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Mutate in zombie farm 211/8/2022 Homo sapiens may have outcompeted other hominins by an extended adolescence, or neoteny, allowing greater transmission of cultural knowledge. It does not do so in ways that simply eliminate those constraints, however.Ī good example is the role of biological and cultural neoteny in making science possible (Gould 1977 Elia 2013). By contrast, lineage thinking allows us to think about how past constraints at many points in evolutionary history not only set limits on what we can do and think, but also shape the possibility for certain kinds of changes to those limits. Ironically, it reflects our species’ tendency to think about minds and spirits as distinct from our bodies, which just mystifies the kinds of social constraints that may be limiting us (Flannery and Marcus 2012 Lynch 2019). I would argue that the dream of technological transcendence, a kind of Gnostic theology for disembodied beings emerging from embodied creatures, is not the right model (Shiffman 2015). Can we direct this kind of change in some ways that will be better than others? It is because we have minds and bodies adapted to Pleistocene problems that we can be the kind of species that, with the right kind of cultural work-arounds, can construct kinds of knowledge, signs, technologies, and social systems that have made remarkable progress in developing new kinds of environments that will shape our future in turn (Wolf 2007 Wynn and Coolidge 2012, ch. The idea of an evolutionary preadaptation, or exaptation as Gould and Vrba (1982) put it, is relevant here. But where we have been shapes what can be possible, even though these possibilities can be reworked. By considering transhumanism’s zombie problem, Fuller is trying to get beyond self-imposed obstacles to putting together a collective plan for where we are headed rather than where we have been. The idea that the earth, or our bodies or brains, are disposable such that we can move on to the next one was part of the problem. The PDF of the article (see above) provides the entire piece.Īt the same time, we should recognize that the kinds of dreams we had about technologically-mediated transcendence were part of the problem. The SERRC presents “Zombie Epistemology” in two parts-the following serves as Part II. We have become zombies just seeking out bare survival without conscious thought and planning. As the gloom of dealing with an emerging awareness of a troubled Anthropocene, likely to be a thin stratum for future archaeologists rather than a long-lived geological epoch if we are not careful, our imaginations have contracted, and possibly deadened. He is surely right that the challenges posed by twentieth-century problems have overwhelmed the optimistic projections of the future that led the way mid-century, as a simple extrapolation based on what now look like exceptional and temporary rates of economic growth and technological innovation encouraged fevered dreams (Mühlbauer 2006). Steve Fuller’s work on transhumanism is interesting because it forces us to think about the long-term trajectory of the human species and the knowledge and technology it is likely to build in the future. Zombie Epistemology: Or, I Ain’t Gonna Work on Zoltan’s Farm, Either, Part II, William T. Home › Articles › Zombie Epistemology: Or, I Ain’t Gonna Work on Zoltan’s Farm, Either, Part II, William T.
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