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Forum Philosophicum

Volume 24, Issue 2, Autumn 2019
Humanity Enhanced, Transformed, Abolished

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Displaying: 1-12 of 12 documents


articles
1. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Paul Dumouchel Intelligence, Artificial and Otherwise
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The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is “natural,” or at least not artificial. The problem is that intelligence, whether “natural” or “artificial,” is not well defined: it is hard to say what, exactly, is or constitutes intelligence. This difficulty makes it impossible to measure human intelligence against artificial intelligence on a unique scale. It does not, however, prevent us from comparing them; rather, it changes the sense and meaning of such comparisons. Comparing artificial intelligence with human intelligence could allow us to understand both forms better. This paper thus aims to compare and distinguish these two forms of intelligence, focusing on three issues: forms of embodiment, autonomy and judgment. Doing so, I argue, should enable us to have a better view of the promises and limitations of present-day artificial intelligence, along with its benefits and dangers and the place we should make for it in our culture and society.
2. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Ted Peters Artificial Intelligence versus Agape Love: Spirituality in a Posthuman Age
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As Artificial Intelligence researchers attempt to emulate human intelligence and transhumanists work toward superintelligence, philosophers and theologians confront a dilemma: we must either, on the one horn, (1) abandon the view that the defining feature of humanity is rationality and propose an account of spirituality that dissociates it from reason; or, on the other horn, (2) find a way to invalidate the growing faith in a posthuman future shaped by the enhancements of Intelligence Amplification (IA) or the progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I grasp both horns of the dilemma and offer three recommendations. First, it is love understood as agape, not rational intelligence, which tells us how to live a godly life. Love tells us how to be truly human. Second, the transhumanist vision of a posthuman superintelligence is not only unrealistic, it portends the kind of tragedy we expect from a false messiah. Third, if as a byproduct of AI and IA research combined with H+ zeal the wellbeing of the human species and our planet is enhanced, we should be grateful.
3. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Graham McAleer, Christopher M. Wojtulewicz Why Technoscience Cannot Reproduce Human Desire According to Lacanian Thomism
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Being born into a family structure—being born of a mother—is key to being human. It is, for Jacques Lacan, essential to the formation of human desire. It is also part of the structure of analogy in the Thomistic thought of Erich Przywara. AI may well increase exponentially in sophistication, and even achieve human-like qualities; but it will only ever form an imaginary mirroring of genuine human persons—an imitation that is in fact morbid and dehumanising. Taking Lacan and Przywara at a point of convergence on this topic offers important insight into human exceptionalism.
4. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Inti Yanes-Fernandez David I. Dubrovsky and Merab Mamardashvili: Adam’s Second Fall and the Advent of the Cyber-Leviathan
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In his speech “The European Responsibility,” the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili summarizes his utopia of a fulfilled humanity by presenting it as an integration of two main traditions: the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian ones. In contrast, David Dubrovsky launches a new perspective for present and future human evolution: the cyber-superman, i.e. the perfect merging of human mind and digital brain—or the bio-digital interface. “Intelligence” here is not just an artificial by-product of a highly organized technological structure, but the re­production of mental operations through the techno-replication of the bio-brain as material substrate: the Dubrovskyan avatar. In the present article, I focus on Dubrovsky’s and Mamardashvili’s anthropological paradigms, and their relationship to the phenomena of cyberbeing and cyberculture. I examine the phenomenon of cyberbeing as a “built-in” feature of a bio-electronic, transhuman ontology that impacts and transforms personhood into “cyborghood” in the context of an interactive digital framework of fictional transcendences, body-deconstruction and bio-technological interplays. My aim is to develop a critical approach to Dubrovsky’s cybernetic anthropology and avatar-theory, along with its meaning and implications for our world-epoch, in contrast to Mamardashvili’s ontology, which proves essentially incompatible with the moment of technological singularity—i.e. with the creation of a transhuman bio-digital avatar as envisioned and prophesized by Dubrovsky.
5. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Roberto Paura A Rapture of the Nerds?: A Comparison between Transhumanist Eschatology and Christian Parousia
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Transhumanism is one of the main “ideologies of the future” that has emerged in recent decades. Its program for the enhancement of the human species during this century pursues the ultimate goal of immortality, through the creation of human brain emulations. Therefore, transhumanism offers its followers an explicit eschatology, a vision of the ultimate future of our civilization that in some cases coincides with the ultimate future of the universe, as in Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory. The essay aims to analyze the points of comparison and opposition between transhumanist and Christian eschatologies, in particular considering the “incarnationist” view of Parousia. After an introduction concern­ing the problems posed by new scientific and cosmological theories to traditional Christian eschatology, causing the debate between “incarnationists” and “eschatologists,” the article analyzes the transhumanist idea of mind-uploading through the possibility of making emulations of the human brain and perfect simulations of the reality we live in. In the last section the problems raised by these theories are analyzed from the point of Christian theology, in particular the proposal of a transhuman species through the emulation of the body and mind of human beings. The possibility of a transhumanist eschatology in line with the incarnationist view of Parousia is refused.
6. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson Transhumanism, Posthumanism, and the Catholic Church
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In this essay, I engage the foreseeable consequences for the future of humanity triggered by Emerging Technologies and their underpinning philosophy, transhumanism. The transhumanist stance is compared with the default view currently held in many academic institutions of higher education: posthumanism. It is maintained that the transhumanist view is less inimical to the fostering of human dignity than the posthuman one. After this is established, I suggest that the Catholic Church may find an ally in a transhumanist ethos in a two-fold manner. On the one hand, by anchoring and promoting the defense of “the human” already present in transhumanism. On the other, rethinking the effectiveness of the delivery of sacraments in a humanity heavily altered by these technologies.
7. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Anna Bugajska Will Postmortal Catholics Have “The Right to Die”?: The Transhumanist and Catholic Perspectives on Death and Immortality
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The article discusses the transhumanist and Catholic perspectives on death and immortality within the speculation on the rise of a postmortal society, and asks the question if Catholics have the right to reject immortalist technologies. To address this problem, I first outline the ideas and technology leading to the rise of a postmortal society, and accept Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon as a counterfactual scenario. Further, the naturalistic and Catholic understandings of death are compared, and it is shown that despite superficial similarities, they are fundamentally different. Finally, I consider insights from the current debates on end-of-life issues, such as euthanasia and the right to die, since some of the reasons and motivations behind choosing to die will be different in the postmortal society. The analysis allows to provide a set of arguments and problems for further consideration when it comes to the rejection of immortalist technologies.
articles on other subjects
8. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Piotr K. Szałek Berkeley, Expressivism, and Pragmatism
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There is a long-standing dispute among scholars concerning Berkeley’s supposed commitment to an emotivist theory of meaning as the very first (and an early modern) instance of non-cognitivism. According to this position, the domains of religious and moral language do not refer to facts about the world, but rather express the emotional attitudes of religious or moral language users. Some scholars involved in the dispute argue for taking Berkeley to be an emotivist (non-cognitivist), while others hold that we should not do so. This paper puts forward an interpretation that lends support to the non-cognitivist reading of his stance, but in expressivist rather than emotivist terms. It argues that the label “expressivism” does more justice to the textual evidence concerning his understanding of moral language, as what is distinctive where this philosopher is concerned is his interest in explaining the nature of our practice of employing moral language (i.e. how we come to formulate moral statements as expressions of our non-referential attitudes, and the meta-level considerations pertaining to morality associated with this), rather than whether morality is just a matter of our emotions or feelings (i.e. such first-order considerations about morality as whether moral rightness and wrongness correspond merely to our emotional states).
book reviews
9. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Lucas E. Misseri Anna Bugajska. Engineering Youth: The Evantropian Project in Young Adult Dystopias
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10. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Jakub Pruś Józef Bremer. Ludwiga Wittgensteina teoria odwzorowania w filozofii, mechanice, muzyce i architekturze
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11. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Reviewers of Articles Submitted in 2019
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12. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 24 > Issue: 2
Note about Forum Philosophicum
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