Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Life and Mind : Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psycholog - Nicholas Agar
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Life and Mind

Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psycholog

By: Nicholas Agar

Paperback | 16 August 2013

At a Glance

Paperback


$66.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $16.69 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 7 business days

An argument that achieving millennial life spans or monumental intellects will destroy values that give meaning to human lives.

Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In Humanity's End, Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences.

Agar examines the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve "longevity escape velocity"; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans.

Industry Reviews

Penetrating and lucid...This is the definitive critique of what [Agar] calls 'radical enhancement.'

* Monash Bioethic Review *

An evenhanded treatment of an area ripe for serious philosophical scrutiny. Agar's analysis is philosophically astute, empirically informed, and historically shrewd. It is a welcome corrective to the occasional extravagancies of the human sciences.

* Quarterly Review of Biology *

Agar's book is a valuable survey of the most important interlocutors in the conversation about posthumanism...should be taken seriously...one may well be persuaded by Agar's arguments.

* Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies *

More in Ethics & Moral Philosophy

The Nicomachean Ethics : Penguin Classics - Aristotle

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Letters from a Stoic : The Penguin Classics L210 - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

RRP $22.99

$20.75

10%
OFF
Fear and Trembling : Penguin Books Great Ideas - Søren Kierkegaard
Meditations : Design by Coralie Bickford-Smith - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Meditations : A New Translation - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $45.00

$38.99

13%
OFF
Meditations : Penguin Classics - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $19.99

$15.75

21%
OFF
Modern Library Classics (Paperback) : A New Translation - Marcus Aurelius
The Myth of Sisyphus : Vintage International - Albert Camus

RRP $35.00

$27.75

21%
OFF
Ethics : Penguin Classics - Benedict De Spinoza

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
The dilemma of authority : Social and Political Power - Allyn Fives
The Kantian Religion - Ian Hunter

$135.75

"Were I the Author of This Tale" : Tolstoy as Translator - Elizabeth F. Geballe
Beyond Good and Evil : The Philosophy Classic - Friedrich Nietzsche

RRP $24.95

$21.75

13%
OFF
Monsters : What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? - Claire Dederer