Knowing What to Wish For

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Vallor ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
Normative Content ◽  
The Way

Through an analysis of the appeals to human dignity used by bioconservatives to criticize transhumanist proposals for aggressive development of human enhancement technologies, I identify an implicit tension within such appeals that renders them internally incoherent and ultimately unpersuasive. However, I point the way to a more compelling objection to radical human enhancement available to bioconservatives, a version of the argument from hubris that employs an Aristotelian account of prudential virtue in order to challenge the normative content of the liberal transhumanist vision. The vulnerability of the transhumanist project to this argument is underscored by Ortega y Gasset’s critique of technological mass culture, in which he suggests that humans may increasingly lack the prudential virtues needed to identify and authentically choose those ends worthy of technological pursuit.

Technic Self-Determination

2014 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Franco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and a threat to human dignity and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. Contrarily, HET can be shown to constitute the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, this chapter elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination (i.e., control over the determining circumstances and conditions of our own selves and lives), which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, arguably, the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular as it is today and has been in the past. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity and characteristic that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

scholarly journals Reading Posthuman Ethics in Daniel Wilson’s Amped

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-90
Author(s):  
Omar M. Abdullah ◽  
Hardev Kaur
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Form ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Technological World ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

In 20th century and beyond, humans have witnessed numerous advances in technology which have opened new horizons. Science and technology redesigned human life exponentially and humans always search for a more technological world and hence more comfort and ease. As such, going past human confinement could be accessible through a few changes in human form, but these changes posture a contentious point since people grow into being more reliant on technology in order to execute their desires and needs. What will happen to humanness and humanity? What will happen to their moralities and behaviors? In this manner, technological development could have both promising and discouraging pictures within the human mind. The current study cites Daniel H. Wilson’s Amped (2013) to discuss the clash of views between Transhumanists and Bioconservatives. Transhumanists believe that human improvement advances should be made broadly accessible, where people could adopt these innovations and apply them to themselves to have a better life. In particular, bioconservatives consider human enhancement technologies as ‘dehumanizing’ for these technologies might weaken human dignity and affect something that is profoundly valuable about being human. As such, Posthuman theory is consulted in order to analyze the ethical and moral concerns of human enhancement technology in Wilson’s Amped.  The findings are summed in the importance of ethics in any kind of enhancement and conclude that the trustworthy source is a priority to ensure success.

scholarly journals Is human enhancement intrinsically bad?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Kudlek
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

AbstractA pertinent concern in the human enhancement debate is that human enhancement technologies (HET) are intrinsically bad and, hence, morally impermissible. This article evaluates the related claims about the intrinsic badness of HET by looking into philosophical theories of intrinsic value. It investigates how well-established conceptions of intrinsic value map onto typical bioconservative arguments about HET's intrinsic badness. Three predominant variants of these arguments are explored and found wanting: (i) HET are intrinsically bad owing to their unnaturalness; (ii) the pursuit of HET reveals intrinsically bad character (“the desire for mastery”); and (iii) HET will necessarily undermine intrinsically valuable things (e.g., human dignity). My analysis shows that the debate on intrinsic value places serious constraints on claims about the intrinsic badness of HET. More specifically, the analysis shows that bioconservative arguments are, for the most part, inconsistent, misconceived, and overly speculative. Enhancement interventions cannot be bearers of intrinsic value on any of its plausible understandings, and, even if we could grant such a possibility, there are no compelling reasons to presume that the intrinsic value of HET would be necessarily negative. As a result, claims regarding their moral impermissibility are unwarranted.

Argentine New Theatre: The Coming of Age of Popular Tradition

1989 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Social Sector ◽  
Central Question ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dynamic Links ◽  
The Way ◽  
Popular Drama

In order to assess Argentine New Theatre and traditional popular drama as comprising a phenomenon of convergence and continuity, one needs first to examine both forms in their relationship to hegemonic culture. Culture is viewed here not in monolithic terms, but rather as defined by its organic ties to a specific socio-political context. Consequently, the central question to be addressed is the way those ties become explicit in the artistic products themselves and, most importantly, in their functionality within the social sector they are inserted in. That functionality defines the ideological line between popular and mass culture, and determines the dynamic links between the New Theatre and traditional dramatic forms, in spite of obvious differences in discourse.

Defending the Case for Liberal Anationalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-118
Author(s):  
Theodora Kostakopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Life ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Liberal Nationalism ◽  
Democratic Communities ◽  
The Way

Nationalism appears to be so entrenched in political life and discourse, that its illiberal face is often deemed to be an exception and unfortunate coincidence triggered by international terrorism. Alternatively, it may be depicted as the result of ill-thought policies which can be reversible. In this paper, I argue that liberal nationalism is conceptually flawed and politically illiberal. Illiberal tendencies are an integral part of it and these cannot be corrected by ‘taming’ unruly nationalism or by articulating ‘benign’ adaptations of it. Because the liberal and illiberal faces are interwoven in complex ways, my suggestion is to look far ahead and beyond it. The territory may be uncharted, but a commitment to a pro-human welfare orientation could open the way for separating liberalism from nationalism and aligning the former with critical democratic politics. The challenge, as I see it, is to articulate a liberal anationalism which by affirming equal human dignity and the importance of non-domination could sustain inclusionary and democratic communities.

Voorbij neoliberalisme in de arbeids- en organisatiepsychologie

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Matthijs Bal
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Organizational Psychology ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Workplace Democracy ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Organizational Democracy ◽  
The Way

Beyond neoliberalism in work and organizational psychology: Human dignity and workplace democracy Beyond neoliberalism in work and organizational psychology: Human dignity and workplace democracy In this article, I explore the relation between neoliberalism and work and organizational psychology. This article explains how the neoliberal paradigm has influenced the way research is conducted in the field of work and organizational psychology. The article continues by providing an alternative paradigm based on human dignity, which is translated into the concept of organizational democracy. The article finishes with the implications of the human dignity paradigm for research in the field of work and organizational psychology, as well as with an agenda for future research on the new paradigm.

Responsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 378-396
Author(s):  
William Schweiker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Ethical Vision ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the importance of moral responsibility in Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which in turn allows the reader to interpret his work within the wider compass of Christian humanism. While Niebuhr’s ethics never showcased the concept of responsibility in the way other thinkers did during his time, he nevertheless insisted that the moral capability of responsibility is basic to human dignity. Utilizing the distinction Max Weber made between two forms of ethics, the chapter suggests that moral responsibility constitutes the ‘form’, rather than the ‘norm’, of Niebuhr’s anthropological project. Niebuhr’s project can be seen as an attempt to retrieve the lost insights of the Reformation regarding sin and grace within the historical condition of modern life initiated by the Renaissance. This orientation in Niebuhr’s work bears some of the features of Christian humanism. The final section discusses how Niebuhr’s theological and ethical vision can contribute to Christian thinking in our time.

Liberdade e Direitos Humanos no Pensamento de Richard Price

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
pp. 119-145
Author(s):  
José Gomes André ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This paper is concerned with the political philosophy of Richard Price, analysing the way this author has developed the concept of liberty and the problem of human rights. The theme of liberty will be interpreted in a double perspective: a) in a private dimension, that sets liberty in the inner side of the individual; b) in a public dimension, that places it in the domain of a manifest action of the individual. We will try to show how this double outlook of liberty is conceived under the optics of a necessary complementarity, since liberty, which is primarily understood as a feature of the subject taken as an individual, acquires only a full meaning when she becomes efective in a comunitary field, as a social and political expression. The concept of human rights will appear located in this analysis, being defined simultaneously as condition and expression of the human dignity and happiness, at the same time natural attributes of an individual that should be cultivated and public effectiveness that contributes to the development of society.

Taking the bullying by the horns: the emergence of resistance to bussing

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-170
Author(s):  
Olivier Esteves
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Immigrant Assimilation ◽  
Emergence Of Resistance ◽  
Roll Back ◽  
The Way

The 1970s saw a growing challenge of assimilationist policies at the root of dispersal. Despite that, the hurdles to an efficient movement against it were many: the necessity to make a living among Asian immigrants, difficult access to information about dispersal schools, the fact that immigrants faced a bureaucracy which was opaque to them, etc. The Race Relations Board as well as the Ealing Community Relations Council proved instrumental in generating a growing awareness of the problems around and of the discriminatory nature of dispersal. For many Asians, the struggle against dispersal was primarily about equality and the recognition of a common human dignity, as is attested in some testimonies of former militants. In this chapter, the Kogan Report (commissioned by the RRB) is also analysed in depth, as well as the way dispersal illustrated in its last years a form of Welfare roll-back, rather than a policy of immigrant assimilation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document