From: Waldemar Inghdahl (waldemar.ingdahl@eudoxa.se)
Date: Thu Jun 21 2001 - 13:11:30 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 10:06 AM
Subject: Re: The meaning of philosophy and the lawn chair
> Define please - man. What is and isn't meant? Do you hold this
> entity to be static? What do you wish "man" to evolve to? I do
> not want to live on this earth or at least not restricted to
> only this earth nor do I wish to be "human" much longer with all
> of its limitation. Among other things it will take a lot of
> computer code to accomplish transcending that state. It will,
> of course, take much more than just that.
Man- you, me, the rest on this list, people in general.
> > Transhumanism has everything to do with lawn chairs, microwave owens and Pokemon collectable trading cards.
> >
> > If a certain technology is developed it may have many good and practical applications, but it may also be applied in bad and impractical ways. Technology is a venue to make humanity's problems more agreeable, but it is not the fundamental part of transhumanism
> >
>
> This is false. Without technology you cannnot transcend the
> limits that bind us including the evolution-imposed limits to
> our rationality and the range and breadth of our reason.
> Technology is utterly necessary (but not sufficient) for
> transhumanism to succeed.
Like Anders Sandberg, I don't agree.
> > For transhumanism it wouldn't be a problem if MIT tomorrow published the fact that there are unsurmountable problems in applying nanotechnology, because transhumanism spans over further areas than just technology. It is a distinct philosophy with a view of the world, a theory of knowledge, a moral system and a political theory. We are talking about a dynamist approach to technology, humanity, and society. Not of specific technologies.
> >
>
> No particular technology is the key but the ability to transcend
> through the application of our minds including technology is
> inherent to the very nature of transhumanism.
>
> We are not yet capable of defining a full moral and political
> theory. Dynamism is much too weak to fill the bill. Objectivism
> was in many ways a good start but had its own blinders that
> ultimately largely derailed it.
Praise Reason that it isn't!!!
I think that the development of a philosophy is a process. Much of the problem created with Objectivism is derivate form this. There could not be an Objectivism v 2.0, it was creeded to be THE ultimate philosophy, while neglecting that it had roots itself (it could be called Aristotelianism v 15.0 ;-)
This doesn't mean one should get caught up in the sophisms so common today, that you cannot never agree on the significance of terms and concepts.
Call me an instrumentalist, but what is needed today is building of philosophical constructs, not another way of criticizing them.
> > When discussing a specific technology it is from the dynamist viewpoint and through a dialectical societal analysis of its societal consequences.
> >
>
> I think I will need some examples beofre I understand what your
> "dialectical societal analysis" might consist of.
OK, a quick definition-
Dialectics is about seeing connections. We live in a world that isn't constituted by separated occurances without any connections. On the contrary things do have connections, they have a past and a future and they influence each other mutally. It is this influence, these processes and connections that dialectics tries to make us aware of.
For instance: when you read a book you must interpret the individual sentences to understand the whole of the book, but you must also interpret the individual sentences from the context of the rest of the book' s message.
It doesn't seem strange? Good, because it isn't really. In this form dialectics wasn't founded neither by Marx or Hegel but by Socrates and Aristotle.
And I think one of the main reasons from the problem in Western philosophy today is the lack of dialectical thinking. It is the inability to see the connections and cross- influences that lie behind all attempts to find the all explaining factor behind it all. It is also behind the problem of dualism in philosophy.
> > Why are we positive towards human change? In the end it gets down to the fact that man has the right not to have his freedom infringed, and that of course includes the right of men to develop themselves and their right to implement their freedom in creating new technologies- as long as it doesn't hurt other people.
> >
>
> This is not sufficient for what extropians are about.
>
> - samantha
Indeed it is not sufficient, but it is sufficient as a meta normative in a political sense. Not through designing THE ethical guide but a frame that enables a good life. The good thing about this, I would say is that it leaves the truth of happiness in the hands of the ethical agents (me and you, Greg Burch, that guy in the streetcorner etc). This doesn't mean that truth in itself is relative. No, the point is that the truth must be discovered by the individual within the frame provided.
This is the frame that makes even extropianism possible- the project within these frames- the normative.
Sincerely,
Waldemar
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