Tony Milligan Gives Lecture on Virtue Ethics

Post Date October 08, 2013
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Category astrobiology, ethics, online lectures

On Wednesday 25 September, GCRI hosted an online lecture by Tony Milligan entitled ‘Virtue, Risk and Space Colonization’. Milligan is a Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Hertfordshire.

Discussions of the ethics of risk and space colonization are often dominated by consequentialist ethics. This includes GCRI’s recent ethics lecture by Nick Beckstead as well as my own writings on the topic (e.g. [1-2]). Milligan’s lecture covers the same risk and space topics but in terms of virtue ethics. Regardless of one’s views (and …

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Tony Milligan To Deliver Online Lecture On Virtue Ethics 25 September

Post Date August 22, 2013
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Category astrobiology, ethics, online lectures

This is the pre-event announcement for an online lecture by Tony Milligan, Lecturer with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire.

Here is the full talk info:

Virtue, Risk and Space Colonization
Wednesday 25 September 2013, 17:00 GMT (10:00 Los Angeles, 13:00 New York, 18:00 London)
To be held online via Skype. RSVP required by email to Seth Baum (seth [at] gcrinstitute.org). Space is limited.

Virtue ethics is one of the key components of contemporary ethical theory. It shifts our focus in the direction of living well and …

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New Magazine Article ‘Making The Universe A Better Place’

Post Date June 28, 2013
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Category astrobiology, ethics, publications

One more quick announcement. I have a short magazine article Making The Universe A Better Place in the new issue of Current Exchange/Technophilic Magazine. (The link is for the full issue. There’s no direct link to my article yet.) The article presents an overview of the ethics of global catastrophic risk as it relates to astrobiology. Technophilic is a magazine for science and engineering students, and so the article tells my personal story of how I transitioned from an engineering grad student to someone active …

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Teaching Astrobiology In A Sustainability Course

Post Date February 05, 2013
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Category astrobiology

View the paper “Teaching Astrobiology In A Sustainability Course”

Sustainability commonly refers to the ability for human and/or ecological systems to be sustained on Earth in the face of natural resource depletion, environmental degradation, and other stressors. Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe, including Earth-life colonizing space and life that originates elsewhere. Both are interdisciplinary fields asking big-picture questions about humanity and its surroundings. While sustainability almost always focuses on life on Earth, much about sustainability can be learned from astrobiology. This paper …

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New Publication: Teaching Astrobiology In A Sustainability Course, By Seth Baum

Post Date December 03, 2012
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Category astrobiology, publications

GCRI now has its second academic publication: Teaching astrobiology in a sustainability course by Seth Baum (i.e. me, your humble GCRI blogger).

This paper is based on Geog 30, an introductory undergraduate sustainability course I taught at Penn State. The basic idea is that while sustainability education usually focuses on sustainability on Earth, much can be learned from considering life in the universe. (Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe.) This includes a direct connection to GCR: In order to sustain Earth-originating life beyond …

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Meet The Team Tuesdays: Tim Maher

Post Date October 31, 2012
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Category astrobiology, environmental change, meet the team Tuesdays

This post is part of a weekly series introducing GCRI’s members. It’s running one day late this week. Yesterday my attention was fixed on Hurricane Sandy, which still loomed over my apartment.

It turns out that there are not many people working on both climate change policy and contact with extraterrestrials. But here at GCRI and our parent organization Blue Marble Space, well, yes, we do both, sometimes in the same study. So Tim must have been pretty surprised when he found us via web searches …

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Meet The Team Tuesdays: Jacob Haqq-Misra

Post Date October 23, 2012
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Category astrobiology, environmental change, meet the team Tuesdays

This post is the first in what will be a weekly series introducing GCRI’s members.

I was introduced to Jacob in 2008 via our mutual friend Shawn Domagal-Goldman when the three of us were grad students at Penn State. Shawn and Jacob were part of Penn State’s Astrobiology Research Center. They were thinking a lot about the implications of astrobiology (the study of life in the universe) for human civilization today, and invited me to join the conversation. The conversation has resulted in several papers together …

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