Download or read book The Proactionary Imperative written by S. Fuller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Proactionary Imperative debates the concept of transforming human nature, including such thorny topics as humanity's privilege as a species, our capacity to 'play God', the idea that we might treat our genes as a capital investment, eugenics and what it might mean to be 'human' in the context of risky scientific and technological interventions.
Download or read book The Politics and Ethics of Transhumanism written by Alexander Thomas and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2024-07-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence Transhumanism is a philosophy which advocates for the use of technology to radically enhance human capacities. This book interrogates the promises of transhumanism, arguing that it is deeply entwined with capitalist ideology. In an era of escalating crisis and soaring inequality, it casts doubt on a utopian techno-capitalist narrative of unending progress. In critiquing the transhumanist project, the book offers an alternative ethical framework for the future of life on the planet. As the debates around the advancement of AI and corporate-led digital technologies intensify, this is an important read for academics as well as policy makers .
Download or read book Religion and the Technological Future written by Calvin Mercer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of rapid technological advancement. Never before has humankind wielded so much power over our own biology. Biohacking, the attempt at human enhancement of physical, cognitive, affective, moral, and spiritual traits, has become a global phenomenon. This textbook introduces religious and ethical implications of biohacking, artificial intelligence, and other technological changes, offering perspectives from monotheistic and karmic religions and applied ethics. These technological breakthroughs are transforming our societies and ourselves fundamentally via genetic modification, tissue engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, the merging of computer technology with human biology, extended reality, brain stimulation, and nanotechnology. The book also considers the extreme possibilities of mind uploading, cryonics, and superintelligence. Chapters explore some of the political, economic, sociological, and psychological dimensions of these advances, with bibliographies for further study and questions for discussion. The technological future is here – and it is up to us to decide its moral and religious shape.
Download or read book Postdigital Theologies written by Maggi Savin-Baden and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the relationships between technologies and the content of religious belief and practice. A number of models are now starting to emerge, but each of these depends on the theological or philosophical framework within which the debate is set. At at the same time, there are dilemmas operating at different ends of the spectrum. For example, at one end there is a tendency towards subsuming the digital within the divine, and at the other an instrumental stance relating to how technology is deployed. Either of these stances could be said to ignore rather than acknowledge that the human itself is being changed as a result of the interactions with the digital. The book explores the following areas: · Where is God to be found or present in the postdigital condition? · What are the implications of the postdigital condition for spirituality and indeed for the activity of God through the Holy Spirit? · How do concepts of transhumanism or posthumanism effect understandings of the incarnation? · Does the doctrine of the Trinity need revisiting in the light of the digital as medium of relationship? · Does Creation now include the postdigital? · What of the Kingdom of God now that the kingdom of the Tech giants is so powerful all-consuming?
Download or read book Knowledge written by Steve Fuller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-08 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, is often regarded as a dry topic that bears little relation to actual knowledge practices. Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History addresses this perception by showing the roots, developments and prospects of modern epistemology from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with an introduction to the central questions and problems in theory of knowledge, Steve Fuller goes on to demonstrate that contemporary epistemology is enriched by its interdisciplinarity, analysing keys areas including: Epistemology as Cognitive Economics Epistemology as Divine Psychology Epistemology as Philosophy of Science Epistemology as Sociology of Science Epistemology and Postmodernism. A wide-ranging and historically-informed assessment of the ways in which man has - and continues to - pursue, question, contest, expand and shape knowledge, this book is essential reading anyone in the Humanities and Social Sciences interested in the history and practical application of epistemology.
Download or read book Imagined Futures in Science Technology and Society written by Gert Verschraegen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining, forecasting and predicting the future is an inextricable and increasingly important part of the present. States, organizations and individuals almost continuously have to make decisions about future actions, financial investments or technological innovation, without much knowledge of what will exactly happen in the future. Science and technology play a crucial role in this collective attempt to make sense of the future. Technological developments such as nanotechnology, robotics or solar energy largely shape how we dream and think about the future, while economic forecasts, gene tests or climate change projections help us to make images of what may possibly occur in the future. This book provides one of the first interdisciplinary assessments of how scientific and technological imaginations matter in the formation of human, ecological and societal futures. Rooted in different disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, and science and technology studies, it explores how various actors such as scientists, companies or states imagine the future to be and act upon that imagination. Bringing together case studies from different regions around the globe, including the electrification of German car infrastructure, or genetically modified crops in India, Imagined Futures in Science, Technology and Society shows how science and technology create novel forms of imagination, thereby opening horizons toward alternative futures. By developing central aspects of the current debate on how scientific imagination and future-making interact, this timely volume provides a fresh look at the complex interrelationships between science, technology and society. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students interested in Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Science, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Political Sciences, Future Studies and Literary Sciences.
Download or read book Postdigital Humans written by Maggi Savin-Baden and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores approaches to developing and using postdigital humans and the impact they are having on a postdigital world. It presents current research and practices at a time when education is changing rapidly with digital, technological advances. In particular, it outlines the major challenges faced by today’s employers, developers, teachers, researchers, priests and philosophers. The book examines conceptions of postdigital humans and studies the issue in connection with ethics and employment, as well as from perspectives such as philosophy and religion.
Download or read book The Care of Life written by Miguel de Beistegui and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-12-22 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary collection of essays demonstrates how the ethical and political problems we are confronted with today have come to focus largely on life. The contributors to this volume define and assess the specific meaning of life itself. It is only by doing so that we can understand why life has become an all-encompassing problem, why all questions, especially ethical and political, have become vital questions. We have reached a moment in history where every distinction and opposition is no longer in relation to life, but within it, and where life is at once a theoretical and practical problem. This book throws light on this nexus of problems at the heart of contemporary debates in bioethics and biopolitics. It helps us understand why and how life is understood, valued, cared for and framed today. Taking a genuinely transdisciplinary approach, these essays demonstrate how life is a multifaceted problem and how diverse the origins, foundations and also consequences of bioethics and biopolitics therefore are.
Download or read book Social Epistemology and Epistemic Agency written by Patrick J. Reider and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of epistemology is undergoing significant changes. Primary among these changes is an ever growing appreciation for the role social influences play on one’s ability to acquire and assess knowledge claims. Arguably, social epistemology’s greatest influence on traditional epistemology is its stance on de-centralizing the epistemic agent. In other words, its practitioners have actively sought to dispel the claim that individuals can be solely responsible for the assessment, acquisition, dissemination, and retention of knowledge. This view opposes traditional epistemology, which tends to focus on the individual’s capacity to form and access knowledge claims independent of his or her relationship to society. Social Epistemology and Epistemic Agency is an essential resource for academics and students who ask, “in what manner does society engender its members with the ability to act as epistemic agents, what actions constitute epistemic agency, and what type of beings can be epistemic agents?”
Download or read book Humanism and its Discontents written by Paul Jorion and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-02-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains that while posthumanism rose in opposition to the biblical contention that ‘Man was created in the image of God’, transhumanism ascertained the complementary view that ‘Man has been assigned dominion over all creatures’, further exploring a path that had been opened up by the Enlightenment’s notion of human perfectibility. It explains also how posthumanism and transhumanism relate to deconstruction theory, and on a broader level to capitalism, libertarianism, and the fight against human extinction which may involve trespassing the boundary of the skin, achieving individual immortality or dematerialization of the Self and colonisation of distant planets and stars. Two authors debate about truth and reason in today’s world, the notion of personhood and the legacy of the Nietzschean Superhuman in the current varieties of anti-humanism.
Download or read book The Spirit of Luc Boltanski written by Simon Susen and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relevance of Luc Boltanski’s ‘pragmatic sociology of critique’ to central issues in contemporary social and political analysis? In seeking to respond to this question, this book contains critical commentaries from prominent social theorists attempting to map out the influence and broad scope of Boltanski’s oeuvre.
Download or read book The Nature of the Machine and the Collapse of Cybernetics written by Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a philosophical exploration of the theoretical causes behind the collapse of classical cybernetics, as well as the lesson that this episode can provide to current emergent technologies. Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson advances the idea that the cybernetic understanding of the nature of a machine entails ontological and epistemological consequences that created both material and theoretical conundrums. However, he proposes that given our current state of materials research, scientific practices, and research tools, there might be a way for cybernetics to flourish this time. The book starts with a historical and theoretical articulation of cybernetics in order to proceed with a philosophical explanation of its collapse—emphasizing the work of Alan Turing, Ross Ashby and John von Neumann. Subsequently, Malapi-Nelson unveils the common metaphysical signature shared between cybernetics and emergent technologies, identifying this signature as transhumanist in nature. Finally, avenues of research that may allow these disruptive technologies to circumvent the cybernetic fate are indicated. It is proposed that emerging technologies ultimately entail an affirmation of humanity.
Download or read book Design in Crisis written by Tony Fry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary field of critical design studies. The essays in this collection locate design at the center of a series of interrelated planetary crises, from climate change, nuclear war, and racial and geopolitical violence to education, computational culture, and the loss of the commons. In doing so, the essays propose a range of needed interventions in order to transform design itself and its role within the shifting realities of a planetary crisis. It challenges the widely popular view that design can contribute to solving world problems by exposing how this attitude only intensifies the problems we currently face. In this way, the essays critique the dominant modes of framing the meaning and scope of design as a largely Anglo-European 'problem-solving' practice. By drawing on post-development theory, decolonial theory, black studies, continental philosophy, science and technology studies, and more, the contributions envision a critical and speculative practice that problematises both its engagement with planet and itself. The essays in this collection will appeal to design theorists and practitioners alike, but also to scholars and students generally concerned with how the past and future of design is implicated in the unfolding complexity of ecological devastation, racial and political violence, coloniality, technological futures, and the brutality of modern Western culture generally.
Download or read book Historical Understanding written by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first decades of the new century shake old certainties. In a whirlwind of profound changes, do we have more history or less? Does history overwhelm us in all domains of life or is historical understanding in yet another crisis? The answers do not come easily. The recent demise of humanities education, the technological alterations of our social lifeworlds and the human condition, the anthropogenic changes in the Earth system, the growing sense of memory, trauma and historical injustice as alternative approaches to the past, seem to entail contradictions and complexities that do not fit very well with our existing notions of historical understanding. Historical thought as we know it is facing manifold challenges, and we struggle to grasp a larger picture that could encompass them. Boasting a range of contributions from leading scholars, this volume attempts just that. In an innovative collection of short essays, Historical Understanding explores the current shape of historical understanding today, by surveying a variety of historical relations to the past, present, and future in the face of socio-political, ecological and technological upheavals. This book is an invaluable research tool for students and researchers alike, presenting a kaleidoscope-like overview of manifold new ways which we navigate “historically” in coping with present-day challenges, both in wider society and in historiography
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism written by Mads Rosendahl Thomsen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As our ideas of the human have come under increasing challenges – from technological change, from medical advances, from the existential threat of climate crisis, from an ideological decentering of the human, amongst many other things – the 'posthuman' has become an increasingly central topic in the Humanities. Bringing together leading scholars from across the world and a wide range of disciplines, this is the most comprehensive available survey of cutting edge contemporary scholarship on posthumanism in literature, culture and theory. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism explores: - Central critical concepts and approaches, including transhumanism, new materialism and the Anthropocene - Ethical perspectives on ecology, race, gender and disability - Technology, from data and artificial intelligence to medicine and genetics - A wide range of genres and forms, from literary and science fiction, through film, television and music, to comics, video games and social media.
Download or read book Scientific Knowledge and the Transgression of Boundaries written by Bettina-Johanna Krings and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to understand and critically appraise science-based transgression dynamics in their whole complexity. It includes contributions from experts with different disciplinary backgrounds, such as philosophy, history and sociology. Thus, it is in itself an example of boundary transgression.Scientific disciplines and their objects have tended to be seen as permanent and distinct. However, science is better conceived as an activity that constantly surpasses, erases and rebuilds all kinds of boundaries, either disciplinary, socio-ethical or ecological. This transgressive capacity, a characteristic trait of science and its applications, defines us as “knowledge societies.” However, scientific and technological developments are also sources of serious environmental and social concerns.
Download or read book Perfecting Human Futures written by J. Benjamin Hurlbut and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans have always imagined better futures. From the desire to overcome death to the aspiration to dominion over the world, imaginations of the technological future reveal the commitments, values, and norms of those who construct them. Today, the human future is thrown into question by emerging technologies that promise radical control over human life and elicit corollary imaginations of human perfectibility. This interdisciplinary volume assembles scholars of science and technology studies, sociology, philosophy, theology, ethics, and history to examine imaginations of technological progress that promises to transcend the constraints of human body and being. Attending in particular to transhumanist and posthumanist visions, the volume breaks new ground by exploring their utopian and eschatological dimensions and situating them within a broader context of ideas, institutions, and practices of innovation. The volume invites specialists and general readers to explore the stakes of contemporary imaginations of technological innovation as a source of progress, a force of social and historical transformation, and as the defining essence of human life.
