Some History of the Singularity

Many philosophers portray the cosmic process as an ascending curve of positivity. As time goes forward, the quantities of intelligence, power, or value are always increasing. These progressive philosophies have sometimes been religious and sometimes secular. Secular versions of progress have sometimes been political and sometimes technological. Technological versions have sometimes invoked broad technical progress and have sometimes focused on the recursive self-improvement of artificial intelligence.

The Disconnection Thesis (extended abstract)

David Roden, The Open University

Speculative Posthumanism and The Disconnection Thesis

Keywords: speculative posthumanism, wide descent, wide humanity, cognitive and value incommensurability, essentialism, flat ontology

In this essay I develop a philosophical schema for understanding the concept of the posthuman implied by singularity scenarios: Speculative Posthumanism (SP). SP states that wide descendants of current humans could cease to be human by virtue of a history of technical alteration. The major part of the essay clarifies its metaphysical presuppositions. The final part will consider the ethical implications of SP for current technological practice.

The singularity as faith (extended abstract)

Selmer Bringsjord and Alexander Bringsjord, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Belief in The Singularity is Fideistic

We have on hand a framework for classifying the bases of belief in things that are at once weighty and unseen. Here, we apply the framework to belief in The Singularity, and conclude from this application, and the absence of both rationalist and empiricist evidence in support of this belief, that believers in the doctrine are fideists. While it’s true that fideists have been taken seriously in religion (e.g., Kierkegaard in the case of Christianity), even in that domain the likes of religious believers like Descartes, Pascal, and Leibniz find fideism to be little more than wishful, irrational thinking — and at any rate it’s rather doubtful that fideists should be taken seriously in the realm of science and engineering.

The singularity as a religion (extended abstract)

Diane Proudfoot and B. Jack Copeland, University of Canterbury

Software Immortals—Science or Faith?

The 20th century futurist Julian Huxley called for a new religion, allied with science, to replace the (he said) ‘progressively less and less tenable’ hypothesis of a supernatural god or spirit. 21st century technological futurists have in effect answered Huxley’s call. They predict a post-Singularity future that is remarkably similar to the post-salvation (or post-spiritual liberation) life promised by major world religions: a software-based existence that is ‘immortal’, ‘truly meaningful’, and ‘blissful’. Modern physics and computer science, they claim, can give us ‘transcendence’, ‘resurrection’, ‘souls’, ‘spirit’, ‘heaven’, and even ‘God’. Proponents of the Singularity hypothesis claim that their predictions are very different from those of (what Kurzweil calls) ‘traditional’ religions. Futurists are materialists (they have no time for ‘ornate dualism’ or souls composed of a ‘ghostly substance’), and their forecasts are based on science rather than faith. Yet, as we shall argue, the Singularity hypothesis fares little better than established religions in answering the philosophical challenges that arise for afterlife beliefs.