This video is part of the mini-course "The Posthuman". Concept #1. More info: www.theposthuman.org
Text: "Are we already posthuman? The answer is: yes and no, depending on the philosophical movements we are thinking of. According to Transhumanism, we are not posthuman yet. “We” were humans, some of us are transhuman in merging more and more with technology, in seeing the human as an open notion, and some, in the close future, may become posthuman – for instance with the example of mind uploading, in which we have the speculative technology of downloading human consciousness in a machine. That hybrid, that co-emergence of human consciousness and machinic elements cannot be considered human anymore because humans do have biological bodies, but it's also related to the human, for instance from the aspect of consciousness. Another example: Posthumanities – humans migrating to Mars and not merging, nor procreating anymore with humans living on planet Earth eventually, generation after generations, those humans who migrated on Mars may develop into a different species, which is connected to the human species but is not human anymore. So going back to to the question “are we already posthuman?”, the answer is: No, according to Transhumanism we were human, we are now transhuman, and some of us in a close future may become posthuman. The answer is: Yes, according to Posthumanism, we can already be posthuman in the way we address existence, so the posthuman here is seen as a philosophy of existence, the way we live according to the deconstruction of the notion of the human seen as as an open frame, as existing not anymore enclosed by a cultural, biological, historical notion that is the human. According to Posthumanism you can be posthuman now in the way you live, in the way you exist, in the way you relate to yourself in relation to others through the deconstruction of the human approached as a post / humanism, as a post / anthropocentrism and as a post / dualism." (Ferrando 2017)
