Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex Machina Realist Responses to Post-Human Society

This volume is the first of a trilogy which investigates, from a broadly realist perspective, the place, and challenges, of the human in contemporary social orders. The authors, all members of the Centre for Social Ontology, ask what is specific about humanity’s nature and worth, and what are their main challenges in contemporary societies? Examining the ways in which recent advances in technology threaten to blur and displace the boundaries constitutive of our shared humanity, Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex Machina explores the philosophical and ethical questions raised by these developments, and discusses the dangers posed by the combination of transhumanism with post-humanist social theories and antihumanist practices, institutions and ideologies.

List of Contributors 1. Introduction: Post-humanism in Morphogenic Societies (Ismael Al-Amoudi and Jamie Morgan) 2. Bodies, Persons and Human Enhancement; Why these distinctions matter (Margaret S. Archer) 3. Vulcans, Klingons, and Humans: What Does Humanism Encompass? (Douglas V. Porpora) 4. Transcending the Human: Why, Where, and How? (Pierpaolo Donati) 5. Yesterday’s tomorrow today: Turing, Searle and the contested significance of Artificial Intelligence (Jamie Morgan) 6. Trans-Human (Life-)Time: Emergent Biographies and the ‘Deep Change’ in Personal Reflexivity (Andrea M. Maccarini) 7. The Evisceration of the Human Under Digital Capitalism (Mark Carrigan) 8. Management and dehumanisation in Late Modernity (Ismael Al-Amoudi) Index

Ismael Al-Amoudi is Deputy Director of the Centre for Social Ontology. He is Associate Professor in Organisational Studies at Cardiff Business School. His work spans across anthropology, management studies, political philosophy, social theory and sociology. One recurring theme in his research concerns the nature of social norms and the basic processes through which they are legitimated or contested. Another recurring theme concerns the contribution of ontology to the human and social sciences. Recent publications include articles in the British Journal of Sociology; Business Ethics Quarterly; Human Relations; Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour; Organization and Organization Studies. Jamie Morgan is Professor of Economic Sociology at Leeds Beckett University. He coedits the Real World Economics Review with Edward Fullbrook. He has published widely in the fields of economics, political economy, philosophy, sociology, and international politics. His recent books include Trumponomics: Causes and consequences (co-edited with E. Fullbrook, 2017); What is neoclassical economics? (2015); and Piketty’s capital in the twenty-first century (co-edited with E. Fullbrook, 2014).