ALI 2018 Welcome and Panel 1 (July 20th 9:00 am EDT)

8:45 am–9:00 am: Welcome by Congress Chair (Location: Meeting Room):
Peter A. Redpath (Holy Apostles College and Seminary)

9:00 am–10:30 am: Plenary Session Panel 1 (Location: Meeting Room)
Chair: Elisabeth Blum (Loyola University Maryland)

Complete conference program (subject to change)

Update: Plenary Session video

Speaker: Paul Richard Blum (Loyola University Maryland), “Isaac Asimov on the Paradox of the Human Condition: Robots are Slaves”

Slaves and robots have in common that they are intended to obey orders. Therefore I suggest taking a close look at some of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. Executing a program while detecting and overcoming problems and acting towards fulfillment of given instructions – all this makes a robot a perfect slave. In the same way as slave laws in the British Colonies in America were intended to keep slavery effective by confining slaves in their place, so are Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics the formal condition for the workability of a robot holding society. Asimov’s androids reveal the implicit impossibility of both robots and slaves by establishing the command structure that would be needed to keep the system working and then disassembling this structure. The Three Laws, as they are meant to guarantee protection, command, and operation, cannot possibly work with separate master/slave subjects. They are a paradoxical juxtaposition. And consequently, slavery is logically impossible.

Speaker:: Douglas Viviani, Esq. (Host: “Everything Old is New Again” Radio Show)

Throughout literature, television and movies, the usual representation of Artificial Intelligence is that of an eventual enemy or foe for Humanity. Must Artificial Intelligence, a human creation made without any emotions, feelings or true sense of what it means to be human, ever be considered a "friend" to humanity? Can Artificial Intelligence ever become so advanced as to be considered "life"? What if such a being was embodied with the frailties of humanity, such as human emotion? This talk will introduce such questions as they have been presented in our pop culture and leave all in attendance with a hopeful yet cautionary tale that may be the legacy we leave to our ancestors to resolve so as to ensure very existence of humanity itself.

Speaker: Peter A. Redpath (Aquinas School of Leadership), “The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas
Aquinas as a Midwife to the Birth of a New and Improved Global Civilization of Freedom”

As we increasingly witness on a daily basis the contemporary crackup of the Western Enlightenment and its cultural institutions, through the research of Étienne Gilson, I examine how the Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas can serve as the midwife for birth of a new and improved Western culture capable of helping to generate a future global civilization of freedom properly-so-called to replace the dying Enlightenment and its decaying organizations.