ABSTRACT
Genetics, computer science, neuroscience, and nanotechnology are converging. Increasingly what can be fabricated is limited more by the imagination than technical capability. Many already speak of a singularity – a convergence of organic and inorganic life and physical and biological sciences – in which the capability to intervene in the course of human history will experience a sudden and dramatic shift in scale. Whereas scientific discovery has previously accelerated the pace of politics, economies, warfare, or medicine, synthetic biology enables the ability to intervene in the very conditions of existence, even to radically alter the trajectory of human evolution or to create new sentient beings. In response to this opening I am going to try my hand at what William Connolly calls the political theorist as seer. The task: to read the entrails and portents of scientific, technological – both organic and inorganic – evolution and to look for the ‘pluripotentiality inhabiting … such temporal tiers’ (Connolly, forthcoming: 3). To what end? The concept of critical responsiveness as developed throughout Connolly’s work has been received in strictly human terms, not always either man or woman, but always human (see Connolly, 1993). As such, a certain intelligibility or logic of recognition underwrites the application of Connolly’s deep pluralism and its struggle to acknowledge previously unintelligible parts of newly emergent identities. The one extending presumptive generosity has at least an inkling of where to look or listen for the incipient, but not yet fully public or political demands of those whose minor tradition is not yet audible. Thus, Connolly’s concept of generosity and critical responsiveness has been circumscribed by a certain humanism when placed in the context of other concepts such as the public sphere and democracy. Nevertheless the potential of these concepts has not been exhausted by the humanist frame, and, in the hands of an immanent naturalist, these concepts must be pushed beyond the accepted limits of the species community. The aim of this chapter is not to prove the existence (or inevitability) of
artificial intelligence or of newly emergent post-human forms of life, any more than to declare the end of man or join the chorus of doomsayers who predict
our demise. My aim is to consider the possibilities and limits of a moral order grounded in what we now call the human species. In the first section of the chapter I will lay out some actual and possible trajectories of social beings that have not been welcomed into the species family with open arms, the next considers the concept of the species in the moral theory of Jürgen Habermas and the third section considers critical responsiveness as a strategy for pursuing generosity without the presumptive boundary of a common humanity. This is ethics without a net, with nothing to reassure us that our duty has been done or that our generosity is sufficient. The moral calculation of where our commonality begins and ends is, from this perspective, an alibi for indifference and even cruelty. Fortunately, Connolly is not a theorist of moral actions or duties but of ways of life, ethos, reflective vigilance, and care. I argue that these are the resources we need in a world of material and political becoming. Tumult need not be cause for panic and resentment.
