[MD] Transhumanism

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Krimel,

Krimel said:
Not to belabor the point but the role of natural philosophers 
for the past 2500 has been to carve out philosophical 
questions and provide ways of answering them. As a result 
they are no longer considered philosophical questions 
anymore. Philosophical speculation about mathematics fell 
to the Greeks. Philosophical speculation about physics fell 
to the Italians and English.

Matt:
Right, the "every discipline broke off from the tree of 
philosophy" view.

Matt said:
(4) why on earth would anybody think that the 
Metaphysics of Quality should have something to say about 
cyborgs and holodecks?  Isn't that like demanding that the 
literary critic have something relevant to say about gluons 
or carburetors?  Even if philosophy is about including 
everything, once you reach the level of abstraction that it 
takes to do so, what kind of "relevance" are we exactly 
talking about here?

Krimel said:
If philosophy and especially metaphysics is about examining 
the assumptions that underlie one world view, then it seems 
to me at least that it _ought_ to have something to say.

Matt:
Sure, but taking the tree/new-tree approach to what 
philosophy's relationship is to other stuff, what kind of 
relevance is this "something" that is said?  For instance, 
I'm sure we can draw various kinds of lines between gluons 
and the worldview that allowed gluons to happen (like the 
inferential connections I drew in my post to Ian about the 
publicity of moral reasoning), but that relevancy seems 
pretty remote from the gluons themselves.  Because in this 
case, "gluons" is really just a variable-X, a placeholder for 
"insert scientific thingy here."

Here's an extrapolation of the above, but to grant you 
what kind of interaction I think happens between new-trees 
and the old tree of philosophy/worldview-management: 
you talk about Pirsig's cultural lens metaphor, and go on to 
talk about fractals and pixilation and whatnot.  Fractal 
geometry and the latest technological advancements 
_cannot_ be directly relevant to philosophical inquiry by the 
very _fact_ of the tree/new-tree view of philosophy.  If you 
first distinguish philosophy from other disciplines, then you 
cannot have an easy view of interdisciplinary impact (or 
"cross-pollinization").

But what do think about this way of describing it: all other 
disciplines can offer the distinctive problems of philosophy 
are new kinds of metaphors.  A philosopher doesn't _need_ 
to take into account new metaphors--that would be like 
saying you have to take something seriously just because 
it was new.  However, since philosophical articulation is 
based on the metaphors you start off from (like the mind 
as a mirror or Man Falling From Heaven), new metaphors 
will transform your philosophy.  And, crossing back into 
philosophy from the newer discipline with new metaphors 
might, indeed, produce new disciplines.  Philosophy is about 
mediating between the future and the past, on this view, 
but what we can't have is just an entire abandonment of 
old metaphors without good reason.

So with your illustration of the impact on Pirsig's cultural 
lens metaphor of new stuff, I--as a philosopher personally 
reflecting on his metaphors--can't really see it as a major 
alteration because the basic metaphor has stayed the 
same.  What it does is update it to not be so static, but 
if you've already lodged complaints against the entire 
ocular metaphor itself, then it isn't clear what more is 
gained by going back to it.  It's like being asked to go back 
to a geocentric view because you found a way of adding a 
hundred new epicycles so that your geocentrism matches 
better with the new heliocentrism.  A heliocentrist will reply, 
"Well, that's nice, but the structural integrity of view is still 
the same and I still don't want to use it."  

Dewey didn't need computers to suggest we could be less 
static by getting rid of the spectator view of knowledge, 
though I'm not going to complain too much when people 
catch up in their own way.  I don't think work being done 
on information theory and whatnot, particularly about 
feedback loops and self-reference (like Hofstadter, 
strange-loop junk) is SOMic, I just think that Dewey and 
pragmatism are waiting at the other end of it.  And the 
example of Dewey is a good example of why I'm suggesting 
there isn't (nor should their be) direct impact between 
up-to-date science and up-to-date philosophy.  Both got 
their own thing going, though curiosity about what other 
people are doing and cross-pollinization is sometimes an 
instrument of advance (just as it sometimes is in personal 
relations).

Matt

p.s. I noticed just now, through reading your reply, that 
the above is suspiciously similar to (apparently) Mr. 
Buchanan's response to your post.  That's a shame for me, 
because discussion about the relationship between different 
disciplines is cogent, but the heat generated obscures 
whatever conversation might have happened.  I can admit 
to being more or less disinterested about scientific 
discoveries and technological advances (focusing my 
energies elsewhere), but I can also admit to being an 
outsider to AI debates and whatnot and all the things that 
outsider-status entails.  The clarification that philosophy 
might be able to give to worldviews might be a better 
understanding of the relationship between disciplines.  If I'm 
an outsider to scientific debate, that means there's an inside 
where science is not.  What that inside is, exactly, is 
sometimes _very_ difficult to articulate, and it changes with 
the ebb and flow of disciplines and of life generally.  
Sometimes a scientific fact is germane, and sometimes the 
same fact isn't.  The general know-how of knowing when to 
take something seriously is an evolving currency, but 
knowing that there is a know-how there to be flexed is 
perhaps something we need better work at articulating.

Not being interested myself, I can only hope that other 
people _are_ so culture won't miss out on something.  I hope 
people are paying attention to both science and mysticism, 
so that somebody, when I look up from Howards End, can tell 
me some tidbits of what other people are doing.  But I guess 
if you perceive a person as an enemy beforehand, you won't 
like anything they say.  That's why I don't (try not to) view 
most people as enemies.  I have political enemies and 
philosophical enemies (and soon literary ones), but they are 
actually quite small in scope, and they are only enemies in 
their disciplinary capacities, and knowing the scope helps 
you not take offense when someone tells you about a 
conference.  But if you view the seeds of all evil (rather 
than a certain, limited scope of evil) as rooted in worldview, 
then you naturally perceive almost everyone else as an 
enemy, and so open for ridicule (as silly as it will make you seem).
 		 	   		  
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