[ExI] Philosophy and philosophers

[Anders Sandberg]

Another angle to this discussion is whether scientists or philosophers have influenced transhumanism the most. And I think the philosophers win.
If we look at the root of the transhumanist movement, the humanist movement was founded by scholars before even natural philosophy split from philosophy. Pico Della Mirandola was a hermeticist philosopher. The Enlightenment thinkers who strongly influenced us? Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant... philosophers to a man (well, we got Wollenstonecraft too a bit later). 
Looking at direct intellectual ancestors, Marquis de Condorcet was both philosopher, mathematician and statesman. As was Benjamin Franklin. Exactly how we are descended from Nietzsche might be controversial, but I don’t think he can be ignored.
Then we have Fedorov, the intellectual father of Tsiolkovsky and the space movement - steeped in Orthodox philosophy. His later counterpart in the west, Teilhard de Chardin, has certainly influenced transhumanism tremendously by sneaking in thoughts about cosmic teleology. 
What about H.G. Wells and Haldane? Looking at their thinking we see a fair dose of Marx – expressed of course even more clearly through Bernal and Stapledon. Of course, one could argue that behind it all was a general post-enlightenment sense of materialist positivism.
And Extropian thought was of course shaped profoundly by Hayek’s views on spontaneous orders and a whole libertarian milieu.
Of course, trace anybody's intellectual genealogy far back, and you will find a philosopher. A bit like always finding royalty in family genealogies: they get around, and they stand out. But philosophy typically deals with questions about what matters/what should be done, and that is of course core to any proactive intellectual movement. Science itself is mainly concerned with what is true about the actual world, not what has proper value or where we should be aiming. Transhumanism without the science would be escapist aspiration, transhumanism without the philosophy would be aiming at small improvements in the here-and-now. 

Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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