I attended a Templeton sponsored workshop on Transhumanism at ASU this past Friday and had a fascinating time. The speakers were generally very good, though ironically some of them admitted from the start to not knowing very much about the subject (and it at times really showed). I was offended when at the very start of the conference, Transhumanism was called a "shallow ideology" that did not warrant even being called a philosophy yet. And yet it supposedly needed to be addressed because as Fukyama stated, "it is the world's most dangerous idea."
http://www.asu.edu/transhumanism/
http://www.asu.edu/t...nism/about.html
The conference was set up to be for basically only academics and so I was touched to be invited. But the closed nature of the event (I had to "sniff it out" to even pursue going) bothered me. I feel it should have been advertised (it is not even mentioned on their website!) and the general public allowed to attend. But it was believed that keeping things closed would keep out many possibly noisy Transhumanists. lol Several of the speaking academics were very critical of Transhumanism and I was very troubled that there were no prominent Transhumanists there such as Max More, Natasha Vita-More, Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, James Hughes, etc., to counterbalance them. It was definitely needed at times! But I was told several Transhumanist academics had been invited, but for one reason or another did not accept. I was very saddened to learn this.
I reached the end of my rope when Andrew Pickering, of the University of Exeter, who admitted from the start to having known nothing about Transhumanism before he was asked to give a talk at the workshop, gave his opinion that Transhumanists, with their vision of humanity uploaded into super computers, had a total lack of imagination as to how the future might be! He went on about Transhumanists wanting to "freeze their form for the ideal of Transhumanist perfection." I shook my head at this because of course Transhumanists want the freedom to take on whatever configuration they desire and not to be "locked in" to just one form. This stereotyping of *all* Transhumanists wanting the same scenario/goals and his general ignorance on the subject really disturbed me.
Andrew Pickering:
http://www.huss.ex.a...taff/pickering/
But the tipping point for me was when Professor Sarewitz (mentioned in my last post), of ASU, chimed in and said Transhumanists "suffered from a desiccated imagination." I finally stood up for us and said that I had seen Transhumanists accused of many things, but lack of imagination was not one of them! LOL I stated that Transhumanists were not all of one mind and that uploading was just one option that some of us we embraced. And that others wanted to simply augment the bodies we currently have. At that I was told it was just another example of Transhumanist lack of imagination! ha
Dan Sarewitz:
http://cspo.org/abou...le/sarewitz.htm
Things felt Monty Pythonesque when a professor started waxing poetic about how great it would be to be genetically modified so you could have wings and fly. It was decided by the group (very seriously I might add) that this was indeed a very great idea and better than what Transhumanists could dream up. The unintentional comedy potential of academics in a group is really something...
Later, the final speaker, Ted Peters, read a quote from Ray Kurzweil on humanity transforming the universe, and then looked my way and with a smile on his face and acknowledged how you could never justly accuse Transhumanists of a lack of imagination!
Don Ihde, of Stony Brook University, started off the lectures by discussing the four "idols" of futurism. Paradise, techno-fantasy (he saw Transhumanists falling for this one, especially), prediction and cyborgs were the deadly failings. He referred a great deal to the failed predictions of the past. But the man lost me when he said Transhumanism was man versus nature (in some ways true), while the Japanese cultural approach to technology was different by being highly integrative. I do admire Japan for their pro-tech pro-robotics endeavors, but I don't see how they should be viewed as the enlightened alternative to Transhumanism.
Don Ihde:
http://www.sunysb.ed.../faculty/dihde/
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a Frenchman of both Stanford and École Polytechnique, was a very charming and extremely energetic fellow who referred again and again to Hannah Arendt's 1958 book, "The Human Condition." Dupuy said she foresaw even then what is happening now with technology and society. Regarding Nick Bostrom (described as a "very bright guy") and other prominent Transhumanist scholars, he was "they are not stupid, they know their stuff."
Dupuy went on to say some modern scientists are seized by the spirit of the Sorcerer's Apprentice myth. The goal is not control but actually having their creation get *out* of control. I think he misunderstood the classic Disney cartoon because Mickey did not want the spell on the broom to get out of hand! lol
A sweet moment in his presentation was when he gave very adoring background information about a professor he was about to reference and then he brought up a picture of the lovely female academic who just so happened to be his wife! lol Dupuy was quite the charmer and was almost a living stereotype of the classic bright, romantic and energetic French intellectual type.
He claimed that "love would become incomprehensible in a Transhumanist world" and to support that view he shared the Greek myth of Alcimena. Zeus took the form of her husband (who was off fighting in a war) and then had sex with her, getting the woman pregnant. This resulted in baby Hercules. The story was brought up to take into consideration the Transhumanist/SF idea of making a copy of a former lover who had died. But as a female professor said to a girlfriend, "how could a woman not know it was another man, despite appearances?" lol I think female intuition is not to be underestimated.
The French professor commented that Nick Bostrom had written what he considered a superb paper about how Transhumanism should be seen as the height of humanism. But at the same time he said the big irony was that Transhumanism would ultimately eliminate humans as they now exist.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
http://www.stanford....ulty/dupuy.html
Katherine Hayles, of UCLA, spoke about "wrestling with Transhumanism." People laughed (so did I) when she confessed, "Transhumanism to me is like being very obsessed with a former lover and not being able to fully let go!" lol
She said a strongpoint of Transhumanism is that it takes "techno-genesis" extremely seriously, while many other future oriented groups/movements do not. But Hayles felt a comparative weakness is the emphasis on the individual, which is sometimes divorced from the larger picture/society. And going along with that is a naiveté regarding the idea that Transhumanist technology will be good for everyone. I see her points, but I think if she had been reading Transhumanist email lists over the last year or two she would not have claimed we had these weaknesses to the extent she thinks we do.
I was very impressed that she felt reading science fiction was an excellent way to explore various possible future scenarios. Hayles went into great detail about the superb Hugo-winning "Beggars in Spain" series by Nancy Kress, that focused on genetic engineering and the social conflict/cooperation it may engender.
Katherine Hayles took Transhumanism seriously, despite many criticisms and she very much impressed me. But I was distressed by her closing statement that Transhumanist philosophy (not ideology!, lol) and logic were just not at present sufficient to deal with the extremely complex and very hard to anticipate consequences of convergence technology on society.
Katherine Hayles:
http://www.english.u...faculty/hayles/
Ted Peters, of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, felt that no amount of technological progress could truly lift humanity out of its dark and self-destructive nature. He discussed nano, bio, info, cogno convergence, but also added artificial intelligence (isn't this "info?") , capitalism (need money!) and intelligence amplification (isn't this "cogno?").
Peters brought up William Jennings Bryan, who he said defended evolution largely out of the fear that if the public embraced it, that it would corrupt them by greatly cheapening the value of human life due to its view of life forms competing fiercely for survival. Bryan had witnessed some of the crimes against humanity (mass murder of the Hottentots) the pre-WWI Social Darwinist Germans committed against their colonial underlings in Africa and he had been appalled. Peters felt we must be careful or Transhumanism could go down a similar twisted path among at least some of its future adherents.
This speaker was the only one who really examined Transhumanism from a religious perspective. He explained that this had been requested from the conference organizers. I suspect it may be a requirement from the Templeton Foundation (an avowedly religious foundation, set up to explore connections between science and religion) to have at least one speaker at a largely secular conference focus on the religious aspect.
I found it interesting when he brought up the differences between immortality in Transhumanist thinking and how it is envisioned in mainstream Christianity. The speaker compared the Transhumanist upload immortality scenario to the concept of Platonic resurrection.
Engendering much discussion was the subject of evil/sin existing in a Transhumanist Post-Singularity society and how even as we ascended to godlike status we would be bringing the dark side of our natures with us, in essence corrupting our technological Eden.
Ted Peters:
http://www.counterba...o/ted-body.html
Around the conclusion of the conference a grad student brought up Nietzsche and "the will to power," in regards to Transhumanism. She wanted to wanted to know what kind of future world Transhumanists really wanted to live in and what drove them on/made them tick. There was a silence and you could have heard a pin drop after she finished speaking. Finally, people started responding but not to my satisfaction. I could tell the woman who made the comment was not content with the replies she had been given. And the heads of various professors were turning and looking my way to see if I would give an answer...
I said Nietzsche was a source of inspiration for Transhumanists but he had been rehabilitated by scholars over the past several decades and was no longer falsely seen as an evil poster boy for Hitler. And so it would be wrong to make the horrible assumption that Transhumanists were on their way to becoming futuristic Nazi's.
Regarding what kind of future Transhumanists wanted to live in, I told her many of us envisioned a universe where various intelligent beings of different levels of power and ability, unaugmented humans, greatly enhanced humans still in a humanoid body, and nearly god-like uploads would co-exist in harmony in (I admitted) a near-utopian society, at least compared to the civilization we have now. I said that what drove us was the desire to reach that place.
All eyes were on me as I said these things and there was a palpable feeling of focused attention and energy there. When I finished speaking people seemed to be mildly impressed and the professor in charge of the conference gave me a kind smile of affirmation. I felt really good at doing my best (in the very limited time I had to speak) to defend Transhumanism.
As Ted Peters did his Q & A session, Dan Sarewitz rounded out things by saying Transhumanism will not be able to overcome sin/the human dark side. He also stated that to be realistic we need a "muddle through" mentality and the other people there approved of this idea. Finally, he asked why academics at any level even buy into the Transhumanist future technology exponential growth scenario.
Dupuy added that he felt Transhumanism must not be dismissed, but instead confronted. And that at times Transhumanists behave like a sect/cult. Once again (he loved to bring this up), he said how shocking it was that William Bainbridge is the head of a 1.5 billion dollar research grant allocating department within the U.S. government.
Growing up Mormon I remember how Evangelical bookstores would make a great deal of money selling "exposes~" on the LDS Church. Books, audiotapes, films and the guest speakers pushing them became extremely popular. I suspect up to a point a similar thing could be happening in academia, but the focus is Tranhumanism. It is the new, exciting and best of all frightening idea/movement/ideology/philosophy that can attract the grant money and resources to build up one's name and organization/department. Many Mormon Transhumanist Association members could give their own insights into this parallel.
I believe if these academics are representative of what is going on worldwide, that there is a strong effort going on to at first marginalize and then later quite possibly supplant us as various sectors of society garb themselves with the mantle of Transhumanism (as it gets more popular) and relegate us to the fringes. But for now using us as a straw man/scary Bogey man seems to be the order of the day.
I did learn a great deal from the conference, generally had a wonderful time (including the difficult moments), and took copious notes. But the antagonism and lack of respect for Transhumanism, coupled with no prominent Transhumanist academics present to try to off-set unfair criticisms, really concerned me.
John Grigg
