Posthumanism: changing times and self-understanding 

Place 

The learning will be conducted through face-to-face meetings and this hub of communication. 

Context 

The human being understands itself as an individual agent and perhaps unique amongst things in that it originates action and is a source of value.  

This modern self-understanding supports and maintains our theories of justice and rightness (who is to blame?), labour (who produced what?), property (who owns what?), intellectual property (essay writing, artistic creation), talent (who deserves what?), family (genetic choices for offspring), politics (who rules me?) and sports (who deserves to win?). 

However, this certainty in one’s own place is weakening with the emergence of new technologies and new understandings. Human modifying technology (HMT) impacts (our) “self-understanding” against contexts of technology and changing interests. The main enhancements leading to transformation are genetic, morphological, pharmacological, robotic, intellectual and social and the main effects will be on: 

Continue reading “Introduction to the learning approach”

Practical reason is a theory of imperatives (see GMM 4:414-415).  There are three types of imperatives:

Continue reading “Categorical imperative”

Implicit in Kant’s reasoning and philosophy is a fundamental refrain: desires are phenomenal and act upon the phenomenal self, obeying the law of causality, which is a normal law of nature.  As such, the phenomenal self is not free; it is the noumenal self which is free: the will and its activity as spontaneous and self-caused.  Therefore, the ends of the activity (the purpose; the effect) cannot hold any moral worth from the phenomenal perspective (it is an inappropriate description of the object).  Any law the will produces must be represented to itself and then acted upon from a sense of duty.  For such a law to be absolute, without limitation and unconditional, it must be universalizable.

Continue reading “Autonomy”