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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

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Enhancing Humanity

Ray Tallis peers into the future, without fear.
“Tereza is staring at herself in the mirror. She wonders what would happen if her nose were to grow a millimeter longer each day. How much time would it take for her face to become unrecognizable? And if her face no longer looked like Tereza, would Tereza still be Tereza?”
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.
There is increasing concern amongst a wide range of commentators that human nature is in the process of being irrevocably changed by technological advances which either have been achieved or are in the pipeline. According to a multitude of op-ed writers, cultural critics, social scientists and philosophers, we have not faced up to the grave implications of what is happening. We are sleep-walking and need to wake up. Human life is being so radically transformed that our very essence as human beings is under threat.
Of course, apocalypse sells product, and one should not regard the epidemiology of panic as a guide to social or any other kind of reality. The fact that one of the most quoted picnickers about the future is Francis Fukuyama, who has got both the past wrong (The End of History) and the present wrong (recovered neo-con Pentagon hawk), should itself be reassurance enough. Nevertheless, it is still worthwhile challenging the assumptions of those such as Fukuyama who are trying to persuade us to be queasy about the consequences of the various technologies that have brought about enhancement of human possibility and, indeed, want to call a halt to certain lines of inquiry, notably in biotechnology.
The most often repeated claim is that we are on the verge of technological breakthroughs – in genetic engineering, in pharmacotherapy and in the replacement of biological tissues (either by cultured tissues or by electronic prostheses) – which will dramatically transform our sense of what we are and will thereby threaten our humanity. A little bit of history may be all that is necessary to pour cooling water on fevered imaginations. In 1960, leading computer scientists, headed by the mighty Marvin Minsky, predicted that by 1990 we would have developed computers so smart that they would not even treat us with the respect due to household pets. Our status would be consequently diminished. Anyone seen any of those? Smart drugs that would transform our consciousness have been expected for 50 years, but nothing yet has matched the impact of alcohol, peyote, cocaine, opiates, or amphetamines, which have been round a rather long time.
It was expected that advances in the understanding of the neurochemistry of dementia in the 1970s would permit us not only to restore cognitive function in people with Alzheimer’s disease, but also to artificially boost the intelligence of people without brain illness. The results have been a little disappointing, as the recent judgment by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence that anti-dementia drugs have only modest benefits reminds us. Gene therapy that was going to deliver so much in the 1980s is still waiting to deliver.
So don’t hold your breath; you’ll die of anoxia. Of course changes will come about eventually. But it is the pace of change that matters. We can individually and collectively adapt to gradual technological changes; that is why they never quite present the insuperable challenges some doomsayers and dystopians anticipate. In Victorian times, it was anticipated that going through a dark tunnel in a train at high speed (30 mph) would be such a shocking experience that people would come out the other side irreversibly damaged. In one of his last poems, published in 1850, Wordsworth opined that the infantilism of illustrated newspapers – the first tentative steps towards the multimedia of today – would drive us back to “caverned life’s first rude career” (‘Illustrated Books and Newspapers’), and he felt that the endless influx of news from daily papers would incite us to a level of unbearable restlessness.
Railway journeys and tabloid newspapers have not had the dire effects that were predicted. Even the most radically transformative technologies have not had the impact we might have expected. The dramatic electronification of everyday life that has taken place over the last few decades has not fundamentally altered the way we relate to each other. Love, jealousy, kindness, anxiety, hatred, ambition, bitterness, joy etc, still seem to have a remarkable family resemblance to the emotions people had in the 1930s. The low-grade bitchiness of office politics may be conducted more efficiently by email, but its essential character hasn’t changed. Teenagers communicating by mobile phones and texts and chat rooms and webcams still seem more like teenagers than nodes in an electronic network. I have to admit a little concern at what we might call the attenuation of life, whereby people find it increasingly difficult to be here now rather than dissipating themselves into an endless electronic elsewhere; but inner absence and wool-gathering is not entirely new, even if it is now electronically orchestrated. It just becomes more publicly visible. What’s more, there is something reassuring about electronic technology: because it is widely and cheaply available and because it is so smart, it allows us to be dumb, and so compresses the differences between people.
Of course, people are worried about more invasive innovations; in particular, the direct transformation of the human body. And this is where the gradualness of change is important, because as individuals we have a track record of coping with such changes without falling apart or losing our sense of self entirely. After all, we have all been engaged all our lives in creating a stable sense of our identity out of whatever is thrown at us. This idea is worth dwelling on.
We humans are unique among the animals in having a coherent sense of self, and this begins with our appropriating our own bodies as our own. This is our most fundamental human achievement: that of transforming our pre-personal bodies – with their blood and muscles and snot and worse – into the ground floor of our personal identity (see my forthcoming book, My Head: Portrait in a Foxed Mirror, Atlantic Books). Looked at objectively, our bodies beneath the skin are not terribly human; indeed, they are less human than our human technologies. There is very little in my purely organic body that I could say is me. Most of the meat of which I am made and which I assume as myself is pretty alien: “our flesh/ Surrounds us with its own decisions” as Philip Larkin said in ‘Ignorance’ in The Whitsun Weddings. On the whole, those decisions are not very pleasant.
At the root of humanity is what in I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being I have called ‘the Existential Intuition’ – the sense that ‘I am this’; our appropriation of our own bodies as persons who participate in a collective culture. Even at a bodily level, this intuition withstands quite radical changes. And by this I don’t just mean coping with a wooden leg or a heart transplant, or being able to reassume ourselves and our responsibilities each morning when we wake up or when we come round from a knock-out blow. I mean something more fundamental – namely, normal development. We grow from something about a foot long and weighing about 7 pounds, to something about 6 foot long and weighing about 150 pounds, and for the greater part of that period we feel that we are the same thing. We assimilate these changes into an evolving and continuous sense of our own identity.
This is possible because change happens gradually and because it happens to all of us. Gradualness ensures continuity of memory alongside an imperceptible change in our bodies and the configuration of the world in which we live. That is why my earlier reassurances emphasised the gradualness of technological advance. If I look at myself objectively, I see that I am the remote descendent of the 10-year-old I once was, and yet my metamorphosis is quite unlike that of Kafka’s man who turns into a beetle. My dramatic personal growth and development is neither sudden nor solitary; and this will also be true of the changes that take place in human identity in the world of changing technologies.
Yes, we shall change; but the essence of human identity lies in this continuing self-redefinition. And if we remember that our identity and our freedom lie in the intersection between our impersonal but unique bodies and our personal individual memories and shared cultural awareness, it is difficult to worry about the erosion of either our identity or our freedom by technological advance.
If, as I believe, the distinctive genius of humanity is to establish an identity which lies at an ever-increasing distance from our organic nature, we should rejoice in the expression of human possibility in ever-advancing technology. After all, the organic world is one in which life is nasty, brutish and short, and dominated by experiences which are inhumanly unpleasant. Human technology is less alien to us than nature (compare: bitter cold with central heating; being lost without GPS and being found with it; dying of parasitic infestation or spraying with pesticides). Anyone who considers the new technologies as inhuman, or as a threat to our humanity, should consider this. Better still, they should spend five uninterrupted minutes imagining the impact of a major stroke, of severe Parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimer’s disease on their ability to express their humanity. Those such as Fukuyama who dislike biotechnology do not seem to realise that the forms of ‘post-humanity’ served up by the natural processes going on in our bodies are a thousand times more radical, more terrifying, and more dehumanising than anything arising out of our attempts to enhance human beings and their lives. Self-transformation is the essence of humanity, and our humanity is defined by our ever-widening distance from the material and organic world of which we are a part, and from which we are apart.
L’homme passe infiniment l’homme. (Blaise Pascal, Pensées)
In short, do not be afraid.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

G.I. Jane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SgNgXSGy_g

Julia Ormond Videos News

Monday, September 26, 2011

Lennox

Consumer

Consumerism in America

Secular Ethics

Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance (which is the source of religious ethics). Secular ethics can be seen as a wide variety of moral and ethical systems drawing heavily on humanism, secularism and freethinking.^{[citation needed]}

The majority of secular moral systems accept either the normativity of social contracts, some form of attribution of intrinsic moral value, intuition-based deontology, or cultural moral relativism. Approaches like utilitarianism, subjective moral relativism, and ethical egoism are less common, but still maintain a significant following among secular ethicists.^{[citation needed]} Little attention is paid to the positions of moral skepticism and moral nihilism, however many religious and some secular ethicists believe that secular morality cannot exist without God or gods to provide ontological grounding, or is at least impossible to apprehend apart from authoritative revelation.

It must be mentioned that the concept of secular ethics is not necessarily opposed to or inherently contrasting with religious ethics. Certain sets of moral beliefs, such as the golden rule or a commitment to non-violence, could be held by each position and mutually agreed upon. As well, it must be mentioned that secular ethics have been developed differently given the different times and different situations faced.

Tenets of secular ethics

Despite the width and diversity of their philosophical views, secular ethicists generally share one or more principles:

Human beings, through their ability to empathise, are capable of determining ethical grounds.
Human beings, through logic and reason, are capable of deriving normative principles of behavior.
This may lead to a behavior preferable to that propagated or condoned based on religious texts. Alternatively, this may lead to the advocacy of a system of moral principles that a broad group of people, both religious and non-religious, can agree upon.
Human beings have the moral responsibility to ensure that societies and individuals act based on these ethical principles.
Societies should, if at all possible, advance from a less ethical and just form to a more ethical and just form.

Many of these tenets are applied in the Science of morality, the use of the scientific method to answer moral questions. Various thinkers have framed morality as questions of empirical truth to be explored in a scientific context. The science is related to Ethical naturalism, a type of Ethical realism.

In How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, Rushworth Kidder identifies four general characteristics of an ethical code:

1. It is brief

2. It is usually not explanatory

3. Can be expressed in a number of forms (e.g. positive or negative, single words or a list of sentences)

4. Centers on moral values^[1]

Humanist ethics

Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature, and that knowledge of right and wrong is based on our best understanding of our individual and joint interests, rather than stemming from a transcendental or arbitrarily local source, therefore rejecting faith completely as a basis for action. The humanist ethics goal is a search for viable individual, social and political principles of conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility, ultimately eliminating human suffering.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the world-wide umbrella organization for those adhering to the Humanist life stance.

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.^[2]

Humanism is known to adopt principles of the Golden Rule, of which the best-known English formulation is found in the words of Jesus of Nazareth, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Also consider the quote by Oscar Wilde: "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." This quotation emphasizes the respect for others' identity and ideals while downplaying the effects one has on others.

Secular ethics and religion

Main article: Morality without religion

There are those who state that religion is not necessary for moral behavior at all.^[3] The Dalai Lama has said that compassion and affection are human values independent of religion: "We need these human values. I call these secular ethics, secular beliefs. There’s no relationship with any particular religion. Even without religion, even as nonbelievers, we have the capacity to promote these things." ^[4]

Those who are unhappy with the negative orientation of traditional religious ethics believe that prohibitions can only set the absolute limits of what a society is willing to tolerate from people at their worst, not guide them towards achieving their best.^{[citation needed]} In other words, someone who follows all these prohibitions has just barely avoided being a criminal, not acted as a positive influence on the world. They conclude that rational ethics can lead to a fully expressed ethical life, while religious prohibitions are insufficient.^{[citation needed]}

That does not mean secular ethics and religion are mutually exclusive. In fact, many principles, such as the Golden Rule, are present in both systems, and some religious people, as well as some Deists, prefer to adopt a rational approach to ethics.^{[citation needed]}

Examples of secular ethical codes

Boy and Girl Scout laws

The Boy Scout law holds that a Scout is: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.^[5]

The Girl Scout law is as follows:

I will do my best to be

honest and fair,

friendly and helpful,

considerate and caring,

courageous and strong, and

responsible for what I say and do,

and to

respect myself and others,

respect authority,

use resources wisely,

make the world a better place, and

be a sister to every Girl Scout.^[6]

Naval Academy Honor Concept

"Midshipmen are persons of integrity: They stand for that which is right.

They tell the truth and ensure that the full truth is known. They do not lie.

They embrace fairness in all actions. They ensure that work submitted as their own is their own, and that assistance received from any source is authorized and properly documented. They do not cheat.

They respect the property of others and ensure that others are able to benefit from the use of their own property. They do not steal."^[7]

Minnesota Principles

The Minnesota Principles were proposed "by the Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility in 1992 as a guide to international business activities":

Proposition #1: Business activities must be characterized by fairness. We understand fairness to include equitable treatment and equality of opportunity for all participants in the marketplace

Proposition #2: Business activities must be characterized by honesty. We understand honesty to include candor, truthfulness and promise-keeping.

Proposition #3 Business activities must be characterized by respect for human dignity. We understand this to mean that business activities should show a special concern for the less powerful and the disadvantaged.

Proposition #4 Business activities must be characterized by respect for the environment. We understand this to mean that business activities should promote sustainable development and prevent environmental degredation and waste of resources.^[8]

Rotary Four-Way Test

This test is the "linchpin of Rotary International's ethical practice." It acts as a test of thoughts as well as actions. It asks, "Of the things we think, say, or do":

1. Is it the Truth?

2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?^[1]

West Point Honor Code

The West Point Honor Code states that "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." The non-toleration clause is key in differentiating it from numerous other codes.^[9]

Nature and ethics

Whether or not the relationships between animals found in nature and between people in early human evolution can provide a basis for human morality is a persistently unresolved question. Thomas Henry Huxley wrote in Evolution and Ethics in 1893 that people make a grave error in trying to create moral ideas from the behavior of animals in nature. He remarked:

The practice of that which is ethically best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence... Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process.^[10]

Famous biologist and writer Stephen Jay Gould has stated that "answers will not be read passively from nature" and "[t]he factual state of the world does not teach us how we, with our powers for good and evil, should alter or preserve it in the most ethical manner". Thus, he concluded that ideas of morality should come from a form of higher mental reason, with nature viewed as an independent phenomenon.^[10]

Evolutionary ethics is not the only way to involve nature with ethics. For example, there are ethically realist theories like Ethical naturalism. Related to ethical naturalism is also the idea that ethics are best explored, not just using the lense of philosophy, but science as well (a Science of morality).

Key philosophers and philosophical texts

Holyoake

Holyoake, agnostic

George Jacob Holyoake's 1896 publication English Secularism defines secularism thus:

"Secularism is a code of duty pertaining to this life, founded on considerations purely human, and intended mainly for those who find theology indefinite or inadequate, unreliable or unbelievable. Its essential principles are three: (1) The improvement of this life by material means. (2) That science is the available Providence of man. (3) That it is good to do good. Whether there be other good or not, the good of the present life is good, and it is good to seek that good."^[11]

Holyoake held that secularism should take no interest at all in religious questions (as they were irrelevant), and was thus to be distinguished from strong freethought and atheism. In this he disagreed with Charles Bradlaugh, and the disagreement split the secularist movement between those who argued that anti-religious movements and activism was not necessary or desirable and those who argued that it was.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche, atheist

Friedrich Nietzsche based his work on ethics on the rejection of Christianity and authority in general, or on moral nihilism. Nietzsche's many works spoke of a Master-Slave Morality, The Will to Power, or something stronger that overcomes the weaker and Darwinistic adaptation and will to live. Nietzsche expressed his moral philosophy throughout his collection of works; the most important of these to secular ethics being The Gay Science (in which the famous God is dead phrase was first used), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On The Genealogy of Morals.

Kant

Kant, theist (disputably Christian)

Main article: Deontological ethics

On ethics, Kant wrote works that both described the nature of universal principles and also sought to demonstrate the procedure of their application. Kant maintained that only a "good will" is morally praiseworthy, so that doing what appears to be ethical for the wrong reasons is not a morally good act. Kant's emphasis on one's intent or reasons for acting is usually contrasted with the utilitarian tenet that the goodness of an action is to be judged solely by its results. Utilitarianism is a hypothetical imperative, if one wants _____ , they must do ______. Contrast this with the Kantian ethic of the categorical imperative, where the moral act is done for its own sake, and is framed: One must do ______ or alternatively, one must not do ______.

For instance, under Kantian ethics, if a person were to give money to charity because failure to do so would result in some sort of punishment from a God or Supreme Being, then the charitable donation would not be a morally good act. A dutiful action must be performed solely out of a sense of duty; any other motivation profanes the act and strips it of its moral quality.

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill, developer of Jeremy Bentham's utility-based theory

Main article: Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism (from the Latin utilis, useful) is a theory of ethics that prescribes the quantitative maximization of good consequences for a population. It is a form of consequentialism. This good to be maximized is usually happiness, pleasure, or preference satisfaction. Though some utilitarian theories might seek to maximize other consequences, these consequences generally have something to do with the welfare of people (or of people and nonhuman animals). For this reason, utilitarianism is often associated with the term welfarist consequentialism.

In utilitarianism it is the "end result" which is fundamental (as opposed to Kantian ethics discussed above). Thus using the same scenario as above, it would be irrelevant whether the person giving money to charity was doing so out of personal or religious conviction, the mere fact that the charitable donation is being made is sufficient for it to be classified as morally good.

Objectivism

The mythological figure of Atlas is an icon of Objectivism.

Main article: Objectivism (Ayn Rand)

According to Ayn Rand in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology,

A moral code is a system of teleological measurement which grades the choices and actions open to man, according to the degree to which they achieve or frustrate the code’s standard of value. The standard is the end, to which man’s actions are the means. A moral code is a set of abstract principles; to practice it, an individual must translate it into the appropriate concretes—he must choose the particular goals and values which he is to pursue. This requires that he define his particular hierarchy of values, in the order of their importance, and that he act accordingly^.

Thus, she stated in her book For the New Intellectual that her morality is contained in a single axiom. She described it as the fact that "existence exists— and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these." Objectivist ethics holds that the only true moral standard that is that a person should act to do what is in their rational self-interest in benefit of themselves. No other standard of judging behavior should exist otherwise. The twin related principles of reason and of free will are key in allowing an individual to determine their self-interest.^[12]

Ayn Rand has also coined the phrase "I am, therefore I think" as a summary of the process. In the novel Atlas Shrugged, the character John Galt said that he based his actions on his belief that "I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."