School #57

Transhumanism / Posthumanism

Nick Bostrom, Ray Kurzweil, Max More, Donna Haraway

Transhumanism holds that the human condition — mortality, cognitive limitation, physical frailty — is a temporary engineering problem rather than a fixed essence. The observer is fundamentally mutable and upgradable. Embodiment, mortality, and cognitive limits are contingent features that technology can and should transcend.

I. Time

Extent Infinite
Ontological Status Substantival
Grain Continuous
Freedom Non-Deterministic
Traversability Branching
Dimensionality One
Direction Uni-directional

Time is emergent and infinite — it extends indefinitely into a future of radical technological transformation. Time is continuous, linear, and uni-directional, but the transhumanist seeks to overcome time's constraints through life extension, mind uploading, and technological acceleration. The Singularity represents a threshold beyond which time's meaning changes fundamentally.

II. Space

Extent Infinite
Ontological Status Substantival
Curvature Curved
Dimensionality Three
Locality Non-local

Space is emergent and infinite — the transhumanist aspires to transcend spatial limitations through space colonization, virtual reality, and digital existence. Space is curved and non-local in the context of physics, but technology can overcome spatial barriers. Dimensionality is N because virtual environments and digital substrates are not bound by three physical dimensions.

III. Matter

Extent Finite
Ontological Status Substantival
Conservation Conserved
Dimensionality Three
Locality Local

Matter is emergent and finite — but the transhumanist seeks to transcend material limitations through nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and substrate-independent minds. Matter is non-conserved in the sense that radical transformation (not mere conservation) is the goal. It is non-local because digital and virtual existence liberates the observer from dependence on a particular material body.

IV. Observer

Time Instance Multiple
Space Instance Multiple
Extent of Knowledge Total
Retainment of Knowledge Total
Physicality Both
Agency Active
Number Plural
Time Instance: Multiple — through life extension, mind uploading, and cryonic preservation, the observer can potentially exist across multiple temporal frames; the posthuman observer is not bound to a single biological lifespan
Space Instance: Multiple — through telepresence, distributed computing, and eventual mind uploading, the observer can occupy multiple spatial locations simultaneously; Haraway's cyborg already blurs the boundary between here and there
Extent of Knowledge: Total — cognitive enhancement, brain-computer interfaces, and artificial superintelligence aim to remove all limitations on knowledge acquisition; Kurzweil's Singularity envisions the merger of human and machine intelligence achieving near-omniscience
Retainment of Knowledge: Total — digital memory, perfect backups, and information technology ensure that knowledge once acquired is never lost; the posthuman observer transcends the biological forgetting curve
Physicality: Both — the observer may be embodied in biological, cybernetic, or virtual substrates, or exist as pure information; Haraway's posthumanism embraces the dissolution of the boundary between flesh and machine
Agency: Active — the transhumanist observer is radically active, reshaping its own nature, overcoming biological constraints, and engineering its own evolution
Consciousness: Present — consciousness is assumed to be substrate-independent and transferable; it persists through uploading, enhancement, and transformation
Number: Plural — multiple enhanced observers, both biological and artificial, coexist and potentially merge; the boundary between individual observers becomes fluid

V. Energy

Extent Finite
Ontological Status Substantival
Conservation Conserved
Dispersibility Irreversible

Finite and substantival — energy is a real, physical resource governed by thermodynamic laws; it is the raw material that powers both biological and technological systems. Conservation: Conserved — energy conservation is a hard constraint that even transhumanist ambitions must respect; Dyson spheres and similar megastructures aim to maximize energy capture within conservation laws. Dispersibility: Irreversible — entropy remains the ultimate constraint; transhumanism seeks to delay and manage entropic degradation through technology but acknowledges the thermodynamic arrow cannot be reversed.

VI. Information

Ontological Status Substantival
Conservation Conserved
Granularity Discrete

Information is substrate-independent — consciousness can be uploaded, transferred, and preserved as information patterns. The mind is software; the body is hardware. Information is substantival because it is the essence of mind and reality. It is conserved because digital information can be perfectly copied and preserved. It is discrete because digital computation operates on bits.

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