From: Mark Walker (mail@markalanwalker.com)
Date: Sat Jul 13 2002 - 06:57:20 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
I agree with most of you interesting post. As usual, however, I have more to
say about what I disagree:
>
> > I think by embellishing our
> > response to the 'why' question by pointing out that transhumanism is the
> > logical conclusion of the cultural projects that so many already hold
dear
> > we might make further progress. The drive to perfection is already so
> > embedded in the telos of the cultural projects of the West it is a true
> > testimony to the inadequacy of our attempts to explain ourselves that we
> > have not be able to make this case. (In the East, of course, there is a
> > venerable tradition that says we should negate this desire for
> > perfection--in some ways it would be harder to make our brief there.
> > Obviously this contrast is overdrawn: the West has made attempts to
negate
> > this will, e.g., American pragmatism of James and Dewey, and the whole
> > gaggle of postmodernists).
>
> This telos in some sense is the inevitable consequence of the human
> tendency to use better solutions when they are found (and to look for
> them). That doesn't make it right, just as its prevalence in our culture
> does, but it shows that it will always crop up.
>
I think that we are agreed that "that doesn't make it right". The point of
course is to show that transhumanism does not appear "shot from a cannon" (a
self-image I think some transhumanists enjoy) but is actually the telos of
these great cultural projects. Even if we agreed that humans have a tendency
to use better solutions this still does not go to the heart of the matter,
since the question is: "what are the goals that require solutions?"
Pragmatists like James and Rorty would agree with me in the main that this
drive to perfection is implicit in the great cultural projects of the
West--they sometimes choose to lampoon this with the suggestion that the
goal is to get a God's eye view on the world. They conceive their project as
reconfiguring the telos into a more "humanly attainable" goal. (James was
right to see Herr Nietzsche as a kindred spirit in this regard. I've never
understood >H's appeal to Nietzsche. ) The various proposals about how to
scale down the ambitions of these cultural projects is interesting in
itself, e.g., Dewey says the goal of philosophy is not the truth in any
Platonic sense but (merely) to break the crust of convention. Kuhn argues
that science should not be seen as working towards the goal of truth but
simply evolves (in the Darwinian sense) from one form of puzzle solving to
another. The pragmatists I think generally see themselves as "looking for
better solutions" so I don't think that is our point of disagreement.
Rather, I think we can agree with the pragmatists in the diagnosis of the
problem but not in the prescription: rather than making science, philosophy,
and art smaller (to give them a human face to turn a phrase from Putnam), we
need to make humans greater.
Again, I don't think this is a matter of saying that it makes it right.
It does, however, show the relevance of transhumanism to the great cultural
projects of the West and also makes the choice clear: either pragmatism or
transhumanism (i.e. either scale back the ambitions or scale up the
participants). There is no third choice.
Mark
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