency and the effectiveness of ethical reflexivity in the technological development itself. In turn, our approach is not limited to consider ethical issues as a sheer sectorial approach with the consequence that the debate will be reduced just as a mere application of a priori accepted principles, in fact, the latter approach would resume itself to a deduction of consequences from the application of those principles to a perceived context, without taking into account its achievement

Consequently we develop the following research questions:

• what will be the consequences of scientific and technical rationality for the moral reason ?
• Is it possible to relativize instrumental rationality? and what are the conditions for its political control?
• What are the conditions that allow the conditions for the integration, within the structures of power and decision, means of « learning », taking possession of the socio-techniques, ethics and cultural stakes of new technologies ?
• how we can define a new ethical governance: reflexive, deliberative, ethical… that allows (I think this sentence is to be completed)

Doing so, we will specify a theoretical framework for improved governance mechanisms that identify and address potential ethical issues arising from new and emerging ICT technologies, and at the same time will erase the separation and disjunction that, to take Putnam expression, separates so often the level of justification (theoretical approach and determination of ethical issues) from the level of application (transformation of the context by the application of the ethical reflexivity and determination).

We will respond to the need for a comprehensive ethical governance process that supports deliberation and shared decision-making, and that implicitly carries a commitment to ethical engagement in technology development.

AUTHOR
Andrea Glorioso

ABSTRACT

Since the inception of its first prototypes in the late ’60s, the internet has certainly come a long way. What used to be an extremely small network – originally designed with military and defence purposes, but very soon turned into a communication system for researchers – has nowadays become an essential element for economies and, most importantly, for societies throughout the world [1].

Although the social significance and implications of this new technology[2] was rather clear both to its original designers (perhaps less so to its funders) and to ‘gearly adopters’, [3] it seems fair to say that it is only in the past decade that the full extent and impact of the internet on societies has become clearer – which does not mean, as this paper will argue, that our level of reflection on and understanding of this relationship is fully satisfactory.

More specifically, this paper argues that it is necessary to broaden our understanding of the relationship between fundamental rights – as enshrined inter alia in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[4] – and the Internet. In particular, the paper argues that we should strive to better understand:

Do or should fundamental rights be changed, or at least declined differently, when their exercise takes place on the internet (e.g. Should the right to freely receive and impart information be refined, in view of the technological possibilities for filtering and blacklisting[5] that abound on the internet) ?

Although the internet, as a human-made piece of technology, does not have rights per se, is it useful to frame the discourse around this topic also in terms of the specific technological characteristics that the internet should be guaranteed to have in order for fundamental rights on the internet to be meaningfully exercise (e.g. Should “network neutrality” be mandatory) ?

Are there fundamental rights – and if so, which ones – that must be particularly safeguarded and promoted in order to make sure that the distributed social – but technology-based – ecosystem of the internet is preserved and, even more importantly, updated and developed to cope with new requirements that might arise, so that, as above, the meaningful exercise of fundamental rights on the internet is preserved (e.g. How far should the right to private initiative be balanced against the intervention of public authorities in developing the internet of the future) ?

The paper will provide a legal, technological and policy framework to discuss these three questions, on the basis both of existing literature and of the ongoing policy initiatives in this area, including, but not limited to, the activities of the dynamic coalition on rights and principles in the context of the internet governance forum,[6] of participants to the world summit on the information society[7], of the council of europe[8] and of other relevant players.

REFERENCES

[1] See inter alia Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Declaration on the Future of the Internet Economy, 2008, available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/49/28/40839436.pdf; and even more importantly the OECD report Shaping policies for the future of the Internet Economy and its annexes (available respectively at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/29/40821707.pdf and http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/28/40821729.pdf).

[2] In this contribution the definition of ‘technology’ introduced in R.G. Lipsey, K. I. Carlaw, C. T. Bekar, Economic Transformations – General Purpose Technologies and Long Term Economic Growth, Oxford University Press, 2005, p.58, will be used, i.e. “the set of ideas specifying all activities that create economic value […] comprising (1) knowledge about product technologies, the specifications of everything that is produced; (2) knowledge about process technologies, the specifications of all processes by which goods and services are produced; (3) knowledge about organisational technologies, the specification of how productive activity is organised in productive and administrative units for producing present and future goods and services”.

[3] See for example S. Levy, Hackers – Heros of the Computer Revolution, Anchor Press, 1984.

[4] As mentioned, the references to these three instruments should not be interpreted as limiting the scope of the necessary analysis. Many other instruments, some of which are available for consultation at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/, play a central role in this reflection.

[5] See inter alia R. Deibert, J. Palfrey, R. Rohozinski, J. Zittrain (eds.), Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, MIT Press, 2008, as well as the reports of the OpenNet Initiative (http://opennet.net/) and their proposed taxonomy (http://opennet.net/about-filtering).

[6] See http://www.internetrightsandprinciples.org/.

[7] See http://www.itu.int/wsis/.

[8] See http://www.coe.int/ and in particular the declaration on freedom of communication on the internet adopted by the committee of ministers on 28 may 2003 at the 840th meeting of the ministers’ deputies) and the resolution on internet governance and critical internet resources (adopted by the conference of ministers on 29 may 2009 at the 1st council of europe conference of ministers responsible for media and new communication services).

AUTHOR
Anne Gerdes

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I set out to address moral philosophical issues, which arise when human nature undergoes changes and we eventually turn into cyborgs. We are now faced with the fact that we have become masters of evolution, even if we decide in general not to modify the body; it too is an active choice. When our body and brain are attached to technology it will gradually change our ways of being beings in the world. Furthermore, the possibility of technology enhancement also allows for variety among us. Therefore, it is my main concern to make aware of bodily presence within moral philosophy (MacIntyre, 2002) in order to shed light on the significance of embodiment for the development of a common understanding of the good. This background will function as a fundamental framework, which supports analysis about how cyborg ethics will relate to human ethics. Relating on the work of John Rawls, I will discuss conditions for social justice and equality in a future human and or cyborg society. In A Theory of Justice (1972), Rawls defines principles of justice for regulating an ideal society. He presents a model of a fair choice situation, which affords social justice by engaging participants to choose mutually acceptable principles of justice. In a hypothetical situation, participants are acting behind a “veil of ignorance” regarding their own social position in a future society. Given such circumstances, individuals will select principles in accordance with principles of justice. On this basis, I set out to explore the strength of this argument in a future human and or cyborg society.

The description of the conversion into cyborgs is laid out by Pearson (2000). The first step involves using gen technology in the development of Homo optimus. Next, with the help from bio-technology, we turn to homo cyberneticus and homo hybridus. Finally, with homo machinicus, we are faced with a species with no biological origin, heading for eternal life, an idea also reflected by Tipler in his book with the subtitle: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (Tipler, 1994). Additionally, the idea that humanity should strive for enhancing itself is reflected in the philosophy of transhumanism, and also Moor argues in favour of enhancement – with reference to the autonomy of the responsible individual (2005, 9. 129). This is already taking place; people have implants for therapeutic purposes, and professor Kevin Warwich (2002, 2003) is actively experimenting with implementing technology into his own body. One of his experiments concerns the possibility of future distributed cognition and implies coupling machine and human nervous system (Warwick, 2003. P. 134). Warwick also touches upon ethical dilemmas, which arise from future scenarios, as well as from his own self-experimentation projects. Warwick outlines dilemmas, such as: should everybody have a right to upgrade to a cyborg? How about the clash between free will and computer control of thoughts? (Warwick, 2003, pp. 135-136). But he does not establish a framework for dealing with these issues. Rather than speculating further on the basis of empirical cases and future scenarios, I would like to call for reflection upon the moral philosophical consequences of evolving into species that are no longer characterized by the kind of sameness, which has been a fundamental human condition for homo-sapiens.

In his famous paper What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (1974), Nagel discusses the mind-body problem and criticizes physical theories of the mind for their reductionist approach to the explanation of our conscious experiences. He points to the fact that we are unable to consider the subjective character of experience without trying to imagine how it would be like to be a given experiential subject (Nagel, 1974, p. 166). Nagel then stipulates an objective phenomenology with the purpose of describing the subjective character of experience in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experiences (Nagel, 1974, p. 166). In order to explain to a blind person what it is like to see, we should at first, well aware that something would still be left out, strive to develop a method allowing us to express in objective terms structural features of perception. Thus, to deal with the relation of mind to brain in the framework of a physical theory, we have to consider the problem regarding subjective and objective experiences.

I agree with Nagel that no reductionist analysis of mental states is fully able to explain the subjective character of experience – the fact that in order to have conscious experiences there must be something it is like to be a given organism (Nagel, 1994, p. 160). On the other hand, I disagree with Nagel on the idea of reaching an objective understanding of the mental through a structural feature analysis, which presumably would allow us to a grasp with greater precision the explanation of mental experiences. In the context of this paper, this disagreement causes me to explore how lack of sameness, with right to embodiment (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) and vulnerability (MacIntyre, 2002) may challenge the development of future social interaction.

REFERENCES

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh – the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books, NY.

MacIntyre, A. (2002), Dependent Rational Animals – Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, Carus Puhlishing Company, Illinois.

Moor, J. H. (2005), Should We Let Computers Get Under Our Skin? In: (ed.) R. J. Cavalier, The impact of the internet on our moral lives. State University of New York Press, NY. (p. 121-138).

Nagel, T. (1974), What Is It Like to Be a Bat? In: Philosophical Review 83, pp. 435-450.

Pearson, I. (2000), The Future of Human Evolution (www.bt.com)

Rawls, J. (1972), A Theory of Justice. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Tipler, F. J. (1994), The Physics of Immortality. Modern Cosmology – God and the Resurrection of the Dead, Doubleday.

Warwick, K. (2002), I, Cyborg, Century.

Warwick, K. (2003), Cyborg morals, cyborg values, cyborg ethics. In: Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 131-137.

Transhumanism http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/