August 4, 2010
If we are to believe transhumanists, people who bill themselves as champions of superlongevity and artificial human enhancement, 2045 should be a very good year. (The Boston Globe)
July 12, 2010
Wallach is a pioneer in the nascent field of robot ethics and has captured the imaginations of futurists with his theories on artificial moral agents and computational ethics. In fact, he designed the world’s first course on the subject at … Read More
July 1, 2010
The American Journal of Bioethics (Volume 10, Issue 7, 2010) is now available by subscription only. Articles Include: “Disaster in the Gulf: Public Health and Public Responsibility” by Summer Johnson, 1-2. “Should Human Beings Have Sex? Sexual Dimorphism and Human … Read More
June 23, 2010
The New York Times Sunday business section recently ran an enormous puff piece on Ray Kurzweil and the “Singularity” cult (my term, not the Times’s). Kurzweil is a successful inventor–entrepreneur best known lately for his sci-tech prophecies. He claims that … Read More
June 14, 2010
Transhumanism is the idea of guiding and improving human evolution with intention through the use of technologies and culture. If those technologies are not robotic and cybernetic but, instead, genetic and organic, then so be it. (IEET)
June 14, 2010
ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen. (New … Read More
June 2, 2010
The emergent course of our human bio-technological transition is leading toward a species transformation. In light of this, approaches to transhumanism are varied and some are without clear conceptual apparatus; people want to extol its far-out promise or decry its … Read More
March 23, 2010
A major objective of the technoprogressive agenda is to close the gap between popular presentations of transhumanism and the mainstream of social/political thought. In order to effect a significant influence on public policies related to human enhancement technologies and other … Read More
March 10, 2010
I have proposed that a scenario of slower-than-disruptive tech development over the next 15-20 years combined with weak or reduced opposition to human enhancement could result in “increasing irrelevance†for transhumanists. But what exactly does that mean? (IEET)
January 25, 2010
Transhumanists, like Enlightenment partisans in general, believe that human nature can be improved but are conflicted about whether liberal democracy is the best path to betterment. The liberal tradition within the Enlightenment has argued that individuals are best at finding … Read More
November 25, 2009
In 2003, the idea that one might have a freedom to change one’s body and brain as one liked was being discussed in relation to the Transhumanist FAQ. This idea receives much less attention in the current FAQ, where it … Read More
November 20, 2009
IBM’s Blue Gene brain simulation has made gains in one of the most sophisticated tasks man has ever taken on—creating artificial intelligence (AI). With the true AI milestone comes the dawn of the singularity, when computers overtake humans. Contributing editor … Read More
November 4, 2009
Philosophy & Public Affairs (Volume 37, Issue 4, Fall 2009) is now available by subscription only. Articles Include: “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience” by Selim Berker, 293-329. “Neuroscience and Moral Reasoning: A Note on Recent Research” by F.M. Kamm, 330-345. … Read More
September 24, 2009
61-year-old Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award winner, futurist and inventor guy Ray Kurzweil has made a lot of wild predictions that end up being appealing or terrifying. One of those is his belief that, within the next 20-25 years, … Read More
September 3, 2009
Transhumanism is, essentially, the advanced tech-art of improving both the physical and mental capacities of human beings with the aid of existing and emerging 21st century technologies in the Bio, Info and Nano (BIN) spheres. At present, transhumanism is fast … Read More
August 20, 2009
Many practitioners, for instance, do not realize that their scientific research may have ethical ramifications, Grinnell said. When scientists repeat their experiments, they accumulate ten to fifteen notebooks with many sets of data that eventually become a paper. (Science Progress)
June 24, 2009
Artificial Intelligence Review (Volume 28, Number 3, October 2007) is now available by subscription only. Articles Include: “Human–Computer input and output techniques: an analysis of current research and promising applications” by Marco Porta, 197-226.
June 16, 2009
Dialog (Volume 48, Issue 2, Summer 2009) is now available by subscription only. Articles Include: “Animals and the Image of God in the Bible and Beyond ” by Joshua M. Moritz, 134-146. “The Animal that Aspires to be an Angel: … Read More
June 9, 2009
The notions of biomedical enhancement and our possible posthuman future are very much, so to speak, topics du jour in the bioethical literature. Over the past few years a number of books have appeared that address the ethical issues that … Read More
May 11, 2009
Dr. Susan Schneider, IEET fellow and assistant professor of philosophy and an affiliated faculty member with Penns Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, speaks at a UPenn Media Seminar on Neuroscience and Society on … Read More
May 7, 2009
For inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, being human with limited intelligence and doomed biology was never good enough. So he came up with an idea called the Singularity – a time when humans merge with machines, become smart and live … Read More
May 1, 2009
Philosophers and engineers have debated whether or not we are all gradually becoming post-human cyborgs for decades. Now, the European Parliament is meeting to debate the issues next month. The European Parliament is set to debate issues surrounding smart drugs, … Read More
May 1, 2009
What is transhumanism? A pretty good definition is offered by bioethicist and transhumanist James Hughes who states that transhumanism is “the idea that humans can use reason to transcend the limitation of the human condition.”[i] Specifically, transhumanists welcome the development … Read More
April 24, 2009
In a spare one-room office at Nasa’s Silicon Valley campus, a small band of futurists is plotting to save the world. The means are not a revolutionary technology or a new world order (though both may be byproducts). Rather, a … Read More
April 14, 2009
Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy (Volume 12, Number 2, May 2009) is now available by subscription only. Articles Include: “Human nature, medicine & health care” by Bert Gordijn and Wim Dekkers, 119. “Medical technologies and the life world: an introduction to the theme” by Fredrik … Read More
