Charles T. Rubin | |
---|---|
Occupation(s) | Professor and author |
Spouse | Leslie Rubin (m. 1981) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Case Western Reserve University & Boston College |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Duquesne University &Princeton University |
Main interests | Transhumanism Environmentalism |
Charles T. Rubin is a political science professor,philosopher and writer. [1] [2] Rubin was raised in Cleveland,Ohio and attended nearby Case Western Reserve University,receiving a bachelor's degree in philosophy and political science in 1975. [3] He went on to study at Boston College,where he graduated with a doctoral degree in 1983 and also where he met his wife Leslie Rubin,a fellow political science academic. [4] Rubin and his wife taught at Kenyon College before both moving to Duquesne University as professors and raising their children. [5] Rubin began at Duquesne as an assistant professor in 1987 and continued teaching there for over 30 years. He was appointed as an endowed chair in 2019. [6]
Rubin is the author of The Green Crusade,a 1998 book which questions the scientific basis for claims and predictions made by environmentalists,specifically naming Rachel Carson and Paul Erlich. [7] [8] [9] In 2008,the President's Council on Bioethics commissioned two essays by Rubin on upholding human dignity,which he titled "Human Dignity and the Future of Man" and "Commentary on Bostrom". In 2014,his book Eclipse of Man was released. In it,Rubin considers the advancements of technology and cautions against hasty adoption of transhumanism. [10] [11] [12] [13]
British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages that are known as Clarke's three laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited. They are part of his ideas in his extensive writings about the future.
An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities". An environmentalist is engaged in or believes in the philosophy of environmentalism or one of the related philosophies.
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.
Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman. In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans. These abilities might include improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability. Transhumans appear in science-fiction, sometimes as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans.
Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically. It is of significance in morality, ethics, law and politics as an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable rights. The term may also be used to describe personal conduct, as in "behaving with dignity".
David Pearce is a British transhumanist philosopher. He is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+. Pearce approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective.
Leon Richard Kass is an American physician, scientist, educator, and public intellectual. Kass is best known as a proponent of liberal arts education via the "Great Books," as a critic of human cloning, life extension, euthanasia and embryo research, and for his tenure as chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005. Although Kass is often referred to as a bioethicist, he eschews the term and refers to himself as "an old-fashioned humanist. A humanist is concerned broadly with all aspects of human life, not just the ethical."
James J. Hughes is an American sociologist and bioethicist. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and is the associate provost for institutional research, assessment, and planning at UMass Boston. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future and is currently writing a book about moral bioenhancement tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha: Using Neurotechnology to Become Better People.
Morphological freedom refers to an alleged or proposed civil right of a human person either to maintain or modify their own body, on their own terms, through informed, consensual recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling medical technology.
Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species due to either natural causes such as population decline from sub-replacement fertility, an asteroid impact, large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction).
Technogaianism is a bright green environmentalist stance of active support for the research, development and use of emerging and future technologies to help restore Earth's environment. Technogaianists argue that developing safe, clean, alternative technology should be an important goal of environmentalists.
The New Atlantis is a journal founded by the social conservative advocacy group the Ethics and Public Policy Center, now published by the Center for the Study of Technology and Society. It covers topics about the social, ethical, political, and policy dimensions of modern science and technology. The journal is editorially reviewed, however is not peer-reviewed on scientific topics. It is edited by Ari Schulman, having previously been edited by co-founders Eric Cohen and Adam Keiper.
The wisdom of repugnance or "appeal to disgust", also known informally as the yuck factor, is the belief that an intuitive negative response to some thing, idea, or practice should be interpreted as evidence for the intrinsically harmful or evil character of that thing. Furthermore, it refers to the notion that wisdom may manifest itself in feelings of disgust towards anything which lacks goodness or wisdom, though the feelings or the reasoning of such 'wisdom' may not be immediately explicable through reason.
Christian views on environmentalism vary among different Christians and Christian denominations.
Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a German metahumanist philosopher, a Nietzsche scholar, a philosopher of music and an authority in the field of ethics of emerging technologies.
The term directed evolution is used within the transhumanist community to refer to the idea of applying the principles of directed evolution and experimental evolution to the control of human evolution. In this sense, it is distinct from the use of the term in biochemistry, which refers only to the evolution of proteins and RNA. Maxwell J. Melhmanh has described directed evolution of humans as the Holy Grail of transhumanism. Oxford philosopher Julian Savulescu wrote that:
Humanity until this point has been a story of evolution for the survival genes - survival and reproduction ... we are entering a new phase of human evolution—evolution under reason—where human beings are masters of their destiny. Power has been transferred from nature to science.
Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. Specific topics include space migration, and cryogenic suspension. It is considered the opposing ideal to the concept of bioconservatisim, as Transhumanist politics argue for the use of all technology to enhance human individuals.
Henk Antonius Maria Johannes ten Have is Professor emeritus at the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, U.S.A. where he has been Director since 2010. Previously, he served in UNESCO as Director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology (2003–2010). His recent works are: Global Bioethics—An Introduction (2016), Vulnerability—Challenging Bioethics (2016), Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (2016), and Wounded Planet (2019).
Deakin University Lecturer in Health Ethics and Professionalism Tamara Kayali Browne and University of Oxford Senior Research Fellow Steve Clarke understand bioconservatism as "a term that is often used to describe those who wish to conserve humanity as it is, and so oppose human enhancement."
The Green Crusade is a detailed critique of a series of populist writers who are environmentalists, such as Carson, Commoner, Ehrlich, Schumacher, and more recently the proponents of deep ecology. What Rubin says about the frequent lack of scientific backing for many of the claims and predictions made by environmentalists is interesting.