This is the symbol used by Transhumanists which essentially represents the grander vision of upgrading Humanity with an ultimate aim of creating an entirely new Human species – beyond human, or Posthuman.
H+ (H plus) is a synonym and symbol for transhumanism. It was adopted by Humanity+ in 2008 following their rebrand from the World Transhumanist Association.
It has been adopted by a number of transhumanist organisations including:
- Humanity+ and subsequently chapters such as AFT Technoprog
- H+Pedia
- Transhumanist Party (US political organization)
- Transhumanism (organisation)
Transhumanism H+ Seduction
What makes the transhumanist movement so seductive is that it promises to restore, through science, the transcendent hopes that science itself has obliterated.
Transhumanists do not believe in the existence of a soul, but they are not strict materialists, either. Kurzweil claims he is a “patternist”, characterising consciousness as the result of biological processes, “a pattern of matter and energy that persists over time”. These patterns, which contain what we tend to think of as our identity, are currently running on physical hardware – the body – that will one day give out. But they can, at least in theory, be transferred onto supercomputers, robotic surrogates or human clones. A pattern, transhumanists would insist, is not the same as a soul. But it’s not difficult to see how it satisfies the same longing. At the very least, a pattern suggests that there is some essential core of our being that will survive and perhaps transcend the inevitable degradation of flesh.
Of course, mind uploading has spurred all kinds of philosophical anxieties. If the pattern of your consciousness is transferred onto a computer, is the pattern “you” or a simulation of your mind? One camp of transhumanists have argued that true resurrection can happen only if it is bodily resurrection. They tend to favour cryonics and bionics, which promise to resurrect the entire body or else supplement the living form with technologies to indefinitely extend life.
Read the Full Article – God in the Machine
