Reading for week 4: On Bostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values vs Wrestling with transhumanism (Katherine Hayles 2011)

The teachers asked in week 4:

• What is your own response to the ‘values’ he proposes?
• Do you find them attractive or repellent?
• On what basis?
• Bostrom mentions education a few times here: what might his vision of transhumanism mean for the future of education?
• What would a transhumanist theory of education look like?

Nick Bostrom (2005) ‘Transhumanist values’ reproduced from Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 4, May (2005) http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html

"The transhumanist view that we ought to explore the realm of posthuman values does not entail that we should forego our current values"

Evolution is slow and about the whole and not one specific species. We can't be transhumans, but should strive to be trans-ecosystem, or trans-planetary. From Science Fiction, Dune comes to mind.

"Transhumanism promotes the quest to develop further so that we can explore hitherto inaccessible realms of value. Technological enhancement of human organisms is a means that we ought to pursue to this end. There are limits to how much can be achieved by low-tech means such as education, philosophical contemplation, moral self-scrutiny and other such methods proposed by classical philosophers."

What are "the hitherto inaccessible realms of value"? Is it possible to know the future? Speculation is not knowledge. In any case, survival on this planets seems a good value, worthy of pursuit. Education is called a low-tech means, but education is a process which has always been enhanced with technology.

"collective problem-solving capacities of our species"

And other species too, cf Bees, ants, etc. The problem solving should be regarded in contexts and environments.

"Collectively, we might get smarter and more informed through such means as scientific research, public debate and open discussion of the future, information markets, collaborative information filtering. On an individual level, we can benefit from education, critical thinking, open-mindedness, study techniques, information technology, and perhaps memory- or attention-enhancing drugs and other cognitive enhancement technologies."

Certainly worth while for education. Cognitive enhancement should be investigated but caution taken for long term reverse effects.

"Given the limitations of our current wisdom, a certain epistemic tentativeness is appropriate."

tentative? 'epistemic tentativeness' - Had to look this up. Should mean something like 'cognitive provisionality'. But what does this sentence mean? Our current knowledge is always limited so any conclusion must be provisional.

http://www.metanexus.net/essay/h-wrestling-transhumanism - Wrestling with Transhumanism (Katherine Hayles 2011)

"perform decontextualizing moves that over-simplify the situation and carry into the new millennium some of the most questionable aspects of capitalist ideology. Why then is transhumanism appealing, despite its problems? Most versions share the assumption that technology is involved in a spiraling dynamic of co-evolution with human development."

Apparantly Hayles is less enthousiastic about transhumanism, or technology per se than Bostrom.

"How can we extract the valuable questions transhumanism confronts without accepting all the implications of transhumanist claims? One possibility is to embed transhumanist ideas in deep, rich, and challenging contextualizations that re-introduce the complexities it strips away."

I read in this circular reasoning. Transhumanism is the stripping away of complexities and consists of certain claims about the future. Of course the future asks valuable questions, and transhumanism, like any other -ism, is a (logically constructed) simplification: an angle to look from. It seems impossible to embed a simplification in a deeper context.

There has been a discussion on the Coursera site, whether Transhumanism equals religion.
"As a sample of transhumanist rhetoric, consider the following passage from Max More, a prominent movement spokesperson:"

We seek to void all limits to life, intelligence, freedom, knowledge, and happiness. Science, technology and reason must be harnessed to our extropic values to abolish the greatest evil: death. Death does not stop the progress of intelligent beings considered collectively, but it obliterates the individual. No philosophy of life can be truly satisfying which glorifies the advance of intelligent beings and yet which condemns each and every individual to rot into nothingness. Each of us seeks growth and the transcendence of our current forms and limitations. The abolition of aging and, finally, all causes of death, is essential to any philosophy of optimism and transcendence relevant to the individual.

(Max More, “Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy” (1996), http://www.maxmore.com/transhum.htm.) Indeed, this sounds like religion. "critiques of transhumanism enacted in these SF fictions". Described are:

• Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
• Vernon Vinge, Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future
• Greg Bear, Darwin’s Radio
• Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain
• James Patrick Kelly, Mr. Boy

Each of these scenarios involves complexities for which the transhumanist philosophy is simply not able to account or to understand, much less to explain. Reason is certainly needed, but so are emotion, systemic analysis, ecological thinking, and ethical consideration

. This shows Hayles' criticism on Transhumanist ideas.

framework in which transhumanism considers these questions is, I have argued, too narrow and ideologically fraught with individualism and neoliberal philosophy

Too narrow, fraught with neoliberal philosophy. I tend to agree.