Book chapter
Vulcans, Klingons, and humans: What does humanism encompass?
Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex Machina
2019
Abstract
This chapter explores what humanism means, arguing that it must mean more than concern for homo sapiens. If Vulcans, Klingons, and other forms of intelligent life exist, what we call humanism must encompass them as well. Nor actually, this paper argues, can humanism be restricted to organic intelligence. If via some progress in artificial intelligence, non-organic intelligence attains self-consciousness, that embodied self-consciousness too should enjoy the same sanctity and rights as self-consciousness embodied organically. This paper will make these points while taking us through various science fiction accounts drawing on Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and Westworld featured on television or in movies. Essentially, the chapter argues that humanism has to do with humane treatment of anything sentient but especially of sentience that attains self-consciousness in whatever form that self-consciousness takes.
This chapter explores what humanism means, arguing that it must mean more than concern for homo sapiens. It argues that humanism has to do with humane treatment of anything sentient but especially of sentience that attains self-consciousness in whatever form that self-consciousness takes. Personhood may not be specific to humanity as on other worlds, non-humans like Vulcans, Klingons, and beings even stranger may also be persons. The post-humanist version of poststructuralism would challenge the privileging of the human. Thou-ness is part of what personhood entails, and our own thou-ness in fact is the paradigm of what it means to be a thou. Wherever empathy, love, and sacrifice reside, there lies a thou. Where that thou can also communicate with linguistic understanding, that thou is also a person with rights. Persons are a social emergent, an artifact of communities in the manner described by Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Meade.
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Details
- Title
- Vulcans, Klingons, and humans
- Creators
- Douglas V. Porpora
- Contributors
- Ismael Al-Amoudi (Editor)Jamie Morgan (Editor)
- Publication Details
- Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex Machina
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Edition
- 1
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Communication
- Other Identifier
- 991021863119504721