Q: Why/What made you decide to create this course and choose this specific topic?

A: New technologies have changed the world in many ways, mostly in the direction of making human life better. However, many new technologies also lead to problems and issues. Technology such as human cloning and mind uploading may even challenge the dignity of human being or what is to be human. With this class, I wanted students to think about humanity from the perspectives of both science and philosophy. In KAIST, we have the major courses and the humanities and social science courses separately. I felt that we need a course covering both.

Q: What do you expect students to gain/achieve from this course?

A: In this course, the most important part is the discussion based on the studies about the topic. Students develop the questions to address, survey on the background and present their own thoughts about them. In this way I expect students to learn what they are most interested in, not what I want to teach. Unlike in many other courses, most of the topics we discuss will be controversial, meaning no single answer or correct answers exist. In fact, the problems we face in real life are often like that. I expect students to learn how to handle such problems. 

(Associate Professor Lee Wonhee, Department of Physics)