Re: Foundations of Transhumanism

Gregory Sullivan (sullivan@blaze.cs.jhu.edu)
Mon, 27 Oct 1997 06:08:38 -0500 (EST)


Nicholas Bostrom said:
>Foundations of Transhumanism is a new web site that will provide easy
>access to selected transhumanist material of an academic nature.

You may wish to add a link to Max More's doctoral dissertation which
treats the topic of identity. This is a central concern to any
transhuman/posthuman being which has the capability of transforming
"itself" radically.

THE DIACHRONIC SELF: IDENTITY,
CONTINUITY, TRANSFORMATION
(Ph.D. Dissertation by Max More,
1995, Dept. of Philosophy,
University of Southern
California.)

http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore/disstoc.htm

The link above leads directly to the thesis and will work, but the site
uses frames so you may wish to access the thesis by going thru
http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore/

Since you have a link to "Engines of Creation" you may wish to add a link
to "Unbounding the Future":
http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/index.html

Nicholas Bostrom said:
>But if some student who is writing her MA, say, wants to do it in
>transhumanism, she will have a hard time convincing her professors that
>this is really something more than science fiction and entertaining
>speculation.

The case for examining transhumanist issues could perhaps be strengthened
by referring to ongoing technical progress. Links to the full papers of
the upcoming Fifth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology are
available:

http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Papers/index.html

Gregory Sullivan