From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 16:18:53 MDT
Yes, there are plenty of antecedents to transhumanism. It would be a
mistake to assume that it all started with Max More or FM 2020. The FAQ
contains a partial list of forerunners
(http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/faq.html#View). It mentions
Condorcet but not Fourier.
Do we need to be a new philosophy? No, just as we do not need to be an
old philosophy. We just need to be a good philosophy that works. This is
maybe where transhumanism
On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 04:53:19PM -0400, p_chikara@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> Genuine ignorance or vanity, it doesn't matter to me: as a group,
> extropians/transhumanists are a bit too eager to misread their predecesor in
> order to make room for themselves...
So in what way are we misreading predecessors? You do not give any
examples, just suggestive quotes that they "had the same ideas" (or
rather, have ideas similar to the ones we develop in the light of
current knowledge and ideas).
> Also, using the structure of an "institute" / "school of philosophy" is a
> massive philosophical regression, sad, a system of terror, with the
> pretention of making something new but is a king-sized povrety.
A school of philosophy is just a group of people sharing many views,
which may or may not form a well-defined philosophical system. Aren't
you aiming at the issue of whether transhumanism can be viewed as a true
philosophical system (with parts such as metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics and politics) rather than the structure of transhumanist
organisations?
> extropianism is just a materialism and
> realizing it by droping the usless brand name would be the mature thing to
> do for it would help in getting credibility and real life traction to our
> common dreams.
> Rejoice! You are not an extropian, you are a materialist ! :-)
But what kind of materialist? Marxist materialist? Epicurean
materialist? Reductive or eliminative materialist? That I am a
materialist does not tell much about my ethics, my ideas of what
constitutes the good life, my ideas of how knowledge can be acquired and
applied. Saying extropianism is just materialism is like saying it is
just optimism - it takes a part (which is not even essential, since
there are Christian extropians who presumably are not materialists) and
says it is all.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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