Braving the Elements

by Harry B. Gray, John D. Simon, William C. Trogle

¿Un transhumanismo nietzscheano? Sobre la parcialidad del alegato

El artículo analiza desde una perspectiva crítica las tentativas de interpretar a Nietzsche como un precursor del transhumanismo. Tras una breve contextualización del fecundo debate en torno a Nietzsche y el transhumanismo, se evalúa el carácter fraccional o parcial del alegato de Stefan Sorgner en favor de un 'transhumanismo nietzscheano'. Después, se investiga la tensión entre humanidad, la superación del ser humano y su cría en los escritos de Nietzsche. Una vez ejecutado este análisis, y sin ánimo de caer en el anacronismo, se sostiene que Nietzsche anticipa ciertamente un germen de la idea de post-humanidad, en su crítica de la cultura humanista y en su invitación a transformar el ser humano y superar el nihilismo, pero no asimilable a la vertiente tecnológica del transhumanismo. Para concluir, se sugiere una prospectiva de análisis del transhumanismo desde una perspectiva nietzscheana, tomando como ejemplo la imagen de las 'sombras de Dios'

Humanity at the Turning Point

This essay aims to demonstrate that the philosophical anthropology of Michael Landmann provides important critical tools and resources for intervening in the debate over the posthuman and the turning point that humanity faces due to the advancing powers of technologies such as genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics. Landmann’s view of the human being, which emphasizes the correlative conditions of creativity and culturality, freedom and determinacy, and malleability and fixity, provides the grounds on which to critique the current structure of the debate over the posthuman and resituate it in terms of our historicity and self-images. The rhetorically charged trope of the posthuman, with its emphasis on a break or turning point, risks cutting us off from significant resources for understanding human nature, including the resources of philosophical anthropology, and does not advance our understanding of our current situation and the current dilemmas human beings face in light of our advancing technological powers

Health beyond the carbon barrier

Silicon Valley donors have been investing heavily in a range of transhumanist longevity and immortality ventures. Theirs is a particular, culturally embedded endeavor, shaped by specific histories, ideologies, and futures that present new posthuman views of life, death, and survival. These projects aim for a future world in which the fundamental ontological categories of mind, life, and nonlife will have finally collapsed into one another thanks to the intercession of silicon-based digital or informatic technologies. The key term that denotes such a project is ‘convergence’ – used as much by transhumanists as by mainstream scientists and policymakers. Here I critically explore the ‘project of convergence’, tracing its history in the United States, and examining some of the projects and activities that have coalesced around it. These specifically include artificial intelligence, in which human persons are to be transferred from carbon-based to silicon-based substrates, and nanotechnology, in which work at the nano resolution aims at the reconstitution of the carbon-based or biochemical body. Although the concept of convergence emerges out of a transhumanist imaginary, the ideas and plans behind it have gained increasing traction in mainstream technoscientific projects. In contrast to some other health concepts that have been recently expanded to incorporate the organic nonhuman environment, these projects expand notions of health via robotic and computational formations in ways that, I argue, are moving health beyond the carbon barrier, pushing us toward an era in which intelligent existence deserving of care will not be understood as exclusive to carbon-based life forms

The Suspension of Death. The Cryonic Utopia in the Context of the U.S. Funeral Culture

This article outlines the history of cryonics, starting with fictional novels and movies and the actual formation of the cryonic movement in the 1960s. Cryonics has been considered – by its advocates – to overcome religion by offering a technological way of immortality. Since cryonics never gained serious attention outside the United States it is promising to ask for the specific frame of American funeral culture as a condition for the emergence (and the limitations) of cryonics

Fictions et théories du posthumain: de la créature au concept

The posthuman is a multidimensionally hybrid figure: it denotes both the post-biological or technological being that mostly inhabits science-fiction stories as well as the ensuing reconceptualisation of what it means to be human (which is often called ‘posthumanism’). Even within these conditions, it remains hybrid: posthuman beings are mixes of organic and non- organic materials while posthuman conceptualisations combine philosophical and technological perspectives. This dissertation claims that the profoundly hybrid nature of the posthuman forces its texts – whether fictional or theoretical – to adopt similarly hybrid statuses. More concretely, on the one hand, its fictional (and fictitious) nature forces the presence of fiction into theoretical texts, which mainly materialises intertextually (i.e. through references to fictional works). On the other hand, the posthuman’s philosophical extent as well as its hybridity as a being make it highly probable for theory and philosophy to manifest in posthuman-featuring fiction. This last phenomenon – which will be the focus of my presentation - may operate through three mechanisms: (1) intertextuality, where theories of the posthuman are referred to in fiction; (2) reflexive discourse, where philosophical reflection or theoretical content are conveyed by various narrative devices (narration, dialogue, and (free) indirect speech, amongst others); and (3) double referentiality, where philosophical reflection emerges out of the science-fictional juxtaposition of a cognitively estranging world with the actual world. The dissertation exemplifies the first aspect with the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell 2 and the Belgian play Cocon!, which both feature characters named Haraway. The second and third aspects are described through the analysis of three novels: LoveStar by Andri Snær Magnason, The Possibility of and Island by Michel Houellebecq and Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

Reality Hackers: The Next Wave of Media Revolutionaries

Just as the printing press gave rise to the nation-state, emerging technologies are reshaping collective identities and challenging our understanding of what it means to be human. Should citizens have the right to be truly anonymous on-line? Should we be concerned about the fact that so many people are choosing to migrate to virtual worlds? Are injectible microscopic radio-frequency ID chips a blessing or a curse? Is the use of cognitive enhancing nootropics a human right or an unforgivable transgression? Should genomic data about human beings be hidden away with commercial patents or open-sourced like software? Should hobbyists known as biohackers be allowed to experiment with genetic engineering in their home laboratories? The time-frame for acting on such questions is relatively short, and these decisions are too important to be left up to a small handful of scientists and policymakers. If democracy is to continue as a viable alternative to technocracy, the average citizen must become more involved in these debates. To borrow a line from the computer visionary Ted Nelson, all of us can -- and must -- understand technology now. Challenging the popular stereotype of hackers as ciminal sociopaths, reality hackers uphold the basic tenets of what Steven Levy (1984) terms the hacker ethic. These core principles include a commitment to: sharing, openness, decentralization, public access to information, and the use of new technologies to make the world a better place.https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1000/thumbnail.jp

Reading nano: the public interest in nanotechnology as reflected in purchase patterns of books

Owing to a rapidly growing public interest in nanotechnology, people are increasingly buying various books to inform themselves about nanotechnology. This paper tries to measure the public interest in nanotechnology and its relation to the public interest in other fields of knowledge by applying a new method. I combine formal network analysis of co-purchase book data with traditional content analysis. The method is successful in identifying the books that the public reads to be informed about nanotechnology, and in distinguishing between different kinds and classes of books and thereby between different interest foci and readerships and their relations. The results suggest that nanotechnology is for many their first intense contact with science and technology and that they read a great variety of different kinds of books. Rather than choose general introductions to current research written by scientists or science journalists, readers focus on forecasting and visionary literature including business guides, written by software entrepreneurs and business consultants. Unlike expert readers, who connect nanotechnology to other fields of science and engineering, the broader public connects it to visions about dissolving the human/machine distinction. Although the distinction between non-fiction and science fiction is still important for readers, border-crossing authors increasingly blur it

How Have We Always Been Posthuman?

Rad problematizuje opravdanost „postističkih“ revizija humanizma. U prvom delu rada izlaže se ona misaona linija razumevanja čoveka koja čoveka vidi kao hronično manjkavog za vlastitu „prirodu“ ili „suštinu“ i koja od te neukorenjenosti gradi njegov privilegovan status. Drugi deo rada posvećen je odnosu transhumanizma i kritičkog posthumanizma prema humanizmu. Nalazi se da transhumanizam skladno nastavlja i/ili radikalizuje humanistički projekt samotvoračkog i samotranscendirajućeg čoveka, dok kritički posthumanizam radije zagovara ponovno promišljanje i redeskripiciju čoveka s obzirom na ono što smatra da su bile pogubne posledice humanizma. Zaključni deo rada detektuje izvesnu proizvoljnost u razumevanju humanizma njegovih kritičara, podseća da su se i unutar humanizma baštinili kritički momenti kao njegov vlastiti sadržaj i korektiv, te da su možda suvišne objave radikalnih rezova i raskida sa humanističkom tradicijom. Sugeriše se jedno sinoptičko sagledavanje humanističkih orijentira i njihovih posthumanističkih osuda, koje bi uvažilo i baštinu humanističke misli i obavezu njenog kritičkog preispitivanja.This paper problematises the justification of ‘postist’ revisions of humanism. In the first part of the paper, a line of thought that persistently marks the self-perception of man is presented. It stretches from Plato, through Pico della Mirandola and Kant, all the way to existentialism and philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century. In it, man is understood as chronically deficient in their own ‘nature’ or ‘essence’, and his privileged status is built from this rootlessness. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the relationship of transhumanism and critical posthumanism to humanism. Transhumanism is found to harmoniously continue and/or radicalise the humanist project of self-creating and self-transcending man, while critical posthumanism advocates a rethinking and redescription of man in view of what are considered to have been the disastrous consequences of humanism: a transgression in relation to everything different from man by anthropomorphising it and anthropocentrically measuring it against himself. The concluding part of the paper detects a certain arbitrariness in the understanding of humanism by its critics, reminds that even within such a broadly understood humanism, critical moments have been inherited as its own content and corrective, and that announcements of radical cuts and ruptures with the humanistic tradition are perhaps redundant. It is also noted that something non-negligible has changed with the contemporary challenges of technoscience – artificial intelligence, informatics, robotics –but it is contested that this change in social history requires a cardinal rejection, change or neglect of the intellectual heritage that enables responses to it and/or a rational dispute about it. A synoptic overview of humanist landmarks and their post-humanist condemnations is suggested, which would respect the heritage of humanist thought and the right or even the obligation built into it of its critical reviewL’article problématise le bien-fondé des révisions « postistes » de l’humanisme. Dans la première partie de ce travail est exposée cette ligne de pensée qui conçoit l’homme comme chroniquement incomplet dans sa propre « nature » ou « essence » et qui de ce déracinement construit son statut privilégié. La deuxième partie de ce travail est consacrée au rapport du transhumanisme et du posthumanisme critique envers l’humanisme. Il est démontré que le transhumanisme continue et/ou radicalise harmonieusement le projet humaniste de l’homme autocréateur et autotranscendant, alors que le transhumanisme critique préfère opter pour le réexamen et la redescription de l’homme étant donné ce qu’il considère comme les conséquences néfastes de l’humanisme. La partie conclusive de l’article détecte un certain arbitraire dans la compréhension de l’humanisme de la part de ses critiques, rappelle qu’à l’intérieur de l’humanisme s’étaient aussi développés des éléments critiques qui faisaient partie de son propre contenu et de son correctif, enfin que les annonces des séparations et ruptures radicales avec la tradition humaniste sont peut-être superflues. Il est suggéré qu’une analyse synoptique des repères humanistes et de leurs condamnations posthumanistes, prendrait en compte et le patrimoine de la pensée humaniste et l’obligation de son réexamen critiqu