Is transhumanism heading towards redefinition of human being or towards Utopia?

IF 1.1 0 RELIGION

Scientia et Fides Pub Date : 2021-03-14 DOI:10.12775/SETF.2021.007

Rafał Szopa

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Transhumanism has enormous affect on temporary philosophical thought by forcing philosophers to take on many intellectual challenges generated by scientists who try to create technological solutions that enable implementation of transhumanistic ideas. The question is whether all these ideas will be realized. The purpose of the article is to show that the ulitmate goal of transhumanism, to create posthumanistic society, is impossible to realize. The first reason is that transhumanism limits human’s understanding to the material dimension (from a theological viewpint). While this is understandable in the naturalistic paradigm, this approach is insufficient when it comes to all complexity of human being and for this reason transhumanism represents too narrow a human’s understanding to be able to implement its all assumptions. The second reason is that to enable people to become posthumans the latest technologies would have to be available to everyone and this seems impossible. If so, such a situation will divide people into ordinary ones and posthumans and this could lead to conflicts that transhumanists want to avoid after all. Finally, the body-mind problem is essentially limited to emergentism, which corresponds to the naturalistic paradigm. It seems, however, that without the concept of the soul it is impossible to understand who a man is, their identity and consciousness and this is crucial for mind uploading.

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超人类主义是走向重新定义人类还是走向乌托邦?

超人类主义对暂时的哲学思想产生了巨大的影响，它迫使哲学家们接受许多由科学家们提出的智力挑战，这些科学家们试图创造技术解决方案，使超人类主义的思想得以实现。问题是这些想法能否实现。这篇文章的目的是为了表明，超人类主义的最终目标，即创造后人类主义社会，是不可能实现的。第一个原因是，超人类主义将人类的理解局限于物质维度(从神学的角度来看)。虽然这在自然主义范式中是可以理解的，但当涉及到人类的所有复杂性时，这种方法是不够的，因此，超人类主义代表了人类过于狭隘的理解，无法实现其所有假设。第二个原因是，为了使人们成为后人类，最新的技术必须对每个人都可用，这似乎是不可能的。如果是这样，这种情况将把人分成普通人和后人类，这可能会导致超人类主义者想要避免的冲突。最后，身心问题本质上仅限于突发现象，这与自然主义范式相对应。然而，似乎没有灵魂的概念，就不可能理解一个人是谁，他们的身份和意识，而这对心灵上传至关重要。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Scientia et Fides RELIGION-

CiteScore

1.80

自引率

10.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： "Scientia et Fides" (SetF) is an open access online journal published twice a year. It is promoted by the Faculty of Theology of Nicolaus Copernicus University, in Torun, in collaboration with the Group of Research “Science, Reason and Faith” (CRYF), at the University of Navarra. The journal is characterised by the interdisciplinary approach, multiplicity of research perspectives and broad reflection on methodology as well as analysis of the latest publications on the relationship between science and faith. The tasks of the journal are perfectly expressed by the motto "Veritas in omnibus quaerenda est" ("to seek the truth in all things") from "De revolutionibus" by Nicolaus Copernicus. SetF aims to present rigorous research works regarding different aspects of the relationship between science and religion. For this reason, SetF articles are not confined to the methodology of a single discipline and may cover a wide range of topics, provided that the interdisciplinary dialogue between science and religion is undertaken. The journal accepts articles written in English, Spanish, Polish, French, Italian and German which will be evaluated by a peer-review process.