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Why extropianism is unscientific
You will often see many transhumanists try to defend their beliefs by claiming that your opposition to transhumanism is unscientific or grounded in religion. Well, you'd be surprised to see that they live in an illusion that their views are anything but scientific.
Transhumanism, with its belief that the human mind can exist outside of a human body, finds its basis in dualism, a philosophy which posits that essence (in case of humans, "soul", "mind", "spirit" or various other terms) and matter are fundamentally separate and can coexist independently of each other. This is directly taken from Descartes, who was reluctant to abandon his faith and clung to some basics of the Christian dogma, such as the existence of a soul, which he claimed was the same as the mind. Nowadays it's quite an outdated view, especially due to various scientific facts that have been discovered since - above all, the consequences of brain damage. According to Cartesian dualism, the mind is transcendental, non-material and eternal, but damage to the brain (a damage to matter) can cause various effects on a person's mind, such as ill effects to their mental well-being or a sudden change in personality, which completely debunks that theory.
The opposite of dualism is monism, which presumes that essence and matter are one and the only substance and ties the mind to biology; the priniciples of contemporary science tend towards monism. This is the reason why most of the mainstream scientific community looks down on transhumanism and transhumanists, some even going as far to call it a "cult" and a "Rapture for nerds". This isn't far from the truth, as transhumanism is an anachronistic philosophy basing itself on a purely metaphysical principle and burdened by religious legacy, and nothing but a futile attempt to avoid accepting the meaninglessness, absurdity and shortness of life.
It is impossible. Face it.
Comments
-comes to thread to defend transhumanism-
Oh, you're just complaining about that one specific type of transhumanism. Okay.
While I don't know what to think about Transhumanism, I will always think that our life, and the ridiculous complexity of everything about us and this planet and how the conditions are so wildly perfect for us to survive, and we also have the ability to think about these things makes a case for some kind of...higher thing.
You don't think not being allowed to stuff your kids in liquid nitrogen is a horrifying abuse of human rights!? *GASP!* That's - oh my Eliezer, he really believes it! - that's DEATHISM! BAAAD! ILLOGICAL!
Eh, you may disregard this post.
On the other hand, I think this mentality severely underestimates random chance and our importance and complexity in the face of the universe.
Yep. Brain uploading is probably impossible, mechanical augmentation is not.
What? I have no idea what you're saying and how it's relevant to this argument.
What do you mean by that Crimson?
Basically, he's using a strawman to make fun of people who aren't here.
Lookat the spoilered part. :P
@Saturn: Meaning the complexity of the universe TO US does not mean that some intelligent being must have created it.
It's arguable if believing in mechanical augmentation, while preserving humans' biological fundamentals can even be considered true transhumanism, because the ultimate goal of transhumanism has always been immortality and the elimination of biological hindrances, which is a complete and utter folly.
If that's what the word means, I'm unaware of that, but I think it's commonly used in the broader sense.
No, the ultimate goal of transhumanism has always been making people's lives better via technology, with immortality/the elimination of biological hindrances merely being a possible extension of that.
@Crimson: Oh. I didn't say it did. I just meant that, for me personally, the complexity of the universe, and more specifically, us being in it, makes me believe in some kind of higher power.
^ Also cloning.
No, cloning is, again, a possible extension of that.
Is that really a dualist "belief", though? If I upload my brain into a computer (which is what I assume you're referring to with this), isn't my mind existing outside of my body, in a sense? It seems like you're turning a relatively mundane prediction about a future technology into something much more metaphysical than it really is.
I believe that this definition may be too broad, as it would make most people on this planet a believer in transhumanism. But now we're getting into pointless semantics.
@Saturn: Yes, the universe is incredibly complex, but why not accept that the universe itself might be the "higher power", without any sort of an independent, transcendental creator god.
@Wicked223: Well, yeah, uploading your brain into a computer does mean that it exists outside of your body. But it's most probably impossible, for reasons I already said.
Okay, so the universe might be intelligent. That's cool too.
Um...I don't think that's what he meant.
^^^ Yes, you said that brain uploading is unscientific because Cartesian dualism is unscientific. I'm just not sure why you're making that connection.
Well... not quite, but then again, sort of. It simply functions as an organic whole that we ought to try not to mess up, and that's about it.
I don't understand what do you find unclear. Brain uploading is unscientific because it's only possible if the postulates of Cartesian dualism are true (and they aren't). For brain uploading to be possible, all information that makes up your "mind" has to be able to exist independently of your biological body, and it most probably can't.
I like the idea of a God, so I might stick to it.
Another way you can think of the brain uploading thing is that it may be possible, but it's almost impossible that nothing would be lost in translation. That is, you'd have to upload a being capable of abstract thought into a machine that can only, ultimately, think in binaries. So while you may succeed at uploading a facsimile of a human mind, no conventional technology could ever handle the abstract modes of thinking that a brain excels at.
In the same sense that our brain can only think in electrical firings.
That really isn't the problem with brain uploading. The problem is that even if perfected, you'd just be creating a copy of yourself then committing suicide.
Oh yeah, that thing. But that should be a pretty obvious logical result of an upload process.
Matching the brain's workings with binary code is still a major issue, though. A part of this is because we're still unaware of how the brain works in its entirety, and there's no guarantee that we'd be able to fit the smallest pieces of brain information into a binary format.
Yeah, some people seem to think that you yourself would actually experience being put into a machine, and you would still be able to live.
If it is, indeed, possible to make a copy of yourself uploaded, then you would.
Even then, that's still a hypothesis that can be tested scientifically.
^^ Well, there's always the fact that if you can get over the technical issues, uploading your brain into a computer doesn't mean you have to commit suicide or anything. You'd simply exist as you always had, but there'd be a second version of yourself in the machine. So it's not a linear line of consciousness, but one consciousness that becomes two.
I know. That's what I said.
Well, of course, but I believe that we can try coming to logical conclusions on the matter before technology advances to the level where such testing is possible. We can never be 100% sure of anything before we see it (and not even then, our senses can and do cheat), but again, it's unlikely.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/14/and-everyone-gets-a-robot-pony/ There's some hard science on it here.