In Defense of the Human Being

In Defense of the Human Being PDF

Author: Thomas Fuchs

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0192898191

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With the progress of artificial intelligence, the digitalization of the lifeworld, and the reduction of the mind to neuronal processes, the human being increasingly appears to be just a product of data and algorithms. That is, we conceive ourselves in the image of our machines, and conversely, we elevate our machines and our brains to new subjects. At the same time, demands for an enhancement of human nature culminate in transhumanist visions of taking human evolution to a new stage. Against this self-reification of the human being, this book defends a humanism of embodiment: our corporeality, vitality, embodied freedom are the foundations of a self-determined existence, which uses these new technologies only as a means, instead of letting them rule us. In Defence of the Human Being offers an array of interventions directed against a reductionist naturalism or transhumanism in various areas of science and society. As alternative it offers an embodied and enactive account of the human person: we are neither pure minds nor brains, but primarily embodied, living beings in relation with others. Fuchs applied this concept to issues such as artificial intelligence, transhumanism and enhancement, virtual reality, neuroscience, embodied freedom, psychiatry, and finally to the accelerating dynamics of current society which lead to an increasing disembodiment of our everyday conduct of life. Cutting across neuroscience, philosophy, and psychiatry, this important new book applies cutting-edge concepts of embodiment and enactivism to the current scientific, technological and cultural tendencies that will crucially influence our society's development in the 21st century.

Defending Humanity

Defending Humanity PDF

Author: George P. Fletcher

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-02-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0198040350

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In Defending Humanity, internationally acclaimed legal scholar George P. Fletcher and Jens David Ohlin, a leading expert on international criminal law, tackle one of the most important and controversial questions of our time: When is war justified? When a nation is attacked, few would deny that it has the right to respond with force. But what about preemptive and preventive wars, or crossing another state's border to stop genocide? Was Israel justified in initiating the Six Day War, and was NATO's intervention in Kosovo legal? What about the U.S. invasion of Iraq? In their provocative book, Fletcher and Ohlin offer a groundbreaking theory on the legality of war with clear guidelines for evaluating these interventions. The authors argue that much of the confusion on the subject stems from a persistent misunderstanding of the United Nations Charter. The Charter appears to be very clear on the use of military force: it is only allowed when authorized by the Security Council or in self-defense. Unfortunately, this has led to the problem of justifying force when the Security Council refuses to act or when self-defense is thought not to apply--and to the difficult dilemma of declaring such interventions illegal or ignoring the UN Charter altogether. Fletcher and Ohlin suggest that the answer lies in going back to the domestic criminal law concepts upon which the UN Charter was originally based, in particular, the concept of "legitimate defense," which encompasses not only self-defense but defense of others. Lost in the English-language version of the Charter but a vital part of the French and other non-English versions, the concept of legitimate defense will enable political leaders, courts, and scholars to see the solid basis under international law for states to intervene with force--not just to protect themselves against an imminent attack but also to defend other national groups.

Cultivating Humanity

Cultivating Humanity PDF

Author: Martha C. Nussbaum

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1998-10-01

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0674735463

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How can higher education today create a community of critical thinkers and searchers for truth that transcends the boundaries of class, gender, and nation? Martha C. Nussbaum, philosopher and classicist, argues that contemporary curricular reform is already producing such “citizens of the world” in its advocacy of diverse forms of cross-cultural studies. Her vigorous defense of “the new education” is rooted in Seneca’s ideal of the citizen who scrutinizes tradition critically and who respects the ability to reason wherever it is found—in rich or poor, native or foreigner, female or male. Drawing on Socrates and the Stoics, Nussbaum establishes three core values of liberal education: critical self-examination, the ideal of the world citizen, and the development of the narrative imagination. Then, taking us into classrooms and campuses across the nation, including prominent research universities, small independent colleges, and religious institutions, she shows how these values are (and in some instances are not) being embodied in particular courses. She defends such burgeoning subject areas as gender, minority, and gay studies against charges of moral relativism and low standards, and underscores their dynamic and fundamental contribution to critical reasoning and world citizenship. For Nussbaum, liberal education is alive and well on American campuses in the late twentieth century. It is not only viable, promising, and constructive, but it is essential to a democratic society. Taking up the challenge of conservative critics of academe, she argues persuasively that sustained reform in the aim and content of liberal education is the most vital and invigorating force in higher education today.

In Defense of Faith

In Defense of Faith PDF

Author: David Brog

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 1594035091

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Religious faith is under assault. In books and movies and on television, militant secular critics attack religion with a renewed vigor. These “new atheists” repeat a two-part mantra: that religious faith is hopelessly irrational and that those possessed of such faith are responsible for the hatred and bloodshed that has plagued humanity. Abandon religion, they urge us, and the world will at last live in peace. In Defense of Faith examines this proposition in the context of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition and asserts that, far from encouraging hatred and violence, the Judeo-Christian tradition has easily been the most effective curb upon the dark defects of human nature and our best tool in the struggle for humanity. From the Christian activists who fought to stop the genocide of Indians in South America and their ethnic cleansing in North America, to the abolition of African slavery on both sides of the Atlantic, and on to modern human rights activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to the rock star Bono—In Defense of Faith rebuts the fashionable arguments against religion and presents the strong and lasting record of the Judeo-Christian idea. History has not been as kind to the atheist model: every time it is put to the test, we have reverted to the most base, violent instincts of our selfish genes.

The Cradle of Humanity

The Cradle of Humanity PDF

Author: Mark Maslin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0198704526

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POPULAR SCIENCE. Humans are rather weak when compared with many other animals. We are not particular fast and have no natural weapons. Yet Homo sapiens currently number nearly 7.5 billion and are set to rise to nearly 10 billion by the middle of this century. We have influenced almost every part of the Earth system and as a consequence are changing the global environmental and evolutionary trajectory of the Earth. So how did we become the worlds apex predator and take over the planet? Fundamental to our success is our intelligence, not only individually but more importantly collectively. But why did evolution favour the brainy ape? Given the calorific cost of running our large brains, not to mention the difficulties posed for childbirth, this bizarre adaptation must have given our ancestors a considerable advantage.

So You Think You're Human?

So You Think You're Human? PDF

Author: Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0199691282

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An enlightening journey through the history of humankind, revealing the challenges to our most fundamental belief, that we are, and always have been, human. Also discusses AI and genetics.

Clear Bright Future

Clear Bright Future PDF

Author: Paul Mason

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2019-04-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0241320119

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A passionate defence of humanity and a work of radical optimism from the international bestselling author of Postcapitalism How do we preserve what makes us human in an age of uncertainty? Are we now just consumers shaped by market forces? A sequence of DNA? A collection of base instincts? Or will we soon be supplanted by algorithms and A.I. anyway? In Clear Bright Future, Paul Mason calls for a radical, impassioned defence of the human being, our universal rights and freedoms and our power to change the world around us. Ranging from economics to Big Data, from neuroscience to the culture wars, he draws from his on-the-ground reporting from mass protests in Istanbul to riots in Washington, as well as his own childhood in an English mining community, to show how the notion of humanity has become eroded as never before. In this book Paul Mason argues that we are still capable - through language, innovation and co-operation - of shaping our future. He offers a vision of humans as more than puppets, customers or cogs in a machine. This work of radical optimism asks: Do you want to be controlled? Or do you want something better?

In Defense of Secrets

In Defense of Secrets PDF

Author: Anne Dufourmantelle

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0823289257

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Finalist, French-American Foundation Translation Prize In an age that prizes political and personal transparency, In Defense of Secrets champions the secret as what permits relation and ensures our humanity. Psychoanalyst and philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in 2017 in an attempt to rescue two children caught in the ocean. Her work lives on, though, in this provocative and necessary book. Through etymologies and case studies, personal history and incisive commentary on contemporary society, In Defense of Secrets returns us to the fundamental psychic scene of the secret. The secret, for Dufourmantelle, is not a code to be cracked or a firewall to be penetrated but a dynamic and powerful entity that permits relation and that ensures our humanity. Tracking the secret though art and literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and sociology, from the Inquisition to the present, Dufourmantelle’s writing spirals around the question of the secret’s value. In our age, when political and personal transparency seem to be prized above all—lives posted on the Internet, information leaked, whistles blown, taboos absent except with respect to the secret itself—In Defense of Secrets champions what remains hidden, private, veiled, hushed, just out of sight. The secret is on the side of nature, not science; organic growth, not technology; love’s generosity, not knowledge’s grasp. For Dufourmantelle, the secret is a powerful and dynamic thing: deadly if unheard or misused, perhaps, but equally the source of creativity and of ethics. An ethics of the secret, we can hear her say, means listening hard and sensitively, respecting the secret in its secret essence, unafraid of it and open to what it has to say.

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