Lesson 5: Human Flourishing In Science and Technology

Philosophy. The study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence,
knowledge, values, reason, mind and language. Its branches include natural, moral, and metaphysical
philosophy.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

 German philosopher whose work is associated with phenomology and existentialism.
 His ideas have exerted influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy.
 His best-known work is Being and Time (1927). He gave a very impressive analysis of human
existence, the prominence of the important themes of existentialism like care, anxiety, guilt and above
all death is brought out here.
 He begins “The Question Concerning Technology” by examining the relationship between human and
technology, a relationship Heidegger calls a free relationship. If this relationship is free, it opens our
human existence to the essence of technology”. This essence of technology, however, has nothing to do
with technology. Rather, as Heidegger suggests, ‘The essence of a thing is considered to be what the
thing is.”
 Heidegger examines two definitions of technology. Firstly, he offers that “Technology isa means to an
end”(Instrumental definition). Secondly, he proposes that “Technology is a human activity
(Anthropological definition).

The Question Concerning Technology

1. Heidegger begins by portraying his investigation of technology as the building of a path.
2.He examines the common understanding of technology as a neutral instrument under the control of
humans.
3.He proposes to get to the true sense via the correct sense
4. He analyses the notion of instrumentality to reach the truth or the essence of technology- it is traced to
causality.
5.Technology is a very particular kind of revealing to, and the description articulates the key terms of
Heidegger’s philosophy of technology: Modern technology challenges-forth nature to yield treasures to humans;
technology sets-upon (positions and orders) the yields of nature so that they are available and of humans,
becoming part of the standing reserve.
6.He discusses the relation of modern science to the essence of technology. He claims for the sciences the
aggressive approach to nature that goes well with technology, but poorly with science.
7.The enframing of technology is destiny. Destiny is neither an inevitable fate that descends on humanity
nor the result of human willing. Disclosure of destiny and human freedom are one and the same.
8. There is a twofold danger to destiny. One is the danger that human being reduces itself to standing
reserve and in so appearing to have taken total control encounters nothing any more. The other is the
danger that the disclosure of the enframing forecloses every other dispensation and conceals that too is a
disclosure.
8. Still the enframing is a disclosure. It involves human being, therefore harbors the possibility of saving
power.

Doctrine of Causality
Causa Naterialis. The material, the matter out of which an object is made. Causa Formalis. The
form, the shape into which the material enters.
Causa Efficiens. Brings about the effect that is finished Causa
Finalis. End

Bringing Forth. Making something

 The bringing forth (poiesis) which underlies causality is a bringing out of concealment.
 The revealing is what the Greeks call truth. Aletheia means unhiddedness or disclosure.
 Technology brings forth as well , and it is a revealing.
 This is seen in the way the Greeks understood techne, which encompasses not only craft, but other
acts of the mind and poetry.
 Heidegger characterizes modern technology as a challenging forth- very aggressive in its activity.
 With modern technology, revealing never comes to an end.
 The revealing always happens on our own terms as everything is on demand.
 He also described modern technology as the age of switches, standing reserve and stockpiling for
its own sake.
Example:
 Volcanic eruption. Challenging forth
 Coral bleaching. Challenging forth
 Planting trees. Bringing forth
 Mining. Challenging forth
 Farming. Bringing forth

Questioning as the Piety of Thought

 Piety means obedience and submission.
 One builds a way towards knowing the truth who he/ she is as a being in this world.
 Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely
represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and
chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the
worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we
particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology (1977,p1)

ENFRAMING: WAY OF REVEALING IN MODERN TECHNOLOGY

 Calculative thinking
One orders and puts a system to nature so it can be understood better and controlled
 Meditative thinking
One lets nature reveal itself to him/ her without forcing it.

1. Technology as a Mode of Revealing

2. Technology as Poesis: Applicable to Modern Technology
3. Questioning as the Piety of Thought
4. Enframing: A way of Revealing in Modern Technology
5. Human Person Swallowed by Technology
6. Art as a Way out of Enframing
Lesson 6: Human Flourishing
Human flourishing is defined as an endeavor to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within
the context of a larger community of individuals. This also means access to the pleasant life, the engaged
or good life and the meaningful life.
(Seligman, Steen, Park and Peterson, 2005), stated that human flourishing requires the development of
attributes and social and personal levels that exhibit character strengths and virtues that are commonly
agreed across different cultures.
According to Aristotle, there is an end of all the actions that we perform which we desire for
itself. Flourishing is the greatest good of human endeavors and that toward which all actions aim. The good
is what is good for purposeful and goal-directed entities. He presented the various popular conceptions
of the best life for human beings; (1) a philosophical life, (2).life of pleasure and (3) a life of political
activity.
Eudamonia means good spirit is a property of one’s life when considered as a whole. It is formally
egoistic in that a person’s normative reason for choosing particular actions stems from the idea that he must
pursue his own good or flourishing. It also implies a divine state of being that humanity is able to strive
toward and possibly reach.
Happiness is “doing well” and” living well”. It is a pleasant state of mind.
Verbally there is a very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior
refinement say that is ( Eudaimonia), and identify living well and faring well with being happy; but with
regard to what ( Eudaimonia) is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise…
(Nicomachean Ethics 1095a17).
Epicurus identifies that the eudaimon life is the life of pleasure maintains that life of pleasure
coincides with the life of virtue. He understands Eudaimonia as a more or less continuous experience of
pleasure and, also freedom from pain and distress. Virtue is only instrumentally related to happiness.
Socrates believed that virtues such as self-control, justice, courage, wisdom, piety and related qualities
of mind and soul are absolutely crucial if a person is to lead a good and happy life. Virtues guarantee a
happy life Eudaimonia
For Plato, Eudaimonia depends on virtue (arête) which is depicted as the most crucial and the
dominant constituent of euddaimonia.
Pyrrho, founder of Pyrrhonism, a school of philosophical skepticism that places the attainment of
ataraxia (a state of equanimity) as a way to achieve Eudaimonia. Pyrrhonist practice is for the purpose of
achieving epoch.
"Daesin" literally means "being there" and focuses on the "mode of existence".
Eudemonia is consists of Greek words eu (good) and daemon (spirit)
Lesson 7: The Good Life

A Puzzling Problem
 People want to be healthy but many consume junk food
 People want to be happy but many do things that make themselves miserable
 Most things that taste good are probably bad for you.
 Most things that give you thrill are probably bad for you too.
 What is the good life?
 People have different ideas of what constitutes the good life.
 Wrong pursuits may lead to tragic consequences.
 Correct pursuits may lead to flourishing.

ARISTOTLE (NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 2:2)

All human activities aim at some good. Every art and human inquiry, and similarly every action and
pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has been rightly declared as that at
which all things aim.

Nicomachean Ethics and Modern Concepts

 Eudaimonia. Eu (good) + daimon (spirit) = good life
 Good life. Happiness and virtue
 Virtue. Intellectual and moral

The 4 Pillar of the Good life

Health Wealth Love Happiness

The Happiness Pursuit

 Everybody wants more happiness and success.
 It’s good to know how to optimize happiness and success.
 There is a wide agreement that happiness is the greatest human good. Risk
Factors
 The happiness pursuit becomes one’s ultimate purpose in life.
 The happiness pursuit is not guided by a philosophy of life informed by general principles of meaning,
spirituality and virtue.

Golden Rule
 Confucius. What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.
 Aristotle. We should behave to others as we wish others to behave to us.
 Buddhism. Hurt not others with that which pains thyself.
 Christianity. D unto others as you would have them do unto you.

 They make personal happiness and success their ultimate end of life without moral compass and
without the desire to pursue inner goodness.
Disillusion. King Solomon realized the vanity of success long, long ago: The world will never be
enough: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing”( Eccl.1:8)
 It takes more and more to reach the same level of happiness- addiction, money etc.
 Nothing in this world can fill the spiritual vacuum within us.
 Dreams are often broken when reality strikes.

Fate and Circumstances

 Bad things happen to good people
 Reversal of fortune
 For some people, most days are bad days. ( poverty)

"Living an authentic life means living with deep acceptance on the facticity of death resulting to a
life lived" - Heidegger
'The unexamined life is not worth living for" - Socrates

The Holistic Approach. Good people, good community and world peace= good life
Materialism
 A form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and
that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness are results of material interactions.
 The first materialists were the atomists in Ancient Greece.
 Democritus and Leucippus led a school whose primary belief is that the world is made up of and is
controlled by the tiny invisible units in the world called atomos or seeds.
 Atomos simply comes together randomly to form the things in the world.

Classification of Materialism
 Naïve materialism
 Dialectical materialism
 Metaphysical materialism

Hedonism. A school of thought that argues that the pursuit

of pleasure and intrinsic goods are the primary or most
important goals of human life. A hedonist strives to
maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain) but when
having finally gained that pleasure, happiness remains
stationary. “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we
die.”

Stoicism. Another school of thought led by

Epicurus. The stoics espoused the idea that to generate happiness, one must learn to distance oneself
and be apathetic. The path to happiness for humans is found in accepting this moment as it presents itself,
by not allowing ourselves to be controlled by our desire for pleasure, or our fear of pain.

Theism. The belief in the existence of the Supreme Being or Deities. It describes the classical conception of
God. The ultimate basis of happiness is the communication with God.

Monotheism. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism.

Humanism
 A school of thought espouses the freedom of man to carve his own destiny and to legislate his own
laws, free from the shackles of a God that monitors and controls.
 Is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings,
individually and collectively.
 Refers to nontheistic life stance centered on human agency and looking to science rather than
revelation from a supernatural source to understand the world.
 The Good Life is a Balance Life
 A single-minded pursuit is not always beneficial.
 Active engagement needs to be balanced by rest.
 Exclusive love needs to be balanced by greater love.
 Achievement needs to be balanced by acceptance.
 Self-transcendence needs to be balanced by fair treatment.

No one can deny the fact that science and technology has a profound impact on how modern man
thinks and appreciates matter. It can be concretely seen in the present conditions of man in the society.
The desire to feel satisfaction of research and development through genetic engineering, cloning and the
likes opened endless doors for skeptics.

Lesson 8: When Humanity and Technology Cross

Humanity
 A virtue associated with basic ethics of altruism derived from human condition
 According to Confucius, humanity is a” love of people”, if you want to make a stand, help others
make a stand.

Human Robot Interaction

Today, in the era of present technology, robotics has become a big part of our collective lives.
Robots are utilized for their knowledge, exactness and interminable vitality to perform assignments
consistently and profitably, that when performed by people tends to create flaws. For instance, AI robots
have already started an enormous job in improving waste administration and finding distinctive approaches to
handle the waste issue endured by most developing nations like India. Indeed, the robot age has arrived. The
possibility of robots may bring to most minds the possibility of androids like T-800 in the movie “Terminator”.
The
vast majority of us are not able to understand that a lot of robots exist in the most basic forms today;
they are not so much android but rather more like industrial tools or equipment. This implies the world
would be prepared for more smart intelligence to be utilized in day-to- day applications (Singh).

The Impact of Technology on Human Health

Technology has crept into every corner of our lives, form obsessive texting to checking emails more
often. Most of us absorb three times more information everyday compared with 50 years ago. According to
University of California researchers, we spend 12 hours in front of TV and computers at home.
Multitasking participants had more difficulty filtering out irrelevant information than those focusing on
one task at a time. Teens, however, are emotionally more vulnerable to the effects of rampant texting and
online sharing. According to a 2010 Nielsin survey, we send and receive text messages 3, 339 times a month
(Deodhar).

The Future of Humanity (Nick Bostrom, 2009)

Extinction
An estimated 99% of all species that ever existed on earth are already extinct (Raup, 1991). There
are different ways in which human species could become extinct: Primarily, by transforming or evolving
into one or more species or by merely dying out without any replacement or continuation. Our species
has survived earthquake, volcanic eruption, typhoons and other natural phenomena for tens of thousands of
years. Nowadays, one of the utmost extinction risks arise from human activity. For instance, Advances in
biotechnology might make it possible to design new viruses that combine the easy contagion and mutability
of the influenza virus. A dreadful pandemic with high virulence and 100% mortality rate among infected
individuals could possibly will terminate human species. Additionally, an all-out nuclear war between
Russia and the United States might be an example of a global catastrophe that would be unlikely to
result in extinction.

Recurrent Collapse
This means that the human condition will reach a kind of statis, either instantly or after undergoing
one or more cycles of collapse regeneration. Human civilization may endure catastrophes that prevent it
from moving beyond a certain level of advancement. It also requires a carefully calibrated homeostatic
mechanism that possesses the level of civilization restricted within a relatively narrow interval.
Plateau
Human civilization may reach a level of technological advancement beyond which no further
advancement is feasible. Predictions that life span can be greatly increased have depended in part on the
apparent decelerations and plateaus.

Post-humanity
People have developed significantly different cognitive abilities, population sizes, body types, sensory or
emotional experiences or life expectancies. Post humanity has established itself as a label for a form of
human existence radically transformed by the most advanced medical techniques and by the use of
biotechnology and nanotechnology for human enhancement.

Technology Trends (Jayshree Pandya)

1. Biological Engineering and Bio-Economy
2. Molecular Manufacturing and Self-replicating Systems
3. Distributed Additive Manufacturing
4. Artificial Intelligence Driven Automation
5. Neuromorphic Computing and Computing Beyond Turing Limit
6. Quantum Computing and Control
7. Nanosatellites and Space Exploration
8. Internet to BrainNet
9. Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
10. Brain Mapping and Brain Uploading

Lesson 9: Why Does The Future Not Need Us?

Technology is changing our world at an overwhelming pace. Most people are deeply involved with
technology. They tend to be ever optimistic about its prospects and persistently eager to adopt and promote
it. Many focused their optimistic remarks on health care, food, energy, environment, education, economy
and agriculture. In the span of a few short years, social media, mobile devices and internet have
transformed how we communicate and get information about the world. Rapid advances in science and
technology foreshadow a world that can displace some forms of human labor. In addition, nearly
everyone expressed concerns about the long-term impact of new tools and techniques on the essential
elements of being human. However, many shared deep worries and trepidation about the danger
brought by rapid technological change. It is of course true that no one can predict the future. The key
variable in understanding the future is rarely technology alone, but how humans use it, perceive it, and
adapt to it.
C.S.Lewis argued that humanity, so –called power over nature “turns out to be a power exercised by
some men over other men with Nature as its instrument’. He feared that modernism and its ability to
explain away everything but “nature “would leave us emptied of humanity. All that would be left is our
animal instincts. The choice we have to see humanity as a complex combination of both material and
spiritual components or else to be reduced to machines made of meat ruled by other machines with nothing
other than natural impulses to guide them. He also warned us of a society that has explained away every
mystery, and the danger of what he calls “man-molders which will be armed with the powers of an
Omni- competent state and irresistible scientific technique.
According to Francis Fukuyama, there are three possible scenarios for the near future. First, the
genetically enhanced intelligence or the prospect of living longer lives free from genetic disease. Next,
advance in stem cell research might soon allow us to regenerate any tissue in the body. Lastly, the
widespread use of psychotropic drugs like Prozac and Ritalin that can make everyone happy without the
side effects of the drugs.
Jacques Ellul warns that as technological capabilities grow, they results in countless means to
accomplish tasks than ever before. The more dependent we become on technology, the more it conforms
our behavior to its requirements rather than vice versa.
William Gibson, who coined the term “cyberspace”, has said the ‘the future is here”- it’s just not
evenly distributed”. Some of the important changes in the future will come not from a new technology, but
from a large number of people having access to something that already exists (Scharre, 2017).

21st Century Technologies

1. Genetic Engineering. The process by which an organisms’ genetic material is altered or manipulated so
that the organism will have specific characteristics.
It has been applied in numerous fields including research, medicine, industrial biotechnology
and agriculture.
It can be used in Cloning, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), Gene therapy.
2. Robotics. An interdisciplinary research area at the interface of computer science and engineering. It
involves the conception, design, manufacture and operation of robots.
Characteristics of Robots: Robots all consist of some sort of mechanical construction, Robots need
electrical components that control and power the machinery.
 Types of Robots
Pre-Programmed Robots ( operate in a controlled environment where they do simple,
monotonous tasks)
Humanoid robots ( robots that look like and/ or mimic human behavior- Sophia)
Autonomous Robots ( operate independently of human operators, Teleoperated Robots (
mechanical bots controlled by humans)
Augmenting Robots ( either enhance current human capabilities or replace the capabilities a
human may have lost),

Applications
Military Robots ( to search, rescue and attack), industrial robots ( IBM keyboard manufacturing
factory in Texas)
Collaborative Robots or CoBots ( intended for direct human robot interaction within shared space)
Construction Robots ( robotic arm and robotic exoskeleton),
Agricultural Robots ( closely linked to the concept of AI-assisted precision agriculture and
drone usage),
Medical Robots ( da Vinci Surgical System and Hospi),
Kitchen Automation ( Rotimatic, flatbreads baking, Frobot, frozen yogurts), Robot Combat for sport
Domestic Robots ( Roomba vacuums the carpets),
Nanobots (Kinesin uses protein domain dynamics in nanoscales to walk along a microtubule)
and
Swarm Robotics (disaster rescue missions, target localization and tracking, simultaneous
localization and mapping, cooperative environment monitoring and convoy protection).

3. Nanotechnology. The study and manipulation of atomic or molecular scale to improve or even
revolutionize many technology and industry sectors.
4. Artificial Intelligence. Refers to “machines” that respond to stimulation consistent with traditional responds
from human, given the capacity for contemplation, judgement and intention.
Alan Turing established the fundamental goal and vision of artificial intelligence. It is the attempt ro
replicate or simulate human intelligence in machines.
 Norvig and Russell defined Artificial Intelligence in four approaches: Thinking rationally, thinking
humanly, acting rationally and acting humanly.
It is being used in health care, energy development, finance, transportation, aviation and
telecommunications.
It includes autonomous vehicles such as drones and self-driving cars, playing games such as chess or
Go, search engines such as Google search, online assistants such as Siri, image recognition in
photographs, predicting flight delays and medical diagnosis.
Methods and Goals in AI: The symbolic ( or top-down) approach-seeks to replicate intelligence by
analyzing cognition independent of the biological structure of the brain in terms of the processing
of symbolic label. and the connectionist ( bottom-up) approach- involves creating artificial
neural networks in imitation of the brain’s structure.

Potential Risks to Society Devaluation of

humanity
 Decrease in demand of human labor
 High costs of creation
 Ethical issues
 Social isolation
 Environmental Problems

List of Emerging Technologies that will shape our Future

1. Electric/ self-driving cars
2. Robot butlers
3. Flying cars
4. Space tourism
5. Colonization of other planets
6. Wearable screens
7. 3D printed Food and Metal
8. 5G-6G connectivity
9. Re-engineering and Recycling
10. High-rise farms
11. Lab-grown meats
12. Robot soldiers
13. Roads over rivers and seas
14. Holography
15. Body implants prosthesis