Terrell Ward Bynum
Encyclopedia
Terrell Ward Bynum is an American philosopher, writer and editor. Bynum is currently Director of the Research Center on Computing and Society at Southern Connecticut State University
, where he is also a Professor of Philosophy, and Visiting Professor in the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility in De Montfort University
, Leicester
, England. He is best known as a pioneer and historian in the field of computer
and information ethics
; for his achievements in that field, he was awarded the Barwise Prize
of the American Philosophical Association
, the Weizenbaum Award of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology, and the 2011 Covey Award of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy
. In addition, Bynum was the founder and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the philosophy journal Metaphilosophy (1968 to 1993); a key founding figure (1974–1980) and the first Executive Director (1980–1982) of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers
; biographer of the philosopher/ mathematician Gottlob Frege
, as well as a translator of Frege’s early works in logic
. Bynum’s most recent research and publications concern the ultimate nature of the universe and the impact of the information revolution upon philosophy.
set, Bynum became interested in the ultimate nature of the universe, an interest that was reinforced by a high school chemistry teacher who taught “the new chemistry” of the 1950s, and also by an English teacher who assigned philosophical writing exercises to her students. After high school, Bynum studied chemistry at the University of Delaware
(1959 to 1963), where, in 1961, philosopher Bernard Baumrin created the Delaware Seminars in Philosophy of Science featuring lectures by world-famous philosophers of science, such as Carl Hempel, Adolph Grunbaum, and Ernest Nagel
. Impressed by the Delaware Seminars, Bynum added philosophy as a second field of study, and Baumrin became his logic teacher and mentor. At that time, Bynum developed a strong interest in the life and work of philosopher/ mathematician Gottlob Frege
. As an undergraduate at the University of Delaware
, Bynum was surprised to learn that, although Gottlob Frege
was considered by many to be “the greatest logician since Aristotle
”, very little was known about Frege’s life, and some of his most important logical writings had never been translated into English. Bynum vowed to write Frege’s biography and translate Frege’s most important logical works, if the opportunity arose to do so.
In 1963, Bynum graduated from Delaware with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with Honors and Distinction and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with Honors and Distinction. His senior thesis derived a complex acid-base algorithm from the laws of thermodynamics using symbolic logic. In 1963-64, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Bristol
, England studying Philosophy of Science with Stephan Körner
. From 1964 to 1967 he was a graduate student, with a Danforth Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, in Princeton University
’s Program in the History and Philosophy of Science. In that program, he took courses that included, among others, History of Science with Thomas Kuhn
, Philosophy of Science with Carl Hempel, Logic with Alonzo Church
, and Analytic Philosophy with Richard Rorty
. In 1966, he was awarded an MA in Philosophy by Princeton. While still at Princeton, Bynum began writing a manuscript on Frege, which originally was to be a doctoral dissertation, but developed, instead, into a book containing Frege’s biography, translations of Frege’s Begriffsschrift
and related articles, an exegesis of Frege’s revolutionary contributions to logic, and an extensive annotated Frege bibliography. In 1972, the manuscript became a book published by the Clarendon Press, and in 2001, the book was republished as an “Oxford Scholarly Classic”.
To complete his university education, Bynum entered the PhD Program in Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
in 1982. He was granted an MPhil in Philosophy from CUNY in 1984 and a PhD in Philosophy in 1986. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Aristotle’s Theory of Human Action, and it was written under the direction of Bernard Baumrin.
, who had discovered the famous "Russell’s paradox" in Frege’s logical foundation for arithmetic; and he also interviewed Rudolf Carnap
, who had been a student of Frege’s. Of special importance was a meeting that Bynum had with Ignacio Angelelli, who recently had visited Jena University in Germany where Frege spent his entire academic career. While in Jena, Angelelli had secured a photograph of Frege and a wealth of materials about Frege’s career and personal life. He generously shared those materials with Bynum. During 1966 and 1967, Bynum completed the bulk of the work on his biography of Frege, his English translation of Frege’s Begriffsschrift and related articles, and his extensive annotated Frege bibliography. In 1972 the resulting Frege book was published by the Clarendon Press branch of Oxford University Press. In 2002, it was republished as an Oxford Scholarly Classic, which, according to the editors of that Oxford series, is a “great academic work” containing “some of the finest scholarship of the last century”.
, university students across America demanded that their university courses should be “relevant” to their lives and to the solution of urgent social problems. In this environment, as the Editor-in-Chief of Metaphilosophy, Bynum had begun (in 1969) to accept articles on topics, such as “applied philosophy” and philosophical analyses of social unrest, as well as articles on the improvement of the teaching of philosophy. By 1974, Bynum was convinced that there should be a national conference on the teaching of philosophy, not only to improve the teaching of traditional philosophy courses, but also to create new courses in applied philosophy in new environments, such as elementary schools, high schools, technical colleges, public libraries, prisons and “old folks’ homes”. He organized and headed a conference planning committee consisting of scholars and teachers from universities, colleges, technical schools, high schools, elementary schools, and a representative of the American Philosophical Association. The resulting conference was called The National Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, and it occurred on the campus of Union College
in Schenectady, New York
in August 1976. It lasted five days and attracted over 300 attendees from the United States, Canada and Japan. At the closing session, the attendees asked Bynum and his committee to put together a similar conference to be held two years later. In August 1978, the Second National Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, again headed by Bynum, occurred for a second time on the Union College campus. At the closing session, attendees asked Bynum and his committee to put together a professional organization to run such a workshop-conference every two years. Bynum appointed and headed a Steering Committee to create the new organization, which was to be called the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. In 1979, with advice from the Steering Committee, Bynum wrote the constitution and articles of incorporation and filed legal papers to make AAPT an official non-profit educational membership corporation of the State of New York. In August 1980, on the campus of the University of Toledo
, the Third National Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy became the first official conference of AAPT, and Bynum was selected as the first Executive Director, a position that he held for four years. He remained on the AAPT Board of Officers until 1994, serving as Vice-President in 1989 to 1990, President in 1991-1992, and Past-President in 1993-1994. Since 1980, AAPT has continued to run Workshop-Conferences in August every two years.
Also in the early 1980s, to demonstrate to fellow philosophers that computer ethics was an important and viable new branch of applied ethics, Bynum decided to create an entire computer ethics issue of the journal Metaphilosophy (he was Editor-in-Chief of the journal at the time). To generate papers for the special issue, he arranged an essay competition on the topic of Computer Ethics, with a $500 first prize plus publication in the special issue for the best half-dozen submitted papers. Professor James Moor of Dartmouth submitted the prize-winning paper “What is Computer Ethics?” which became the lead article in the special issue. The issue had its own title (Computers and Ethics) and “book cover”, and it was published as the October 1985 issue of Metaphilosophy. It quickly became the widest selling issue of the journal and remained so for many years.
In 1986 Bynum decided to find a university that would enable him to create a world-class research center on computer ethics. The following year he joined the faculty at Southern Connecticut State University, where he created, in 1988, the Research Center on Computing and Society. To generate a “critical mass” of scholars with whom his Center could work, Bynum decided to organize a national conference to which he would invite philosophers, computer scientists, and other academics, as well as public policy makers and journalists. He and Walter Maner decided to work together to plan the conference. In 1989, the National Science Foundation provided a conference-planning grant (grant # DIR-8820595) enabling Bynum and Maner to form a committee of 16 distinguished scholars and computer science leaders to plan the National Conference on Computing and Values (NCCV). In August of 1991, NCCV (funded by NSF grant # DIR-9012492) was held at Southern Connecticut State University . It included 400 attendees from 32 states of the USA plus 7 other countries. It generated a wealth of computer ethics materials, including six printed monographs, six videotapes, and a set of computer ethics syllabi. After the conference, the staff of the Research Center on Computing and Society spent three years editing the NCCV materials and disseminating them to more than 300 universities worldwide.
Southern Connecticut State University
Southern Connecticut State University is one of four state universities in Connecticut, and is located in the West Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut...
, where he is also a Professor of Philosophy, and Visiting Professor in the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility in De Montfort University
De Montfort University
De Montfort University is a public research and teaching university situated in the medieval Old Town of Leicester, England, adjacent to the River Soar and the Leicester Castle Gardens...
, Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
, England. He is best known as a pioneer and historian in the field of computer
Computer ethics
Computer Ethics is a branch of practical philosophy which deals with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct....
and information ethics
Information ethics
Information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society". It provides a critical framework for considering...
; for his achievements in that field, he was awarded the Barwise Prize
Barwise prize
The Barwise prize was established in 2002 by the American Philosophical Association, in conjunction with the APA Committee on Philosophy and Computers, on the basis of a proposal from the International Association for Computing and Philosophy for significant and sustained contributions to areas...
of the American Philosophical Association
American Philosophical Association
The American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly activity in philosophy, to facilitate the professional work...
, the Weizenbaum Award of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology, and the 2011 Covey Award of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy
International Association for Computing and Philosophy
The International Association for Computing and Philosophy is a professional, philosophical association emerging from a history of conferences that began in 1986...
. In addition, Bynum was the founder and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the philosophy journal Metaphilosophy (1968 to 1993); a key founding figure (1974–1980) and the first Executive Director (1980–1982) of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers
American Association of Philosophy Teachers
American Association of Philosophy Teachers is a non-profit professional organization dedicated to the advancement of the art of teaching philosophy. The association was establsihed in 1976 and since that time it has supported the continuing professional development of philosophy teachers in North...
; biographer of the philosopher/ mathematician Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
, as well as a translator of Frege’s early works in logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
. Bynum’s most recent research and publications concern the ultimate nature of the universe and the impact of the information revolution upon philosophy.
Education
As a teenager with a home chemistryChemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
set, Bynum became interested in the ultimate nature of the universe, an interest that was reinforced by a high school chemistry teacher who taught “the new chemistry” of the 1950s, and also by an English teacher who assigned philosophical writing exercises to her students. After high school, Bynum studied chemistry at the University of Delaware
University of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...
(1959 to 1963), where, in 1961, philosopher Bernard Baumrin created the Delaware Seminars in Philosophy of Science featuring lectures by world-famous philosophers of science, such as Carl Hempel, Adolph Grunbaum, and Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel was a Czech-American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement....
. Impressed by the Delaware Seminars, Bynum added philosophy as a second field of study, and Baumrin became his logic teacher and mentor. At that time, Bynum developed a strong interest in the life and work of philosopher/ mathematician Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
. As an undergraduate at the University of Delaware
University of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...
, Bynum was surprised to learn that, although Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
was considered by many to be “the greatest logician since Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
”, very little was known about Frege’s life, and some of his most important logical writings had never been translated into English. Bynum vowed to write Frege’s biography and translate Frege’s most important logical works, if the opportunity arose to do so.
In 1963, Bynum graduated from Delaware with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with Honors and Distinction and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with Honors and Distinction. His senior thesis derived a complex acid-base algorithm from the laws of thermodynamics using symbolic logic. In 1963-64, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
, England studying Philosophy of Science with Stephan Körner
Stephan Körner
Stephan Körner, FBA was a British philosopher, who specialised in the work of Kant, the study of concepts, and in the philosophy of mathematics...
. From 1964 to 1967 he was a graduate student, with a Danforth Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, in Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
’s Program in the History and Philosophy of Science. In that program, he took courses that included, among others, History of Science with Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
, Philosophy of Science with Carl Hempel, Logic with Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church was an American mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem.-Life:Alonzo Church...
, and Analytic Philosophy with Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
. In 1966, he was awarded an MA in Philosophy by Princeton. While still at Princeton, Bynum began writing a manuscript on Frege, which originally was to be a doctoral dissertation, but developed, instead, into a book containing Frege’s biography, translations of Frege’s Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift
Begriffsschrift is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book...
and related articles, an exegesis of Frege’s revolutionary contributions to logic, and an extensive annotated Frege bibliography. In 1972, the manuscript became a book published by the Clarendon Press, and in 2001, the book was republished as an “Oxford Scholarly Classic”.
To complete his university education, Bynum entered the PhD Program in Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
in 1982. He was granted an MPhil in Philosophy from CUNY in 1984 and a PhD in Philosophy in 1986. His doctoral dissertation was entitled Aristotle’s Theory of Human Action, and it was written under the direction of Bernard Baumrin.
The Frege Project (1962 to 1972)
As a graduate student in Princeton’s Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Bynum chose to make Frege’s philosophy of mathematics and groundbreaking logical achievements the center of his graduate school research. This “Frege project” began to flourish in summer 1965 when Bynum was in Europe. He interviewed Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, who had discovered the famous "Russell’s paradox" in Frege’s logical foundation for arithmetic; and he also interviewed Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
, who had been a student of Frege’s. Of special importance was a meeting that Bynum had with Ignacio Angelelli, who recently had visited Jena University in Germany where Frege spent his entire academic career. While in Jena, Angelelli had secured a photograph of Frege and a wealth of materials about Frege’s career and personal life. He generously shared those materials with Bynum. During 1966 and 1967, Bynum completed the bulk of the work on his biography of Frege, his English translation of Frege’s Begriffsschrift and related articles, and his extensive annotated Frege bibliography. In 1972 the resulting Frege book was published by the Clarendon Press branch of Oxford University Press. In 2002, it was republished as an Oxford Scholarly Classic, which, according to the editors of that Oxford series, is a “great academic work” containing “some of the finest scholarship of the last century”.
Creating the Journal Metaphilosophy
In the mid 1960s, while he was a graduate student at Princeton, Bynum attended Richard Rorty’s seminar on the history of analytic philosophy, where Rorty was trying out various articles for possible inclusion in his forthcoming book The Linguistic Turn. According to Bynum, he and his fellow graduate students “were amazed at Professor Rorty’s ability to ‘stand back’ from philosophy and describe how one branch of philosophy relates to another, how one school or method of philosophy compares to other schools and methods, how philosophy relates to other disciplines, and so on. . . . [Rorty] had a remarkable ability to explain and compare an impressive diversity of philosophical movements, schools, methods and trends.” Bynum believed that there should be a philosophy journal specializing in the publication of such metaphilosophical articles, and he was surprised to discover that no such journal existed. He vowed, at that time, to create such a journal himself in a decade or two after he had established his career in philosophy. Surprisingly, he created such a journal, instead, in 1968, just a year after leaving Princeton. This happened because he sustained a serious eye accident in August 1968 that left him flat on his back in bed for a number of weeks. As a result, he quickly became bored and tried to think of something constructive to do. He hit upon the idea of creating the journal Metaphilosophy, and sought the advice of his undergraduate mentor, Bernard Baumrin. Baumrin suggested that Bynum should persuade a number of famous philosophers to serve on a Board of Consulting Editors, then send a journal proposal to the publisher Basil Blackwell, who already published several important philosophy journals, such as Mind. Bynum followed Baumrin’s advice and sent a proposal to Blackwell in late 1968. Blackwell accepted Bynum’s proposal, and the first issue of Metaphilosophy was published in January 1970. The journal flourished, and in 1977 the librarians’ magazine Choice described it as “one of the top English-language philosophy journals”. Bynum remained Editor-in-Chief of Metaphilosophy until 1993, when he turned it over to his colleague, Armen Marsoobian, at Southern Connecticut State University, because he had become very busy creating and running the Research Center on Computing and Society.Founding the American Association of Philosophy Teachers
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, during the Vietnam WarVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, university students across America demanded that their university courses should be “relevant” to their lives and to the solution of urgent social problems. In this environment, as the Editor-in-Chief of Metaphilosophy, Bynum had begun (in 1969) to accept articles on topics, such as “applied philosophy” and philosophical analyses of social unrest, as well as articles on the improvement of the teaching of philosophy. By 1974, Bynum was convinced that there should be a national conference on the teaching of philosophy, not only to improve the teaching of traditional philosophy courses, but also to create new courses in applied philosophy in new environments, such as elementary schools, high schools, technical colleges, public libraries, prisons and “old folks’ homes”. He organized and headed a conference planning committee consisting of scholars and teachers from universities, colleges, technical schools, high schools, elementary schools, and a representative of the American Philosophical Association. The resulting conference was called The National Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, and it occurred on the campus of Union College
Union College
Union College is a private, non-denominational liberal arts college located in Schenectady, New York, United States. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. In the 19th century, it became the "Mother of Fraternities", as...
in Schenectady, New York
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...
in August 1976. It lasted five days and attracted over 300 attendees from the United States, Canada and Japan. At the closing session, the attendees asked Bynum and his committee to put together a similar conference to be held two years later. In August 1978, the Second National Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, again headed by Bynum, occurred for a second time on the Union College campus. At the closing session, attendees asked Bynum and his committee to put together a professional organization to run such a workshop-conference every two years. Bynum appointed and headed a Steering Committee to create the new organization, which was to be called the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. In 1979, with advice from the Steering Committee, Bynum wrote the constitution and articles of incorporation and filed legal papers to make AAPT an official non-profit educational membership corporation of the State of New York. In August 1980, on the campus of the University of Toledo
University of Toledo
The University of Toledo is a public university in Toledo, Ohio, United States. The Carnegie Foundation classified the university as "Doctoral/Research Extensive."-National recognition:...
, the Third National Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy became the first official conference of AAPT, and Bynum was selected as the first Executive Director, a position that he held for four years. He remained on the AAPT Board of Officers until 1994, serving as Vice-President in 1989 to 1990, President in 1991-1992, and Past-President in 1993-1994. Since 1980, AAPT has continued to run Workshop-Conferences in August every two years.
Creating the Research Center on Computing and Society
In 1978, Bynum attended a workshop on the topic of Computer Ethics conducted by Walter Maner, who was a member of the Philosophy Department of Old Dominion University. Maner had recently coined the name “Computer Ethics” and was teaching an experimental course on that subject at Old Dominion. That workshop was a career-changing event for Bynum, who became convinced by Maner that computer ethics was a vital subject that should be advanced and expanded. Bynum set himself the goal of spreading knowledge of computer ethics across America. With advice from Maner, he began to incorporate computer ethics components into his university courses, and he also started conducting workshops of his own. He encouraged Maner to publish his booklet, “A Starter-Kit on Teaching Computer Ethics”, with the help of a small publishing company, Helvetia Press, that Bynum and his Swiss wife had created to disseminate applied-philosophy teaching materials generated by National Workshop-Conferences on Teaching Philosophy. (See the discussion of AAPT above.) Maner’s “Starter Kit” was acquired by scores of schools and colleges across America in the early 1980s.Also in the early 1980s, to demonstrate to fellow philosophers that computer ethics was an important and viable new branch of applied ethics, Bynum decided to create an entire computer ethics issue of the journal Metaphilosophy (he was Editor-in-Chief of the journal at the time). To generate papers for the special issue, he arranged an essay competition on the topic of Computer Ethics, with a $500 first prize plus publication in the special issue for the best half-dozen submitted papers. Professor James Moor of Dartmouth submitted the prize-winning paper “What is Computer Ethics?” which became the lead article in the special issue. The issue had its own title (Computers and Ethics) and “book cover”, and it was published as the October 1985 issue of Metaphilosophy. It quickly became the widest selling issue of the journal and remained so for many years.
In 1986 Bynum decided to find a university that would enable him to create a world-class research center on computer ethics. The following year he joined the faculty at Southern Connecticut State University, where he created, in 1988, the Research Center on Computing and Society. To generate a “critical mass” of scholars with whom his Center could work, Bynum decided to organize a national conference to which he would invite philosophers, computer scientists, and other academics, as well as public policy makers and journalists. He and Walter Maner decided to work together to plan the conference. In 1989, the National Science Foundation provided a conference-planning grant (grant # DIR-8820595) enabling Bynum and Maner to form a committee of 16 distinguished scholars and computer science leaders to plan the National Conference on Computing and Values (NCCV). In August of 1991, NCCV (funded by NSF grant # DIR-9012492) was held at Southern Connecticut State University . It included 400 attendees from 32 states of the USA plus 7 other countries. It generated a wealth of computer ethics materials, including six printed monographs, six videotapes, and a set of computer ethics syllabi. After the conference, the staff of the Research Center on Computing and Society spent three years editing the NCCV materials and disseminating them to more than 300 universities worldwide.
Selected Publications
(Chinese translation published in 2010 by Peking University Press ISBN: 978-7-301-15989-7)External links
- Terrell Ward Bynum, staff page at Southern Connecticut State UniversitySouthern Connecticut State UniversitySouthern Connecticut State University is one of four state universities in Connecticut, and is located in the West Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut...