Perkowitz, professor of physics at Emory University, takes the reader on an absorbing journey through the history of human efforts to duplicate human functions. Robots and artificial body parts represent the current level of achievement; the ultimate achievement may be artificial beings. Although "no one has yet made a completely autonomous being, or one that seems consistently and convincingly alive, or a bionic implant that improves human strength or wit ... there is no doubt that existing technology will carry us further along these paths." And eventually we must face some profound questions. "What is our purpose in making artificial or hybrid beings? What are our ethical responsibilities toward them and theirs toward us? Do we have anything to fear from intelligent and powerful nonhuman beings?"

This course addresses some of the eternal questions that man has grappled with since the beginning of time. What is good? What is bad? Why is justice important? Why is it better to be good and just than it is to be bad and unjust? Most human beings have the faculty to discern between right and wrong, good and bad behavior, and to make judgments over what is just and what is unjust. But why are ethics important to us? This course looks at our history as ethical beings. We’ll travel into the very heart of mankind’s greatest philosophical dilemmas—to the origins of our moral values and the problem of ethics.