rhinoceros
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The world's most dangerous ideas
« on: 2004-09-17 17:35:57 » |
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The latest feature of "Foreign Policy" contains some rather intriguing articles.
The World's Most Dangerous Ideas
What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story2696.php
Especially the following two:
Francis Fukuyama: "Transhumanism"
Paul Davies: "Undermining Free Will"
There are more, such as "War on Evil" and "Free Money". Unfortunately these articles are not available for free; only the propagandistic ones are (e.g. "Hating America"). I wonder if anyone has access and is willing to share...
So far, I have found some reviews/replies to these two articles:
Transhumanism: The Most Dangerous Idea?
Why striving to be more than human is human
http://reason.com/rb/rb082504.shtml
<snip>
In his Foreign Policy article, Fukuyama identifies transhumanism as "a strange liberation movement" that wants "nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints." Sounds ominous, no?
<snip>
Human liberation from our biological constraints began when an ancestor first sharpened a stick and used it to kill an animal for food.
<snip>
Davies' Really Dangerous Idea
http://www.naturalism.org/davies.htm
Even very smart people can get tangled up in the perennial problem of human freedom, and a good example is astrophysicist Paul Davies, writing in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy. One of the world's most dangerous ideas, he says, is the scientific and philosophical assault on free will. Why dangerous? Because: "Belief in some measure of free will is common to all cultures and a large part of what makes us human. It is also fundamental to our ethical and legal systems. Yet today's scientists and philosophers are busily chipping away at this social pillar -- apparently without thinking about what might replace it."
So there's something very serious at stake here, and no doubt Davies' warning resonates with those who are fearful of neuroscience’s march into the mind, and the recent unraveling of the human genome. But there are several problems with his commentary, the first of which is that he doesn’t clearly define what he means by free will. He equivocates between two types of freedom, one quite plausible, and one clearly not.
<snip>
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