24/2 – Fall 2019

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24/2 – Fall 2019
Humanity Enhanced, Transformed, Abolished: Christian Anthropology Encounters the Transhumanist Hope of Artificial Intelligence

This issue of Forum Philosophicum, to which we have given the title “Humanity Enhanced, Transformed, Abolished: Christian Anthropology Encounters the Transhumanist Hope of Artificial Intelligence,” primarily serves to make available seven papers on transhumanism and Christianity.

Within its pages, Paul Dumouchel investigates the idea of “intelligence” as something ostensibly central to discussions of “artificial intelligence,” Ted Peters searches for a new differentia specifica for human beings (where, in the light of “thinking machines,” this can no longer be rationality), and Graham McAleer and Christopher Wojtulewicz, taking Lacan and Przywara as a basis, examine the idea of replacing human beings by such “thinking machines.” Meanwhile, Inti Yanes-Fernandez presents the ideas of two philosophers, Dubrovsky and Mamardashvili, in order to see how they might contribute to the debate over transhumanism, and Roberto Paura dissects the differences and similarities between Christian and transhumanist eschatologies. Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson questions the relationship between the Catholic Church and emerging ideas of the trans-human or post-human, and Anna Bugajska investigates the moral and philosophical status of euthanasia from both Catholic and transhumanist perspectives.

Beyond this, Piotr Szałek analyses the concepts of “expressivism” and “pragmatism” in the context of Berkeley’s philosophy, and we offer readers two book reviews: Lucas Misseri examines Anna Bugajska’s book on the transhumanist project, Engineering Youth, while Jakub Pruś reviews Józef Bremer’s book-length study of Wittgenstein’s picture theory in philosophy, mechanical engineering, music and architecture.