On Sun, Aug 05, 2001 at 06:50:43PM -0400, Mark Walker wrote:
>
> There is nothing new under the sun (I may not have been the first to say
> this). Transhumanism is a minor variant on an ancient theme. Plato and
> Aristotle said the (1) telos of humanity's best (i.e., philosophers) is to
> become godlike, (2) that we ought to become godlike, and (3) that
> dialectical reasoning is the means for philosophers to realize their telos.
> Unlike Plato and Aristotle (Hegel, etc.) we do not believe that there is a
> little divine element in us that needs to be nurtured. Darwin killed that
> idea forever. So, transhumanists substitute technology (most notably genetic
> engineering and AI) for (3). What separates us from Plato et al is a minor
> quibble about the means to become what we ought to be.
Actually, I would say far more separates us from Plato. We are not claiming
the telos just for humanity's best (although I guess we all from time to
time see ourselves as the select philosophers of the future; just a bit of
self-serving pride) but for all of humanity. As Carl Feynman put it:
Godlike powers can be mass-produced and inexpensive. Also, this telos is
not seen as some single Platonic ideal, but rather ethically at least
(after all, we have plenty of convergentists here who think future
development will converge on some state or another) we can select many
different possible directions. The telos is towards greater self
actualisation, but that might be something more akin to the plurality of
Aristotelian virtues rather than a single ideal.
I think Plato would be horrified by the idea of transhumanism - we are
seeking to become something different from human, and we gladly accept
change. In Plato's view (which in this respect seem amusingly similar to
Jeremy Rifkin's in _Entropy_) change is a bad thing, due to our remoteness
from the Ideal. The only acceptable change is towards an ideal state, and
then it would stop.
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