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Topic: Posthuman


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In the News (Mon 28 Dec 09)

  
  Posthuman.com
Such posthuman beings do not exist currently, therefore any more detailed description of what they would look like or how they would think and behave is pure speculation.
Nothing could be farther from the truth: We who hope that there exist posthuman beings one day want to preserve humaneness forever.
All the wisdom humans have achieved by departing from blindly following their instincts should be stored for all eternity, but the shape of in what it is stored is completely irrelevant.
www.posthuman.com   (461 words)

  
  Transhumanist FAQ
Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or they could be enhanced uploads [see “What is uploading?”], or they could be the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound augmentations to a biological human.
Posthuman minds might be able to share memories and experiences directly, greatly increasing the efficiency, quality, and modes in which posthumans could communicate with each other.
Posthumans might shape themselves and their environment in so many new and profound ways that speculations about the detailed features of posthumans and the posthuman world are likely to fail.
www.transhumanism.org /index.php/WTA/faq21/56   (503 words)

  
 In Defense of Posthuman Dignity
This paper distinguishes two common fears about the posthuman and argues for the importance of a concept of dignity that is inclusive enough to also apply to many possible posthuman beings.
This paper will distinguish two common fears about the posthuman and argue that they are partly unfounded and that, to the extent that they correspond to real risks, there are better responses than trying to implement broad bans on technology.
These, not a blanket prohibition of all posthuman ways of being, are the measures to which those bothered by the prospect of debased posthumans should resort.
www.nickbostrom.com /ethics/dignity.html   (4231 words)

  
  The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness beyond the Brain, by Robert Pepperell (2003) | Betterhumans > Review
He declares posthumanism to be the philosophical and methodological successor to humanism, but fails to acknowledge how humanist thinking has in many ways contributed to progressive posthumanist thought; in many respects, posthumanism is the transitional successor to humanism, and not postmodernism as Pepperell insinuates.
Posthumanism, says Pepperell, suggests that people are not in opposition to nature, but an intrinsic part of it.
Pepperell considers the post-biological or transhumanist element to be one facet of his brand of posthumanism, the other parts being the end of humanism and the beginning of a new (or is that old?) form of epistemological skepticism.
archives.betterhumans.com /Reviews/Review/tabid/86/Review/170/Default.aspx   (1696 words)

  
 posthuman
The posthuman condition is still only a potential, since fully integrated, first-order cyborgs (the organic platform and technological superstructure are completely interdependent) are still on the cultural horizon, and virtual consciousness is at best an entertaining speculation.
The posthuman model that seems to be developing is McLuhanesque--that is, the techno-organic interface should enhance the body from the fluctuating degree zero of everyday normalization.
In this phase of posthuman development, the will to purity, explicit in the spectacle of anxiety, manifests itself in two significant forms: First is the purification of the pancapitalist cycle of waking everyday life.
www.brown.edu /Departments/MCM/people/chun/377/cyborg.html   (3070 words)

  
 Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution - Book Review Christian Century - Find Articles
POSTHUMAN," the newest buzz word, is beginning to eclipse "postmodern." Postmodernism consists of a philosophical reexamination of foundational suppositions of the Enlightenment: objectivity, realism, universal truths, rationalism, the blank slate, essences and meta-narratives (socialism, liberalism, etc.).
But "posthuman" refers to biology, as thinkers grapple with the fact that we have entered a period of monumental advance in the life sciences.
Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future is a retrospective of his bold declaration that we have reached the end of history; that is, the major alternatives to liberal democracy have exhausted themselves (The End of History and the Last Man, 1992).
www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m1058/is_15_120/ai_106098106   (876 words)

  
 Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
Furthermore, virtually all posthuman civilizations lack individuals who have sufficient resources and interest to run ancestor-simulations; or else they have reliably enforced laws that prevent such individuals from acting on their desires.
Maybe the scientific value of ancestor-simulations to a posthuman civilization is negligible (which is not too implausible given its unfathomable intellectual superiority), and maybe posthumans regard recreational activities as merely a very inefficient way of getting pleasure — which can be obtained much more cheaply by direct stimulation of the brain’s reward centers.
If we learn more about posthuman motivations and resource constraints, maybe as a result of developing towards becoming posthumans ourselves, then the hypothesis that we are simulated will come to have a much richer set of empirical implications.
www.simulation-argument.com /simulation.html   (4855 words)

  
 Toward a Posthuman Ethics
Posthumanism, on the other hand, is under critical scrutiny from "an interdisciplinary perspective informed by academic poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminist and postcolonial studies, and science and technology studies" (Simon 2-3).
The revelation in turn reveals that the collaboration of posthumanism and ethics is detained by anthropocentrism, on the basis of which the hierarchy tries to maintain its status in the question of the cyborg.
However, since posthumanism involves not only humans but also non-human beings such as conscious cyborgs, there should be more than one place to start from on the way toward posthumanism.
reconstruction.eserver.org /043/yi.htm   (4404 words)

  
 CTheory.net
One of the main areas examined in the posthuman from the perspective of dematerialization is the epistemic shift toward pattern/ randomness from presence/absence.
The posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes, as an epiphenomenon, an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in fact it is only a minor side-show.
The posthuman view regards the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born.
www.ctheory.net /text_file.asp?pick=266   (2170 words)

  
 Probing the Posthuman
In posthumanism, this problem is reworked, and the distinction between subject and object is collapsed, and the mind is considered to be no more than a material function of the body.
The posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow.
Conversely, posthumanism has taken into consideration that the observer is inextricably bound to and influences the observed: "reflexivity is the movement whereby that which has been used to generate a system is made, through a changed perspective, to become part of the system it generates" (Hayles 8).
reconstruction.eserver.org /043/campbell.htm   (6916 words)

  
 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman
An interesting statistic given in How We Became Posthuman is that about 10 percent of the current U.S. population is estimated to be cyborg in the technical sense -- that is people with electronic pacemakers, for example, or artificial joints.
Admittedly the word "science" is printed in bold type on the top left corner of the rear cover (presumably as an aid to its correct categorization on bookstore shelves).
The author persuasively argues that such narratives as these are important because they have qualities (chronological thrust, personified agents, located actions), which counter the perception of humans as something constituted essentially of abstract information, a perception which will inevitably lead to a disembodied, impoverished humanity.
www.rambles.net /hayles_posthuman.html   (466 words)

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