It always annoys me when people try to evaluate ideas from their social context rather than their content.
But are you really evaluating the content of transhumanism from outside your social context? Most transhumanists are humanists, and thus can trace their philosophical lineage back through the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, Catholic monks translating Aramaic texts into Latin, Zoroastrians and Muslims translating Greek texts into Aramaic, and Hellenistic post-Socratic philosophers writing their ideas down in reaction to pre-Socratic ideas (and this is just where the paper trail ends). All of that context has helped shaped modern humanism, and through that context humanists have notions of what they consider epistemologically sound and what values they support. These influence how humanists evaluate the content of transhumanism.
At best we might say that because transhumanism was developed by humanists, the humanist interpretation of transhumanism is privileged because it gives perspective on the origins of the ideas, yet that doesn’t mean we can’t find other contexts in which to make sense of transhumanism. To deny them, or even just be annoyed by them, is to exert pressure against the very process that generated transhumanism in the first place: successive reinterpretation and expansion of ideas that have their origins in pre-Socratic Hellenism.
There is no way to consider transhumanism, or any idea, outside of a context; to do so is to blind oneself to the lens through which one sees the world.
It always annoys me when people try to evaluate ideas from their social context rather than their content.
Contains a grammatical ambiguity; the first “their” could refer to the people or the ideas. I meant it to refer to the ideas. I’m not asking people to stop using their own social norms when they judge ideas. I am saying that the society from which an idea originated is irrelevant to judging the truth of that idea. (At least once you’ve fully understood what the idea is. Before that you might need to understand its context in order to resolve ambiguities in the description of the idea.)
So I’m not claiming that I’m not biased by my cultural heritage (although of course I aspire to be unbiased), I’m just saying that transhumanism shouldn’t be attacked or defended based on its heritage.
But are you really evaluating the content of transhumanism from outside your social context? Most transhumanists are humanists, and thus can trace their philosophical lineage back through the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, Catholic monks translating Aramaic texts into Latin, Zoroastrians and Muslims translating Greek texts into Aramaic, and Hellenistic post-Socratic philosophers writing their ideas down in reaction to pre-Socratic ideas (and this is just where the paper trail ends). All of that context has helped shaped modern humanism, and through that context humanists have notions of what they consider epistemologically sound and what values they support. These influence how humanists evaluate the content of transhumanism.
At best we might say that because transhumanism was developed by humanists, the humanist interpretation of transhumanism is privileged because it gives perspective on the origins of the ideas, yet that doesn’t mean we can’t find other contexts in which to make sense of transhumanism. To deny them, or even just be annoyed by them, is to exert pressure against the very process that generated transhumanism in the first place: successive reinterpretation and expansion of ideas that have their origins in pre-Socratic Hellenism.
There is no way to consider transhumanism, or any idea, outside of a context; to do so is to blind oneself to the lens through which one sees the world.
If I remember this correctly, the writing itself—without which, there could be no paper trail—was invented by Phoenicians.
Phoenicians also invented money. Peter Thiel has a lot of money, and he supports transhumanism. He also supports Donald Trump.
...just adding more context...
My sentence
Contains a grammatical ambiguity; the first “their” could refer to the people or the ideas. I meant it to refer to the ideas. I’m not asking people to stop using their own social norms when they judge ideas. I am saying that the society from which an idea originated is irrelevant to judging the truth of that idea. (At least once you’ve fully understood what the idea is. Before that you might need to understand its context in order to resolve ambiguities in the description of the idea.)
So I’m not claiming that I’m not biased by my cultural heritage (although of course I aspire to be unbiased), I’m just saying that transhumanism shouldn’t be attacked or defended based on its heritage.