Humanism in the Digital Age: course description
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Victor Gomez Pin, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Humanism is essentially a philosophical position that claims for the specificity and singularity of human being among the animals. From this point of view almost the whole set of western thinkers may be considered humanists. Nevertheless at the end of the past century, classical humanism seemed to be dramatically questioned by some scientific discoveries, namely by the discovery of the coincidence between the human genome and the genome of other primates. The first goal of this course is to summarize and confront the arguments concerning the question, in order to establish the state of the art. We will try to show that, in fact, held the thesis of the singularity of humans species among animals is perfectly compatible with the main discoveries of contemporary science. But classical Humanism is also confronted to the consequences for our societies of contemporary technology: The emergence of information and communication technologies (Internet) and its broad dissemination at the end of the 20th century raises, economic, social, political and educational problems. Significant philosophical questions also arise, focused on the opposition of Real vs. Virtual. A digital world (virtual, electronic, telematic, etc.) is generally spoken of to allude to this plurality of objects and representations that, being technologically built, produce the sensation of reality in human beings. Are we facing new category of Plato's cave? Why do scientists, engineers, doctors, artists, musicians, and persons from many other professions systematically turn to digital representations if these are all but pure appearances? In any case, the massive incorporation of the use of technologies modifies substantially the relations of citizens with their social environment. In this course we summarize the contemporary reflections concerning the weight of new technologies in the future configuration of human beings. In the lectures will approach the following interrogations: Is there something of substantial in the digital world? The feeling that provokes in us the virtual world, may be compared to those that provokes the reality? The virtual perceptions are the only ones that would affect a robot, but may we actually refer to perception without biological bases? The digital perceptions (originally limited to sight and hearing) are now extended to touch, feeling and even taste. Can we conclude that the perceptions via internet of a wine or a body will stop to be a simulacrum? Is thinkable a social order in which citizen have met exclusively though Internet? Is there law in Internet? And in this case, who has to legislate in the web?
