Discusses the scientific potential represented by intelligent machines and their social implications.

First published in 1984, Cultural Analysis is a systematic examination of the theories of culture contained in the writings of four contemporary social theorists: Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. This study of their work clarifies their contributions to the analysis of culture and shows the converging assumptions that the authors believe are laying the foundation for a new approach to the study of culture. The focus is specifically on culture, a concept that remains subject to (...) ambiguities of treatment, and concentrates on questions concerning the definition and content of culture, its construction, its relations with social conditions, and the manner in which it may be changing. The books demonstrates how these writers have made strides towards defining culture as an objective element of social interaction which can be subjected to critical investigation. (shrink)

This book includes chapters on the most representative structuralists (in anthropology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, literature, and history) as well as on their opponents (in Marxism, hermeneutics, and sociology), so that this book about structuralism also put structuralism in its intellectual and political milieu.

“Who am I?” is the ultimate ontological question, and we often refer to it as the issue of consciousness. When people speak of consciousness they often slip into considerations of behavioral and neurological correlates of consciousness (for example, whether or not an entity can be self‐reflective). But these are third‐person (objective) issues and do not represent what David Chalmers calls the “hard question” of consciousness. The question of whether or not an entity is conscious is apparent only to itself. The (...) difference between neurological correlates of consciousness (such as intelligent behavior) and the ontological reality of consciousness is the difference between objective and subjective reality. That is why we cannot propose an objective consciousness detector without philosophical assumptions built into it. (shrink)

Technology has always been a double‐edged sword, bringing us longer and healthier lifespans, freedom from physical and mental drudgery, and many new creative possibilities, on the one hand, while introducing new and salient dangers on the other. Technology empowers both our creative and destructive natures.