2016 Stanford Course
An academic course at Stanford University titled "The Boundaries of Humanity: Humans, Animals, and Machines in the Age of Biotechnology" (Anthro128A), co-taught by Professor William Hurlbut and Professor William Durham, took place during spring quarter, 2016. The course invited field leaders to share their area of expertise with the class and to discuss the implications of our dilemmas at the 'boundaries of humanity' and the wisest path forward into the human future.
Class 1: Historical perspectives on human distinction and human flourishing
- Jessica Riskin, Professor of History, and James Sheehan, Professor Emeritus of History, Stanford University
Class 2: Course overview and Transcendent Man screening
- None
Class 3: Evolution and the emergence of the human
- William H. Durham, Professor in Anthropology & Human Biology, Stanford University
Class 4: Homo sapiens, the symbolic species
- Terrence Deacon, Professor in Biological Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Class 5: Human evolutionary ecology
- Kim Hill, Professor of Anthropology, Arizona State University
Class 6: Human Universals and Variations
- William H. Durham, Professor in Anthropology & Human Biology, Stanford University
Class 7: Embodied cognition: the conceptual groundings of symbolic and aesthetic capacities
- William Hurlbut, Consulting Professor in Neurobiology, Stanford University
Class 8: Distinguishing aspects of human social psychology
- Jeanne Tsai, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford University
Class 9: Common and distinctive patterns in genetics and human developmental neurobiology
- David Kingsley, Professor of Developmental Biology, Stanford University
Class 10: The inevitability of human intelligence
- Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Cambridge
Class 11: Clones, Chimeras, and Human Hybrids
- Stuart Newman, Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy, New York Medical College
Class 12: Humans and machines: current and future cyborg possibilities
- Paul Nuyujukian, Postdoctoral scholar, Neurosurgery, Stanford University
Class 13: Distinguishing characteristics of human cognition
- Andrew Meltzoff, Professor in Psychology, University of Washington
Class 14: Distinguishing characteristics of human emotions
- David Lyons, Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
Class 15: Unique Characteristics of Human Social Psychology
- Jamil Zaki, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Stanford University
Class 16: Neuroaesthetics: the elevation of uniquely human abilities
- Blakey Vermeule, Professor of English, Stanford University
Class 17: Humans, Computers, and Robots
- Trevor Blackwell, Researcher at Y Combinator
Class 18: Transcendent Man: the Vision of Ray Kurzweil
- Ray Kurzweil, Chief Engineer and Renowned Futurist, Google
Class 19: Course Reflection: What are the boundaries we have found? How will they shape the human future?