Forbidden Knowledge: Theology, Ethics, and Research of Impermissible Risk

Undergraduate / Graduate

We live in time of extraordinary scientific research, in which our capacities for technological advances far outstrip our established legal, ethical, and social norms for control. LLMs and embryo manipulation raise questions about the acceptable relationships between humans and technology: Artificial General Intelligence, advanced Mirror Biology both, if created, may destroy human life entirely. Is there some research that ought never to be done? It was here at the University of Chicago where this question was most vividly raised, as researchers of the Manhattan Project objected to using new technologies of atomic fission as weapons in World War II. These researchers consistently challenged the assumption that scientists must be completely free to do any research that they wish, noting that scientists themselves might not be the best ones to evaluate the risks and benefits of their own projects, and they called for a deeper involvement in such questions in an informed, public, and democratic process. This seminar will look in detail at the technology of AGI and of mirror biology, both of which carry deadly portents and totalizing implications and explore both how we discern whether and how to control scientific inquiry. We will ask: what role does moral philosophy or theological ethics have to play in this inquiry and we will consider what sort of governing norms or methods should have oversight over modern research science.