In a recent interview on Singularity One on One http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/question-everything-max-more-on-singularity-1-on-1/ (first video) Max More, one of the founders of transhumanism talks about how important philosophy was as the starting point for the important things he has done. Philosophy provided an important vantage point from which he wrote the influential papers which started transhumanism. Philosophy is not something to give up or shun, you just need to know what parts of it to ignore in pursuing important objectives.
I am not questioning the importance of philosophy, but the use of the label “philosophical” together with “fundamental”. If someone draw a map of human knowledge, mathematics and biology and physics and history would form wedges starting from well-established facts near the center and reaching more recent and complex theories further away; philosophy, on the other hand, would be the whole ever receding border region of uncertain conjectures still out of reach of scientific methods. To expand the human knowledge these areas indeed must be explored, but once that happens, some branch of science will claim their possession and there will be no reason to further call them philosophy.
In a recent interview on Singularity One on One http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/question-everything-max-more-on-singularity-1-on-1/ (first video) Max More, one of the founders of transhumanism talks about how important philosophy was as the starting point for the important things he has done. Philosophy provided an important vantage point from which he wrote the influential papers which started transhumanism. Philosophy is not something to give up or shun, you just need to know what parts of it to ignore in pursuing important objectives.
I am not questioning the importance of philosophy, but the use of the label “philosophical” together with “fundamental”. If someone draw a map of human knowledge, mathematics and biology and physics and history would form wedges starting from well-established facts near the center and reaching more recent and complex theories further away; philosophy, on the other hand, would be the whole ever receding border region of uncertain conjectures still out of reach of scientific methods. To expand the human knowledge these areas indeed must be explored, but once that happens, some branch of science will claim their possession and there will be no reason to further call them philosophy.