物理与电子工程学院2019学术论坛之十六
Title: Is It Immoral to Go to Mars?
Speaker: Andrea Baldini, Young Ambassador of the Jiangsu Province, School of Arts, Nanjing University
Time: 5:10pm , 18 April
Venue: 图书馆副楼5楼报告厅
Abstract：Discussions about the possibility of traveling to Mars touch on wide range issues. The most obvious concerns raised are typical of space exploration and deal with scientific and technological problems. Such preoccupations all revolve around the following question: Is it feasible to go to Mars? Call this the feasibility question. However, preoccupations of a different kind have emerged in response to the human crave for extra-terrestrial worlds. Scholars and general commentators have questioned the moral status of space exploration. In general, many have considered then issues related to the following question: Is going to Mars the right thing to do? Call this the moral question.
In this presentation, I focus on the moral question. Leading voices in the debate often endorse pessimistic views about the moral status of Mars exploration. There seems to be growing consensus that going to Mars is immoral – or, at least, morally questionable. I defend here an optimistic view about traveling to Mars. I argue that colonizing Mars is either morally neutral or morally good. I reject pessimism about space travel by pointing out that its arguments suffer from either one of those two problems: (i) they misunderstand human nature by failing to recognize that humans have no natural niches as pragmatist philosopher Joseph Margolis, among others, have recently argued; and, (ii) they overlook the simple fact that morality is empty when imagined outside of a human context. In effect, as Bernard Williams famously suggested, ethical concerns are human concerns and their meaningfulness is bound to matters of proximity to our interest as determinate species. In the conclusion, I offer some qualifications about to my view, presenting therefore a version of qualified optimism about Mars colonization.
Speaker：Andrea Baldini is Associate Professor of Art Theory and Aesthetics at the School of Arts
of Nanjing University and Director of the NJU Center for Sino-Italian Cultural Studies. He is also Young Ambassador of the Jiangsu Province. A native of Italy, he studied as a Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Philosophy at Temple University in Philadelphia (USA), where he obtained a PhD (2014). Since 2015, he is also the coordinator of the Jinling Artist-in- Residence Program, whose aim is to promote cultural exchange between China and Italy. He has published extensively on issues related to aesthetics, philosophy of art, and visual culture. Recent articles appeared in the Journal of Visual Culture and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
