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Problems of Transhumanism: The Unsustainable Autonomy of Reason
Reason is not self-legitimating. Like all Enlightenment advocates for reason, transhumanists find that the project of Reason erodes all premises including the superiority of reason over unreason. Consequently transhumanists, like Enlightenment advocates in general, need to defend our values with nonrational a prioris. Unfortunately some transhumanists continue to advocate a naïve conception of pure rationality as an end in itself.
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COMMENTS
Posted by Michael Anissimov on 01/08 at 10:32 PM
Nice article, in general I agree. Rationality is a choice, though seemingly a useful one -- in most cases, having a more accurate map is the best way to achieving whatever your goals are. Certainly, rational means could be applied to many different ends, including evil or dishonest ends.
With regards to rationality, my favorite way of seeing it in the lens of Bryan Caplan's "rational irrationality". Irrationality is an economic good, just like any other, and people often demand it because it can be psychologically satisfying and/or the path of least resistance. However, when it comes to life-or-death personal choices that matter to the individual, they can be surprisingly rational, because they are willing to forgo the good of irrationality for a compelling enough reason.
It isn't true that Less Wrong discourages discussion about the relationship of IS and OUGHT. In fact, such discussions are common there. For instance, Roko Mijic posted a link to a long doctoral thesis on the topic. Eliezer's definition of rationality merely says that it is synonymous with having a map that reflects the territory -- he himself points out that it has to do more with IS than OUGHT. It's somewhat of an odd accusation, in fact, because much of Yudkowsky's work, such as his Human Values sequence on Less Wrong, go into great detail on the question of untangling OUGHT from IS.
Posted by mjgeddes on 01/08 at 11:00 PM
Well I agree values can't be grounded on reason but that doesn't mean we're floating in mid-air, values could still be grounded in conscious experience.
Human conscious intuitions may differ so much simply because human consciousness is fairly weak and unreliable. Transhumans with stronger powers of introspection (ability to reflect on themselves better) combined wth new modes of consciousness (e.g. ability to 'see' their own thoughts directly) may agree on much more. So there could still be some kind of 'universal morality'. That is to say, there may be a way to make 'intuition' reliable, even though I agree that it can't be grounded by reason.
The LW guru you refer to appears to be 'running scared' of consciousness. For instance in his video answers to reader questions he does his best to evade the quesions related to subjective experience, and refers to social emotions as 'danger zones' and 'land mines'. Unfortunately for him, there may those who know exactly what consciousness is and how to implement it in code.
Posted by Giulio Prisco on 01/09 at 04:35 AM
An excellent article, really. I have always seen rationality as a useful tool, the best tool to achieve measurable goals. But these goals and the values they are based upon are not a product of reason. They are usually, on the contrary, a product of the more veiled and fractal world of emotions, hopes and fears.
I think reason and emotion have common cognitive roots in brain software and underlying physics, which we will soon understand in sufficient detail to modify in a precise and measurable way, or re-engineer in AIs. But I think also AIs, in order to function, will need some kind of emotional systems (not necessarily similar to ours).
I have never been a big fan of Less Wrong and its companion Overcoming Bias, because I question the a-priori need to overcome bias. I love my doggy and don't like cockroaches, which is certainly a bias. But why should I want to overcome it? I am happy enough with loving my doggy.
Posted by iPlant on 01/09 at 07:50 AM
Thoroughly fascinating and enjoyable writing. Very glad to find it, especially here. Don't think I have anything to add, except that at the end of it I really wanted to know where J feels we should go from here. Also wonder if my own preoccupation with the emergence and modulation of values in the brain can help moving forward.
(Also, it's a small matter but the sentence "Where do the values that from that rationality help us achieve?" looks like it could use some TLC.)
[Ed. - thanks, that's been corrected.]
Posted by jhughes on 01/09 at 10:58 AM
@ Anissimov
Glad to hear that LW does indeed discuss the disconnect between IS and OUGHT. I get the impression that many of the advocates attracted to the project are still scrambling for a modern versionof natural law, a way to ground ethics and values on reason and empiricism. If the blog and the pursuit of friendly AI helps lay bare that value and ethics have non-rational origins while preserving a respect for the power and importance of rationality - i.e. innoculating against relapses into counter-Enlightenment romanticism and irrationality - that's great.
@ Marc
I don't think grounding value in conscious experience gets us much farther. I observe that I have desires, and that I share those desires with many others. But that doesn't tell me if they are good or bad. That is the IS-OUGHT problem.
@ Giulio
Yes, I think one of the errors of the artificial intelligence crowd has been the presumption that cognitive complexity and rationality would lead to intelligent, self-willed behavior. That is why I have presumed that - for better or worse - intentional or accidental a-life, where the creature is built from the ground level with the goal of self-preservation and reproduction, is far more likely to generate machine intelligence than the coding of elaborate expert systems in boxes. In other words I think a lot of AI research is an effort to program Damasio's patients, reasoning machines without desires and wills. That is probably a very good thing from a catastrophic risks point of view.
@iPlant
Where do we go from here? For me the Buddhist attempt at dodging the IS-OUGHT problem and building a naturalist fallacy has always been the most satisfying: if we examine our minds they want to stop suffering; desire causes suffering; deeply understanding the mind unravels clinging and brings contentment; when we stop tying ourselves up in counter-productive ego knots we become nicer people who want to help others. I don't claim that the Buddhist system of thought is the only set of conclusions one can draw from empirical investigation of the human condition, only that it has great feng shui and the people living in this house (at least the upper stories) appear to be very happy. Hopefully neurotechnologies will help us unravel more of the processes of the mind so we all can build our own metaphysics from first principles.
Posted by mjgeddes on 01/09 at 11:53 AM
>I don't think grounding value in conscious experience gets us much farther. I observe that I have desires, and that I share those desires with many others. But that doesn't tell me if they are good or bad. That is the IS-OUGHT problem.
The relevant wiki links to my favored position:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_sense_theory
"Ethical intuitionists claim that only an agent with a moral sense can observe natural properties and through them discover the moral properties of the situation. Without the moral sense, you might see and hear all the colors and yelps, but the moral properties would remain hidden, and there would be in principle no way to ever discover them (except, of course, via testimony from someone else with a moral sense)."
"Moral sense might inform us of the existence of objective morality, just as eyesight informs us of the existence of colors."
There are different types of conscious feelings and desires, one type must be a particular sense of good/bad (only your consious awareness of this sense of good/bad can motivate you to consider such questions important in the first place). This type of feeling is judging your other desires.
Posted by jhughes on 01/09 at 12:47 PM
@ Marc
Yes, I don't think there is any empirical evidence to support moral intuitionism or moral realism, which is basically a restatement of natural law/naturalistic fallacy. IMO there are no self-evident moral facts or values, no objective morality. There were certainly Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson who made that argument, but I think Humeian skepticism has basically won that Enlightenment argument.
Posted by Robin Hanson on 01/09 at 01:03 PM
I really find it hard to understand what, if anything, you are saying here. Our facts should be reasonable, but our values are whatever they are, and values are required to choose acts. Those of us who don't want to die, we might sign up for cryonics, and those who do want to die, well it makes sense for them to not sign up. But if you want to live yet don't sign up because your beliefs about its effectiveness are not based on enough reason, well you are making a serious and costly mistake. If you James are trying to defend that kind of unreason, well I can at least understand you, even if I'd disagree. If not, I just don't know what if anything you are saying.
Posted by jhughes on 01/09 at 01:30 PM
@Robin
I'm critiquing the transhumanist tendency to fetishize rationality and fall back into the naturalistic fallacy, and recommending an acknowledgement of the need to examine and embrace our irrational first principles, desires and values. You appear to be commendably clear on our inability to ground values in reason but many are not.
Posted by Giulio Prisco on 01/09 at 01:46 PM
@James: not the transhumanist tendency to fetishize rationality, but the tendency of some transhumanists to fetishize rationality. I am a transhumanist and, as I said in my previous comment, I don't fetishize rationality.
Posted by Michael Anissimov on 01/09 at 07:22 PM
I get the impression that many of the advocates attracted to the project are still scrambling for a modern version of natural law, a way to ground ethics and values on reason and empiricism.
This is quite mistaken, and shows either a major failure in either the community to communicate our views or your ability to infer them. A major part of the Less Wrong arc is about how values are complex, often viewed as a black box when they aren't, and how different kinds of minds could have entirely different values and still operate just fine. That's one of the overarching points of the whole thing. See the "complexity of value" entry in the Less Wrong Wiki:
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Complexity_of_value
You might also recall how Joshua Greene's Ph.D thesis gets brought up often on both my blog and Less Wrong. The whole argument of that thesis is that moral realism is wrong.
I really get the impression here that you're taking a classic "rationalist" mistake, as in the Objectivist idea that we can use rationality to determine objective morality, and sort of assuming that the current Less Wrong community is making the same mistake, even though I can't recall any post or instance that ever makes this claim.
Basically, the LW community puts more emphasis on rationality than anyone else, and what you seem to be expressing is the danger of a potential over-fetishism of rationality. But one of the goals of the whole LW project has been to flesh out the definition of "rationality" in more detail so that it doesn't retain the simplistic flaws that has given it a bad reputation in the past. One reason why Eliezer's definition of rationality works well is that it doesn't make any specific moral claims. This dovetails with the AI/economics idea of a utility function being distinct from the machinery that implements it.
Posted by Lincoln Cannon on 01/09 at 07:25 PM
James, I heartily agree that ethics are not based in epistemics. Rather, epistemics are based in ethics. Rationality is charity, which gambles (perhaps wrongly) that an altruistic pursuit of power will prove superior to an egotistic pursuit. Rationality presupposes the possibility of commonality, communication and congruence; that I can overcome estrangement with the other, and together we will share experience and understanding. Rationality is epistemic atonement, to use the Christian term.
Posted by CygnusX1 on 01/09 at 07:48 PM
Excellent article.
Critical thinking may stand in the way of free thought and new ideas however, if too closely scrutinised for rationality and validity. All ideas and views are important and of value enough for argument and debate. But your points concerning lofty heights and houses are well described.
Do transhumanists have lofty values and ideals? I'm still not sure what the real terms are that define the difference from a non-transhumanist : someone that does not agree with cloning? Or someone who frowns in overcoming disease, blindness, or having a robotic arm? My point is that the lines between transhumanist and bio-conservative and those that think critically may be too rigidly defined here. I think that most people would align themselves with transhuman ideals where they are explained and can be understood fully.
Transhumanism is not a philosophy, yet perhaps it should be embraced as one. An extension of humanitarianism and described as the furtherance and progress of humanity and not misunderstood as different from being human and the precursor to posthumanity, (whatever that may be described as). If transhumanism is promoted as being different or even elitist or idealist, then it may be taken and scorned for such.
It is good to hear your views on Buddhism and suffering. Certainly the Buddha was perhaps the forefather of existentialism and personal responsibility, and his doctrines concerning mindfulness and integrity promote rationality and critical thinking. I do believe that progress for trans-humanity lies in debate, ethics and philosophy, and the understanding of who we are which naturally leads to an understanding and embrace of potential and thus of what we may achieve and what we may become.
Posted by mjgeddes on 01/09 at 11:57 PM
>IMO there are no self-evident moral facts or values, no objective morality. There were certainly Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson who made that argument, but I think Humeian skepticism has basically won that Enlightenment argument.
According to Wikipedia, Hume is actually equally compatible with both moral realism and moral anti-realism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
Hume's essential point (which you and I seem to both agree on) is quoted in the 'Ethics' section:
"Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason"
But this doesn't actually contradict moral intuitionism and moral sense theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_sense_theory
"Arguably the most prominent defender of moral sense theory in the history of philosophy is David Hume (1711-1776). While he discusses morality in Book 3 of his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Hume's most mature, positive account of the moral sense is found in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)."
As to LW folks, they are just confused. I'm sure Anissimov doesn't even understand the views of his own guru, who has stated he isn't a moral anti-realist. Here's an example of what appears to be a self-evident moral fact:
*Changes to the brain that improve the capability to make moral judgements are good.
LW folks are contradicting themselves. First they say they agree with Hume that moral judgements are not based on reason, then they say that they can make a CEV (Coherent Extrapolated Volition) AGI that is entirely based on reason (has no consciousness) yet can perform reflective decision making (deciding what changes are 'good') to it's own valuation system!
In fact (by Hume) an AGI with no consciousness would be quite unable to assess the truth or falsity of the above * statement, much less perform any reflective decision making!
Posted by Max More on 01/10 at 12:02 AM
James, you write: "Most transhumanists argue the Enlightenment case for Reason without ackowledging its self-undermining nature. For instance Max More's Extropian Principles codified "rational thinking" as one of its seven precepts.' That is rather frustrating, since I'm extremely familiar with the issues you discuss in this article. The Principles of Extropy are not meant to be, and cannot reasonably be, a complete philosophical statement. What's more, it seems that you didn't come across this piece of mine: Pancritical Rationalism: An Extropic Metacontext for Memetic Progress. <http://www.maxmore.com/pcr.htm>
If you read that piece and understand PCR, you will see why I agree with you about rationality not being self-justifying and yet disagree that we have a problem in figuring out "how to advocate for rationality in a way that avoids its potential for self-erosion."
Posted by Carl Shulman on 01/10 at 12:08 AM
I agree on the silliness of natural law and moral realism, as would most Less Wrong participants. Note that if there were such a natural law, which could magically rewrite the software of a superintelligence (in defiance of physics) to comply with it, there wouldn't be a 'Friendly AI problem." Here's a link for a Yudkowsky post that entertainingly critiques moral realism:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/sy/sorting_pebbles_into_correct_heaps/
Posted by Tim Tyler on 01/10 at 07:13 AM
This article seems like a straw man attack to me. Who exactly is supposed to believe this stuff? Yudkowsky is singled out -- but he is definitely not in the moral muddle described in this article.
Posted by XiXiDu on 01/10 at 12:32 PM
I think there is a lot of noise here. It's all about what we want and how to achieve it. Ethics is at best a means to an end. Rationality being just a matter of definition. It's all about practicability, what works. If prayer worked, we'd use it if we wanted to use it. Meanings are not created in reference to other words but ultimately rely on the all-purpose of desire from within the entity uttering these words. These desires, which turn into volition, are the ultimate truth. The ultimate purpose on which all meaning is based, the subjective-first-person knowledge of volition. A truth which is self-evident. Volition is a truth that is adequately proven by circular reasoning. I want what I want, by reason that's what I want.
Posted by Lincoln Cannon on 01/10 at 06:43 PM
Agreed, XiXiDu -- well put. I assume you've read Nietzsche, but if you have not then I recommend it.
Posted by David Roden on 01/10 at 06:49 PM
A very useful intervention. I'm a little leery of some of the historical generalizations, though and an contextualist insistence on 'historical situatednes's implies a synchronic conception of history that is hard to sustain. Derrida, interestingly, is absolutely not a postmodernist in the sense implied here - as his trenchant critique of Foucault's archaeology of 'unreason' testifies. Maybe, one way through this impasse is to recognize that the critique of the claims of reason - whether in Hume, Rousseau or Kant - is internal to the tradition of Enlightenment thought.
Posted by jhughes on 01/10 at 07:40 PM
@ David Roden
Thanks! I completely agree that "the critique of the claims of reason... is internal to the tradition of Enlightenment thought." That's why this is framed as the unfinished internal contradictions of the Enlightenment tradition. As for the distinctions between Derrida and Foucault I confess I'm not as up on their distinctions as I should be, and any clarifications are welcome.
@ Max
I don't grok Pancritical Rationalism. Does it help answer, for instance, why one should believe in extropic principles as opposed to some other set? The self-undermining of values is the tendency to constantly ask why. The Extropian Principles actually always seemed relatively free of any first principle obfuscation in that they basically said "here they are - take 'em or leave 'em."
Posted by Shiroe on 01/11 at 09:55 PM
Rationality is by all means a good tool, but spirituality - that intuitive introspection written of in another comment - should not be ignored in favor of it. A healthy blend of both will be required as we move forward. People are not rational creatures to begin with, and quite frankly, spiritual practices such as meditation, controlled breathing, and yoga might actually *increase* rational thinking in an individual, as all three are examples of practices which are for strengthening the mind.
Also remember that some 3,000 years ago, a couple of guys named Leucippus and Democritus had this wild superstitious idea that everyone was made of invisible particles called "a-toms." Ben Franklin pondered life extension in one of his essays. The guiding principles behind transhumanism have their roots in the intuitive, the world of dreams and creativity, the people not afraid to ask "what if?" and then actively try to answer.
When a person dies, they are anatomically no different from when they were alive. But we all know that something - dare I call it the soul? - leaves the body. In a world where, for example, no one dies, it is all that much more important to exercise the soul like the muscle it is instead of continuing to rationalize it out of existence. Leave the rational to rational topics.
Posted by David Roden on 01/12 at 05:03 AM
I'm not a scholar of the Derrida/Foucault debate on madness, but the key text is Derrida's 'Cogito and the History of Madness' (In Writing and Difference) - a response to Foucault's Madness and Civilisation (published in French as Folie et deraison). Derrida argues that Foucault's project of writing from the position of madness as the radical 'other' of reason presupposes the logical structures of rational discourse and thus is self-vitiating. Christopher Norris usefully compares Derrida's argument with Donald Davidson's anti-relativist arguments in 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' in his 'Textuality, Difference and Cultural Otherness' in Truth and the Ethics of Criticism.
More broadly, Derrida, like Davidson,consistently argued against the claim that a set of cultural or linguistic practices could constitute a concept or system of concepts. For Davidson our ability to interpret one another by applying norms of truth and logical coherence is more fundamental than the existence of a shared language. For Derrida, the 'iterability' or differential repeatability of signs or signifying states is a more basic condition of meaning than the existence of shared conceptual schemes or cultural practices. If we buy into this, the idea of the situated rationality (while attractive in many respects) needs to be complicated.
Best wishes,
David
Posted by Sheekus on 01/12 at 02:47 PM
Amazing, just utterly amazing! the only other thinker/group of thinker that demonstrated such a breadth of insight is the American philosopher Ken Wilber. Dr. J has an astounding capacity integrating values of traditional religion, modern Enlightenment, postmodernity, and post-postmodernith in a way that I have not seen for a long time. I look forward to more of Dr. J's opus integrating spirituality, reason, and transhumanism.
Yes. postmodernism is a dead end; and so is reason severed from emotion.
Posted by sheekus on 01/12 at 03:33 PM
Transhumanism is historically situated, there are invariably some hidden, possibly fallacious, a priori assumptions that will be unveiled in post-transhumanist thought. And those post-transhumanist will as likely contain some hyperinflated assumptions that need to be, as our postmodern friends like to say, deconstructed. But beyond postmodernism and post-rationalism, there is post-postmodernity, or what some of us call, "integral thought." But like transhumanism, integralism, is situated, contextual, and only one ladder on the spiral of the Grand Dialectics. Any form of post-postmodern thought, be it integral, or transhumanist--the healthiest thing that it can usher in is to help facilitate that drive toward higher complexity and human consciousness, and not to be an end unto itself, or as the article states, "a house floating in mid-air."
In the mean while, I think an integration of Human Potential movement, contemplative spirituality, Ken Wilber's Integral thought, and general trans-humanism is the most sophisticated worldview that we can achieve in the early 21st century
--that is, until the advent of cyberbrain...
Posted by Vadim on 01/14 at 05:05 PM
As an outsider, I think this article is a good start towards creating a fruitful public discussion of transhumanist objectives and arguments. I respect the courageous self-reflection it takes to realize and acknowledge that your own values do not stem from some purely logical origin. From the standpoint of virtue epistemology, I think this is a worthwhile attitude to model to the members of your own clan, as well as an opportunity to call your interlocutors to greater self-awareness.
However, you should also be aware that rigorous examination does indeed happen (though certainly not often enough) in the so-called "houses of faith". See, for instance, William P. Alston's "Perceiving God; The Epistemology of Religious Experience", Cornell UP, 1993. In fact, though your metaphor of houses up in the air is useful in pointing out the provincial status of so-called "rational arguments" that various groups with competing interests often hurl at one another, what is it exactly that gives transhumanists the rationalist high ground to designate other "houses" as being "ramshackle huts of mud daub and random flotsam, tied up with string"? In other words, what is the standpoint from which you critique ancient and medieval philosophy, for instance? What is it that makes, say, someone like Aristotle or Aquinas "unreasonable", or "pre-rational"? I would also add that, if transhumanists want to see themselves in continuation with certain aspects of the Enlightenment movement, in addition to being wary of hyper-rationalism, they would be well advised to avoid the similar temptation of scientific hyper-empiricism.
To Carl Shulman: Natural Law and Moral Realism are not the same thing, nor are they necessarily directly related to one another. And, I always find it interesting when someone introduces a general argument into a public forum against moral realism, especially when that argument owes its very existence to realist democratic political principles that provide it with a right to be heard. Not that more nuanced critiques of MR are invalid, but this loose association between the Natural Law and MR seems bereft of, shall we say, rationality. For instance, I don't think that one can successfully argue that Rawls based his "Theory of Justice" on a set of premises derived from some theory of Natural Law.
David Roden: To what exactly are you referring when you say: "contextualist insistence on 'historical situatednes's implies a synchronic conception of history that is hard to sustain"?
Posted by Carl Shulman on 01/14 at 11:04 PM
Vadim, I'm fully aware of the differences between natural law theory and moral realism, and that people with a vast variety of views describe those views as moral realism (some much less extravagant than others). The "and" between "natural law" and "moral realism" was not superfluous.
Posted by David Roden on 01/16 at 07:35 AM
Hi Vadim,
Some anti-foundationalists assert that because there are no self-grounding principles we must ultimately appeal to historically contingent epistemic or ethical practices or, as in James' case, 'existential choices'. There are a number of problems with this position: it provides a knock-down defense of almost any anti-Enlightenment craziness you might care to imagine on the grounds that 'this is what folks do around here'. But more problematically, it assumes that the relevant contingencies are not only historical facts but (more importantly) metaphysically constitutive (of our form of life, our culture, our conceptual schemes, whatever...).
This approach reifies forms of life, cultures or praxis in a way that ignores problems of semantic/translational indeterminacy (Quine/Davidson), the structural possibility of re-contextualizing or re-inscribing any practice or choice within a new context (Derrida) or the dependence of all culture upon dynamically changing material conditions (Marx). So in response to the claim that we are situated by this or that, we need to insist on the problem of framing situations and contexts, and their inherent dynamism and openness. If that's right, it's a forlorn hope to supplement the the deficit of rational self-grounding with irrational self-grounding.
Posted by vadim on 01/16 at 10:59 PM
David,
Thanks for the helpful clarification.
"So in response to the claim that we are situated by this or that, we need to insist on the problem of framing situations and contexts, and their inherent dynamism and openness. If that's right, it's a forlorn hope to supplement the the deficit of rational self-grounding with irrational self-grounding." - I agree. Though I think that the impulse of this article is properly directed, it betrays a rather narrow purview of rationality. For instance, I don't think that emotional, psychological, or moral processes are devoid of rationality, or that faith is necessarily the antithesis of reason. Not all people of faith are fideists, and Carl Jung, for an example, had (in?)famously responded to the question, do you believe in God, by saying: "I don't believe, I know."
If someone wants to take a rational stance, that is absolutely legit. It does not, however, by virtue of association, grant one a dictatorship over all things rational and the multitude of contexts where reason is manifested (i.e. science labs, philosophical debates, schools, churches, families, economic and political forums, etc). What I look forward to is a "thick" rational, ethical discourse among all of these spheres, rather than a usurpation of reason by one set of values against all the rest.
Posted by David Stodolsky on 01/17 at 12:55 PM
This is where the argument goes off the rails: "why should ethics be grounded on observations about human nature and not something else, like ancient religious dogmas?"
It is not 'human nature'/rationality, but human survival/rights that must be the foundation of ethics for any kind of (Trans)Humanist. The inadequacies of Kant, Postmodernism, etc. are irrelevant. Let's stick with modern philosophy:
Jonathan Glover's "Causing Death and Saving Lives" is a modern statement of a Humanist foundation for ethics (that also criticizes Kant, etc.).
Posted by Jonatas M on 01/29 at 12:53 PM
"Why should ethics be grounded on observations about human nature and not something else, like ancient religious dogmas?" Do I even need to answer this? Come on, think, you can do it.
"Reason can only be argued for from metaphysical and ethical a prioris, even if those are only such basic assumptions as 'it is good to be able to accomplish one's intended goals.'" Some goals are general and reason can be argued from an empirical perspective for being able to better accomplish those general goals. "Empirical" subjective experience also seems to confirm that good feelings are good and that bad feelings are bad.
"Most tangibly, contemporary neuroscience, also a product of Enlightenment reason, now recognizes that reason severed from emotion is impotent." Although it could be said that ethics and thus decision making are based on the positiveness or negativeness of feelings (not on emotions, there is a difference), the fact that some humans cannot make decisions without emotions (and were really emotions separated from thought?) that's not an absolute fact, only a contingent characteristic of human brains.
I agree that de Grey's defense of immortality has a weak base, because immortality is not really necessary, although it may make one feel better and other things and thus have utilitarian ethical value.
Posted by Steven Killeen on 12/17 at 02:18 AM
Nietzsche taught me years ago that pure reason is like a gun which one obtains to protect one's own but which fires off randomly, rendering it just as likely to blow one's knees off as to scare away intruders...
Posted by David Stodolsky on 12/17 at 10:47 AM
"I agree that de Grey's defense of immortality has a weak base, because immortality is not really necessary"
Think again:
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