Russell Family Research Conference with Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, "In Pursuit of Perfection: The Misguided Transhumanist Vision "
Dinner Board Room, Graduate Theological Union
Transhumanism is a secular ideology that invests technology with spiritual meaning. Presenting transhumanism as a pursuit for perfection of the human species, the lecture highlights the innate ambiguity of transhumanist discourse which treats perfection both as a stadial process of self-improvement as well as an end state of the process: the emergence of the posthuman species. The lecture highlights the main themes of transhumanist discourse -- human enhancement, morphological freedom, cyborgization, Singularity, and mind-uploading -- and argues that transhumanism is culturally significant but deeply misguided. The transhumanist pursuit of perfection by means of technology reflects the cross-currents of our post-secular age.