Beyond Technological Singularity-the Posthuman Condition

Abstract

In the transmodern context, transhumanism appears as a new paradigm, with a centripetal tendency, which proposes the reinventing of man by overcoming the current biological limitations with the help of new technologies, so called human amelioration. In our work, we want to discuss in a speculative manner the possibility of the existence of the posthuman individual in the biological and moral (self) transcendence of the self. We will discuss a series of technologies capable of irreversibly modifying the human condition by placing humanity first in a transhuman or posthuman condition: technologies of virtualization of the social space that allow the transcendence of the spatial limitation of the human condition as a localized being within the finite limits, by opening up to communication and beingness in a non-topological space, the possibility of downloading the consciousness into electronic storage media, which would allow it to be in a non-biological space, that is, independent of its own corporeality and the supposed technologies of indefinite extension of life, which removes the human being from the the physical horizon of temporality and finitude. In defining the boundaries of the human condition, we have appealed to the work of the philosopher Abhinavagupta (975-1025), who was one of the greatest philosophers, aestheticians and mystics of the Shia school of Kashmir. The revaluation of the Kashmiri philosophy in the postmodern context allows us to rethink the human being’s boundaries, whose overcoming allows for a transcendence of the human condition. The boundaries identified based on the work of the Kashmirian philosopher are: limitation in temporality, limitation in the capacity for knowledge, limitation in fullness (limitation in scope - spatiality), limitation in causality, limitation in creative power. The overcoming of these ontological boundaries leads, in our opinion, to the emergence of an anthropological singularity, a concept built after the technological singularity, and implicitly of physical singularity.