From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 00:15:58 MDT
Jacques Du Pasquier wrote:
>French "Le Figaro" has an interesting interview with Peter Sloterdijk
>about the biotech and its implications (seen positively !). Sloterdijk
>seems to be an interesting transhumanistish German philosopher,
[...]
>Maybe other people, and in particular German extropians, Hubert or
>others, will want to comment and tell us some more about his ideas and
>their impact in Germany.
and Hubert replied:
>Two or three years ago he raised hell in the German feuilletons with a
>speech he held about a future "Menschenpark" (human park) where he pondered
>about the free breeding of men with the help of biotechnology. I read this
>piece and found it awkwardly indigestible. Sloterdijk, it seemed, had no
>concept at all about human enhancement.
[...]
>Much has happened in the last three years. I remember that Sloterdijk was
>invited to talk at technology conferences, where Ray Kurzweil was also
>peeping in by video. I also remember that he said something like the
>transhuman philoosphy of being a little eccenctric, to say the least. I
>think he is very well informed about the subject of posthuman future but
>still would have ethical objections against transhuman core values
Thanks Hubert, for that elegant summary!
Regarding Sloterdijk and genetic research in Germany, I discovered
that the former president of largest science funding agency in Germany
is a well-known molecular biologist. His name is Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker.
I believe that his position ended last year.
Because, or in spite of his specialty, Winnacker seems to be
particularly conservative with regards to genetic research.
I wonder if his views will continue to carry weight with
regards to genetic research here.
Links to him
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Ernst-Ludwig+Winnacker»
Some of his public statements in English:
Future Challenges of Genetic Technology
http://www.munichre.com/aktuelles_forum_e/pdf/winnacker_e_.pdf
"Genetic engineering - manipulating human beings
What we can and what we cannot do"
Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, Bonn
http://www.h-quandt-stiftung.de/english/kolloq/ab_ab_wi.htm
Quoting in part: (where he mentions Peter Sloterdijk)
"Stages 5,6 and 7 of our model concern therapeutic manipulation of
the germ line, not only in order to prevent the most serious
hereditary complaints, but also in order to introduce genes which
are resistant to deficiencies, to treat deviations from the norm,
for example homosexuality, which actually no longer have any medical
correlates, and intervention in order to change the nature of our
species, for example, the already-mentioned extension of our life
span. Without exception, this final stage in particular points in
the direction of utopia and science fiction, and has nothing
whatsoever in common with doctors' professional ethics, which relate
solely to the treatment of sick people. From an ethic and moral
standpoint, not only from a scientific one, we are on the wrong
track in breeding an improved human being. Six months ago, the
philosopher Peter Sloterdijk took up this old theme again in his
Rules for the human park. It is indeed not new; we only have to
think about the debate 30 years ago between behaviourists, on the
one hand, who regarded the human genome as a tabula rasa into which
anything and everything can be projected, and the social biologists,
on the other, who considered that we humans as well were puppets of
our genome. Recapitulation, even if it is due to a distinguished
philosopher, does not make the concept any better. I hope I have
been able to show you that anyone who tries to reduce a human being
to his genes alone has a disturbed relationship to the biological
foundations of our life. It does us no harm, of course, to remind
ourselves from time to time of "Wonders are many on earth, and the
greatest of these/Is man, ..." from the chorus in Sophocles
Antigone. But this is also not unfamiliar to modern natural
scientists. They are also aware of the ambivalence of human nature.
The "codex of anthropo-techniques" which Sloterdijk calls for has
already been envisaged. It was my wish, if not to convince you, at
least to put you into the picture about this. It is up to society
and the public to preserve this codex intact, this respect for the
integrity of our own likeness, throughout the upheavals of time, and
when necessary to make sure that it receives due recognition. "
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Dare to be naive." -- Buckminster Fuller
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:18 MST