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Nicholas Agar (born 1965) is a New Zealand professor of ethics at the University of Waikato. [1] Agar has a BA from the University of Auckland, an MA from the Victoria University of Wellington, and a PhD from the Australian National University. He has been teaching at the University of Waikato since 2022.
Agar has written on the debate about human enhancement and eugenics. His wrote the 2004 book Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (Blackwell Publishers). [2] Agar has argued that a vigorous defense of procreative freedom could turn the morally misguided authoritarian eugenics into a morally defensible liberal eugenics. Agar has argued that a liberal state should ban choices judged injurious to children's well-being. And should exercise the same kinds of control over harmful genetic choices that it currently does over choices about how to raise children.
Agar's 2010 book Humanity's End (Bradford Books) argued against the doctrine of radical enhancement sometimes identified with the transhumanist movement. [3] Agar claims that enhancement is a good thing that it is nevertheless possible to overdo. He advances a species-relativist view about the value of human experiences and achievements.
In his 2013 book Truly Human Enhancement (The MIT Press) Agar defines transformative change as altering "the state of an individual's mental or physical characteristics in a way that causes and warrants a significant change in how that individual evaluates a wide range of their own experiences, beliefs, or achievements." [4] He uses examples from the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers to argue that there are transformative changes that we correctly predict we will endorse once we have undergone them but that conflict with our prudential values. The central characters in the body snatchers movies resist snatching by the aliens even if they expect to be content about this change once they have undergone it. We may predict that we will enjoy life as a radically enhanced being but nevertheless be justified in rejecting it.[ clarification needed ]
In the 2015 book The Sceptical Optimist: Why Technology Isn't the Answer to Everything (Oxford University Press) Agar challenges the view that great things will come from technological progress that will lead human flourishing. He describes a phenomenon called "hedonic normalization" that Agar claims leads us to significantly overestimate the power of technological progress to improve our well-being. According to Agar, we overlook hedonic normalization when we suppose that because we would be unhappy to find ourselves permanently transported back in time to the middle ages that people living back them must have been miserable too. The same distortions apply when we imagine a future with cures for cancer and colonies on Mars. Technological progress may make us happier but not nearly so much as we imagine it. Agar discusses the implications this has for our collective prioritization of technological progress. [5]
In a 2019 book How to be Human in the Digital Economy (The MIT Press) Agar addresses challenges posed by automation and artificial intelligence to human work and agency. Agar argues for a hybrid "social-digital economy". The key value of the digital economy is efficiency. The key value of the social economy is humanness. A social economy would be centered on connections between human minds. Agar argues that we should reject some digital automation because machines will always be poor substitutes for humans in roles that involve direct contact with other humans. In a hybrid social-digital economy, people do the jobs for which feelings matter and machines take on data-intensive work. [6]
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have altered various human gene frequencies by inhibiting the fertility of people and groups purported to be inferior or promoting that of those purported to be superior.
Pessimism is a mental attitude in which an undesirable outcome is anticipated from a given situation. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is "Is the glass half empty or half full?"; in this situation, a pessimist is said to see the glass as half empty, or in extreme cases completely empty, while an optimist is said to see the glass as half full. Throughout history, the pessimistic disposition has had effects on all major areas of thinking.
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being.
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for Human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good's intelligence explosion model of 1965, an upgradable intelligent agent could eventually enter a positive feedback loop of self-improvement cycles, each successive; and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase ("explosion") in intelligence which would ultimately result in a powerful superintelligence, qualitatively far surpassing all human intelligence.
An information society is a society or subculture where the usage, creation, distribution, manipulation and integration of information is a significant activity. Its main drivers are information and communication technologies, which have resulted in rapid growth of a variety of forms of information. Proponents of this theory posit that these technologies are impacting most important forms of social organization, including education, economy, health, government, warfare, and levels of democracy. The people who are able to partake in this form of society are sometimes called either computer users or even digital citizens, defined by K. Mossberger as “Those who use the Internet regularly and effectively”. This is one of many dozen internet terms that have been identified to suggest that humans are entering a new and different phase of society.
The term superhuman refers to humans, humanoids or other beings with qualities and abilities that exceed those naturally found in humans. These qualities may be acquired through natural ability, self-actualization or technological aids. The related concept of a super race refers to an entire category of beings with the same or varying superhuman characteristics, created from present-day human beings by deploying various means such as eugenics, euthenics, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and/or brain–computer interfacing to accelerate the process of human evolution.
Technological utopianism is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal.
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. He was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and is now Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative.
The Progressive utilization theory (PROUT) is a socioeconomic and political philosophy created by the Indian philosopher and spiritual leader Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. He first conceived of PROUT in 1959. Its proponents (Proutists) claim that it exposes and overcomes the limitations of capitalism, communism and mixed economy. Since its genesis, PROUT has had an economically progressive approach, aiming to improve social development in the world. It is in line with Sarkar's Neohumanist values which aim to provide "proper care" to every being on the planet, including humans, animals and plants.
New eugenics, also known as liberal eugenics, advocates enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive technology and human genetic engineering. Those who advocate new eugenics generally think selecting or altering embryos should be left to the preferences of parents, rather than forbidden. "New" eugenics purports to distinguish itself from the forms of eugenics practiced and advocated in the 20th century, which fell into disrepute after World War II.
Criticism of socialism is any critique of socialist economics and socialist models of organization and their feasibility, as well as the political and social implications of adopting such a system. Some critiques are not necessarily directed toward socialism as a system but rather toward the socialist movement, parties, or existing states. Some critics consider socialism to be a purely theoretical concept that should be criticized on theoretical grounds, such as in the economic calculation problem and the socialist calculation debate, while others hold that certain historical examples exist and that they can be criticized on practical grounds. Because there are many types of socialism, most critiques are focused on a specific type of socialism, that of the command economy and the experience of Soviet-type economies that may not apply to all forms of socialism as different models of socialism conflict with each other over questions of property ownership, economic coordination and how socialism is to be achieved. Critics of specific models of socialism might be advocates of a different type of socialism.
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 but 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.
Human enhancement is the natural, artificial, or technological alteration of the human body in order to enhance physical or mental capabilities.
Mark Alan Walker is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at New Mexico State University, where he occupies the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies. Prior to his professorship at NMSU Prof. Walker taught at McMaster University in the department of philosophy and the Arts & Science Programme. He is the author of Happy-People Pills for All and Free Money for All. Walker founded and was president of the former nonprofit organization Permanent End International (2003–2007), which had been devoted to ending hunger, illiteracy and environmental degradation through the dissemination of modular aquaponics systems for farming. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Evolution and Technology and on the board of directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He is a former board member of the non-profit organization Humanity Plus.
Reactionary modernism is a term first coined by Jeffrey Herf in the 1980s to describe the mixture of "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy" that was characteristic of the German Conservative Revolutionary movement and Nazism. In turn, this ideology of reactionary modernism was closely linked to the original, positive view of the Sonderweg, which saw Germany as the great Central European power, neither of the West nor of the East.
Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more efficient "mechanical-mind" processes (automation), and humans' role in these processes are minimized. Just as horses were gradually made obsolete as transport by the automobile and as labourer by the tractor, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout modern history. Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanized looms. During World War II, Alan Turing's bombe machine compressed and decoded thousands of man-years worth of encrypted data in a matter of hours. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills and cashierless stores.
(R.) Andrew Sayer is Emeritus Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University, UK. He is known for significant contributions to methodology and theory in the social sciences.
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory in assuming that a society's technology progresses by following its own internal logic of efficiency, while determining the development of the social structure and cultural values. The term is believed to have originated from Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), an American sociologist and economist. The most radical technological determinist in the United States in the 20th century was most likely Clarence Ayres who was a follower of Thorstein Veblen as well as John Dewey. William Ogburn was also known for his radical technological determinism and his theory on cultural lag.
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 bioconservatism, as Transhumanist politics argue for the use of all technology to enhance human individuals.
William Ophuls, the pen name of Patrick Ophuls, is an American political scientist, ecologist, independent scholar and author. He is known for his pioneering role in the modern environmental movement. His work focuses on some of the ecological, social, and political implications of modern industrial civilization.
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