To give an analogy from history, this would be a little like putting conspiracy theories of history on the history page as if they were just another variety of historical theory. They are interesting to many people, and we can concede that they're a kind of history, but golly, hardly any reputable historians have any truck with them. Similarly pseudoscience of all sorts. Maybe the most apt comparison is the "metaphysics" section you will see in many American bookstores. You won't find Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz there; you find stuff about transcendental meditation, ghosts, and all sorts of stuff that real metaphysicians know and care nothing about. Wikipedia should have long, detailed, fair articles about all such stuff; but that doesn't mean that it needs to be presented right alongside more clearly reputable scholarship. |
To give an analogy from history, this would be a little like putting conspiracy theories of history on the history page as if they were just another variety of historical theory. They are interesting to many people, and we can concede that they're a kind of history, but golly, hardly any reputable historians have any truck with them. Similarly pseudoscience of all sorts. Maybe the most apt comparison is the "metaphysics" section you will see in many American bookstores. You won't find Plato, Aristotle, *René Descartes, and Gottfried Leibniz there; you find stuff about transcendental meditation, ghosts, and all sorts of stuff that real metaphysicians know and care nothing about. Wikipedia should have long, detailed, fair articles about all such stuff; but that doesn't mean that it needs to be presented right alongside more clearly reputable scholarship. |
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Again, Lee, you've got an excellent point. --LMS |
Anyway, I also had a comment about putting transhumanism on the philosophy page. Sure, one could say it's a philosophy; but it's not, as far as I know, what is studied by professional philosophers, i.e., people with Ph.D.'s in philosophy who teach and "do" philosophy. So I think it might be better to have a different section of the philosophy page, or better yet an entirely different page, where popular philosophies of all sorts can be listed and discussed. I think it's a bit odd to see it rubbing elbows with the rest of the contents of the page.
To give an analogy from history, this would be a little like putting conspiracy theories of history on the history page as if they were just another variety of historical theory. They are interesting to many people, and we can concede that they're a kind of history, but golly, hardly any reputable historians have any truck with them. Similarly pseudoscience of all sorts. Maybe the most apt comparison is the "metaphysics" section you will see in many American bookstores. You won't find Plato, Aristotle, *René Descartes, and Gottfried Leibniz there; you find stuff about transcendental meditation, ghosts, and all sorts of stuff that real metaphysicians know and care nothing about. Wikipedia should have long, detailed, fair articles about all such stuff; but that doesn't mean that it needs to be presented right alongside more clearly reputable scholarship.
Transhumanism is, granted, different in that it does have a large number of very well-educated, smart adherents. They are not philosophers, most of them, however, but scientists; and insofar as they're doing philosophy, their philosophy is about as good as you would expect from scientists who are not philosophers. Maybe it would be better to list it under technology, actually.
Maybe a page like "popular philosophies" listing some less-academic things like Rand's Objectivism and More's Extropy would be a better place for transhumanism. "Intellectual fad" is probably a fair characterization, but that's not a clear category to me. You're also right that most of its fans are scientists and technologists rather than "academic philosophers". But isn't that because most of what used to be called "philosophy" has been split off into various sciences? Wouldn't Marvin Minsky be considered a philosopher if cognitive science and neuroscience were less advanced than they are now? I think it is dangerous to treat philosophy as a specialized field like other academic specialties. Just because the philosophers studying it aren't the ones in the "philosophy" department doesn't mean it's not philosphy in its most rigorous sense. --LDC
You know, I think an idea at least as interesting to consider as AI is easy, cheap genetic engineering, that makes all new human beings smarter than Einstein. What humanitarian-minded person would be opposed to such a scheme? And think how the world would change then... --LMS