Agreed that humans are more than machines, and that the rise of a transhumanist technocracy movement raises the ante on this age old question.
I think the issue is a more fundamental one than the nature of humanity - it is the nature of the world and how it works. There is a school of modern thought that exposes the difference between the living world - everything from microbes to organisms to the earth system, which this school defines as 'complex', and the built world of things, the fruits of technology such as bridges, engines or soft ware programs, which it defines and distinguishes as merely 'complicated'.
Encounters with the complex reveal the limits of science (including complexity science). As honest doctors know, we have limited knowledge of how are bodies function, especially phenomena like consciousness. As honest biologists and ecosystem scientists know, the same limitations apply to our knowledge of all organisms and their complex interactions in nature. Ask any observant farmer. Released into a complex world, technologies created under limited laboratory conditions have repeatedly caused multiple unexpected ripple effects, including shockingly damaging ones.
The resulting worldview is distinctive in two ways. It exposes and defies the hubris of the technocrats and fosters a humility that restores the worldview of humanity to a place in nature that it lost, especially since the 'Enlightenment'. It reminds us that the laws of nature like laws of energy and matter (known to scientists as the Laws of Thermodynamics) and like the law of overshoot of carrying capacity, apply to us as to the rest of nature. Secondly, this worldview, because it reveals the limitations of scientific knowledge, makes a place and even a necessity for other types of knowledge, such as religions and other faith-based knowledge.
Agreed that humans are more than machines, and that the rise of a transhumanist technocracy movement raises the ante on this age old question.
I think the issue is a more fundamental one than the nature of humanity - it is the nature of the world and how it works. There is a school of modern thought that exposes the difference between the living world - everything from microbes to organisms to the earth system, which this school defines as 'complex', and the built world of things, the fruits of technology such as bridges, engines or soft ware programs, which it defines and distinguishes as merely 'complicated'.
Encounters with the complex reveal the limits of science (including complexity science). As honest doctors know, we have limited knowledge of how are bodies function, especially phenomena like consciousness. As honest biologists and ecosystem scientists know, the same limitations apply to our knowledge of all organisms and their complex interactions in nature. Ask any observant farmer. Released into a complex world, technologies created under limited laboratory conditions have repeatedly caused multiple unexpected ripple effects, including shockingly damaging ones.
The resulting worldview is distinctive in two ways. It exposes and defies the hubris of the technocrats and fosters a humility that restores the worldview of humanity to a place in nature that it lost, especially since the 'Enlightenment'. It reminds us that the laws of nature like laws of energy and matter (known to scientists as the Laws of Thermodynamics) and like the law of overshoot of carrying capacity, apply to us as to the rest of nature. Secondly, this worldview, because it reveals the limitations of scientific knowledge, makes a place and even a necessity for other types of knowledge, such as religions and other faith-based knowledge.
Thanks for your insights.
This is excellent. I ordered the book. Thank you.
Ty,made me cry a touching read.
Nice. Thank you and well said. However the "click here" didn't work for some reason.
God bless. ✝♥️