From Einstein’s Philosophy to the Ethics of High Technology: A Conversation With Don Howard

Our guest on this episode is Don Howard, the former director and a Fellow of the University of Notre Dame’s Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values.

In this podcast: 

Why Einstein was not only a great scientist, but an important philosopher of science (1:30) — How Einstein found the intellectual courage to go against tradition (3:00) — From physics major to philosopher of science (5:30) — Do physicists and other scientists take an interest in the philosophy of science? The Seven Pines Symposium (9:30) — History and Philosophy of Science at Notre Dame (12:30) —  What happens when high-tech employees protest a Pentagon contract? (15:45) — The state of virtue ethics among technologists (19:00) — What happened to virtue ethics during the enlightenment? (20:45) — How does virtue ethics work in practice, within a given community? (24:30) — How to deal with overlapping communities of practice (25:30) — How to think about some current problems in technology and robot ethics: Should robots have rights? … What about self-driving cars? … Autonomous weapons?? … Robot scabs and the universal basic income