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#Post#: 15--------------------------------------------------
(essay) What does it mean to be human?
DIR By: DepletedSoul
Date: August 19, 2017, 5:19 pm
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An interesting essay I found while doing my daily Transhuman
Google sessions.
HTML http://blogs.cui.edu/core/2015/04/27/what-does-it-mean-to-be-transhuman/
HTML http://blogs.cui.edu/core/2015/04/27/what-does-it-mean-to-be-transhuman/
--- Quote ---
> This is the first post of a two-part essay on transhumanism
and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
>
> Many of our universities are currently stuck in an internal
debate about online course offerings, attempting to determine
whether the potential gains of Internet-based instruction
outweigh the costs. On one side of the ledger, the online
student is afforded new levels of individualized education that
no longer restricts them to the institution-centric forms of
physical, in-class environments. On the other side, many
educators caution whether this technologically-mediated
methodology undercuts the nature of the learning enterprise,
treating students as disembodied entities rather than as
physical men and women. The center of the proverbial storm is
the body. Does physical presence matter—not just in the
university environment—but as a touchstone to understand
community more broadly? Or, put more succinctly, is physical
embodiment a necessary feature of the 21st century person?
>
> The contemporary world is in the throes of a digital
revolution, precipitated by the invention of the microprocessor
and every bit as transformational as the Industrial Revolution
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Futurists tells us
that, due to exponential pace in which computers are processing
commands, we will soon be entering into an era of human-computer
parity, perhaps ushering in an age in which technological change
outpaces the human ability to understand their world. Yet this
technological expansion is not accomplished in a vacuum; men and
women (at least until machines have the capacity themselves)
drive the progress. Humanity yearns to explore, to discover, to
drive past the speed limits laid forth by a finite natural world
and its own finite condition within it. Just as the Gagarin and
Shepard once broke through the boundaries of Earth’s
gravitational pull, humanity consistently seeks other venues by
which to challenge its inherent limitations.
>
> Today, the human body looks to be ripe for conquest for those
who would seek a world without physical boundary. This two-part
essay explores the tension between the reality of the human
condition as a function of its bodily limitation and the current
drive toward the technological Singularity, where some believe
that in the very transcending of physical limitation lies a type
of salvific eternal life.
>
> The term “Singularity” was originally coined by John von
Neumann in 1958 to describe a future condition in which
computers exceed human intelligence and thus bring about a
change in society so dramatic, so total, that predicting future
conditions of life becomes essentially impossible.
>
> More recently, author/futurists, such as Ray Kurzweil, have,
to varying degrees, lauded the coming of the Singularity by
suggesting that technological advancements will afford humanity
the opportunity to eradicate formerly unsolvable problems, such
as famine and disease. This optimistic view of the human-machine
relationship is often called “The Theory of Abundance.”
>
> The resulting effect of these theoretical advances culminates
in transhumanism, a state-of-being that promises three
particular ways of human flourishing: Super-longevity,
Super-intelligence, and Super-wellbeing. In short,
super-longevity seeks to transform the way humanity thinks about
physical death, from an inevitable natural process to an
individual decision. The goal of super-intelligence is to
provide each human brain immediate internal access to the
world’s repository of information at the speed of thought. Or,
alternately conceived, super-intelligence refers to a state in
which computers exceed the intelligence of the combined
intellectual force of humanity, leading people into a golden age
of knowledge. Finally, super-wellbeing refers to the
transhumanist promise that, by “editing our genes,” we can
eliminate human suffering (and the suffering of other sentient
beings) altogether.
>
> Philosopher David Pearce calls this the “hedonistic
imperative,” the moral obligation we have as humans to eliminate
all forms of suffering and accentuate, via drugs and/or gene
therapy, all forms of pleasure.
>
> My particular interest in the Singularity and the
transhumanist movement has less to do with predicting the nature
of society or technology-human interactions than it does
exploring one of the characteristics of futurist thinking on the
matter: The body contributes quite little to what makes humans,
human. In one sense, this conclusion might be somewhat
unsettling; conceiving oneself without the body becomes a
challenging feat, indeed! The body acts as the initial point of
contact when a person has a face-to-face conversation. It is the
control center for the information gathering of the senses, and
often shapes the identity of the person and his/her vocation.
The athlete, for example, is known as such only when his/her
body contains a certain amount of natural athletic skill.
>
> In another sense, however, we intuitively recognize the body’s
waning influence in matters of social interaction. The ubiquity
of online social networks has demonstrated the ease in which the
contemporary person feels connected to their contacts without
necessarily associating their physicality with such connection.
Apart from using actual fingers to punch keystrokes, the body is
no longer necessary for one’s participation in social settings.
>
> Community, as a term, is under similar pressures, as each wave
of social technologies seems to be promising greater levels of
social bonding. Whether you consider the body’s dwindling role
in identity-formation as a cause for anxiety, or if you believe
this turn to be of neutral or even positive value, one must be
willing to probe the meanings of “humanity” and “community”
before offering a position of substance.
>
> One particularly influential view of “what it means to be
human” emerged in Enlightenment thought: man was analogous to a
machine.
>
> If one simply breaks down the human form to small enough
parts, it could be reduced, quantified, and understood as an
intricate, yet predictable, mechanical device. Some modern
scholars have suggested that the machine-like-ness of the body
uniquely positions the human to be a “natural-born cyborg,” in
the language of Andy Clark. If the body is machine, then it is
no stretch to see how thoughts and consciousness itself can be
conceived as a series of inputs, outputs, zeroes and ones.
>
> Ray Kurzweil, perhaps the most recognizable of the current
futurists, openly acknowledges his eager anticipation of the
Singularity, for it will open the door for humans to “upload”
their consciousness into an eternal “human cloud.” The body
dies, but Ray the person may live on for an indefinite amount of
time. In this case, the human “machine” has actually melded with
machines.
>
> The salvific undertones of Kurzweil’s work are unmistakable.
Since human existence is limited by its body, technology offers
a particular brand of transcendence—it is a way to jettison that
which is flesh so that the mind, or perhaps, soul, might
experience a dramatic ascent into everlasting life. Or, at
least, a delay of death until the person wills it to be. Each of
the above prongs of transhumanist study (i.e., super-longevity,
super-intelligence, and super-well-being) seeks to overcome a
physical limitation inherent in the physiological system,
whether it’s the size of human brains or the cellular breakdown
that comes with age. Consider how transhumanist terminology
echoes classic religious thought about the afterlife: a place
that is eternal, where one understands all things, and sadness
is no more.
>
> Joel Oesch is Assistant Professor of Theology at Concordia
University Irvine
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