Humanity should colonize space in order to survive but not with embryo space colonization

Author(s):  
Konrad Szocik

Abstract The embryo space colonization (ESC) concept is an interesting, very rational and quite effective way to guarantee the survival of the human species, as long as the technology is achieved and no unforeseen complications arise during even many millions of years journey to an exoplanet. Despite these formal advantages of the concept, this paper points to a number of arguments against its validity. These arguments revolve around two issues. One is to point out that while the concept of saving the Homo sapiens species is noble and should be supported, the way of saving humanity envisioned by the ESC departs from what should be understood by the concept of saving humanity through space colonization. The second issue is to draw attention to the ethical controversies that make this concept perhaps unsuitable for implementation at all. At least some of these objections do not address the concept of saving humanity by sending adult living persons on space missions.

Author(s):  
Peter Gärdenfors ◽  
Anders Högberg

Only among humans is teaching intentional, socially structured, and symbolically mediated. In this chapter, evidence regarding the evolution of the mindreading and communicative capacities underlying intentional teaching is reviewed. Play, rehearsal, and apprenticeship are discussed as central to the analyses of teaching. We present a series of levels of teaching. First of all, we separate non-intentional from intentional teaching. For non-intentional teaching, we discuss facilitation and approval/disapproval and analyze examples from non-human species. We then distinguish between six levels of intentional teaching: (1) intentional approval/disapproval, (2) drawing attention, (3) demonstrating, (4) communicating concepts, (5) explaining concept relations, and (6) narrating. We hypothesize that level after level has been added during the evolution of teaching. We analyze communicative requirements for the levels, concluding that displaced communication is required for level 4 and symbolic language only for levels 5 to 6. We focus on the role of demonstration and pantomime and argue that pantomime has been instrumental in the evolution of language. We present archaeological evidence for when the different levels of teaching emerge. We argue that learning Oldowan technology requires teaching by demonstration, and that learning Acheulean hand-axe technology requires communicating concepts. It follows that several levels of intentional teaching predate homo sapiens.


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

Carved out millions of years before mankind reached its coasts, the Mediterranean Sea became a ‘sea between the lands’ linking opposite shores once human beings traversed its surface in search of habitation, food or other vital resources. Early types of humans inhabited the lands bordering the Mediterranean 435,000 years before the present, to judge from evidence for a hunters’ camp set up near modern Rome; others built a simple hut out of branches at Terra Amata near Nice, and created a hearth in the middle of their dwelling – their diet included rhinoceros and elephant meat as well as deer, rabbits and wild pigs. When early man first ventured out across the sea’s waters is uncertain. In 2010, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens announced the discovery in Crete of quartz hand-axes dated to before 130,000 BC, indicating that early types of humans found some means to cross the sea, though these people may have been swept there unintentionally on storm debris. Discoveries in caves on Gibraltar prove that 24,000 years ago another species of human looked across the sea towards the mountain of Jebel Musa, clearly visible on the facing shore of Africa: the first Neanderthal bones ever discovered, in 1848, were those of a woman who lived in a cave on the side of the Rock of Gibraltar. Since the original finds were not immediately identified as the remains of a different human species, it was only when, eight years later, similar bones were unearthed in the Neander Valley in Germany that this species gained a name: Neanderthal Man should carry the name Gibraltar Woman. The Gibraltar Neanderthals made use of the sea that lapped the shores of their territory, for their diet included shellfish and crustaceans, even turtles and seals, though at this time a flat plain separated their rock caves from the sea. But there is no evidence for a Neanderthal population in Morocco, which was colonized by homo sapiens sapiens, our own branch of humanity. The Straits apparently kept the two populations apart.


2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 122-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara L. Finlay

The question of how complex human abilities evolved, such as language or face recognition, has been pursued by means of multiple strategies. Highly specialized non-human species have been examined analytically for formal similarities, close phylogenetic relatives have been examined for continuity, and simpler species have been analyzed for the broadest view of functional organization. All these strategies require empirical evidence of what is variable and predictable in both the modeled and the model species. Turning to humans, allometric analyses of the evolution of brain mass and brain components often return the interesting, but disappointing answer that volumetric organization of the human brain is highly predictable seen in its phylogenetic context. Reconciling this insight with unique human behavior, or any species-typical behavior, represents a serious challenge. Allometric analyses of the order and duration of mammalian neural development show that, while basic neural development in humans is allometrically predictable, conforming to adult neural architecture, some life history features deviate, notably that weaning is unusually early. Finally, unusual deviations in the retina and central auditory system in the laboratory mouse, which is widely assumed to be “generic,” as well as severe deviations from expected brain allometry in some mouse strains, underline the need for a deeper understanding of phylogenetic variability even in those systems believed to be best understood.


Author(s):  
Jesús Parra-Sáez

Human perfection has been one of the main objectives of the human species since the appearance of Homo sapiens, but contemporary biomedical technologies represent a promise to achieve it in the near future. In view of the new possibilities offered by new technologies, a scientific-philosophical theoretical debate has emerged between those who are in favor of its use on humanity for non-therapeutic purposes (posthumanists) and those who reject it (bioconservatives). In this chapter, the so-called “enhancement technologies,” the problems derived from their use with the aim of radically altering human abilities, and some of the most recent practical cases that have transcended the theoretical debate about their legitimacy are analyzed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 125-155
Author(s):  
Fatima Naqvi

Abstract The Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s films consistently thematize linear perspective as a mode of thought. His documentaries use one-point perspective to draw attention to a scientific habitus, with its studied neutrality and foregrounded objectivity. His “partitive images” home in on the fleeting relation of part to whole, revealing the difficulty of understanding large concepts such as the West or the human species through such supposedly objective images. This article also discusses the connection between Geyrhalter’s photographic mode and sophisticated technological processes. It looks at architecture as an organizing element in relation to Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher’s nomadic typologies and the pneumatic architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, with special attention to the films Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread, 2005), Abendland (Occident, 2011), and Homo Sapiens (2016).


1990 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Raimond Gaita

We may reflect on language in different ways. There is the way familiar to analytical philosophers. That may take different forms, but most of them are strikingly different from the way of someone like Elias Canetti or F. R. Leavis, whose thought is shaped by their concern with literature. In the latter case language appears as an essentially human phenomenon, not because it is limited to the species Homo sapiens, but because it is essentially connected with the culture and histories of peoples, whose plurality is underdetermined by any elaboration on the nature and environmental conditions of Homo sapiens. It is rare to find analytical philosophers of language for whom that is important or who have tried even to sketch the kind of importance it may have. That is because they assume that it is not important to language as such (to what makes something language) but only to the sophisticated use of language in poetry or literature. They have tended to misunderstand the sense in which a language such as English is a natural language.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
F. Budi Hardiman

Abstrak: Perkembangan yang sangat cepat dalam teknologi komunikasi digital telah mengubah pola-pola adaptasi manusia terhadap lingkungannya. Sudah saatnya filsafat merenungkan ciri manusia di era digital ini bukan sebagai homo sapiens, melainkan sebagai homo digitalis. Homo digitalis, berbeda dari sosok manusia pra-digital, mengalami perubahan tidak hanya dalam cara berkomunikasi, melainkan juga dalam cara merespons dunia dan menangkap kebenaran. Penulis memberi paparan fenomenologis yang kritis tentang kerumitan baru yang timbul akibat digitalisasi masyarakat. Dia berpendirian bahwa dampak revolusi digital bersifat ambivalen, yakni: membuka kebebasan-kebebasan baru dalam komunikasi, tetapi sekaligus juga melepas kebebasan alamiah manusia dalam bentuk brutalitas dalam dunia digital. Sebuah rekomendasi dan kesimpulan diberikan di bagian akhir tulisan ini.   Kata-kata kunci: Homo digitalis, kebenaran, digital state of nature, revolusi digital.   Abstract: The fast development of digital communication technology has changed the pattern of human adaptation to their environment. Such shift has prompted philosophy to contemplate on the nature of humans in the time of digital era not as homo sapiens but as homo digitalis. Homo digitalis, being different from the figure of humans in the pre- digital world, has seen changes not only in the way of communication but also in the way of responding to the world and capturing the truth. The writer will discuss the new complexity arising from the digital society through the lens of critical phenomenology. He asserts that the impact of digital revolution is ambivalent in nature, i.e.: giving access to freedom in communication on one hand, but unleashing human natural freedom that has driven brutalities in the digital world on the other hand. A recommendation is offered and conclusion drawn at the end of this paper. Keywords: Homo digitalis, digital communication, truth, new freedom, digital revolution.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Tozzi

ABSTRACTWe display a detailed description of mimetic muscles in extinct human species, framed in comparative and phylogenetic contexts. Using known facial landmarks, we assessed the arrangement of muscles of facial expression in Homo sapiens, neanderthalensis, erectus, heidelbergensis and ergaster. In modern humans, several perioral muscles are proportionally smaller in size (levator labii superioris, zygomaticus minor, zygomaticus major and triangularis) and/or located more medially (levator labii superioris, zygomaticus minor and quadratus labii inferioris) than in other human species. As mimetic musculature is examined in the most ancient specimens up to the most recent, there is a general trend towards an increase in size of corrugator supercillii and triangularis. Homo ergaster’s mimetic musculature closely resembles modern Homo, both in size and in location; furthermore, Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis share many muscular features. The extinct human species had an elaborate and highly graded facial communication system, but it remained qualitatively different from that reported in modern Homo. Compared with other human species, Homo sapiens clearly exhibits a lower degree of facial expression, possibly correlated with more sophisticated social behaviours and with enhanced speech capabilities. The presence of anatomical variation among species of the genus Homo raises important questions about the possible taxonomic value of mimetic muscles.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 106-108
Author(s):  
Chenyu Fu

Human evolution is a very complicated and lengthy process. Around six million years ago, humans were still apelike creatures. However, in modern times, humans have already evolved into a species called homo sapiens. The first species which shows human traits are bipedalism; they can walk on two legs. There are about 12-15 different early human species, but not all of them lived till today. It is well known that chimpanzees and humans shared a common ancestor six to seven million years ago. Chimpanzees are genetically closest to humans; they share about 96% of Human DNA sequences [1]. However, during evolution, chimpanzees and humans diverged into two different paths and finally demonstrated other behavior and into two completely different species. Modern-day humans can develop society and show high intelligence. However, for chimpanzees, they are still at a phase where they only demonstrate animal behavior. Chimpanzees and humans developed completely different behavior not only due to the different environments they lived in, but also due to the gene differences. 


Author(s):  
Jesús Parra-Sáez

Human perfection has been one of the main objectives of the human species since the appearance of Homo sapiens, but contemporary biomedical technologies represent a promise to achieve it in the near future. In view of the new possibilities offered by new technologies, a scientific-philosophical theoretical debate has emerged between those who are in favor of its use on humanity for non-therapeutic purposes (posthumanists) and those who reject it (bioconservatives). In this chapter, the so-called “enhancement technologies,” the problems derived from their use with the aim of radically altering human abilities, and some of the most recent practical cases that have transcended the theoretical debate about their legitimacy are analyzed.


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