Cyborg identities and contemporary techno-utopias: adaptations and transformations of the body in the age of nanotechnology

The possibility of improving the human body through a closer relationship with technology in order to overcome the human species toward new stages of evolution is a constant element of techno-utopian visions, among other transhumanism. This projection to a radical transformation of the body - and mind - as a result of technological action is based on the concepts of adaptation, or non adaptation, of a human being to a world constantly changed by technoscience. The belief is that not only the body has to change, but that identity is not a stable concept. This mobility in the relationship between body and identity is typical of the post human thought, which inherits from the informational model the conviction that the biological embodiment of human is to be regarded as an accident of history rather than as an essential condition of life. Hybridization is therefore valued by the post human thought as a condition which has "made" the human as he is today, and it appears as a fundamental topic in any discourse on nanotechnology, biotechnology and development of human-machine interfaces.     

The Dark Side of Desire: Nietzsche,Transhumanism, and Personal Immortality

Nietzsche has become embroiled in two interesting twenty‐first century debates about advancing technology and its impact on human life, especially its meaning/value. The first focuses on Nietzsche himself and is concerned with the extent to which his views align with those of transhumanism. The second involves the not so blatantly Nietzsche‐centric question of whether or not immortality, or radical life‐extension, is desirable. Given that the desire for immortality, or at least some more feasible (but not so permanent) approximation of it, is strongly associated with transhumanism, it seems that these two debates have some fairly significant overlap. Establishing what Nietzsche ultimately believes about such a core transhumanist issue will go a long way toward determining how sympathetic he would be to the transhumanist cause in general. I argue that while his views do not commit him to an all‐encompassing disdain for immortality, his intolerance for immortality‐seekers means that he might only be open to some of the more fringe understandings of transhumanism.     

Cochlear Implantation,Enhancements, Transhumanism and Posthumanism: Some Human Questions

Biomedical engineering technologies such as brain–machine interfaces and neuroprosthetics are advancements which assist human beings in varied ways. There are exciting yet speculative visions of how the neurosciences and bioengineering may influence human nature. However, these could be preparing a possible pathway towards an enhanced and even posthuman future. This article seeks to investigate several ethical themes and wider questions of enhancement, transhumanism and posthumanism. Four themes of interest are: autonomy, identity, futures, and community. Three larger questions can be asked: will everyone be enhanced? Will we be “human” if we are not, one day, transhuman? Should we be enhanced or not? The article proceeds by concentrating on a widespread and sometimes controversial application: the cochlear implant, an auditory prosthesis implanted into Deaf patients. Cochlear implantation and its reception in both the deaf and hearing communities have a distinctive moral discourse, which can offer surprising insights. The paper begins with several points about the enhancement of human beings, transhumanism’s reach beyond the human, and posthuman aspirations. Next it focuses on cochlear implants on two sides. Firstly, a shorter consideration of what technologies may do to humans in a transhumanist world. Secondly, a deeper analysis of cochlear implantation’s unique socio-political movement, its ethical explanations and cultural experiences linked with pediatric cochlear implantation—and how those wary of being thrust towards posthumanism could marshal such ideas by analogy. As transhumanism approaches, the issues and questions merit continuing intense analysis.     

Going beyond the Human: Christians and Other Transhumanists

Abstract

Today's transhumanists ask good questions about the human future. What about their answers? Is their version of transhumanism useful or acceptable to Christian theology today? No, at least not in its usual form. Transhumanism and Christianity divide on how we think about the cause of the changes that lie ahead for humanity. For transhumanists, the cause or the agent of human transcendence is technology. For Christians, it is grace, the underserved goodness of God who gives life and wholeness to the creation. Our core question is whether it is proper for Christian theology to see technology as contributing in any way to the future that a gracious God has in store for the creation. Does God work through technology? Yes. We may contribute through technology to what God is doing; but it is always God's doing.     

The flesh of the forest: Wild being in Merleau-Ponty and Werner Herzog

The history of the sublime within aesthetics has tended to focus on the natural world. Within this history, the sublime has been a category reserved for awe-inspiring and overwhelming experiences, in which the finite subject is dwarfed by a more expansive force. Despite subjectivity being foremost in this topic, what has been overlooked, is the role the body plays in being the centre of aesthetic experience. In this paper, I will turn the tide on this omission and thematize the role of the body within the experience of the sublime. My plan for reconsidering this movement is to unite Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) with the late thought of Merleau-Ponty, especially his enigmatic notion of "flesh" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). In both Herzog and Merleau-Ponty, a philosophy of nature exists which challenges the dichotomy between the autonomous self encountering the objective realm of wilderness. In each case, an ambiguity undercuts the idea of wilderness existing "there" while human subjectivity remains placed "here." I will "read" the film as an instant of the chiasmatic relation between nature and humanity. Doing so, I will suggest that the reversibility between the body and the environment can be seen as an amplification of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of "wild being" (l’etre sauvage).     

Affective ontologies: Post-humanist perspectives on the self,feeling and intersubjectivity

At this particular historical juncture of the Anthropocene it is becoming increasingly clear that, as Val Plumwood puts it, the survival of our species depends upon how our relationships with earth others are reconfigured . Yet as the human is once again placed at the centre of our planetary life, this time as a geological agent, a growing body of scholarship has taken up the challenge of rethinking the human and its limits (see for example the special issue of the journal Angelaki 16(4), 2011). This special issue seeks to contribute to this body of work from the perspective of posthumanist explorations of affect, and thereby to open possibilities for articulating non-solipsistic and non-anthropocentric notions of the subject.     

Heidegger in the machine: the difference between techne and mechane

Machines are often employed in Heidegger’s philosophy as instances to illustrate specific features of modern technology. But what is it about machines that allows them to fulfill this role? This essay argues there is a unique ontological force to the machine that can be understood when looking at distinctions between techne and mechane in ancient Greek sources and applying these distinctions to a reading of Heidegger’s early thought on equipment and later thought on poiesis. Especially with respect to Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s conception of dunamis (capacity, power, force, potential), it becomes apparent from a Heideggerian perspective that machines provide an increase in capacity to its human users, but only so at a cost. This cost involves a problem of knowledge where the set of operations required in machine use results in the loss of understanding our dependency on being. The essay then concludes with a discussion of how this relation to machinic capacity is not merely pessimistic and deterministic, but indicates what might constitute a free relation to machines.     

MARGINALIZATION AND TRANSCENDENCE IN TRANSHUMANISM AND MINJUNG THEOLOGY

The visibility of transhumanism in pop culture reveals its dramatic advance in twenty-first-century life. The more widespread the movement becomes, the more important it is to consider how transhumanism might be made relevant to global humanity. This article orients technological progress by drawing transhumanism into conversation with minjung theology from Korea. Minjung theology offers global tech culture—and its pursuit of technological salvation—an ethical foundation through attention to Han (an emotion specific to those who suffer from individual, sociopolitical, economic, and cultural oppression but have been unable to express it adequately) and the lived reality of those who are often excluded from benefits of technological society. Working in the other direction, transhumanist perspectives on technology offer minjung theology an opportunity to expand its reach through the development of a transcendent theological perspective.     

Complexity and the Value of Lives—some philosophical dangers for mentally handicapped people

ABSTRACT In his book The End of Life James Rachels argues that in a situation of forced choice if we must choose between a more and a less complex human being we have good reason to choose in favour of the normal human. He argues also that since some humans have less complex mental abilities than some animals it will sometimes be right to choose a non-human animal in preference to a human being.
I do not consider Rachels'belief that sometimes non-human animals are to be preferred to retarded humans; I focus rather on the seemingly less contentious belief that in situations of forced choice, we should choose human beings with more rather than less complex lives. I reject this contention both because Rachels does not seem to have offered a worthwhile argument in its favour and also because I find his cavalier approach to the lives of people with intellectual disabilities morally offensive. En route I argue against his simplistic separation of human lives into the categories 'simple'and 'complex'on the basis of whether the individuals in question fall into what he seems to take as given—the clear cut categories 'mentally retarded'and 'normal'[1] [2].     

技术、主体与形而上学的玄学遐想

本文主要从科学、技术与社会(STS)的视角出发,通过对当今法国哲学家让·鲍德后期晦涩的哲学思想,特别是其命定策略的考察,阐发了鲍德里亚后期哲学的重要意义:(1)鲍德里亚后期思想是一种典型的悲观的技术决定论;是现代技术决定论的翻版。(2)鲍德里亚的后期思想是对近代理性哲学的颠覆和“反动”,它试图通过对技术与人的关系的思辨考察,消解近代理性哲学中的大写的主体的“人”,并给出了未来技术社会中一幅悲观可怕的“人”的命运的图画。(3)后形而上学的玄学则是鲍德里亚思想的最终归宿。鲍德里亚后期思想既有其悲观主义的极端倾向,也包含了深刻的哲理,需要处于信息社会的我们加以关注。     

SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND ETHICS: A RESPONSE TO MICHAEL J. REISS

The respondent agrees with Michael Reiss's general diagnosis of the rudderless state of ethics in our modern society, but not with all of his account of its causes or possible solutions. Scripture has always been limited in terms of direct moral commands, and secular ethics has, since Aristotle at least, been influential in directing Christian understanding of the “good life.” Ethics must be based in biology, but evolutionary biology can tell us more readily what is, than guide us into “what ought” to be. Christian teaching classically emphasized moral formation, grounded in the understanding that we are creatures of a good Creator. We have our being as gift, and human life flourishes when oriented to the Good.     

A critique of Thad Metz’s African theory of moral status

Thad Metz defends what he considers to be a novel theory of moral status, i.e. an account about what beings are owed direct duties in virtue of their moral significance. Metz claims that his account is African, it is plausible and that it is worth taking seriously like other competing accounts in the Western philosophical tradition. In this article, I give four reasons why we should doubt, if not reject, these claims of plausibility. Firstly, I show how a theory that accounts for moral status by relying solely on some facet of human nature ultimately fails to grant intrinsic value to non-human components, and as such it will always prefer human interests over those of nonhuman components, and further it won’t have a moral-theoretical basis to assign intrinsic value to non-human components. Secondly, I hope to demonstrate that this theory will not be able to account for the moral status of Martians and in turn show that it does not secure the standing of animals from such beings. I also argue that his account does not give credible evidence for the intuition that severely injured human persons have greater moral status than animals with similar internal properties. Finally, I briefly indicate that this theory does not have the corpus to explain our duties to people who have died, or at least, their bodies.     

Mysticism,Reality, Illusion,and the Freudian Critique of Religion

Freud's critique of religion cannot be fully understood if his ontogenetic perspective is explored outside of his phylogenetic perspective. The former allows for illusionistic thought processes that are orthogonal to reality claims. The latter requires consideration of empirical claims to truth within a social psychological perspective. It is only the phylogenetic perspective that allows Freud to maintain that religion is delusional, whether or not it is also illusional. Freud's rejection of "as if" philosophies as exemplified by Vaihinger is based upon his refusal to allow religious truth claims to escape their empirical, social foundations. Recent efforts to revive psychological theories of religion rooted only in illusionistic thought, as exemplified in the use of Winnicott's conceptualization, must confront social psychological issues similar to those articulated within Freud's phylogenetic view. A mystical reading of Freud is suggested in which claims to truth within psychoanalysis, science, and religion can be confronted in an empirical and inherently social manner.     

REIMAGINING DAOIST ALCHEMY,DECOLONIZING TRANSHUMANISM: THE FANTASY OF IMMORTALITY CULTIVATION IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHINA

This article studies a new fantasy subgenre that emerged in contemporary China, xiuzhen xiaoshuo (immortality cultivation fiction), which builds imaginary worlds around the magical practice of Chinese alchemy and fuses it with science and technology. After the arrival of the modern, Western triad of science, religion, and magic/superstition, alchemical practices of the Daoist tradition were labeled as a “superstition” to be eradicated; however, they persisted and began to flourish within and beyond the realm of fantasy literature in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Immortality cultivation fiction has generated a magical form of transhumanism, which envisions human enhancement through techniques beyond the boundaries of “proper” science and “legitimate” religion. While transhumanism in the Euro-American West is popular among white bourgeoisie males and dominated by tendencies to reaffirm the human subject constructed by excluding the various subhuman others, magical transhumanism in Chinese fantasy explores the possibility of transcending that antagonistic relationship and making a posthuman subject and a utopian world.     

Was Wittgenstein an Anti-Realist?

William Child has said that Wittgenstein is an anti-realist with respect to a person's dreams, recent thoughts that he has consciously entertained and other things. I discuss Wittgenstein's comments about these matters in order to show that they do not commit him to an anti-realist view or a realist view. He wished to discredit the idea that when a person reports his dream or his thoughts, or past intentions, the person is reading off the contents of his mind or memory. Reporting what one dreamt or recently thought is not like reporting what one has just read. The language is different, and the criterion of truth is different.
The anti-realist is able to explain why the reports of thoughts, for instance, are "guaranteed" to be true (PI II, 222) by stipulating that the character and existence of the past thought is constituted by an inclination to assert that one had that past thought so the assertion could not be false. This could not be Wittgenstein's view. What does "guarantee" the truth of such an assertion is the fact that the person himself is the principle authority on what he dreamt, thought, and intended, something which "stands fast" for us.
I next consider Crispin Wright's account of Wittgenstein's ideas about intentions and point out that his assumption that person always makes a judgement as to whether his action conforms to his intention is clearly false. And he is wrong in attributing to Wittgenstein the idea that an intention does not have a determinate content prior to its author's judgement about whether the action conforms to the intention, an idea that is obscure. If this were accurate, it would be a mystery why we do anything, or, at least, why our actions ever conform to our intentions.     

Being Aggrieved,Faith Crises,and Racism

In this article, I depict the notion of being aggrieved and its relation to crises in or struggles of , faith, using racism to illustrate my claims. I begin the discussion by explaining what I mean by being aggrieved and its relation to faith vis-à-vis racism, relying on theological, philosophical, and psychological frameworks. In the second section of the paper, the faith journey of Malcolm X serves to illustrate this hermeneutical perspective. More specifically, I argue that his faith journey, marred by experiences of racism, led him to a faith wherein his experiences of being aggrieved no longer meant that his being was being aggrieved.     

The Breadth of Glory: A Trinitarian Eschatology for the Earth through Critical Engagement with Hans Urs von Balthasar

This article asks to what extent non-human creatures might share in eschatological promises of wonder in the mode of glory understood in a trinitarian perspective. Widening Hans Urs von Balthasar's notion of theodrama raises important theological questions about the meaning and significance of creation. Balthasar portrays creation as imago Trinitatis . I argue that the way he envisages trinitarian notions of difference, sexuality and freedom is anthropocentric and androcentric, straining his analogy of being between creator and created. I propose a more qualified trinitarian eschatology that is more modest in its epistemological claims, but more inclusive in relation to creaturely beings.     

The critique of natural rights and the search for a non-anthropocentric basis for moral behavior

Conclusion MacIntyre, Clark, and Heidegger would all agree that the current problem with moral theory is its lack of a satisfactory conception of human telos. This lack leads us to resort to such fictions as rights, interests, and utility, which are disguises for the will to power. These thinkers would also agree that modern nation-states are cut off from the roots of the Western tradition. Modern political economy, with its individualism, its acquisitiveness and its elevation of the values of the market to a central social place is leading us into the coming age of barbarism and darkness. MacIntyre's grim depiction of the future, which Heidegger calls the time of the darkening of the earth and the flight of the gods, can only be met by re-appropriating our own tradition. Although Aristotle has much to tell us, I believe Heidegger is right to turn to Heraclitus for a non-anthropocentric conception of humanity's place in Nature. Other writers, however, such as Arne Naess, George Sessions, and Stuart Hampshire, argue that the writings of Spinoza may offer the most helpful vision of humanity needed to guide our efforts to find a more appropriate basis for our behavior toward each other and toward the non-human world as well. Yet Aristotle, Qark, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Maclntyre, and Spinoza all agree that in order to behave fittingly, we must understand what it means to be human.At this time, I would like to acknowledge the importance of the following objection to what I have been arguing here: While it may be true that the concept of human rights is a fiction, it is nevertheless a very useful fiction for changing how human beings relate to each other. The doctrine of the rights of man justified the American and French revolutions, which brought forth new and important human freedoms. Today, most of humanity still lacks the protection afforded by constitutionally guaranteed human rights. Moreover, even in constitutional democracies there are frequent abuses of and attempts to curtail human rights. Until far more people become committed to protecting human rights, it is unlikely that there will be a big movement to extend rights to non-human beings, much less to overcome the anthropocentrism inherent in the concept of rights. What the Buddhist tradition calls skillful means is appropriate in our current situation. We must approach people in a way sensitive to their current self-understanding. Before we can pass on to the stage of planetary unity made possible by non-anthropocentric thinking, we need to find ways that promote mutual respect among human beings. Out of such respect there can also arise respect for the non-human as well.While largely in agreement with this point of view, I would like to note that our means must be very skillful, indeed, if we are to transform our relationships to each other and to the natural world before irreparable damage is done to the earth, through nuclear war or environmental destruction. The time grows short for the transformation needed to bring us from the stage of anthropocentrism to a deeper awareness of our internal relationship to the whole world. Some people, such as Peter Russell, argue that we are witnessing the evolution of a non-anthropocentric mode of planetary consciousness that will be supported by the revolution in communications and computers. Other people, such as Jeremy Rifkin, maintain that the coming computer age promises ever greater intrusions into natural processes, such as the drive for control of genetic structures. In my view, while it is important to extend the idea of human rights wherever possible, it is also crucial that we consider seriously the possibility that the idea of human rights is merely a transitional way of conceiving of morality. As we learn more about the interrelationship of human life with all other aspects of the earth's life, our self-understanding will no longer be in harmony with the human-centered morality we know today. We will either learn to respect all beings and act toward them in appropriate ways, or else we will continue down the road we are now headed - a road which seems to have a very disturbing destination. Learning to dwell appropriately on earth is the most pressing moral issue of the day.

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Self across time: the diachronic unity of bodily existence

The debate on personal persistence has been characterized by a dichotomy which is due to its still Cartesian framwork: On the one side we find proponents of psychological continuity who connect, in Locke’s tradition, the persistence of the person with the constancy of the first-person perspective in retrospection. On the other side, proponents of a biological approach take diachronic identity to consist in the continuity of the organism as the carrier of personal existence from a third-person-perspective. Thus, what accounts for someone’s persistence over time, is the continuity of his mind on the one hand, and the continuity of his body on the other. In contrast to those views, the paper intends to show that bodily existence represents the basis of selfhood across time, both as the continuity of the experiential self and as the continuity of the autopoietic organism. On the one hand, the lived body conveys a continuity of the self from a first-person perspective, namely a pre-reflective feeling of sameness or a felt constancy of subjectivity. Moreover, an analysis of awakening and sleep shows that there is a continuous transition from full wakefulness to periods of deep sleep which may thus not be regarded as a complete interruption of subjective experience. On the other hand, this constancy converges with the continuity of the organismic life process as conceived from a third-person perspective. Thus, the experiential self of bodily subjectivity and the autopoietic self of the living organism should be regarded as two aspects of one and the same life process. Finally, the lived body also exhibits a specific form of memory that results from the continual embodiment of existence: it consists of all the affinities, capacities and experiences, which a person has acquired throughout his life. Thus, it provides a continuity of self that must not be actively produced through remembering, but rather integrates the person’s entire past in his present being and potentiality.     

技艺与价值:分裂还是关联?--柏拉图的整体论解答及其当下意义

在当代技术哲学研究中,柏拉图有关技艺与价值关系的论述日益受到重视。只是目前已有的技术批判与技术建构两种视角并不能完整地展示柏拉图的这方面思想,其实他在其相关的对话中试图为技艺与价值的关系提供一种整体论伦理学基础,即技艺只有包含参照善的罗格斯才能获得健康发展。当环境破坏作为文明危机日益展现在人类面前时,柏拉图的这一整体论见解尤其显得具有实践意义。