I would be interested in a long-term experiment that would require role-playing to be fully integrated into different parts of the  K-12 curriculum.  Fundamental scenarios would be drawn from age-appropriate historical, social, and student-created scripts.  The twist would be an emphasis on casting/ reversing gender roles to sensitize students to each other’s historical and current pressures and perspectives.  The underlying goal would be to help create empathy and stigmatize aggression, leading to a decline in stereotyping and a decline in what is described as a rape culture in different US settings.

Hi Kirk, there are many potentially valuable and urgent interdisciplinary ventures - ranging from sustainability, climate change to problems connected to migration and interreligious strife. It really also matters what expertise you (and colleagues) might bring along. You might want to check out the Association for Interdisciplinary website and mailing list ( https://www.oakland.edu/ais/ ), get inspired during AIS annual conference in October in Baltimore , for example. Let me know if I can be of help in further exploring this - directly or by making connections to other colleagues in interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary research in the US or Europe. Best, Machiel Keestra (past president AIS; past convenor International Network for Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity)

https://www.oakland.edu/ais/

http://ais2017.umbc.edu/

I would love to see an interdisciplinary project to find the common underpinning of what humanity needs to survive in the future as a healthy world population.  This should include the impact of climate change, the need for basic medical care of all humans, the need for an ethic of wellness, the role of basic science in understanding the world, how technology can help by improving lives, and how faith (religions) can help guide us to a vision/goals/dream that we can agree on.  Let us find the common vision and agree to it, and implement it for the benefit of all. I believe there is more commonality in our faith and vision than we are willing to admit, so how can we find and promote this critical future.

There is a growing urgency for interdisciplinary work in artificial intelligence (AI).

In the short term, ethical and legal issues arise over things like, whose fault is it if an autonomous vehicle kills somebody? What criteria should such a system implement if it is to make a correct decision in an emergency (for example to hit a car travelling at sixty or a cyclist travelling at ten?).

In the longer term, as AI systems approach sentience, there will be ethical and moral issues the other way - is the system sentient, and if so how should we treat it? At what point might it, or its persecutors, be convicted of breaking a law in its own right?

Scientists make lousy philosophers, whether of the mind or of law and society. philosophers make lousy scientists. All three must work together if AI systems are to become socially acceptable.

The most urgent interdisciplinary initiatives are those related to Ethical Norms and Humanitarian Laws to regulate and facilitate the development of Artificial Intelligence in support of Human Intelligence in matters of cognition, problem solving and creativity.

Also, the regulation of Synthetic Biology and Cloning of Tissues and Organs to replace tissues and to transplant damaged or insufficient organs in humans, improving survival, expectation and quality of life.

regards

Jose Luis

Las iniciativas interdisciplinarias más urgentes son las relacionadas con las Normas Éticas y Leyes Humanitarias para regular y facilitar el desarrollo de la Inteligencia Artificial como apoyo a la Inteligencia Humana en materia de cognición, solución de problemas y creatividad.

Asimismo, la regulación de la Biología Sintética y Clonación de Tejidos y Órganos para sustituir tejidos y trasplantar órganos dañados o insuficientes en los humanos, mejorando supervivencia, expectativa y calidad de vida.

Saludos

José Luis

The European Central University is a post-graduate "crossroads" university where faculty and students from more than 100 countries come to engage in interdisciplinary education, pursue advanced scholarship, and address some of the most thorny problems in society.

It is accredited in both the United States and Hungary and offers doctoral programs in social sciences in English, master's, humanities, law, administration and public policy. Located in the heart of central Europe - Budapest, Hungary - CEU has developed a clear academic and intellectual focus, combining comparative study of historical, cultural and social diversity in the region with a global perspective on good governance, sustainable development and social transformation.

I think interdisciplinary with medical instrumentation , AI and automation in various fields starting from home automation to space electronics , big data in every field to predict and enable better solutions ...

Perhaps philosophy needs to be more leavened with hard science. I just read a philosophy book (otherwise quite very good), where a discussion of physicalism (the modern version of old-style materialism) occupies a goodly third of the book. Perhaps if the writer had been aware of https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations/ the discussion could have been both shortened, and touched on other related themes thrown off by this item of fact. There are many such examples ....

Almost any sound interdisciplinary study can be fruitful. It was by bringing Consciousness Studies into Biblical Studies that I found the Shroud of Turin referenced in the New Testament. And I am continuing this approach with two in-process papers. But in general, it is the field of study that "has nothing to offer" to a different field that is the one that most needs to be brought in.