In recent years, human bodies have been prominent in the news. It seems they have been getting in... more In recent years, human bodies have been prominent in the news. It seems they have been getting in the way of the smooth running of human societies and planetary ecosystems. While the body's rather limited longevity has always been a major concern, today's news headlines are dominated by issues of bodies' country of origin (refugees), color (BLM), sex/gender (legal reform), and most recently proximity to other bodies (COVID-19). On top of this, an increasing number of neo-Malthusians claim there just are too many bodies with too many organic needs pushing our planetary ecological boundaries beyond their thresholds of recovery. Perhaps this increasing coverage of bodies' problem-causing tendencies is what lies behind the growing appeal of transhumanism's pursuit of post-biological existence? If bodies are causing us so much trouble, why should we feel beholden to their continuation? Shouldn't we welcome the invitation to leave them behind? We have been here before, of course. Most religions that have influenced the worldview of the West have offered dark visions of the body and bright dreams of futures sans physical bodies. But things are different today. In the past, a bodiless future was not something we engineered for ourselves but was a function of either fate or divine prerogative-in either case, something granted by powers beyond our control. Today, post-biological existence is one of the latest projected commodities that, while still in the research and development stage, is aggressively advertised by the transhumanist boosters of mind-uploading as due on the market by mid-century. Mind-uploading is a radical procedure whereby we become a figment of a computer's 'imagination,' according to David Victor. 1 More technically, says Kurzweil, mind-uploading means 'scanning all of [a brain's] salient details and then re-instantiating those details into a suitably powerful computational substrate, [thereby capturing] a person's entire personality, memory, skills, and history.' 2 With this presumed near-term technological capacity, not only will we be free of the weight of personal, social, and ecological turmoil that inevitably accompanies our biological bodies, but we will also be able immediately to access and process at a speed 'over one million times faster than the electrochemical switching used in
Page 1. Reviews 435 but it would be nice to know why Alston says this. As it is, we are left gues... more Page 1. Reviews 435 but it would be nice to know why Alston says this. As it is, we are left guessing why, whether it is because we are not in a position to know what the underlying analogy in question is. At this point I was reminded ...
Polanyi and Transhumanism both place technologies in pivotal roles in bringing about Homo sapiens... more Polanyi and Transhumanism both place technologies in pivotal roles in bringing about Homo sapiens ’ species transitions. The question is asked whether Polanyi’s emphasis on the role of technology in Homo sapiens’ rise out of mute beasthood indicates that he might have been inclined to embrace the Transhumanist vision of Homo sapiens’ technological evolution into a postbiological, techno-cyber species. To
Explores eliminative materialisms (Churchland and Rorty) in the context of Michael Polanyi's acco... more Explores eliminative materialisms (Churchland and Rorty) in the context of Michael Polanyi's account of the body and its agency.
In recent years, human bodies have been prominent in the news. It seems they have been getting in... more In recent years, human bodies have been prominent in the news. It seems they have been getting in the way of the smooth running of human societies and planetary ecosystems. While the body's rather limited longevity has always been a major concern, today's news headlines are dominated by issues of bodies' country of origin (refugees), color (BLM), sex/gender (legal reform), and most recently proximity to other bodies (COVID-19). On top of this, an increasing number of neo-Malthusians claim there just are too many bodies with too many organic needs pushing our planetary ecological boundaries beyond their thresholds of recovery. Perhaps this increasing coverage of bodies' problem-causing tendencies is what lies behind the growing appeal of transhumanism's pursuit of post-biological existence? If bodies are causing us so much trouble, why should we feel beholden to their continuation? Shouldn't we welcome the invitation to leave them behind? We have been here before, of course. Most religions that have influenced the worldview of the West have offered dark visions of the body and bright dreams of futures sans physical bodies. But things are different today. In the past, a bodiless future was not something we engineered for ourselves but was a function of either fate or divine prerogative-in either case, something granted by powers beyond our control. Today, post-biological existence is one of the latest projected commodities that, while still in the research and development stage, is aggressively advertised by the transhumanist boosters of mind-uploading as due on the market by mid-century. Mind-uploading is a radical procedure whereby we become a figment of a computer's 'imagination,' according to David Victor. 1 More technically, says Kurzweil, mind-uploading means 'scanning all of [a brain's] salient details and then re-instantiating those details into a suitably powerful computational substrate, [thereby capturing] a person's entire personality, memory, skills, and history.' 2 With this presumed near-term technological capacity, not only will we be free of the weight of personal, social, and ecological turmoil that inevitably accompanies our biological bodies, but we will also be able immediately to access and process at a speed 'over one million times faster than the electrochemical switching used in
Page 1. Reviews 435 but it would be nice to know why Alston says this. As it is, we are left gues... more Page 1. Reviews 435 but it would be nice to know why Alston says this. As it is, we are left guessing why, whether it is because we are not in a position to know what the underlying analogy in question is. At this point I was reminded ...
Polanyi and Transhumanism both place technologies in pivotal roles in bringing about Homo sapiens... more Polanyi and Transhumanism both place technologies in pivotal roles in bringing about Homo sapiens ’ species transitions. The question is asked whether Polanyi’s emphasis on the role of technology in Homo sapiens’ rise out of mute beasthood indicates that he might have been inclined to embrace the Transhumanist vision of Homo sapiens’ technological evolution into a postbiological, techno-cyber species. To
Explores eliminative materialisms (Churchland and Rorty) in the context of Michael Polanyi's acco... more Explores eliminative materialisms (Churchland and Rorty) in the context of Michael Polanyi's account of the body and its agency.
Anyone who carefully pays attention to the arc of western cultural thought and practice since the... more Anyone who carefully pays attention to the arc of western cultural thought and practice since the rise of modernity will discern a progressively intensifying and spreading pursuit of abstractions as the most trusted means of representing the realities of nature and accessing their truths. Modern science's rise out of the so-called " premodern age of Faith " was significantly propelled by epic acts of abstraction from the meaning-laden and quality-saturated medieval cosmos. By bidding farewell to the cozy and reassuring medieval cosmos** and embracing the cold and abstract world picture of an infinite universe, rife with inert atoms in mechanical motion, the West acquired unprecedented capacities of explanation, prediction, and control of the vicissitudes of matter's ceaseless permutations.** The increases in our power to intellectually grasp and materially control nature eventually brought with it stupendous gains in human standards of living for a good portion of Earth's growing population. Yet, in recent decades, it has dawned on many that these improvements in material standards of living came with an unanticipated price: viz., a rather steep and almost unbearable reduction of the existential meaningfulness of life. Interestingly, our contemporary response to this rising awareness of disenchantment is not to question the spirit of abstraction that has dominated the West since the rise of modernity, but rather to push modernity even further in the direction of abstraction and the quantitative. The idea seems to be that by further
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