Philosophies Of The Future And The Non Human

This book examines philosophical aspects of the future of man and humanity, focusing on questioning what is and what constitutes "being human" in the face of scientific and technological developments and possible coexistence with machines and artificial intelligence. In this sense, the contribution of these authors is the establishment of a new discipline that analyses our technological future, which may be populated by enhanced cyborgs, avatars, and autonomous robots. This scientific-technological future brings about practically inconceivable social and philosophical consequences. Thus, this book answers the questions: What are the ethical and ontological issues and assumptions we make about humans and how will these change with time? Moreover, how should we think of human existence in this new and emerging world?

This book examines philosophical aspects of the future of man and humanity, focusing on questioning what is and what constitutes “being human” in the face of scientific and technological developments and possible coexistence with machines and artificial intelligence. In this sense, the contribution of these authors is the establishment of a new discipline that analyses our technological future, which may be populated by enhanced cyborgs, avatars, and autonomous robots. This scientific-technological future brings about practically inconceivable social and philosophical consequences. Thus, this book answers the questions: What are the ethical and ontological issues and assumptions we make about humans and how will these change with time? Moreover, how should we think of human existence in this new and emerging world?

The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats--the animal that has most captured our imagination--than from the great thinkers of the world. In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness, showing how they embody answers to the big questions of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose un-examined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy. Exploring the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, Gray offers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on the follies of human exceptionalism and our fundamentally vulnerable and lonely condition. He charts a path toward a life without illusions and delusions, revealing how we can endure both crisis and transformation, and adapt to a changed scene, as cats have always done.

A radical call for solidarity between humans and non-humans What is it that makes humans human? As science and technology challenge the boundaries between life and non-life, between organic and inorganic, this ancient question is more timely than ever. Acclaimed object-oriented philosopher Timothy Morton invites us to consider this philosophical issue as eminently political. In our relationship with nonhumans, we decide the fate of our humanity. Becoming human, claims Morton, actually means creating a network of kindness and solidarity with nonhuman beings, in the name of a broader understanding of reality that both includes and overcomes the notion of species. Negotiating the politics of humanity is the first crucial step in reclaiming the upper scales of ecological coexistence and resisting corporations like Monsanto and the technophilic billionaires who would rob us of our kinship with people beyond our species.

We imagine posthumans as humans made superhumanly intelligent or resilient by future advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Many argue that these enhanced people might live better lives; others fear that tinkering with our nature will undermine our sense of our own humanity. Whoever is right, it is assumed that our technological successor will be an upgraded or degraded version of us: Human 2.0. Posthuman Life argues that the enhancement debate projects a human face onto an empty screen. We do not know what will happen and, not being posthuman, cannot anticipate how posthumans will assess the world. If a posthuman future will not necessarily be informed by our kind of subjectivity or morality the limits of our current knowledge must inform any ethical or political assessment of that future. Posthuman Life develops a critical metaphysics of posthuman succession and argues that only a truly speculative posthumanism can support an ethics that meets the challenge of the transformative potential of technology.

A New 2023 translation into English from the original manuscript, with an introduction, glossary of Feuerbachian terminology and a timeline of his life and works. Here in "Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft" Feuerbach argues that the future of philosophy lies in a new understanding of humanity as the center of all things and the ultimate source of meaning and value, broadly criticizing traditional Continental metaphysics (primarily Kantian and Hegelian Metaphysics), which he believes has been a dominant force in philosophy for too long. He argues that traditional metaphysics has failed to understand the true nature of reality and has instead focused on abstract concepts and ideas that have little bearing on human experience. Similar to "Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy," this work represents Feuerbach's attempt to move away from Hegelian philosophy and establish a new, sensualistic philosophy. Although he did not fully develop these principles, they introduced themes that would later be expanded upon by other thinkers. This work is heavily reflective of Kantianism, hence the title. Stalin, in his 1906 book "Anarchism or Socialism", discusses Feuerbach: "If the dialectical method originates from Hegel, then the materialist theory is a development of the materialism of Feuerbach. This is well known to anarchists, and they try to use the shortcomings of Hegel and Feuerbach in order to denigrate the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels. With regard to Hegel and the dialectical method, we have already pointed out that such tricks of the anarchists cannot prove anything other than their own ignorance. The same must be said regarding their attacks on Feuerbach and materialist theory." Feuerbach was heavily influential on Marx, who modeled his entire religion on Feuerbach's de-mythologization of the Hegelian dialectic. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both took their satirical criticism about religion from Feuerbach, and every aspect of Marxism can be found here in Marx's favorite Philosopher. Feuerbach is a critical figure in the development of not merely Marxism, but Materialistic Humanism in general. Feuerbach is critical to understanding Marx.

The conversations generated by the chapters in Music's Immanent Future grapple with some of music's paradoxes: that music of the Western art canon is viewed as timeless and universal while other kinds of music are seen as transitory and ephemeral; that in order to make sense of music we need descriptive language; that to open up the new in music we need to revisit the old; that to arrive at a figuration of music itself we need to posit its starting point in noise; that in order to justify our creative compositional works as research, we need to find critical languages and theoretical frameworks with which to discuss them; or that despite being an auditory system, we are compelled to resort to the visual metaphor as a way of thinking about musical sounds. Drawn to musical sound as a powerful form of non-verbal communication, the authors include musicologists, philosophers, music theorists, ethnomusicologists and composers. The chapters in this volume investigate and ask fundamental questions about how we think, converse, write about, compose, listen to and analyse music. The work is informed by the philosophy primarily of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and secondarily of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Jean-Luc Nancy. The chapters cover a wide range of topics focused on twentieth and twenty-first century musics, covering popular musics, art music, acousmatic music and electro-acoustic musics, and including music analysis, music's ontology, the noise/music dichotomy, intertextuality and music, listening, ethnography and the current state of music studies. The authors discuss their philosophical perspectives and methodologies of practice-led research, including their own creative work as a form of research. Music's Immanent Future brings together empirical, cultural, philosophical and creative approaches that will be of interest to musicologists, composers, music analysts and music philosophers.

'It's Schopenhauer and the will. It's Plato, it's Hume, Baudrillard and the concept of the Nietzschean superman!' Keanu Reeves on The Matrix The Philosopher at the End of the Universe allows anyone to understand basic philosophical concepts from the comfort of their armchair, through the plots and characters of spectacular blockbusting science-fiction movies. Learn about: The Nature of Reality from The Matrix; Good and Evil from Star Wars; Morality from Aliens; Personal Identity from Total Recall; The Mind-Body Dilemma from Terminator; Free Will from Minority Report; Death and the Meaning of Life from Blade Runner; and much more. As someone once said, things must be said and knowledge known, and the cast list assembled to tell us does not disappoint: Tom Cruise, Plato, Harrison Ford, Immanuel Kant, Sigourney Weaver, Friedrich Nietzsche, Keanu Reeves and Rene Descartes. From characters in the biggest films (with lots of explosions and bad language) to Ludwig Wittgenstein (no explosions and too much language in general), hear all the arguments. I think, therefore... I'll be back!