{"id":100338,"date":"2021-03-13T16:28:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T21:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=100338"},"modified":"2021-03-14T14:56:12","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T18:56:12","slug":"new-atlantis-john-sexton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=100338","title":{"rendered":"(New Atlantis) John Sexton–A Reductionist History of Humankind: The trouble with Yuval Noah Harari\u2019s “Sapiens”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harari\u2019s claim that has drawn the most media attention is that we may be on the cusp of an era of super- (or possibly sub-) humans, with newspapers running such sensationalistic headlines as \u201cHumans \u2018will become God-like cyborgs within 200 years\u2019<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe age of the cyborg has begun<\/a>.\u201d He seems to believe that the \u201cSingularity\u201d is a certainty; that some \u201cDr. Frankenstein\u201d will likely create \u201csomething truly superior to us, something that will look at us as condescendingly as we look at the Neanderthals.\u201d But here again there are practical and technical obstacles that Harari overlooks. As Steven Pinker, of all people, has recently pointed out<\/a>, most features of organisms, including senescence, are built deep into their genomic structure. If there were easy fixes to mortality and many other conditions, they would have been low-hanging fruit for natural selection, which will always prevail in the long run over the kind of \u201cintelligent design\u201d Harari envisions us undertaking in the near future.<\/p>\n

Harari tends to think that it\u2019s onward and upward for the modern project to master nature through technology, though he doubts whether the trajectory is really \u201cupward\u201d in the sense of involving genuine improvement in the human condition. But it may be that the golden age of technological progress has already passed. As Peter Thiel and others have observed<\/a>, the development of new technology has arguably slowed in recent decades, a fact disguised by the dissemination of old technology in the form of consumer goods like personal computers and smart phones.<\/p>\n

Still, Harari is right to suggest that scientific advancement potentially threatens much of what we now hold dear, including our humanity as we traditionally understand it. He is also right to point out that questions about the moral character of scientific experimentation always meet with the response that it is being done to \u201ccure diseases and save human lives.\u201d Harari says that \u201cnobody can argue with\u201d such a response. He is right, up to a point: given the value that modern societies put on health, it can be very difficult to question research conducted in the name of medicine. But arguments can still be made against some forms of experimentation and \u201cenhancement.\u201d One could also point out that science itself provides no reason to save human lives or care about curing diseases, whereas moral principles do. One might also ask whether physical health and longevity are the highest goods.<\/p>\n

But Sapiens<\/i> provides us with no resources for answering questions about the moral implications of scientific and technological change. A commitment to a reductionist, mechanistic view of Homo sapiens<\/i> may give us some insight into some of the aspects of our past most tied to our material nature. But Harari\u2019s view of culture and of ethical norms as fundamentally fictional makes impossible any coherent moral framework for thinking about and shaping our future. And it asks us to pretend that we are not what we know ourselves to be \u2014 thinking and feeling subjects, moral agents with free will, and social beings whose culture builds upon the facts of the physical world but is not limited to them.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A Reductionist History of Humankind … https:\/\/t.co\/JF54mBVSf2<\/a><\/p>\n

— Philosophy Matters (@PhilosophyMttrs) January 4, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n