JK, Dont ever run this.

CT 1 Real World
CONTENTION I: THE 21ST CENTURY
QUANTUM MECHANICS CHALLENGES 5 BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF THE WORLD
Wendt 04
[Alexander Wendt Ohio State University SOCIAL THEORY AS CARTESIAN SCIENCE: AN AUTOCRITIQUE FROM A QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE Forthcoming in Stefano Guzzini and Anna Leander, eds.
(2005), Constructivism and International Relations, Routledge]
Quantum Theory 16
Quantum theory is perhaps best introduced by the classical worldview that it overthrew. Like quantum
metaphysics, the classical worldview is an interpretation of physical theory, in this case classical physics,
and as such essentially metaphysical. It makes five basic assumptions: 1) that the elementary units of
reality are physical objects (materialism); 2) that larger objects can be reduced to smaller ones
(reductionism); 3) that objects behave in law-like ways (determinism); 4) that causation is mechanical and
local (mechanism); and 5) that objects exist independent of the subjects who observe them
(objectivism?). 17 In philosophy of mind these assumptions are shared by materialists, 17dualists, and
proponents of the linguistic turn alike, and thus by extension by most positivists and interpretivists in
social science. 18 Quantum theory challenges all five. At the sub-atomic level physical objects dissolve
into ghost-like processes; wholes cannot be reduced to parts; the world does not behave deterministically;
causation is non-local; and objects do not exist independent of the subjects who observe them.
Importantly, these findings do not necessarily invalidate the classical worldview at the macro level, since
quantum states normally decohere into classical ones above the molecular level, which is why the
everyday world appears to us as classical. Decoherence has been a barrier to developing a unified
quantum theory encompassing both micro and macro levels, 19 and is a fundamental obstacle to the
quantum consciousness hypothesis in particular (see below). But at least at the micro- level the quantum
revolution has decisively overturned the claim of the classical worldview to provide a complete description
of reality.
Although the formal structure of quantum theory is highly esoteric, its basic experimental findings are
relatively straight forward, if counter-intuitive, and clearly described in a number of good, popular books.
20 The philosophical literature is also accessible, being concerned with the theorys interpretation, not its
formalism. 21 Thus, while I can claim no understanding of quantum physics, with some hard work I think I
have gained some of its metaphysics, which is what matters here. Since understanding the quantum
consciousness hypothesis requires some physics, however, let me start with four findings from quantum
theory: wave-particle duality, wave function collapse, the measurement problem, and non-locality.18
1) Wave-particle duality refers to the fact that sub-atomic phenomena have two irreducible and nonequivalent descriptions. Under some experimental conditions they are best described as waves, in others
as particles. Importantly, these descriptions are not just different but mutually exclusive. This leads to
Heisenbergs famous Uncertainty Principle, according to which we cannot know the position and
momentum of a particle at the same time. A complete description of quantum systems must therefore
include both descriptions, standing in a relation of what Niels Bohr called complementarity, where each
is inherently partial. 22 Wave-particle duality challenges two assumptions of the classical worldview.
One is that science can achieve an integrated, unitary Truth about the world. Quantum theory seems to
be true, but its truth requires contradictory narratives much like the situation with Explanation and
Understanding in social science, as I suggest below.

The other challenge is to the materialist view of matter. To see this it is necessary to understand the
peculiar nature of waves in quantum theory. Classical waves, like ripples on a pond, are caused by the
interaction of physical objects (water molecules), and as such pose no problem for materialism. Quantum
waves, in contrast, refer to the probability of finding physical objects (particles) at various locations. These
probabilities are not determined by an underlying distribution of particles, 23 since the Uncertainty
Principle tells us that as long as an electron propagates as a wave we have no basis for saying it remains
a particle at all. Unlike classical waves, then, waves in quantum theory do not refer to actualities but
potentialities events that could happen, which is a much broader class than those that actually do.
19
2) Wave function collapse refers to the fact that the transition from wave to particle is instantaneous in
time and has no apparent physical cause. Such quantum leaps challenge the determinism of the
classical worldview, and as such have caused much angst among physicists, with Einstein famously
complaining that God does not play dice. 24 But their anomalous character also points toward a
possible solution, since wave function collapse is strongly analogous to our experience of consciousness,
which involves free will and also does not seem to have a physical cause an analogy that the quantum
consciousness hypothesis will exploit.
3) The measurement problem refers to the fact that it is impossible to measure quantum phenomena
without disturbing them: the process of measurement inevitably leads to a change in the appropriate
description of sub-atomic particles. As long as we dont measure them they appear as waves, and as
soon as we do as particles. This challenges another basic assumption of the classical worldview, the
subject-object distinction, and with it the possibility, even in principle, of true objectivity. In quantum
measurement observer and observed initially constitute a single system, rather than two as they are
classically. Far from being just a given, the subject-object distinction is now emergent from the process of
measurement itself, which makes a cut in a previously undivided whole. Within social science postmodernists, feminists, and others have made similar critiques of the subject-object distinction at the
macro-level, but generally without a quantum basis. A quantum connection would give these critiques
additional force, and point toward the necessity of a participatory epistemology in social inquiry.
4) Finally, nonlocality refers to the fact that when wave functions are entangled they have effects on
each other in the absence of any apparent causal connection , in what 20Einstein called spooky action at
a distance. 25 When one wave function changes as a result of measurement, the appropriate description
of the other instantaneously changes as well. This challenges the classical worldviews mechanical theory
of causation, but more fundamentally its atomism. Entangled particles do not behave as if they were
distinct objects, but rather as parts of a superposition of particles that absorbs their individual identities
into a larger whole. This makes quantum theory radically holistic, 26 and again intriguingly similar to
social life, at least on my argument in Social Theory.

QUANTUM MECHANICS IS OUR REALITY

Strassler 12
[Matt Strassler, theoretical physicist & visiting scholar at Harvard University, B.S.
Princeton; Ph.D Stanford. PuBlished over 75 papers on string theory and on particle
physics. Quantum Physics Is Very Real Of Particular Significance Conversations
About Science October 9, 2012]
Just ask the Nobel Prize committee: is quantum physics some sort of speculative new
science? (A smart educated woman asked me, just a week ago, `What do you think about
that quantum physics stuff?, as though it were in the same category as theories of
consciousness, speculations about the origin of life, and string theory.) No way: its all over
your computers and cell phones; its in many modern light bulbs; its the laser that reads the
prices at the grocery store and your ticket at a concert; its the heart of the best timepieces

and the eyes of the best microscopes; its what makes solids solid and liquids flow, and
powers chemical reactions and radioactivity; its probably playing a big role in biology that
were just starting to understand; and its sunshine and moonlight and the glowing auroras
borealis and australis. Its the foundation and fabric of your world.
And though it may be bizarre, it is by no means abstract. Maybe in the early 1930s one
could still say it was abstract; but already for many decades particle physicists have
passively observed individual particles, one at a time, behaving in quantum mechanical
ways. Today scientists can control individual quantum objects, things whose behavior can
only be predicted by accepting the odd rules and counter-intuitive implications of our
quantum world. In particular, physicists have learned to capture and manipulate individual
photons (particles of light), atoms, and ions (atoms with an electron removed or added, to
make them electrically charged see the Figure below.) It is for their work advancing these
capabilities, making possible new classes of experiments and opening up the potential for
new technologies, that Serge Haroche and David Wineland have won the Nobel Prize for
2012. Read about it here (brief press release or summary for non-technical readers) using
your preferred quantum-mechanical device.

ETHICALLY, YOU SHOULD RESPECT THE SCIENTIFIC IDEAL WHEN DETERMINING

TRUTH
McIntyre 99
[Michael E. McIntyre Centre for Atmospheric Science at the Department of Applied
Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Silver St, Cambridge Lucidity and science III:
Hypercredulity, quantum mechanics, and scientific truth Interdisc. minor updates
from Sci. Revs. , 23 , 29{70 (March 1998)]
Scientific research can reasonably be described as a search for truth, in an
important and nontrivial sense. But respect for the scientific ideal is incompatible
with the myth, or instinctive, quasi-religious belief, that science is about discovering
final, infallible, absolute or ultimate truth. That myth, if publicly endorsed by
scientists, inadvertently or otherwise, is perilous because it fuels tribal conflicts like
the current `science wars' and increases public confusion about science. This in turn
helps the psychological, social, and economic forces , including the forces within big
commerce, that work toward discrediting the scientific ideal and ethic for reasons
both conscious and unconscious, restricting our options for coping with an uncertain
and dangerous future. Future possibilities include the risk of substantial sea level
rise, continuing unstoppably for a century or more after first detection. Also possible
| and arguably likely if the scientific ideal is too far discredited | is the destruction of
the system of free market democracy and free trade, the government by consent
and prosperity of individuals on which big commerce itself depends.
Our understanding of the actual and potential human behaviour patterns that might
lead to such destruction is being sharpened by evidence from linguistics,
palaeoclimatology, palaeoanatomy, and genetics, and from research on perception
and cognition. It is remarkable that any such self-understanding is possible for us,
and even more remarkable that any human society allows such matters to be
openly discussed. Both things demonstrate our species' adaptability and the power
of cultural evolution, more precisely the adaptive power of the intimate and intricate
interplay, or dynamic, of what we falsely dichotomize as `nature and nurture', as if
they were two separate things. This adaptive power is one reason why our children
and their descendents might dare, against the odds, to hope for some kind of

civilized future existence incorporating a new covenant between science and

society. `I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last be whole.' Michael
Tippett 128
Respect for science is on trial in today's world. This is not only trial by soundbite but
also, more to the point, trial by our deepest fears and imaginings. 129 130
Paradoxically, it is the same world where science has made it possible for all
children to be wanted children 131 | perhaps the greatest of all blessings | where
the economic running is being made by scientifically minded competitors, and
where scientific skills and knowledge are crucial to meeting the growing threats
from poverty, war, terrorism, environmental change, and new disease epidemics.
132 133 ; ; 1 Like it or not, science and technology are increasingly powerful tools
for good and evil. Human societies, especially those with democratic aspirations,
need some understanding of the tools they use. If today's democracies are to
survive as democracies of any kind they will need to find ways of alleviating the
widespread, profound, and dangerous confusion 134 135 about what science is and
what it is not, and about the value of science to society . That value includes the
human value of the scientific ideal, meaning the ideal in the sense discussed in
Parts I and II of this series 136 | a value now largely neglected and perhaps even
largely unrecognized by today's societies, as expressed officially by trends in
science policymaking and auditing. I shall argue that this puts us in far greater peril
than is commonly believed. There is plenty of lip service to the ideal, but society's
actual incentives are increasingly stacked against it.
The rest of this book will try to sketch what seems to be involved. Alongside well
known themes there are some new twists, coming from recent discoveries in
linguistics and palaeoclimatology and from insights into perception and cognition,
plus evidence from palaeoanatomy and genetics. There are increasingly clear
implications not only for science policymaking and auditing but also for education,
and for scientists' professional codes of conduct.
CARD CONTINUES
The value of the scientific ideal
But what is it, then, this value to society, this human value, of the scientific ideal?
Con- trary to popular mythology, it is not only the value of cheap long-distance
communication, painless dentistry, heart pacemakers, and the like. It is not only the
value of the invisible science base , the unmeasurable infrastructure of tacit skills
and mental flexibility 152 re- quired to reach and make use of tomorrow's new
knowledge, new understanding, and new technologies, a prerequisite to future
developments of practical and economic value | such as the maintenance or
improvement of food safety, the mitigation or prevention of the new disease
epidemics, the humane avoidance of overpopulation and environmental stress, the
development of robustness, security, maintainability, reliability, and auditability of
com- puter software and electronic transaction systems, 153 154 the efficient and
sustainable use of energy and other resources, 155 156 the containment of
terrorism, 157 the early detection of environmental change whether natural or
[human]manmade | the value of good science and technology as our eyes and ears
on an uncertain future, without which our heads, and our leaders' heads, will be

firmly buried in the sand, at great future cost. 131 132 158 Nor indeed is it only the
invisible and unmeasurable cultural value, the value of the intellectual thrill and
astonishment of great discoveries and great leaps of the imagination, and the
spiritual value of something that transcends the individual : ; ; ; ; Then felt I like
some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ... | John Keats 159
Of course, it is all of these. But it is also something still less visible and still less
measurable, though still more crucial and still more valuable, in a hard economic
sense, increasingly forgotten in the obsession with short-term wealth creation. It is
the value, beyond price, of respect for the scientific ideal, if such respect can be
maintained, as a moderating or countervailing force, or if you will an insurance,
against renewed cycles of social chaos and totalitarian repression in a world full of
modern weapons, biological, physical, chemical, psychological, informationtechnological, and economic 155 | an insurance against what today's politicians
might call wealth destruction on a gigantic scale, a scale incalculably greater than
the recent wealth destruction by food safety scares, itself caused in large measure
by disrespect for the scientific ideal. 139 270
This is one of the points missed by those who see wealth creation as the sole
justification of science. I am talking about an insurance against wealth destruction
on the scale of gross national products, an insurance against the breakdown of
democracy itself, of government by consent, of free trade and personal prosperity |
the breakdown of the increasingly fragile economic, technological, and
psychological infrastructures of modern human societies | an insurance whose
premiums are dwarfed by the cost of the disasters insured against. It is a long term
insurance whose value might command significant public understanding, if
explained well enough. It has not, I think, been explained nearly well enough in
recent years, because its value, though long recognized by careful thinkers, 160
now seems to be forgotten not only in popular mythology but also, I shall argue, in
today's official science policymaking, much of which powerfully discourages the
scientific ideal. This forgetfulness seems to be connected in part with the workings
of the short sighted, not to say blind, international market forces that seem to
dominate our situation today, and to which I shall also refer, the very forces whose
enormous strength makes us forget that they too are vulnerable | that the markets
themselves depend for their wealth creating potential on the avoidance of social
chaos and totalitarian repression.
But how can respect for the scientific ideal be socially stabilizing, rather than
destabilizing as some would now have us believe? As long recognized by careful
thinkers, something very fundamental is involved, something both visible and
invisible. It is something about our own human nature that we seem close to
understanding quite well, and that in any case we need to understand as well as
possible. It is a matter of ubiquitous psycho- logical realities, of our unalterable
genetic inheritance, 161 162 part of what our politicians both underestimate 163
and perilously exploit. Respect for the scientific ideal cannot solve all our problems,
but it can help with `clearing space to speak of the unspeakable ', 164 with tipping
the balance | as has already happened so remarkably in recent centuries | toward
understanding, moderating, and redirecting some of the most terrible and potent
forces that lead to social instability.

These forces manifest themselves most plainly, as everyone knows, in the

phenomena called bigotry and superstition, sectarianism and racism, scapegoating
and witch hunting, 165 kamikaze terrorism and other forms of human sacrifice, 166
and genocidal warfare. They are forces whose crosscultural presence and whose
potential for social catastrophe have been amply and repeatedly demonstrated
throughout history, as well as in recent living memory. I shall hypothesize that they
involve what is usually called `instinctive' behaviour, 167 in- cluding unconscious
cultural influence | more aptly nature{nurture or genetic{memetic 168 interactions,
the intricate, inextricable interplay of genome and culture 161 167 171 | and I
assume that these forces are latent in everyone and could easily be powerful
enough to destroy democracies and free market economies of the type now
familiar, which, through- out human existence, have not, after all, been among the
usual types of human society, 172 especially under environmental stress.
These forces are protean: they are taking new forms and we must not think that
under- standing them is trivial. But I shall argue, too, that our species' astonishing
adaptability leaves room for an optimism that is not naive. As has happened before,
new understanding can take us on new journeys, in directions previously undreamt
of.
CARD CONTINUES
Respect for the success of standard quantum mechanics compels us to say that in
some sense, which no one fully understands | a point on which experts agree | it is a
superbly good model. It is an astonishingly accurate and reliable model, of certain
aspects of the outside world in an impressive range of circumstances. Among many
examples, one of the simplest yet most striking, especially when regarded as
evidence for a vast domain of applicability, is the so called blackbody radiation law,
the curve plotted in Fig. 3, and, by implication, its quantum mechanical basis. The
radiation law is described by a very simple equation. Yet it closely fits not only the
relevant laboratory data but also very precise observations of what is called the
cosmic background microwave radiation, consistent with cosmological models in
which the radiation fills the whole universe and originated, in a thermodynamically
reasonable way, at an early stage of the cosmic `big bang'. 224 Ref. 223 ; 19gives
the technical details concerning observational accuracy; note, however, that in Fig.
3 not only the observational points, but also their statistical error bars, are invisible |
hidden well inside the thin curve. This is an example of the goodness of fit ignored
by the cultural relativist and social constructivist philosophies of science.
Standard quantum mechanics correctly predicts, furthermore, phenomena so
strongly counterintuitive that their repeated experimental confirmation is one of the
greatest wonders of the world. The fact that computers work, most of the time, is
wonder enough; and there are phenomena still more conspicuously strange, going
under names like entanglement, nonlocality, quantum teleportation, or
Einstein{Podolsky{Rosen{Bohm phenomena, now confirmed by many careful
experiments. 149 212 216 310

CT 2 Topicality
CONTENTION II THE TOPIC
UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASE
ITS NON-MILITARY DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARTH'S OCEANS.
THE

SUBPOINT A. UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Akrivoulis 02
[Dimitrios Efthymiou Akrivoulis PhD International Relations, University of Kent @ Canterbury, Thesis for
PhD: The Quantum Politics Metaphor in International Relations: Revising American NewtonianismJuly
2002]
As we have seen in our general introduction to the present thesis, the literature of International Relations
has rather recently and in various ways criticised the Newtonian character of particular spatiotemporal
appreciations mostly associated with the state, the notion of sovereignty, and state agency. Much of the
respective questioning is related to a more general critique of the traditional variations ( idealism/realism)
of IR theorising. There are at least four recurrent themes in such criticisms. First, they usually suggest
that both of these theories have fallen in what Agnew has called the territorial trap, meaning an
ahistorical reification of states as fixed units of sovereign space; a dichotomising of domestic and foreign
or inside and outside which obscures cross-border processes; and a view of the state as the preexisting
container of society.458 Second, and as a corollary, that they have reduced our imaginative excavations
of future political possibilities into two-choice logical games, ranging between the eternalisation and the
extinction of the state.
Third, that they have unproblematically coincided society with national society, drawing, fourth, a
demarcation line separating what is inside from what is outside the state, thus delineating what is
considered to be the division of labour between Political Theory and International Relations. The result of
all this is that our political conceptualisations are still framed by what Walker, following Schuhl and Milic,
has called the Gulliver fallacy, meaning the continuous replication or projection of what we think is valid
about state agency to any other form of authority or organisational form by virtue of an absolute and
homogenous conceptualisation of space.
Indeed, criticising either political realism or idealism on the ground of their Newtonian spatiotemporal
appreciations might be important in its own right. Nevertheless, the approach opted for here does not aim
at building upon the arguments made so far against the traditional way of theorising about international
politics. What I find especially intriguing in such arguments and perhaps needs to be further explored
concerns, first, their shared claim that we are still restrained by a limited political imagination in our
conceptualising political spatiotemporality and, second, the often asserted relationship between this
limited imagination and Newtonian spatiotemporality. To claim that our traditional ways of conceptualising
the qualities and traits of the state, for example, are framed by a Newtonian conceptualisation of political
space and time implies that a limited political imagination is at work. In other words, it means that we are
still framed by a spatiotemporal imaginary that ideologically prescribes where we are supposed to locate
political life. In still other words, Newtonian spatiotemporality is appreciated as an ideological tropology,
and in that sense it is approached as providing the legitimate imaginative variations for conceptualising
the political spatiotemporality of international politics. The issue becomes even more interesting once we
consider that the spatiotemporal conceptualisations under question always entail a particular way of
imagining not only the space and time of international politics, but also how change and action takes
place in this spatiotemporality.
In that sense, what is of importance is neither identifying such spatiotemporal conceptualisations with
Newtons theories, nor tracing a straight, uninterrupted line of intellectual thought, through which Newtons
theories survived in time and were finally reflected in international politics. The crucial questions here

concern, instead, the ideological import of the Newtonian imaginary, as defined and discussed in a more
general context in Chapter III, on the imaginative schematisation of political spatiotemporality: How
exactly are the space and time of international politics conceptualised through this imaginative
schematisation? Does our political imagination still correspond to this Newtonian imaginary of political
spatiotemporality?
In the Newtonian imaginary of political spatiotemporality the space and time of international politics are
conceptualised as absolute and homogeneous, a passive and mutually exclusive arena, where human
beings, societies or states imagined as discrete, mutually exclusive entities with distinct properties act and
interact with conformity according to fixed laws against a fixed geographical, cultural and temporal
background, like physical objects interacting through force-fields . 459
Through the employment of Newtonian metaphoricity political action is visualised as taking place within
the regulating confines of a closed, mechanical and stable system, and thus imbuing political life with a
lingering sense of primordiality and physical composition, an aura of objectivity, inevitability, and
reification.460 In these spatiotemporal confines, any change and (inter-)action could not only be perfectly
measured and readily identified, but also predicted, regulated and controlled .461
More specifically, space is imagined as absolute, real and objective, existing independently of and prior to
the agents interactions, being either human beings, societies or states. It is also imagined as immovable,
implying that although the agents spatial relations may vary, it is conceptually impossible for the relations
among parts of space to vary, remaining always similar, dynamically inert. Thus, both political space and
political interaction are conceptualised as existing independently from each other. Even more
interestingly, the imaginative schematisation of political space as homogeneous and infinitely divisible
implies that, as two points in physical space separated by a spatial interval are always external one to the
other, political space is similarly demarcated, defining separate areas of political authority and interaction.
In this imaginary, time is also imagined as linear, homogeneous, spatialised, floating independently from
sociopolitical interaction, and measurable as a kind of one-dimensional continuous space .462 Political
events are thus identified as unique instances in time measured and remembered through its
embodiments in orreries, clocks, or calendars. Given the role of time in sociopolitical organisation,
constituting the standardised principle for co-ordination, regulation and control, it is perhaps not difficult to
appreciate the impact of such an understanding of time on the appreciation of sociopolitical order, stability
and change.
A good example of how such a Newtonian spatiotemporal metaphoricity has indoctrinated the imaginative
conceptualisation of the space and time of international politics is the balance-of-power metaphor,
discussed in Chapter IV. There we saw how the metaphor was employed in a Newtonian manner not only
to describe state interaction and the distribution of power in the international system, but also to provide a
closed, systemic model for obtaining stability. In the evoked imagery, state-interaction is depicted as
planetary movement in absolute space and time, regulated by gravitational forces rendering states
mutually exclusive to each other. Yet, one may suggest, the conceptualisation of international politics in
such terms is admittedly outmoded and hence any attempt to criticise contemporary political imagination
on these grounds is nothing but an oversimplification of more recent conceptualisations of state
interaction. This may be the case, but such imaginative schematisations of space, time and political
interaction are not only reflected, but actually rooted in the rather truistic asseveration that political life is
primarily located within the state as the dominant agent of international politics, as institution, container of
all cultural meaning and site of sovereign jurisdiction over territory, property and abstract space, and
consequently over history, possibility and abstract time463.
Disciplined by the Newtonian orthodoxies of perspective space and neutralised time, contemporary
political imagination still depicts states as distinct entities separated by hardened borders, inviolate
territorial spaces and defensible centres ... all dedicated to maintaining territorial control over sovereign
spaces.464 The Newtonian imaginary of political spatiotemporality as an absolute and homogeneous
container of political identification and interaction has been central to the conceptualisation of the state as
the nation-state. On the one hand, this conceptualisation has been ratified by the spatialisation of time

and its treatment as homogeneous and empty affecting the formation of collective, national memories,
histories and traditions. 465 On the other hand, it has been secured by the homogenisation,
fragmentation, and partitioning of space. In the Newtonian imaginary, state borders are not mere lines
drawn on maps, facilitating the visualisation of its spatial delimitation, but boundaries of self-realisation,
demarcating outside from inside, domestic from foreign, belonging from not belonging, us from them.
These borders are thus imagined as the easily-definable demarcations of political identification, leading to
the modern proliferation of spatially delineated identities.
With political space defined through a single fixed viewpoint, as if it were depicted in one of
Brunelleschis or Raphaels paintings, state sovereignty is similarly imagined as the mere doctrinal
counterpart of the application of single-point perspectival forms to the spatial organisation of politics ...
[between] territorially defined, territorially fixed, and mutually exclusive state formations.466 Also seen
through this single viewpoint, time is not understood as locally defined, but instead as universal,
producing regular, repetitive, and predictable events; it is the time of history and progress. This always
neutral and homogeneous time becomes the common denominator of almost every representational effort
from art to politics, the temporal medium in which all issues are contained and rationalised. It seems,
then, that our political imaginary of political spatiotemporality is still rooted especially in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century ontological traditions467 that correspond to the Newtonian appreciations of absolute
and homogeneous space and time, where clear, distinct, absolute border lines, and territorially defined,
fixed, and mutually exclusive enclaves of legitimate dominion468 demarcate the exercise of political
power and delimit the various levels where political action takes place.
It has been widely suggested that with the end of the Cold War, the accelerating flows and complex
networks of intense political relationality characteristic of the New World Order could not be contained by
such spatiotemporal schematisations, calling for a reappreciation of political spatiotemporality. According
to Luke, for example, whereas Cold-War international politics has been conceptualised as fixed in stable
spaces and predictable times, and then mirrored in categories of comparable fixity and stability, the
centres of the post Cold-War New World Order are uncertain, its borders are indeterminate, its orders
are tangled as blocs melt into flows, crumble into disarray, or tumble into holes.469 In a similar manner,
Jameson proposes the charting of new cognitive maps, which must nevertheless not return to some
older kind of machinery, some older and more transparent national space. 470 The claim that
contemporary transformations, perplexities and complexities are hard to grasp through our outdated
schematisations is frequently made. We are still unable to understand the paradoxical effects of
contemporary globalisation, interestingly addressed by Robertson as glocalisation,471 that has led to the
creation of new universals and new particulars as diversity, heterogeneity, instability, and
heteromorphism emerge from sharing access to the same flows of symbols, capital, images,
technologies, skills, and commodities.472
Pondering on such claims brings forth two relevant sets of questions. The first concerns the reasons of
this much-acclaimed inability to grasp fundamental discontinuity and change in international politics. We
keep asking questions like: Is it because our descriptive tools have missed the changing fashion ? Is it
because our Newtonian metaphors of political spatiotemporality do not suffice to describe and contain the
contemporary transformations and accelerating mutations of political practice? Is it because we lack, as
Ruggie has suggested, an adequate vocabulary 473 or, according to Harvey, the appropriate
perceptual equipment?474 Need we not then develop a new metaphorics that could more adequately
describe and contain the paradoxes and transformations mentioned above? No matter how imperative
such questioning might seem, it could prove problematic to the extent that it implies the existence of an
autonomous realm of political reality, the meaning of which remains uninfluenced by the ways we think
and talk about it. This questioning is also misleading as what could be missed or undervalued is that this
alternative thinking and talking always already presupposes an alternative way of imagining international
politics. Once we fully recognise this, perhaps we are not far from appreciating that the political
significance of developing an alternative vocabulary, of employing a new spatiotemporal metaphoricity, is
not to be determined by its representational sufficiency or adequacy, but by its imaginative capacity to
disclose new political possibilities.

The second set of questions stems from the relationship often drawn between the conceptualisation of the
state and the imaginative schematisation of political spatiotemporality in Newtonian terms. This
questioning concerns the role and place of the state in an alternative imaginary of political
spatiotemporality: How could we conceptualise the accelerating transformations of the post-Cold War era,
when our political imagination is still framed by the Newtonian, fixed, stable and predictable
spatiotemporal delimitations associated with the state? The same question is sometimes posed in even
more dramatic terms: How can we still meaningfully talk about international politics as inter-state politics,
now that the once easily and clearly determinable lines demarcating the exercise of legitimate political
authority by the state are more uncertain than ever? One could pose here a series of relevant, more or
less dramatic, questions that would revolve, to a greater or a lesser extent, around the gradual
attenuation or even demise of the state. One could then assume that questioning the Newtonian
imaginary of political spatiotemporality necessarily involves the withering away of the state from our
imaginative depictions. The conclusion seems inescapable that reimagining political spatiotemporality in
other-than-absolute and -homogeneous terms involves an imaginary depiction of international politics
characterised by the absence of states. It is this rather agonistic conclusion that renders the questioning
even more misleading, for as Walker has pointed out:
[w]hat is at stake in the interpretation of contemporary transformations is not the eternal presence or
imminent absence of states. It is the degree to which the modernist resolution of space-time relations
expressed by the principle of state sovereignty offers a plausible account of contemporary political
practices, including the practices of states.475

SUBPOINT B EXPLORATION
Logsdon 09
(John, professor of political science at George Washington, former director of the Space Policy Institute
Fifty Years of Human Spaceflight Why Is There Still a Controversy?,
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100025875_2010028362.pdf)
Exploration as a Compelling Rationale Many believe that the only sustainable rationale for a governmentfunded program of human spaceflight is to take the lead in exploring the solar system beyond low Earth
orbit.20 The MIT white paper provides an insightful definition of exploration: Exploration is a human
activity, undertaken by certain cultures at certain times for particular reasons. It has components of
national interest, scientific research, and technical innovation, but is defined by none of them. We define
exploration as an expansion of the realm of human experience, bringing people into new places,
situations, and environments, expanding and redefining what it means to be human. What is the role of
Earth in human life? Is human life fundamentally tied to the earth, or could it survive without the planet?
Human presence, and its attendant risk, turns a spaceflight into a story that is compelling to large
numbers of people. Exploration also has a moral dimension because it is in effect a cultural conversation
on the nature and meaning of human life. Exploration by this definition can only be accomplished by direct
human presence and may be deemed worthy of the risk of human life.21 In the wake of the 2003
Columbia accident that took the lives of seven astronauts and the report of the Columbia Accident
Investigation Board that criticized the absence of a compelling mission for human spaceflight as a failure
of national leadership,22 the United States, in January 2004, adopted a new policy to guide its human
spaceflight activities. The policy directed NASA to implement a sustained and affordable human and
robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond and to extend human presence across the solar
system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration
of Mars and other destinations.23 This policy seems totally consistent with the definition of exploration
provided in the MIT white paper. The issue is whether such a policy and its implementation, focusing on
human exploration beyond Earth orbit, can provide an adequate and sustainable justification for a
continuing program of government-sponsored spaceflight that will make contributions that will outweigh
the costs and risks involved to the primary objectives of national pride and prestige, and also to some of
the several secondary objectives.

SUBPOINT C: DEVELOPMENT
Sumner & Tribe 08
[Andrew Sumner, co-director of the Kings International Development Institute at Kings College London;
MSc, PhD, London SB University; Michael A Tribe Search Research Fellow, Badford Centre for
International Development, University of Bradford Chapter 1: What is Development? in International
Development Studies: Theories and Methods in Research and Practice]
Development is a concept which is contested both theoretically and politically, and is inherently both
complex and ambiguous ... ... Recently [it] has taken on the limited meaning of the practice of
development agencies, especially in aiming at reducing pov- erty and the Millennium Development Goals.
(Thomas, 2004: 1, 2)
The vision of the liberation of people and peoples, which animated development practice in the 1950s and
1960s has thus been replaced by a vision of the liberaliza- tion of economies. The goal of structural
transformation has been replaced with the goal of spatial integration.... ... The dynamics of long-term
transformations of econ- omies and societies [has] slipped from view and attention was placed on shortterm growth and re-establishing fi nancial balances. The shift to ahistorical performance assessment can
be interpreted as a form of the post-modernization of development policy analysis. (Gore, 2000: 7945)
Post-modern approaches... see [poverty and development] as socially constructed and embedded within
certain economic epistemes which value some assets over others. By revealing the situatedness of such
interpretations of economy and pov- erty, post-modern approaches look for alternative value systems so
that the poor are not stigmatized and their spiritual and cultural assets are recognized. (Hickey and
Mohan, 2003: 38)
One of the confusions, common through development literature is between devel- opment as immanent
and unintentional process... ... and development as an inten- tional activity. (Cowen and Shenton, 1998:
50)
If development means good change, questions arise about what is good and what sort of change
matters... Any development agenda is value-laden... ... not to consider good things to do is a tacit
surrender to... fatalism. Perhaps the right course is for each of us to refl ect, articulate and share our own
ideas... accepting them as provisional and fallible. (Chambers, 2004: iii, 12)
Since [development] depend[s] on values and on alternative conceptions of the good life, there is no
uniform or unique answer. (Kanbur, 2006: 5)
1.1. Introduction
What is the focus of Development Studies (DS)? 1 What exactly are we interested in? In this fi rst
chapter we discuss perhaps the fundamental question for DS: namely what is development? Following
Bevans approach (2006: 712), which has been outlined in our Introduction, this is the fi rst knowledge
foundation or the focus or domain of study.
In this introduction we discuss the opening quotations to this chapter in order to set the scene. The
writers who have been cited are, of course, not unique in address- ing the meaning of development, but
the selections have been made in order to introduce the reader to the wide range of perspectives which
exists.
It would be an understatement to say that the definition of development has been controversial and
unstable over time. As Thomas (2004: 1) argues, development is contested, ... complex, and ambiguous.
Gore (2000: 7945) notes that in the 1950s and 1960s a vision of the liberation of people and peoples
dominated, based on structural transformation. This perception has tended to slip from view for many
contributors to the development literature. A second perspective is the defi nition embraced by
international development donor agencies that Thomas notes. This is a defi nition of development which

is directly related to the achievement of poverty reduction and of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs).
There is a third perspective from a group of writers that Hickey and Mohan (2003: 38) broadly identify as
post-modernists. 2 The post-modern position is that development is a discourse (a set of ideas) that
actually shapes and frames reality and power relations. It does this because the discourse values
certain things over others. For example, those who do not have economic assets are viewed as inferior
from a materialistic viewpoint. In terms of real development there might be a new discourse based on
alternative value systems which place a much higher value on spiritual or cultural assets, and within
which those without significant economic assets would be regarded as having signifi cant wealth.
There is, not surprisingly, considerable confusion over the wide range of divergent conceptualizations, as
Cowen and Shenton (1998: 50) argue. They differentiate between immanent (unintentional or underlying
processes of) development such as the development of capitalism, and imminent (intentional or willed)
development such as the deliberate process to develop the Third World which began after World War II
as much of it emerged from colonization.
A common theme within most defi nitions is that development encompasses change in a variety of
aspects of the human condition. Indeed, one of the simplest defi nitions of development is probably
Chambers (2004: iii, 23) notion of good change, although this raises all sorts of questions about what is
good and what sort of change matters (as Chambers acknowledges), about the role of values, and
whether bad change is also viewed as a form of development.
Although the theme of change may be overriding, what constitutes good change is bound to be
contested as Kanbur (2006: 5) states, because there is no uniform or unique answer. Views that may be
prevalent in one part of the development com- munity are not necessarily shared by other parts of that
community, or in society more widely.

SUBPOINT D. OCEANS
Steinberg 13
[Philip E. Steinberg Professor of Geography at Florida State University and Marie Cure International
Incoming Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in
maritime regions, Atlantic Studies, 10:2, 156-169 29 April 2013]
Rethinking the ocean
On a childs world map (and even on many of those consulted by adults), the ocean appears as blue, flat,
and unchanging: stable in both space and time. More sophisticated maps present the topography of the
ocean floor and may even show changes in hue to represent the different depths of regional seas. Still,
however, the overall aesthetic is one borrowed from representations of land: The ocean is fundamentally
presented as a series of latitude-longitude points that can be characterized by certain constant values
across key variables, with the most salient being the categorical divide between land that is covered by
water and land that is not covered by water. This representation serves modernity well, as it reproduces
the idea that the world consists of, on the one hand, static terrestrial points on the inside that may be
settled, developed, and grouped into states and, on the other hand, aqueous points on the outside that,
due to the absence of properties that160 P.E. Steinberg enable settlement and territorialization, may be
written off as beyond society. 27 However, this representation fails to communicate the complexity of the
ocean as a mobile space whose very essence is constituted by its fluidity and that thereby is central to the
flows of modern society. 28 Of course, land is also, in a geological sense, mobile. Doreen Massey points
this out as she uses the geological mobility of land to undermine modernist notions of place as static and
amenable to development along a single trajectory. 29 However, I would assert that the mobility of water
is qualitatively different because its fluidity is inevitably experienced by anyone who actually encounters
its physicality (as opposed to observing its representation on a map). It is readily apparent to the
untrained observer that water is constituted by moving molecules and by forces that push these
molecules through space and time. By contrast, the invisibility of plate tectonic movement endows
terrestrial space with an aura of stability that is expressed in an idealization of place that transcends the

vicissitudes of time and movement; indeed, it is the power of this image on land that prompts Massey to
destabilize place by turning to the hidden mobilities of plate tectonics.
To develop ways for understanding the ocean as a uniquely mobile and dynamic space, as well as one
with depth, it is useful to turn to the tools of oceanography, a discipline rarely engaged by humanitiesoriented scholars (or, for that matter, social scientists) who adopt a regional seas perspective. In
particular, I turn here to the distinction that oceanographers make between Eulerian and Lagrangian
modeling techniques. 30 Oceanographers who work from a Eulerian perspective measure and model fluid
dynamics by recording the forces that act on stable buoys. Eulerian researchers compare the presence
and characteristics of these forces at different points in an effort to identify general patterns across space
and time. Eulerian research remains dominant in oceanography, perhaps because it mimics the terrestrial
spatial ontology wherein points are fixed in space and mobile forces are external to and act on those
points, or perhaps because the alternative is both costlier and mathematically more complex. 31 From the
Eulerian perspective, as in the modernist ontology that tends to inform our understanding of regions
(whether they are defined by a central continent or by a central ocean), matter exists logically prior to
movement. The fixed points of geography, represented in the world of Eulerian oceanography by buoys,
would persist even in the absence of the forces of movement that cross the space between and beyond
these points. Likewise, from this perspective, London and New York would exist as points on a map and,
if they were settled, they would have social dynamics and institutions, even if they did not have centuries
of linkages as nodes in a trans-Atlantic economy.
The alternative is to adopt a Langrangian perspective wherein movement , instead of being subsequent to
geography, is geography. Oceanographers working from this perspective trace the paths of floaters that
travel in three-dimensional space, with each floater representing a particle, the fundamental unit in
Lagrangian fluid dynamics. Movement is defined by the displacement across space of material
characteristics within mobile packages, not abstract forces, and these characteristics are known only
through their mobility. 32 In other words, objects come into being as they move (or unfold) through space
and time. Conversely, space ceases to be a stable background but a part of the unfolding. The world is
constituted by mobility without reference to any stable grid of places or coordinates. From this
perspective, movement is the foundation of geography. 33 To return to the previous example,Atlantic
Studies 161 London and New York exist as they are only in their continual reconstruction through flows of
connectivitity. These connections (and the space central to these connections the ocean) can be seen
only as constitutive parts/processes of the cities, not as manifestations of their external functions.
Although not specifically referencing oceanographic research, Manuel DeLanda elaborates on the
conceptual links between, on the one hand, Deleuzian philosophy and, on the other hand, the
Riemannian differential geometry that forms the mathematical basis for Lagrangian fluid dynamics. 34 In
both cases, there is an absence of a supplementary (higher) dimension imposing an extrinsic
coordinatiza- tion, and hence, an extrinsically defined unity. 35 Space, from this perspective, is less a
thing or a stationary framework than a medium that is constantly being made by its dynamic, constitutive
elements.
My point in introducing this strand of fluid dynamics is not to suggest that the world of ocean-basin
regions can be modeled in Lagrangian fashion. Rather, I discuss it to suggest an alternate route for
developing decentered ontologies of connection. This is, after all, the explicit goal of the poststructuralist
cultural studies wing of ocean region studies and it is even implicit among political economists who seek
to denaturalize the assumed primacy of the (re)production-oriented terrestrial region (e.g. the territorial
nation-state). However, as I noted in the previous section, all too often this agenda is pursued by scholars
who reduce to a metaphor the ocean that lies at the center of the ocean region or, worse yet, who simply
ignore it.
Following, but also going beyond, Blums provocation, I propose that, as part of the process of
incorporating actual, lived experiences of the ocean into the studies of maritime regions, we need also to
bring the ocean itself into the picture, not just as an experienced space but as a dynamic field that
through its movement, through our encounters with its movement, and through our efforts to interpret its
movement produces difference even as it unifies. A Lagrangian-inspired ontology may well provide a
means for doing this.

SUBPOINT E: THE BALLOT

Akrivoulis 02

[Dimitrios Efthymiou Akrivoulis PhD International Relations, University of Kent @ Canterbury, Thesis for
PhD: The Quantum Politics Metaphor in International Relations: Revising American NewtonianismJuly
2002]
Conclusion
The present chapter discussed how political spatiotemporality could be reconceptualised
through the employment of quantum metaphors. To the extent that this alternative
imaginary would aim at destabilising our given imaginative schematisations of the space
and time of international politics, the explication of its noematic content already
presupposes the claim that we still conceptualise political spatiotemporality in Newtonian
terms, meaning that our conceptualisations are still framed by the ideological contours of a
Newtonian imaginary. In other words, questioning the Newtonian premises of these
spatiotemporal conceptualisations connotes the critique of a limited political imagination
and the urge to imagine the space and time of international politics in other ways. In that
sense, instead of directly relating our spatiotemporal conceptualisations with Newtons own
theories, or tracing how these theories survived in time in political theorising, it is more
meaningful to examine whether our political imagination still corresponds to the Newtonian
imaginary of political spatiotemporality, as described in the first section.
There it was further suggested that the Newtonian imaginative schematisations of space,
time and political interaction are both reflected and rooted in our imaginative tendency to
locate political life within the state, understood as the homogeneous container of legitimate
authority, cultural meaning, political interaction and self-realisation, demarcated by easily
defined and readily drawn lines. The crucial question here is whether it is still possible and
meaningful to imagine international politics as taking place in absolute and homogeneous
space and time, between territorially defined and mutually exclusive state-agents. It has
been often claimed that, especially after the end of the Cold War, we are experiencing an
era of intense perplexities and accelerating transformations that are hard to contain in our
Newtonian spatiotemporal conceptualisations. Such claims thus bring forth the necessity of
developing an alternative tropology that could more accurately describe and contain these
perplexities and transformations. Pointing out the problematic and misleading character of
such a way of thinking, it was suggested instead that the political significance of an
alternative metaphorical language would stem not from its alleged representational
sufficiency or adequacy, but from its metaphorical capacity, as an aspect of imagination, to
disclose new political possibilities.
This brings forth another question relating to the role and place of the state in our
reimagining of political spatiotemporality. Contrary to those who assert that such a
reimagination necessarily presupposes a certain withering away or total absence of the state
from our imaginative depictions, it was suggested that what is at stake in our spatiotemporal
reimagining is how we could successfully meet two core challenges. The first concerns our
persistence in delineating political spatiotemporality in Newtonian terms, that is, our
tendency to locate political authority, identity and action only within clear and definable
demarcating lines. Even more fundamentally it concerns our tendency to identify all
authority, identity and action as political only when thus demarcated. The second challenge
concerns our problematic projection of this imaginative schematisation onto alternative sites
of identification, forms of agency and networks of interaction. Both of these challenges were
thus further pondered upon, while explicating the specific noematic content of the quantum
imaginary of political spatiotemporality in the second section.
In this last section the central aim has been to discuss how the space and time of
international politics could be imaginatively reconceptualised through the employment of
quantum metaphoricity. We started with the assertion that the noematic content as well as
the social efficacity of the evoked quantum imaginary would depend less on what quantum
theories make of space and time than on how their spatiotemporal insights are publicly
understood and socioculturally absorbed in their dissemination and popularisation . After
presenting some aspects of this public understanding especially with respect to the so-called
Many Worlds quantum theory, we portrayed the quantum imaginary of political

spatiotemporality as one characterised by instantaneous change, dynamic interactions, and

multifaceted political identification that could not be clearly and readily demarcated in
absolute and homogeneous space and time, but instead in a multiplicity of constantly
emerging, simultaneously coexisting, communicating and interrelating, yet distinct, political
spatiotemporalities.
To illustrate how this admittedly perplexing and inherently paradoxical imaginary of political
spatiotemporality would affect and relate to issues like those of identity, authority and
action, use was made of examples relating to displaced communities, the European
transformation, and social movements respectively. In particular, we saw how this quantum
imaginary of multiple spatiotemporalities would depict, first, the admittedly complex
processes of self-realisation and political identification experienced by diasporic
communities, border-zone or displaced people; second, the intermingling spaces of authority
and interweaving temporalities, upon which authority is sustained, that characterise the
current europeanising processes; and third, the in-and-through movement of social
movements that both politicise new spaces for political mobilisation and resistance and
act/move in a multiplicity of spatiotemporalities. In all three sets of examples it was
suggested that the quantum imaginary of political spatiotemporality could prove politically
significant to the extent that it could disclose a series of new political possibilities.
We concluded our analysis by pondering on the difficulty involved in ascribing a specific
political content to such an imaginative conceptualisation of international politics. As noted,
this difficulty stems mostly from our almost canonical conviction that political life can be
located only within a distinct and demarcated spatiotemporality; that life can acquire
political meaning only when thus located and demarcated. In my view, it is exactly this
difficulty that points towards the core significance of the quantum imaginary. By imagining
international politics as taking place in spatiotemporal multiplicities, involving multiple
subjectivities, and characterised by lines of extreme connections, interrelations and
networks, in other words, by depicting political life as located in spaces and times that could
not be demarcated by lines of separation, perhaps we could come closer to the
reconceptualisation of what (international) politics is and where it could be located. If Walker
is right to assert that imagining our possible futures involves our ability to reimagine the
character and location of political life, and to constitute appropriate practices through which
this reimagination can occur, 508 the difficulty mentioned above would then concern more
the specific political expressions the quantum imaginary might take and the constitution of
these appropriate practices. What form these expressions might have and how these
practices could be constituted is indeed a solemn question, to which we still have no answer.
But posing the question and realising its significance is a good starting point, and here the
role of the quantum imaginary could prove both timely and pregnant.

CT 3 Artificial Life
CONTENTION THREE IS A-LIFE.
Artificial Life is inevitable, the question is how we'll respond.
Humanism ensures an artificial life-human divide.
de Mul 02
[Jos de Mul professor in Philosophical Anthropology and its History and head of the
section Philosophy of Man and Culture. Moreover, he is the Scientific Director of the
research institute 'Philosophy of Information and Communication Technology'
(ICT). De Mul studied Philosophy in Utrecht and Amsterdam and in 1993 he
obtained his PhD (cum laude) at the University of Nijmegen with a thesis in which
he reconstructed Wilhelm Diltheys Kritik der historischen Vernunft (Critique of
historical Reason). He has joined the Philosophy department of the Erasmus
University Rotterdam since 1988. TRANSHUMANISM The convergence of evolution,
humanism and information technology 2002/05/05] We do not endorse the
gendered or ableist language in this card.
In this framework the development of information technology and the informational
sciences is ofcrucial importance.[29] Sciences based on information technology,
such as artificial physics andartificial life, in contrast to the classic mechanical
sciences, are not so much driven by the question ofwhat reality is, but how it could
be. These 'modal sciences' are no longer primarily directed atimitating nature, but
rather at the creation of new nature.[30] With the aid of a computer simulation
ofevolution, not only can countless alternative evolutions be made into virtual
reality, but - if we wish to- we can realize these alternatives in physical nature with
the aid of genetic engineering.[31]Reciprocally, insights from evolution theory can
also be applied to the development of artificial lifeforms. One of the reasons the
classic AI research failed was because attempts were made to program artificial
intelligence top down. Because the number of possible mutual interactions between
the instructions in a software program increases exponentially as the number of
lines of code increases linearly, the program is quickly confronted with an
unmanageable complexity.[32] For this reason the bottom up approach has gained
popularity in AI and AL research in recent years. In this approach AIand AL programs
are constructed in such a way (by making use of genetic or evolutionary algorithms)
that they can develop themselves further in a process of (un)natural selection.
Moreover this approach, suggests Moravec in his subsequent publications to Mind
Children, has, unlike the download procedure, the advantage that it is not weighed
down by the burden of the evolutionary baggage of the human body.[33]
In the light of the previous evolution of life on earth it is not unthinkable that,
thanks to information technology, this will again result in an explosion of radically
different life forms, based on different basic forms of build (phyla), which together
will form a new kingdom (or perhaps even a variety ofkingdoms) in the taxonomy of
life, beside the existing kingdoms of the Animalia, Plantae and Fungi,Protista (singlecelled organisms with one complex cell) and Monera (simple unicellular organisms).
And if evolutionary history repeats itself, after a short period in which this
multiplicity of various new life forms has occupied all the niches in the natural,

cultural (and especially virtual) world, we can expect another decimation, after
which a small number of them will carry the torch of evolution further.
In the previous section I observed that many of the techniques required for the
realization of the three outlined alternatives (genetic engineering of the human
organism, the construction of cyborgs and the development of artificial life and
artificial intelligence) are already reality - or at least in theprocess of development.
Furthermore, if we take the exponential acceleration of evolution seriously,then
neither can we comfort ourselves with the thought that this will take ages. Even the
failure of artificial intelligence research, with its unrealistic expectations, gives no
reason for complacency. A characteristic of exponential acceleration is that we tend
to overestimate its effects in the short term,while often grossly underestimating its
effects in the somewhat longer term.
Also some of the fundamental criticism from various quarters - here I have in mind
philosophers such as Searle, Dreyfus and Lyotard[34] - which is put forward against
the presuppositions of the transhumanist program, in my opinion gives little reason
to dismiss this program as implausible. An important element of this criticism is
falsely based on the anthropocentric presupposition that[humans] man is [are] the
measure for every form of artificial intelligence and artificial life. If, for example, it is
argued that computers will never be really intelligent, never possess consciousness
or have real experiences, then it is all too easily assumed (completely setting aside
the question as to whether this criticism holdswater) that the form of intelligence
(situated in organic bodies) which has developed in Homo sapienssapiens is the
measure of intelligence berhaupt. This 'carbon chauvinism' is rather shortsighted.
Like birds, aeroplanes can fly, but they do not owe this ability to a literal imitation of
a bird's wings. Neither do artificial life and artificial intelligence need to be a literal
replica of organic life and organic intelligence in order to share its essential
characteristics (such as the ability to reproduce,creativity, and the ability to learn).
Computer viruses, for example, despite the fact that the reproductive material
differs from that of natural viruses, share a number of important characteristicswith
them. Even if artificial life forms, based on silicon, should never reach the level of
(human)consciousness, it is still conceivable that they will be more successful in
evolutionary survival than man.
From the end of the Old Stone Age (Paleolithicum) until the New Stone Age
(Neolithicum) man developed as we now know him (Homo sapiens sapiens). During
this development a form of intelligence came into being which deviated in essential
points from previous forms of organic intelligence and which gave the evolution of
life on earth a new twist. Perhaps we are standing at the threshold of the Newest
Stone Age in which intelligent life on earth will acquire a new form and direction
unrecognizable to man. And who knows whether [humans]man will then share the
fate of the innumerable species left to him as (living)fossils in lifes Odyssey through
time and space.
It scarcely needs to be argued that the transhumanistic project, which is articulated
explicitly and radically in Moravec's work, but in fact (intentionally or not) dictates
an important element of the agenda of the new information sciences, means a
fundamental challenge for humanism . 'Bad' postmodernism proclaims the end
of[human] mankind in a much more literal and radical manner than 'good'

postmodernism has ever done. This is no longer exclusively about criticism of an

anthropocentric way of thinking; the continued existence of humankind itself is at
stake. What must sound ominous to humanists is that this shall occur in the name of
humanistic values such as rationality, autonomy,self-determination and selfrealization. Transhumanism radicalizes the humanist struggle "to raise life to its
highest possible level"[35] into a call for self-transformation of the biological type of
[humans] man.
Transhumanists refer not only to the theory of evolution, in which it is argued that
this process of self-transformation is inherent in life, but also to Nietzsches
philosophy of life.[36] In Nietzsche'sphilosophy, too, self-transformation is regarded
as an essential characteristic of life: "All great things fail at its own instigation,
through a deed of self-elevation:the law of life compels them to this, the law of
necessary 'self-overcoming' is the essence of life".[37] "And life itself has spoken
this secret tome: 'See, so it spoke, I am that which that must always overcome
itself'".[38] Humankind is no exception to this. It is, in Nietzsche's famous words in
Also Sprach Zarathustra, "a rope, fastened between animal and superman - a rope
over an abyss",[39] The transhumanistic project is directed atthe technological
realization of the bermensch or, as the extropist Max More puts it: the
beingexisting in us as potential,waiting to be actualized".[40]
Supposing that life is indeed characterized by self-transformation, then we cannot
take for granted that we must strive for this self-transformation. But as has already
been remarked, the defence of self-transformation is supported by humanistic
ideals: The Enlightenment and the humanist perspective assure us that progress is
possible, that life is a grand adventure, and that reason, science,and good will can
free us from the confines of the past... Aging and death victimizes all humans. To
transhumanists, in the words of Alan Harrington, "death is an imposition on the
human race and no longer acceptable".[41] If we allow - and even acclaim - the fact
that medical science and technology have previously combated deadly diseases
successfully, what objections can we put forward agains tstriving to improve life by
adapting the body and the mind? And what reasons could we advance against
striving to transform humankind into a superior, post-human life form? These
questions seem to me to be literally a matter of life and death at the beginning of
the twenty-first century. All the more so because thanks to evolutionary chance,
which has gifted us with intelligence and imaginationour future, is by no means
fixed, but is partly dependent on the choices that we make.
To be sure - and this is the prudent lesson of 'good' postmodernism that we must
not forget our freedom of choice is limited in many ways. Our fundamental finitude
means that our insight and knowledge are always historically and culturally limited
and we can only choose from a limited number of alternatives, the consequences of
which, moreover, can never be completely calculated. As our culture becomes more
complex and we intervene in nature in a more fundamental way, the number of
unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences of our actions increases strongly.
Partly because of this, our cultural and technological creations achieve their own
equilibrium and dynamic,which means that in the long term we cannot fully control
them. In combination with the late capitalistic market economy, technology even
gives the impression of being an autonomous, unstoppable system. With the

evolutionist bottom up approach to the creation of artificial life and artificial

intelligence, moreover, we appear to be taking a conscious distance to what is given
us to control. But perhaps it is also anthropocentric arrogance to think that we are
able to and have to control this developmen t. Is it not more obvious that at some
point in time our mind children will(must) take over responsibility for their
development? Should we not accept that seen from theperspective of humankind
this development - to quote the title of a book by Kelly - become more and more Out
of Control?[42]
But at the very least there is scope for human intervention - however limited it
might be, and however much more limited it might possibly be in the future.
Certainly when we consider that evolution is a chaotic process which is
characterized by a 'sensitive dependency on the initial situation' in which the most
minute variations at the outset can have enormous consequences for the further
development of the ecological system. Because at the moment we are standing at
the threshold of a development, what little scope we have brings great
responsibility with it.[43] This prompts a fundamental consideration of the question
as to if, and if so, how far and in what way, we should actively promote our own selftransformation.
In answering these questions humanists cannot rely on a number of traditional
strategies, seeing that in the light of the humanistic postulates (see 1) these have
lost their validity. This applies, forexample, to the rejection of the transhumanist
program on the grounds that it would breach the given natural order. Within the
humanist world view, however, this order is not immutable (whether createdby God
or not), but a dynamic process, driven by a multitude of chance factors. Neither can
the artificiality of the intended transhuman and posthuman life be a reason to reject
it. Hominoids, in fact,have always been cyborgs - at least from the moment that
Homo habilis manufactured the first stonetools . Certainly the 'artificial by
nature'[44] Homo sapiens sapiens was from the outset complete and already
dependent on cultural artefacts to compensate for his physical and mental
shortcomings.[45]In this sense the transhumanist program is only an extension of
the course which has characterizedevolution from the very beginning. As has
already been observed, it goes without saying that nonormative arguments can be
employed for the promotion of the transhuman and the posthuman, butneither can
we can employ any normative arguments against it.
A pragmatic argument which at first sight appears to hold more water concerns the
enormous risks involved in genetic engineering and the development of artificial life
and intelligence. For this reason,following the bio-ethicus Hans Jonas, there is an
argument for the 'heuristics of fear'.[46] According to this strategy on the basis of
possible future horrors we should decide to temporarily break off, slowdown or even
stop completely, certain technological developments. In any event, we must
proceed insuch a way that we can at all times rectify the consequences of our
technological interventions.
In the light of what has been said about the fundamental limitations on human
desire to control, it is patently obvious that enormous risks are attached to the
transhumanistic program. The question,however, is whether Jonas' heuristics of fear
is actually a realistic option. The notion that it is possible to oversee and, if desired,

to rectify, all the consequences of our technical interventions appears, in thelight of

unforeseen (and in the case of chaotic complexity fundamentally unforeseeable)
side-effects of informationistic interventions in nature , to be an unrealistic point of
departure, and one which clings, in a negative way, to the modernistic ideal of the
makeability of reality. And the idea that to actually call a halt to technological
developments will lie within the capacity of human beings living in a technotope
would also appear to be somewhat unrealistic. We are not in a position to halt the
Odyssey of life. We should rather direct our efforts towards steering its course .
Furthermore, we might ask ourselves whether the wilful curbing - or halting - of
creativity and a yearning toexperiment would not also rob humanity of its grandeur.
Nietzsche's definition of man [humans] as "the great experimenter with
[themselves]himself"[47] is more than a description, it also expresses esteem.
When we are weighed down by the risks associated with the human yearning to
experiment it might be a comfort to consider that the experiment of evolution in
humankind was exclusively guided by blind chance.
Taking the above considerations into account, the normative question as to whether
we should promote the transhuman and posthuman is, of course, still not answered.
If we wish to answer this question we must first ask ourselves if the presupposition
of the transhumanistic program - that it will promote our happiness - is correct.
Moreover, we should bear in mind that here we are not only speaking of the
happiness of humanity, but equally of that of the transhuman and posthuman
lifeforms we are striving for. Transhumanistic ethics can be no other than a
radicalized Ferne-Ethik(Ethics of distance)which - within the earlier-mentioned
bounds of human responsibility - not onlybears responsibility for future generations
of humankind, but also for life forms created byhumankind. As far as humankind is
concerned we can ask ourselves if suppressing chance and in the most radical
scenario - the mortality of human life in all its aspects is an ideal worth striving for. I
have argued elsewhere that , chance, contingency and fate not only forms a threat
to human happiness but, paradoxically, is also one of the principle sources which
determines this fragile happiness. The elimination of chance conjours up the terrible
image of dystopias such as Aldous Huxley's Brave NewWorld in which under the
motto "Community, Identity, Stability", and with the aid of chemical and
psychological manipulation,[human] man is transformed into a fully interchangeable
'hedonistic machine',who is no longer capable of experiencing real feelings. If this is
the consequence (or even theideal[48]) of the transhumanistic project, then the
result is less the creation of the bermensch asNietzsche (who affirmed chance in
the extreme from the standpoint of his amor fati) had in mind,than that of the
nihilistic 'last [human]man' at which Nietzsche actually directed his criticism.[49]
Would the endless stretching of life's duration towards immortality not lead to a
lapse into an Eternal Recurrenceof the Same , to bottomless boredom? Or is the
terrible image of community, identity and stability the result of an outdated
modernistic illusion that it is possible to completely control befalling chance? Or is it
not the case that an increase in command and control will actually lead to new,
perhaps much more radical, forms of chance, contingency and fate, which will turn
our lives into a much greater and more varied adventure than it already is?[50] If
that should be the case, then the humanistic ideal of self-realization would not be so

badly damaged by the transhumanistic program, but would rather receive an

unprecedented new stimulus.
It would be intellectually over-confident to think that we could formulate conclusive
answers tothese and associated questions.[51] All the more so if we consider that in
judging of the desirablility of transhuman and posthuman life forms it would be
difficult for us to resist the tendency to judge these from an anthropocentric
perspective. But just as the ape cannot form an adequate picture of the human life
form, so it is not given to us to visualize the nature or attractiveness of these new
lifeforms. And that makes our responsibility in the creation of these life forms
extremely perilous.
The most radical and difficult-to-answer question that the transhumanistic program
poses tohumanism is closely related to this. It is the question of what value the
human life form has compared with potential transhuman and posthuman life forms.
Does human life have a unique intrinsic value that justifies it defending itself
against these new life forms? Or must we fall back on the argument that prompts us
to protect the panda and defend human life in the name of bio-diversity?And if we
are faced with the choice will we then apply the same criteria, which leads us to
sacrifice the lives ofanimals for the welfare of humankind? Will the superiority of
transhuman or posthuman life (in the quantity of information it carries or in its
abilities) ever force us to eliminate ourselves? Will our relationship with our mind
children be comparable with that of parents who, driven by a desire that is stronger
than any moral reasoning, sacrifice themselves for their children? Or, if we are
concerned with artificial, other types of children, will this sacrifice surpass our moral
capacities and will we only be able to fall back on the egoism of our own species?
In the coming decades these and related difficult questions will repeatedly startle us
out of the anthropocentric slumber in which we usually exist. In the end all these
questions are variations on the most difficult of the difficult questions posed by the
German writer Max Frisch: "Are you certain that when you and everyone you know
are no longer here, the continued existence of the human race really interests you?"

THIS PREVENTS GOOD A-LIFE AND CAUSES BAD A-LIFE.

Abrams 08
[Jerold J. Associate Prof of Philosophy at Creighton Univ. Embracing the "Children of
Humanity": How to Prevent the Next Cylon War Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy. 2008
Amazon] [ct]
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica boasts stronger roles for women, subtler politics, and
more realistic special effects than the original BSG series. But the most important advance is
the tension between humanity and the new humanoid Cylons, which mirrors our own coming
relationship with a new race of artificial beings known as "posthumans". Posthumans are
artificially enhanced humans - or completely artificial beings - with unlimited life spans and
cognitive powers well beyond ours. When these beings arrive, there's no question new social
problems will emerge; one of the first and biggest being a total communicative breakdown
between humans and posthumans - just as the Cylons went silent for forty years before reengaging humanity. Such a division is avoidable, however, if we begin to look upon
posthumans not as slaves or tools, but as Cylons look at themselves: as the "children of
humanity." We should follow the Cylons, too, in their quest to fuse with humanity, creating

ever new and varied syntheses. In this way, we'll not only avoid dialogical division, but
equally subvert slavery - theirs or ours - and perhaps also war; while, at the same time,
achieving our own distinctly human ends of longer life, higher intelligence, and greater
freedom. Failing to do so will only produce all the problems now faced by Galactica - and
only postpone the inevitable. In the words of President Roslin, posthumanity is "the shape of
things to come."

BAD ALIFE DESTROYS THE UNIVERSE.

Rheingold 92
[Howard "At the beginning of the twentieth century; computational biology" Whole Earth
Review - September 22, pg Cov] [West]
It looks as if something even more powerful than thermonuclear weaponry is emanating
from that same, strangely fated corner of New Mexico where nuclear physicists first knew
sin. Those who follow the progress of artificial-life research know that the effects of messing
with the engines of evolution might lead to forces even more regrettable than the demons
unleashed at Alamogordo. At least nuclear weaponry and biocidal technologies only threaten
life on Earth, and don't threaten to contaminate the rest of the universe. That's the larger
ethical problem of a-life. The technology of self-replicating machines that could emerge in
future decades from today's a-life research might escape from human or even terrestrial
control, infest the solar system, and, given time, break out into the galaxy. If there are other
intelligent species out there, they might not react benevolently to evidence that humans
have dispersed interstellar strip-mining robots that breed, multiply, and evolve. If there are
no other intelligent species in existence, maybe we will end up creating God, or the Devil,
depending on how our minds' children evolve a billion years from now. The entire story of life
on earth thus far might be just the wetware prologue to a longer, larger, drier tale, etched in
silicon rather than carbon, and blasted to the stars -- purposive spores programmed to seek,
grow, evolve, expand. That's what a few people think they are on the verge of inventing.
Scenarios like that make the potential for global thermonuclear war or destruction of the
biosphere look like a relatively local problem. Biocide of a few hundred thousand species
(including ourselves) is one kind of ethical problem; turning something like the Alien loose on
the cosmos is a whole new level of ethical lapse.

GOOD A-LIFE SOLVES ALL SCARCITY BASED IMPACTS

Wang 05
[Sinclair T. Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, Taipei, Taiwan Propel to a
new socioeconomic system in an unlimited-sum world enabled by molecular
nanotechnologyTaiwan Nanotechnology Newsletter; North-South Dialogue on
Nanotechnology: Challenges and Opportunities Expert Group Meeting,
International Centre for Science and High Technology United Nations
Industrial Development Organization 10 12 February 2005] [ct]
[http://www.ics.trieste.it/Documents/Downloads/df2550.pdf]
World socioeconomic system has evolved form zero-sum or negative-sum guardian system
to a system that combined guardian with a positive-sum commercial system. Till recent
Information Technology (IT) revolution, the world has entered into a quasi-unlimited-sum
system. The world has started for the first time in history to adopt a new set of IT
socioeconomic system.
IT is virtual in nature; it cannot create an unlimited-sum situation. It is incapable of
performing unlimited reproduction of actual survival material and energy. The underlying
world socioeconomic system has not been radically changed. Therefore, with the
advancement in all aspects of technology, ironically, the major population of world is still
under poverty, lack the most fundamental survival food, clean water and medical care, and
the world is still at a great peril of war and environmental devastation. Meanwhile, in the

fully industrialized nations, wealth distribution is constantly worsening, pockets of the nation
are living under poverty level and crime rate is uprising.
Nanotechnology at its initial development stage, mostly focuses on structural
nanotechnology, is difficult to visualize its ultimate potential. When molecular
nanotechnology (MNT) has realized self-assembly capability, a world of unlimited-sum could
become possible. It can exceed IT make unlimited reproduction from virtual to real. MNT can
abundantly create food, material and energy, and makes them as free as air. This will offer
human race a historically never experienced opportunity to undergo a paradigm shift to a
totally new socioeconomic system.
CARD CONTINUES
Regardless all technology advancement, human civilizations fundamental survival mode has
not changed since the advent of human. This is the root for all wars and environmental
destructions. Seize this opportunity offered by MNT, foster a quantum jump in human
survival mode and propel humanity into a higher state of being is a major challenge for us.
To have a world organization to parent the transition to a higher socioeconomic mode is a
pressing issue. Via MNT and an evolved socioeconomic system to guarantee the
fundamental survival right of each individual and each species on earth is a goal for us to
strive.