COMPETENCY PROGRAM IN LOGIC & MORAL PHILOSOPHY – Part 2

Cagayan State University

Office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs

SCIENCE - TECHNOLOGY – SOCIETY – PHILOSOPHY

TOWARDS AN ETHICS OF
TECHNOLOGY:
Re-Exploring Teilhard de Chardin’s Theory of Technology
and Evolution1

ARCHIMEDES CARAG ARTICULO, M.Phil.

Chair, Department of Social Sciences & Philosophy
College of Arts & Sciences
Cagayan State University
chitocsu@gmail.com

Section 1. Introduction

The tremendous power of the 21st century Technology bestows its creator
the capability to intervene significantly on the mechanisms of life, including the
power to wipe the same, on the face of this planet. We, humans, have unlocked
the power of the atom and probed deeply on the secrets of the building blocks of
life, that we are ready, literally, to actively design our own, and other species’,
evolutionary transformations and destinies.

The most prominent of the emerging views on the implications of modern

technology is transhumanism. We might not know it, but in some forms, we
unconsciously hold its basic premises.

Transhumanism is the belief that humans must wrest their biological

destiny from evolution's blind process of random variation and adaptation and
move to the next stage as a species, favoring the use of science and technology,
especially neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, to overcome
human biological limitations. It asserts that we are no longer the passive subject
of natural evolution because we are capable of becoming, and we should
endeavor to become, the masters of our own evolution. Its ultimate goal is
1
This paper is an updated version of the paper which the author has prepared and delivered
during Teilhard Asia 2006 International Conference held at Ateneo de Manila University.

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human immortality through the use of highly advance human technology. And for
good reasons, this horrifies many of us.

Imagine the havoc which a rebellious, irresponsible, violent, and immortal

human could do to his Universe.

The exponential rate of advancement of our science and technology

become alarming and disturbing because it is widely believed that for every new
scientific discovery and for every introduction of new technology, the gulf
between the states of our technological maturity and moral adolescence widens.
And the gulf is widening in a very fast and confusing pace. We are like intolerant,
impulsive, hotheaded, thrill-seeking and immature adolescents who were given
guns and bombs, with ever increasing power, to play with.

Many thoughtful people have concluded that Mankind must be stopped

from its dangerous craving for technological power.

However, is it really the time to exorcise, or to tamper, the demon of

discovery?

Unlike many people during his time who witnessed the horrors of the
unleashing of Atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Teilhard de Chardin,
a Jesuit priest and a scientist, saw something especial in mankind trying to cross
the realm of the gods. Where others saw horrors, Teilhard saw the expression of
human evolution in a brand new dimension: humanity is entering a peculiarly
critical phase of super-humanization, we are evolving into a global mind.

All the chaotic processes of inventions and innovations which never fail to
baffle most of us are transformed into a meaningful whole under the radical
Philosophy of Teilhard: they become the manifestations of an increasingly rapid
growth in the human world of the forces of collectivization, the 'super
arrangement', or the mega-synthesis.

There is, I think, no other age but ours, which urgently needs an ethical
framework, system, or philosophy, that could guide us in our quest for
technological advancements—whether it is always, never, or contextually right or
wrong to invent and implement technological innovations. Here, the Philosophy
of Teilhard de Chardin offers an interesting and refreshing alternative to other
mainstream and pessimistic views on Science and Technology, that, as teachers
of Moral Philosophy, we should endeavor to explore. This paper argues that:

1) The philosophical underpinning of a transhumanist’s “human-

sponsored variant of evolution” (i.e. evolution towards convergence of
biological and nonbiological intelligence) finds support and meaning

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within Teilhard’s theory of evolution (i.e. evolution towards

consciousness).

2) Teilhard’s theory of evolution could well show the absurdity of

transhumanist ultimate ideal of human immortality.

Section 2. Evolution of Consciousness

Teilhard's theory is deceptively simple: it revolves around the idea of an

evolutionary progression towards greater and greater consciousness, until it
reaches an ultimate stage which he called the Omega Point.

In The Phenomenon of Man (recently, retranslated as The Human

Phenomenon), Teilhard provided two equations, which according to him, have
been gradually formulating themselves from the moment he began situating the
phenomenon of man in the world2:

Evolution = Rise of consciousness

Rise of consciousness = Union effected

For Teilhard, Matter and consciousness are the two subjects of evolution.
Matter is the edifice, the cradle of consciousness – and consciousness becomes
more perfected as it finds a richer and better organized material structure.

As such, Teilhard calls matter and consciousness, the "Without” and

"Within” respectively, which are held together by one single, universal energy.3
Evolution is the steady increase in the "Within" through the growing complexity of
“Without”, through a number of successive stages.4 Teilhard follows the
evolutionist understanding of an evolutionary progression from inanimate matter

2
Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon of Man. 1975. Harper & Row, publish. New York. p. 243.
3
Speaking about this universal energy operating in the world, Teilhard said that it is psychic in
nature – however, in each particular element it is divided into two distinct component: a
tangential energy which links the element with all others of the same order, and a radial
energy which draws it towards ever greater complexity and centricity - in other words, forwards.
In Chapter 3 of Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard equates ' psychic energy ' with 'radial' energy
which operates beneath and within the mechanical or 'tangential' energy. The boiling and the
eventual bursting of psychic energy is the reason for the “explosion” of Life upon the early
earth– which culminated into the coming of Man.
4
And therefore, Spiritual perfection (greater consciousness, or conscious 'centreity ') and
material synthesis (or complexity) are but the two aspects or connected parts of one and same
phenomenon. See The Phenomenon of Man, p. 60; See also Teilhard’s The Future of Mankind,
1959. Harper & Row, New York and Evanston. Chapter 3.

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(i.e. atoms and molecules) through primitive life and invertebrates to fish,
amphibia, reptiles, mammals, then, man, and finally the Omega point.5

However, it must be stressed that for Teilhard, it is with the coming of man
where the first significant threshold is crossed – because for the first time in the
long story of evolution matter becomes a thinking, self-conscious entity. With the
appearance of man, thought or mind, appears. Man, the child of progress, the
youngest in the evolutionary tree, stands apart from other animals, for he rises
no longer merely to know, but to know that he knows. 6 In other words, from the
coming of Man, biological evolution not only rebounds but it rebounds reflectively
upon itself. In Man evolution is interiorized and made purposeful. In man, the
spiritualization of matter began.

What is in man which is the sign and measure of his reflective powers, the
crowning glory of evolution? The key concept here is ‘celebralization’: the
‘cephalization’ of organisms. The more the nervous system develops the more
conscious the living entity becomes.7 In Future of Mankind, Teilhard writes:

“While accepting the undeniable fact of the general evolution of Life in the
course of time, many biologists still maintain that these changes take place
without following any defined course, in any direction and at random. This
contention, disastrous to any idea of progress, is refuted, in my view, by the
tremendous fact of the continuing ‘cerebralization’ of living creatures. Research
shows that from the lowest to the highest level of the organic world there is a
persistent and clearly defined thrust of animal forms towards species with more
sensitive and elaborate nervous systems…”8

The evolution of the human brain, roughly the size of a deflated volleyball,
has approximately 100 billion neurons communicate via minute electrochemical
impulses, shifting patterns sparking like fireflies on a summer evening, that
5
So pre-living entities are ordered on Earth in the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the
atmosphere. Organic beings make up the biosphere, and thinking entities (which in Teilhard's
system solely means man) the noosphere. The Omega point, or the Mega-Synthesis is the
final stage of evolution where humans are united in a single Divine Christ-consciousness.
6
The Future of Mankind, Ch. 10, Part I.
7
Here, I was constrained to ignore the contemporary debates in Anglo-American analytic
philosophy regarding the meaning and nature of consciousness in order to explore fully the
implications of the Chardinian concept of consciousness to the transhumanist’s vision of
human-machine convergence. It must be noted however that the scientific and philosophical
study of the human consciousness in the modern time has resulted into refined approaches,
which include mysterianism, dualism, representationalism, higher-order monitoring theory, and
the self-representational theory. For a good survey of the modern theories of consciousness,
see Kriegel, Uriah, Theories of Consciousness, in Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness. M.
Moscovitch, E. Thomspon, and P.D. Zelato(eds.). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press. Copy available in the internet at
http://www.ephilosopher.com/kriegel/index.php?Papers/Consciousness%2C+Theories+of
8
The Future of Mankind, Ch4, Part 1 [4].

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produce thought, movement, expression, words. From the ceaseless hubbub of

his brain arose the stone tools, the discovery and taming of the fire, the Bible, the
discovery of evolution, the Atomic Bomb, the computer, the Apollo Missions, the
internet, genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, the list is long and every
day it’s getting longer. 9 In other words, the employment of man’s reflective
powers has set into motion the evolution of his “exteriorized”, nonbiological
creation: his tools, his machines, his technology.

Man, one of the frailest in the animal kingdom, with his technology, has
emerged to be the sole child of the Earth that enjoys tremendous mechanical
competence. While successfully extending, increasing, and heightening man’s
mechanical efficiency, his tools, in the words of Teilhard, have also continuously
liberated his thought of the trammels which hinder its progress.10

However, the human brain has reached the limits of its growing
complexities at the stage of Homo Sapiens (around 500,000 years ago)11 – did
evolution of matter towards greater consciousness stop with it? For Teilhard, it
did not. He points to the heightening organo-psychic development of man (i.e.
the process of socialization) which began 30,000 years ago, as an indication that
evolution marches on.12 The process of super-molecularization on the planet
proceeded even when Matter attained in Homo sapiens its maximum of centro-
complexity on Earth. The Individual man is evolving into the Collective Man.

Man, according to Teilhard, is at present time entering a peculiarly critical

phase of super-humanization: the increasingly rapid growth in the human world
of the forces of collectivization, the 'super arrangement', or the mega-synthesis.
In the Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard declares:

“The age of industry ; the age of oil, electricity and the atom ; the age of the
machine, of huge collectivities and of science -the future will decide what is the
best name to describe the era we are entering. The word matters little. What
does matter is that we should be told that, at the cost of what we are enduring,

9
It is a well-known fact that humans are not alone in their use or even creation of tools – for
instance, orangutans in Sumatra's Suaq Balimbing swamp make tools out of long sticks to
break open termite nests, the leaf-cutter ant mixes dry leaves with its saliva to create a paste,
etc. – however, human technology is different for it goes beyond the mere fashioning and use of
tools because it involves a record of tool making and a progression of its sophistication, in other
words, innovation.
10
The Future of Man. Ch. 10, Part 1. [2 - c]
11
Teilhard noted in The Future of Mankind that the human brain may still be biologically evolving
in ways our current means of measurement can not, at least in the present time, physically
detect. See Chapter 4, Part I [6].
12
The cave-dwelling man and the modern man may not differ in terms of the structure of their
brains. But what marks them apart, according to Teilhard, is the complexity of their social
organization, in other words, their state of concentration. The birth of the tribes, of the empires,
and of the modern states is therefore the offspring of the great movement of evolution towards
socialization or collectivization. See The Future of Mankind, Ch 4, Part I [6].

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life is taking a step, and a decisive step, in us and in our environment…To us, in
our brief span of life, falls the honour and good fortune of coinciding with a critical
change of the noosphere.”13

Humans, dwarfed by the Copernican revolution, but enlarged by Teilhard,

are, in the literal (or biological) definition of the term, in the verge of creating the
Noosphere – the thinking layer of the Earth.

Section 3. The Noosphere and the Cyberspace

In the Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard described his now famous concept of

the Noosphere as follows:
“The idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of
thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form,
functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the
plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing
one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection.” 14

Unlike the contemporaries of Teilhard in 1940’s when satellite

communications still dwell in the realm of science fiction, the 21st century readers
could easily identify the Noosphere with the idea of a “cyberspace”, a term used
by the computer press in reference to that mystical field of inter-connecting
computer pathways wherein all of the exchanges are made.

As Michael Benedikt describes it in his Collected Abstracts from the First

Conference on Cyberspace (1996), "Cyberspace is a globally networked,
computer-sustained, computer-accessed, and computer-generated reality. In this
world, onto which every computer screen is a window, actual, geographical
distance is irrelevant. Objects seen or heard are neither physical nor, necessarily,
presentations of physical objects, but are rather; in form, character, and action;
made up of data, of pure information. This information is derived in part from the
operation of the natural, physical world, but is derived primarily from the
immense traffic of symbolic information, images, sounds, and people, that
constitute human enterprise in science, art, business, and culture."

As the cyberspace is as real as the physical space, in the same manner,

the Noosphere, for Teilhard, is real and not just a poetic image:

“The first thing to give us pause, as we survey the progress of human

collectivization, is what I would call the inexorable nature of a phenomenon which

13
The Phenomenon of Man, p. 243.
14
Ibid., p.251.

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arises directly and automatically out of the conjunction of two factors, both of a
structural kind: first, the confined surface of the globe, and secondly, the
incessant multiplication, within this restricted space, of human units endowed by
ever-improving means of communication with a rapidly increasing scope for
action; to which may be added the fact that their advanced psychic development
makes them preeminently capable of influencing and inter-penetrating one
another.15 [Emphasis supplied]

Man, as previously noted, is one of the frailest in the animal kingdom, but
he gained tremendous strength from his conscious effort of drawing close to his
kind, of communicating, and finally of uniting. The birth of the tribes, of the city-
states, of empires, of the modern states, and the emergence of international
organizations in the 20th century, stand witness of our predilection of
communicating and of uniting. And it is hardly debatable that this desire of
coming together is heightened, and the means accelerated, by our technology.

Even when the mechanical apparatus of the Noosphere was still young
during his time, Teilhard has fully appreciated the role which machines play in the
future deployment of the Noosphere. Teilhard, in The Phenomenon of Man,
writes:

“Through the discovery yesterday of the railway, the motor car and the aeroplane,
the physical influence of each man, formerly restricted to a few miles, now
extends to hundreds of leagues or more. Better still: thanks to the prodigious
biological event represented by the discovery of electro-magnetic waves, each
individual finds himself henceforth (actively and passively) simultaneously
present, over land and sea, in every corner of the earth.” 16

And in the Future of Man, Teilhard points to the early radio and television
technology, which is only capable at that time of providing for local coverage (i.e.
covering only a few square miles), and the computer, the full potential of which
still resides in the theoretical realms in the early 40’s17:

“I am thinking, of course, in the first place of the extraordinary network of radio

and television communications which, perhaps anticipating the direct inter-
communication of brains through the mysterious power of telepathy, already link
us all in a sort of ‘etherized’ universal consciousness. But I am also thinking of
the insidious growth of those astonishing electronic computers which, pulsating
with signals at the rate of hundreds of thousands a second, not only relieve our
brains of tedious and exhausting work but, because they enhance the essential

15
The Future of Mankind, Ch. 6, Part III.
16
The Phenomenon of Man, p. 240.
17
The most advanced computer during Teilhard’s time was the Electromechanical (Relay Based)
Computers (Zuse 3). This evolved into the vacuum-tube-based computers of the 1950s, then to
the transistor-based machines of the 1960s, and to all of the generations of integrated circuits
of the past four decades. Computers today are a lot much smaller but about one hundred
million times more powerful than they were a half century ago.

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(and too little noted) factor of ‘speed of thought’, are also paving the way for a
revolution in the sphere of research...”18

Today, man has in his disposal an array of highly advanced

communication and transportation technologies, which are rapidly shrinking the
world as they continuously evolve to be more efficient, fast, and powerful.

The 21st century man, through his machines – most especially the
computer – has already assembled a truly global network of relations, activities,
and concerns in the spheres of trade, politics, accumulation and exchange of
knowledge, and cooperative research, whose present forms the man of the 40’s
may not even imagine to be possible.

Section 4. Technology and the Convergence of Hearts

Central to the thesis of Teilhard is his concept of convergence. The chaos

which usually characterize the independent achievements and activities of man,
for Teilhard, should be seen as phenomena that occurs and move, in its entirety,
towards union or uniformity. It is like the coordinated movement of the two eyes
so that the image of a single point is formed on corresponding retinal areas.

Convergence, according to Teilhard, does not manifest itself explicitly, but

may be seen as an overall effect of multifarious and interdependent causes.

Let us consider some of the various manifestations of convergence or,

what Teilhard sometimes refer to as “collectivization”.

We begin with Education as we know it today. No individual knows more

than a tiny fraction of the sum of human knowledge, and each scholar is
dependent not only for his education but for all his subsequent work on the
traditions and resources which are the collective possession of an entire
international society composed of the living and the dead.

In the past, he relies on the limited number of books and journals shelved
in the corners of a local or university library, now, he could access a global library
of information and resources in a blink of an eye anytime, anywhere, via the
“Cyberspace”. Just as Earth once covered itself with a film of interdependent
living organisms which we call the biosphere, so mankind's combined
achievements in our present age are forming a global network of collective mind.
Human knowledge and information, the product of man’s reflective power,
becomes more ‘Noospheric’ than ever before.

18
The Future of Mankind, Ch. 6, Part III.

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Next, consider how our world adopts the invention and introduction of new
discoveries, leading to their exponential, or accelerating development. Teilhard
has described it well in The Future of Man, that we could present his discussion
here without leaving our experience of our 21st century technology:

“Every new tool conceived in the course of history, although it may have been
invented in the first place by an individual, has rapidly become the instrument of
all men; and not merely by being passed from hand to hand, spreading from one
man to his neighbor, but by being adopted corporatively by all men together.
What started as an individual creation has been immediately and automatically
transformed into a global, quasi-autonomous possession of the entire mass of
men. We see this from prehistoric times, and we see it with a vivid clarity in the
present era of industrial explosion.”19

Think of the automobile, Television, Celphone, the computer, Windows XP

(and soon Microsoft’s’ more powerful operating system, Windows Vista) –
anything. What does it show us? Accelerating adoption of technology and
innovation, which leads to its exponential development and evolution. Note that
the progress of technology in the nineteenth century, greatly exceeded all the
technological progress since the appearance of the Homo sapiens.20 But the
continued exponential growth of technology in the first two decades of the
twentieth century matched that of the entire nineteenth century. In the 21st
century, we have major transformations in just a few years' time. As one of many
examples, the latest revolution in communications -- the World Wide Web --
didn't exist just a few years ago.21 This worldwide reception of a tool or a method
invented or developed usually by one man, or one group of men, clearly
demonstrates a “Noospheric” adoption.

Now, consider the growth of our collective consciousness. With global

coverage of television networks, which is made possible by the discovery of
geosynchronus satellite communications technology22, and the widespread
connection of people around the world in the Internet, a worldwide feeling of
responsibility, at least an interest for things that happen elsewhere on this globe,
now becomes too apparent among humans to be ignored. Our rising awareness
and concerns for environmental protection; the millions of Catholic faithful around
the world who grieved for the death of Pope John Paul II and who patiently

19
The Future of Mankind, Ch. 10. Part 1.
20
With the building of canals and great ships, the advent of paved roads, the spread of the
railroad, the development of the telegraph, and the invention of photography, the bicycle,
sewing machine, typewriter, telephone, phonograph, motion picture, automobile, and of course
Thomas Edison's light bulb.
21
Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Machine Intelligence Exceeds Human
Intelligence.1999. London: Penguin Book, Ltd. p.8.
22
The idea of a geosynchronus satellite communication system was first proposed in 1944by Sir
Arthur C. Clarke, a Physicist, Space visionary, and Science fiction writer (His popular works
include 2001: A Space Odyssey; Childhood’s End; and Fountain of Paradise). The 22,000 miles
orbit where our satellites dwell is named “Clarke’s Orbit” in his honor.

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waited for the Habemus Papam pronouncement in 2005; the collective response
of the world after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in the outpouring of
sympathy for the victims of the Asian tsunami disaster of 2005, and the
worldwide condemnation of Israel for its attacje on Gaza in 2008, among many
others, clearly demonstrates a ‘Noospheric’ reaction.

Note that these three trends of growing collectivity perfectly follow the
requirement of Teilhard that a genuine convergence is not a convergence of
merely minds or bodies - but of hearts, a point he fervently made in almost all of
his works.23 Our desire for more being and meaning, the ever-growing thirst for
greater knowledge, and the tremendous power of our technology to connect and
unite people – are gradually making our age ‘noospheric’.

Assuming we don’t misuse our technology and blow ourselves to kingdom

come, the perfection, at least of the material support, of the Noosphere is within
reach in few decades as guaranteed by the Law of Accelerating Returns - a law
of evolutionary processes that the scientific community is now starting to
recognize, and to which we must now explore.24

Section 5. The Law of Accelerating Returns and the coming of Human-

Machine Convergence

The Law of Accelerating Returns describes evolution (like biological and

technological evolutions) as a process that builds on its own increasing order
(‘order’ here means how well the information fits a purpose). As the order
increases, time speeds up, and as order and time speed up, the returns (that is,
the valuable products of the process) accelerate. Evolution applies positive
feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of
evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. An evolutionary
processes therefore, assuming that it is not wholly wiped out, will accelerate
exponentially through time.

As applied to the evolution of technology, the Law of Accelerating Returns

states that as order exponentially increases, the time interval between salient

23
A point that he made fervently in Phenomenology of Man: men united by love, or sympathy, in
other words, a union without losing individuality. See The Phenomenon of Man, pp. 257-267;
The Future of Mankind, Ch. 6, Part III.
24
First proposed by Ray Kurzweil in his book “The Age of Spiritual Machines” (1999). The
exponential trend of the evolution of machines is also noted by Hans Moravec in "Mind
Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence" (1988), Bill Joy in “Why the Future
Does not Need Us” (2002), Arthur Clarke in “The Profiles of the Future” (1962, 1973; 2000),
and even Alvin Toffler in “Future Shock” (1972) and “The Third Wave” (1981), among many
others.

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technological development grows shorter as time passes.25 For example, the

time invested for the invention of the first generation of technology X (say,
developed for 16 years) will allow for the development of a more powerful second
generation of technology X (now only for 4 years), and for succeeding
generations of the same technology (for 2 years) with increasing power. The
windfall of this is the speeding up of other technologies that make use of the
already exponentially developing technology (e.g. research on genetic
engineering or robotics via super computers). With more powerful computers and
related technology, we have the tools and the knowledge to design yet more
powerful computers and related technology, and to do so more quickly. There are
a great many examples of the exponential growth implied by the law of
accelerating returns in technologies as varied as DNA sequencing,
communication speeds, electronics of all kinds, and most especially in the rapidly
shrinking size of technology.

And so, just like the exponential growth of the evolution of life, which
builds on its past achievements as encoded in the DNA, the technological
evolutionary process accelerates because it also builds on its past achievements
(encoded in the collective knowledge base of mankind, the genetic code for the
evolving technology), which includes improvements in its own means for further
evolution.

Our researchers have already exhaustively mapped the physical regions

of the human brain (and are increasingly demystifying the mind), decoded the
human DNA (and are preparing to tinker it), we are making our machines exceed
the computational speed of our own brains, we make interactive robots to look,
speak, and act like us, we are now in the level of manipulating atoms, and we
have started to build complex atomic artifacts, and we are introducing, replacing,
and converging powerful machines with our bodies.

25
As applied to biological evolution, Kurzweil explains that as order (which for Darwin, is survival,
and for Teilhard, greater consciousness) increases, the time interval between biological
developments grows shorter as time passes. While evolution took billions of years to design the
first primitive cells, when evolution invented the DNA to record the result of the “trial and error”,
or, in the words of Teilhard, “groping” made by Life, salient events then began occurring in
hundreds of millions of years, a distinct quickening of the pace. The establishment of basic
body plans of modern animals in the "Cambrian explosion," about 570 million years ago,
allowed evolution to concentrate on higher-level features such as expanded brain function.
When some calamity finished off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals inherited the
Earth. With the emergence of the primates, progress was then measured in mere tens of
millions of years. Humanoids emerged 15 million years ago, distinguished by walking on their
hind legs. Only around 500,000 years ago, Homo sapiens, our own species, emerged with
larger brains, particularly in the area of the highly convoluted cortex responsible for rational
thought. See Ray Kurweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ch. 1 and his article, The Law of
Accelerating Returns, the electronic version of the article could be downloaded at
http://www.kurzweilai.net.

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The interplay and myriad synergies of 21st century technology, the intense
human drama of innovation and competition, all these chaotic processes, never
fail to baffle most of us. But in Teilhard they could be transformed into a
meaningful whole: we are building a global mind.

“From west to east, evolution is henceforth occupied elsewhere, in a richer and

more complex domain, constructing, with all minds joined together, mind. Beyond
all nations and races, the inevitable taking-as-a-whole of mankind has already
begun. We can envisage a world whose constantly increasing 'leisure' and
heightened interest would find their vital issue in fathoming everything, trying
everything, extending everything.”26 [emphasis supplied]

The exponential growth of human technology presses forward man into thirsting
to know more, to do more, to transform every matter he touches, and in the
process, transforming himself:

“All the increasing degree, in which present-day thought and activity are
influenced by the passion for discovery; the progressive replacement of the
workshop by the laboratory, of production by research, of the desire for well-
being by the desire for more-being points to the growth in our souls of a great
impulse towards super-evolution.”27

For the eyes of someone imaginative enough to see where the heightened
interest of man in trying everything, coupled with the exponential rate of the
evolution of his technological capability, is headed, one will notice that human
evolution is moving in a very different direction than that for the Universe from
which it emerges: the enhancement of human consciousness through a
technology-assisted enhancement of its biological vessel. The skeptics call it
rubbish, the transhumanists call it convergence, but for those who define the
homo sapiens purely in biological terms and who understand the profound
implication, they call it extinction.

26
The Phenomenology of Man, p. 278.
27
The Future of Man, Ch. 6, Part III.

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Section 6. Teilhard and the Transhumanist Concept of Biological Perfection

When one seriously confronts the transhumanist ideal of Biological

Perfection via human-machine convergence, two dominant reaction, which
seems to present themselves in successive stages, usually emerge: the first, and
the most popular, is outright denial – “man’s technical capability will never reach
the necessary level of sophistication to bring about the human – machine
convergence”, then comes horror and repugnance – “human-machine
convergence is not only dehumanizing, but a threat to the survival of the human
species.”28

However, within the framework of Teilhard, one gets another, and

refreshing view – hope: that they bestow man with more being (not only well-
being) and more unity (not isolation), hope that all these technological advances
that inevitably lead to the convergence of human and machine intelligence
completes the material, even the cerebral, support of a genuine sphere of
collective thought.29 Surely, this requires a lot of explaining.

Recall the three specific cases we presented earlier concerning the

advances we made in the 21st century in realizing the material apparatus of the
Noosphere (i.e. ‘noospheric’ knowledge base, ‘noospheric’ adoption of
technology, and ‘noospheric’ reaction). Now consider this thought experiment:
If technology, specifically the cyberspace and or the global satellite networks,
connect people around the world simultaneously, and if technology, specifically
the computer, mediates that global connection instantaneously, what happens if
the computer is integrated in the human brain?

If this convergence is made possible, the combination of human reflective powers

with a computer's inherent superiority in the speed, accuracy, and sharing ability
of its memory will be formidable. As the human brain will be enhanced a million-
fold, so is the human consciousness and intelligence.
28
Read Bill Joy, “Why The Future Does Not Need Us”, Wired Magazine, Issue 8.04, copy
available in the internet, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/. See also Francis Fukuyama,
Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002); and his article,
“Transhumanism” in Foreign Policy September-October 2004 issue, copy available in the
internet: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2667 See also the article of
David Brin, “Singularities and Nightmare,” in Nanotechnology Perceptions: A Review of
Ultraprecision Engineering and Nanotechnology, Volume 2, No. 1, March 27 2006,
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0656.html
29
It is interesting to note here that Teilhard has described the Noosphere as a “stupendous”
thinking machine: “Research, which until yesterday was a luxury pursuit, is in process of
becoming a major, indeed the principal, function of humanity. As to the significance of this great
event, I for my part can see only one way to account for it… As in the case of all the organisms
preceding it, but on an immense scale, humanity is in process of ‘cerebralizing’ itself… The
Noosphere, in short, is a stupendous thinking machine.” See The Future of Mankind, Ch. 6,
Part IV, [c]

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But here, we may ask, how real is this human-machine convergence? The
popular skepticism that men will never achieve the necessary technical ability to
converge human and machine intelligence is usually met in the past, like in the
time of Teilhard, with the too optimistic and wild extrapolations of our growing
technical expertise. In our present age, it finds its firm empirical support. The
technology required, it is true, is very complex, but the fact is - it's already here
with us today – one only needs to survey the current developments in the field of
brain prosthetics.

The accumulated data from the many decades of research in the cognitive
sciences (most especially the research in neural recording and decoding),
biotechonlogy, and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), has found its decisive synthesis in
the technical progress of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology, now on
its full-blown laboratory development in many competing research centers
around the world.30

On the morning of June 22, 2004, a Foxborough, Massachusetts-based

company called Cyberkinetics officially began the most radical version of BCI to
date – it seeks to prove that human brain-computer interfaces are possible and
they can return function to people paralyzed by injury or disease. The fully
functional system used in the conrtroversial clinical trial, was called BrainGate,
and one of the five human subjects was Matthew Nagle, 25, a C4 quadriplegic,
paralyzed from the neck down.31

30
For a good survey of the current developments in BCI research, read Aileen Constans, Mind
Over Machines: Brain-Machine Interfaces Help Locked-In Patients Communicate And
Quadriplegics Control Their World. See
http://www.bioethics.upenn.edu/nubc/speakers/surgenor_mindovermachine.pdf
31
Here is the summary of the event when “science fiction” was turned into reality: Nagle's skull
was oppened using a high-speed drill called a craniotome and using a number 15 scalpel, the
protective membranes that surround his brain was carefully sliced through. Magnetic
resonance imaging allowed the plotting in advance the region on Nagle's motor cortex most
likely to provide readable arm-movement signals to the BrainGate. Using a small pneumatic
inserter, the tiny array - 100 electrodes, each just 1 millimeter long and 90 microns across at
its base – was tapped in. Nagle's skull was closed with titanium screws, leaving a tiny hole.
Through that gold wires threaded from the array to an external pedestal connector attached to
his skull. In the evening of that fateful day, Nagle’s metamorphosis was complete: he was now
part biological, and part silicon, platinum, and titanium. A bundle of wires as thick as a coaxial
cable runs from a connector in Nagle's scalp to a refrigerator-sized machine. Inside his brain,
a tiny array of microelectrodes picks up the cacophony of his neural activity; computer
processors recognize the patterns associated with arm motions and translate them into signals
that couild be understood by the computer. For a fuller description of the event, and interviews
of people involved in Braingate’s clinical trial, see Martin,Richard. Mind Control. WIRED
Magazine. Issue 13.03 - March 2005. Electronic copy of the article available for download at
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/ See also W. Wu, Michael J. Black, Yun Gao, Elie
Bienenstock, M. Serruya, A. Shaikhouni, John P. Donoghue: Neural Decoding of Cursor
Motion Using a Kalman Filter. NIPS 2002: 117-124.

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The following is the account of what happened when Nagel began using
Braingate:

“As Nagle performed specific actions in his mind's eye - move arm left, move arm
up - the electrodes picked up the patterns of nearby neuron groups. Then
BrainGate amplified and recorded the corresponding electrical activity. Over
dozens of trials the computer built a filter that associated specific neural patterns
with certain movements. Later, when Nagle again mentally pictured the motions,
the computer translated the signals to guide a cursor. … What are you thinking
about when you move the cursor? I asked. "For a while I was thinking about
moving the mouse with my hand," Nagle replied. "Now, I just imagine moving the
cursor from place to place." In other words, Nagle's brain has assimilated the
system. The cursor is as much a part of his self as his arms and legs were.”32

Today, Nagel plays Pong, draw with a cursor, operate a TV, open email,
and can open and close a prosthetic hand just by thinking about it. 33 Once you
can control a computer cursor using your thought alone, anything could be made
possible: from drawing circles in the computer monitor to lending a “voice” to a
mute to allowing a quadriplegic to control his limbs. As Gerhard Friehs, the
neurosurgeon who implanted Nagle's device claimed, with enough computational
power, everything else is just engineering.34 Last June 6, 2006, Cyberkinetics
announced the commencement of the commercialization of the Braingate
technology for disabled people, and its other product, Neuroport.

As applied to physically abled people, will they ever like the idea of
bringing along a refrigerator-sized machine with red, yellow and white cables
directly plucked to their brain? Part of the answer is miniurization: the process of
shrinking the size of our technology, and at the same time making it powerful. 35
The thick coaxial cable and the refrigerator-sized machine involved in the
Braingate system, in due time, is expected to shrink in more comfortable sizes
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid., about the opening and closing of the prosthetic hand, this was reported in CNN on
February 3, 2006. See transcript of the program at
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0602/03/ltm.03.html
34
As part of its future development, Cyberkinetics plans to hook BrainGate to stimulators that
can activate muscle tissue, bypassing a damaged nervous system entirely. See CNN’s special
report, dated March 2, 2006, Brain chip research aims for future movement at
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/02/22/brain.gate/index.html. Visit the official website of
Cyberkinetics and learn more about the Braingate technology at
http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/medicalproducts/braingate.jsp. Other future
applications of this technology are also discussed there.
35
I think the best example to illustrate the exponential capability of man in shrinking the sizes of
his technology is the shrinking size of the transistor. Consumer Electronics Manufacturers
Association reports that Intel’s computer chip in 1972 contains 3,500 transistors. In 1982, it
becomes 134,000; in 1993 the chip contains 3,100,000 transistors; in 1997, it already contains
7,500,000; by 2000, intel’s microchip already constains over 10,000,000. With the maturity of
Nanotechnology in the next decade, we will be seeing nanotube-based chips, which are already
working in laboratories, that build circuits from pentagonal arrays of carbon atoms. One cubic
inch of nanotube circuitry would be a million times more powerful than the human brain.

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that the entire system will ultimately appear merely as a nonbiological part of the
scalp. The other part of the answer is non-evasive Brain-Computer Interfaces,
which like the Braingate, are also under development. To cite two recent
examples, a team of Austrian researchers taught a quadriplegic patient to open
and close a prosthetic hand using an electrode-studded skullcap that picked up
electroencephalograms, waves of electricity generated by the entire brain. 36 And
on December of 2004, researchers at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, New
York, reported that a patient was able to move a cursor around on a monitor
using externally detected signals - no implant.37

Now that the breakthrough was done, the rest are mere refinement:
perfecting the best method that gives the power and clarity one needs to
transform the noisy signal of the neurons into something computers can
understand and help translate into physical action. The people who question
whether brain-computer interface will really work, fails to realize how much has
already been done.38

Reflecting on all the explosive developments in Science and Technology,

most particularly in brain prosthesis and brain-computer interface , I am reminded
of Teilhard’s idea of telepathy, the direct inter-communication of brains and our
link in a sort of ‘etherized’ universal consciousness.39

The Law of Accelerating Returns dictates that BCI will end up allowing
man to demonstrate this power – thereby removing telepathy from the realm of
mysticism. Once done, the language barrier among the peoples of our world

36
Pfurtscheller G,Flotzinger D, Mohl W, Peltoranta M. Prediction of the side of hand movements
from single trial multi-channel EEG data using neural networks. Electroencephalogr Clin
Neurophysiol 1992b; 82:313–315.
37
JR Wolpaw, DJ McFarland, Control of a two-dimensional movement signal by a non-invasive
brain-computer interface in humans, Proc Natl Acad Sci 101: 17849-54. See also Wolpaw, et
al., Brain-computer interfaces for communication and control, Clinical Neurophysiology, vol.
113, issue 6, June 2002, pages 767-791.
38
Among the groundbreaking developments in BCI research include a demonstration that
thought could be send via the internet to control robotic arm. Read the December 6, 2000
MIT article of Elizabeth A. Thomson discussing how a monkey, using brain signals sent over
Internet, controlled a robotic arm in one of MIT laboratories. Read the article at
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/monkeys-1206.html; Wheelchair steered by brainpower is
currently being developed by European researchers see BBC special report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3089559.stm ; A video game in which the character is
controlled directly from a player's brain without the need for wires has been developed by
researchers read BBC report http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3485918.stm
39
The passage I quoted in the first part of this Section: “I am thinking, of course, in the first place
of the extraordinary network of radio and television communications which, perhaps anticipating
the direct inter-communication of brains through the mysterious power of telepathy, already link
us all in a sort of ‘etherized’ universal consciousness…” see The Future of Mankind, Ch. 6, Part
III.

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would be bridged, and empathy with others would be enhanced as experience

may, literally, be shared.

The possibility of a brain-to-brain communications, now being considered

in BCI research, points to the direction that far from feeling horror and
repugnance, Teilhard might have welcomed this, and other similar technical
progress, with the unfailing hope and optimism. Because for Teilhard, regardless
of how extreme our projects might be, the measure of its acceptability is the
acceptability of the justification we present for its execution. And for Teilhard,
there is no other acceptable justification than that it must fulfill the functional
needs of reflective action.40 In short, for the furtherance of collective
consciousness.

In so far as Transhumanist concept of biological perfection necessarily

leads to greater collective consciousness, Transhumanism, on this fundamental
point, finds support in the Philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin.

Section 7. Teilhard and the Specter of Spiritual Machines

The fast-growing gulf between technical and moral progress in the world
today, causes alarm to many people that there is now a growing demand for
either relinquishment of certain areas of technology, or abandoning technological
developments altogether.41

But Teilhard, if he were still with us today, would have not joined the
chorus. For in his time, he has already seen this maelstrom coming, and has
penetrated its significance:

“In its early forms human inventive power, as we still see in children, may be
likened to a game. In those first manifestations of the power of reflective
arrangement, everything appears simple, harmless and even beneficent, giving
no hint of a moment to come when we can no longer go on playing. But as the
phenomenon spreads and develops within a Mankind in process of becoming
adult, what once looked like a game is suddenly found to be deadly earnest. The
‘sorcerer’s apprentice’ by dint of fumbling has laid hands on forces of such power
that he begins to be afraid of causing some disaster in Nature. And on the other
hand, finding that by his discoveries he has acquired certain keys to the mastery
of the world, he begins to realize that if he is to be equal to the situation he is
bound, in his role of ‘quasi-demiurge’, to establish principles and a faith regarding
the future and the value of the task that is henceforth imposed upon him.”42
40
The Future of Mankind, Chapter 13 [3]
41
See footnote 33.
42
The Future of Mankind, Ch. 6 [3].

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For indeed clearly, whatever technological wonders we may seek to build

will turn to dust if our brilliance is not coupled with conscience and professional
integrity, or if our creative temperament is without a rational purpose or goal that
it must achieve. But amidst this gap, technological progress must proceed.
Because while it is true that Man might misuse the awesome power of his
technology and promote, with more efficient means, hatred and disunity,43 his
technological skill will force him into moral maturity. Man, with his godly powers,
has no other choice but to grow up and act like god:

“Evolution, in rebounding reflectively upon itself, acquires morality for the

purpose of its further advance. In yet other terms, and whatever anyone may say,
above a certain level, technical progress necessarily and functionally adds moral
progress to itself. All this surely proves that the two events are interdependent. In
fact, the pursuit of human knowledge cannot be carried in concrete terms beyond
a certain stage without this power of reflective arrangement becoming
automatically charged with internal obligations which curb and direct it…”44

As technology and morality are interdependent, allowing the former to

proceed will necessarily makes the latter to follow. With the exponential growth of
technology, it must be expected that there is a corresponding exponential growth
of human spirituality. Today, with the expansion of human senses, thanks to his
technology, moral concerns of the individual are also beginning to expand
embracing issues that are planetary in its scale. In Teilhard, we see the
remarkable application of The Law of Accelerating Returns to moral evolution.

“Our modern world was created in less than 10,000 years, and in the past 200
years it has changed more than in all the preceding millennia. Have we ever
thought of what our planet may be like, psychologically, in a million years’ time?”45
In a million years, man will be beyond recognition, both in form and in
spirituality: human consciousness may finally decide to disgorge its flesh and
bones – the edifice it has known when it was young – in exchange for metal and
plastic.

43
Brain-Computer Interface, unfortunately, can also redefine how mankind wages its future Wars.
Here’s how Anthony Tether, the director of Darpa, envisioned the military outcome of BCI
research: "Imagine 25 years from now where old guys like me put on a pair of glasses or a
helmet and open our eyes. Somewhere there will be a robot that will open its eyes, and we will
be able to see what the robot sees. We will be able to remotely look down on a cave and think
to ourselves, 'Let's go down there and kick some butt.' And the robots will respond, controlled
by our thoughts. Imagine a warrior with the intellect of a human and the immortality of a
machine." See the March, 2005 issue of Wired Magazine, Issue 13.03 – Electronic copy
available in the Internet, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/
44
The Future of Mankind, Chapter 13 [3].
45
Ibid. CH 4, Part I [7]. Teilhard added, “Here, it is finally the Utopians, not the ‘realists’, who
make scientific sense. They at least, though their flights of fancy may cause us to smile, have a
feeling for the true dimensions of the phenomenon of Man.”

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However, although Man may extend his existence by attacking the causes
of his mortality at the root; or although he may go elsewhere and continue his
destiny in some other corner of the firmament of deep space, it will just be a
matter of time – regardless of its immensity – when human consciousness will
finally realize that survival in the material universe is irrelevant to events and
processes on a cosmological scale. Stars are born and die; galaxies go through
their cycles of creation and destruction. The Universe itself was born in a big
bang and will end with a crunch or a whimper, we're not yet sure which.46 The
mechanism of the universe is winding up or down to a distant future. The
Universe will die, and it’s death brings along with it the death of any and all
immortals it contains. In short, in so far as the Universe is a physical universe,
the concept of “immortality” is an absurdity.

Gradually, man, in his ultimate form, will then realize salvation not in the
direction of any temporal or spatial consolidation or expansion but only by way of
spiritual escape through the excess of consciousness.

“At the end of its totalization, its folding-in upon itself, Mankind reaches a critical
level of maturity where, leaving Earth and stars to lapse slowly back into the
dwindling mass of primordial energy, it will detach itself from this material
universe and join the one true, irreversible essence of things, the Omega point.”47

When that day comes, the evolution of man is complete. Man, according
to Teilhard, finally unites with God, who created and shaped man through
evolution, and who patiently waited for the moment when man finally arises from
the world.48

Section 9. Conclusion: Towards an Ethics of Technology

Teilhard’s philosophy does not thread the traditional religious lines

describing the human body as a sacred sanctuary that must be untouched
except in extreme cases. For Teilhard, the human body is a cradle which
consciousness must rise above in order to fulfill the next step of the evolutionary
process. Man is therefore, not only allowed, but tasked to enhance it, or to
sublime it, if doing so would further this purpose.

This paper has shown that for Teilhard, the purpose of evolution is greater
consciousness, and those which satisfy the purpose of evolution is ethical.

46
What the astronomers call "Dark Era" is one of the two versions of how the whole universe will
finally end in 100 trillion years time. Astronomers assume that the universe will gradually wither
away, provided it keeps on expanding, or it recollapse, in a “Big Crunch”, under the pull of its
own gravity.
47
The Future of Man, Ch. 6, Part IV.
48
Ibid., Ch 4, Part II [2]

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Matter, we have argued in the very beginning of this paper, is the edifice,
the cradle of consciousness. Consciousness becomes more perfected as it finds
a richer and better organized material structure. Matter can be enhanced by
human technology, and as such, technology-assisted enhancement of matter
satisfies the purpose of evolution. Since technology-assisted enhancement of
matter satisfies the purpose of evolution, then, technology-assisted
enhancement of matter is ethical.

And by matter, we mean the entire human body, including the brain.

We have emphasized the brain because as Teilhard has clearly and

strongly argued, it is the sign and measure of consciousness. The more the
nervous system develops, the more conscious the living entity becomes. The
enhancement of the human brain means the enhancement of consciousness. If
the purpose of evolution is greater consciousness, and if technology-assisted
enhancement of the human brain means the enhancement of consciousness,
then enhancement of the human brain is ethical.

The convergence of human reflective powers with inherent superiority in

the speed, accuracy, and sharing ability of computers provides for the physical
possibility of a truly “collective” thought.

Social ills and havoc wrought by technology are also explained away as
necessary cost of mankind’s unstoppable or inevitable evolution towards greater
consciousness. Reflecting in the age when the fearsome power of the atom was
first unleashed in the face of the Earth, Teilhard offered this remarkable insight:

“Thus considered, the fact of the release of nuclear energy, overwhelming and
intoxicating though it was, began to seem less tremendous. Was it not simply the
first act, even a mere prelude, in a series of fantastic events which, having
afforded us access to the heart of the atom, would lead us on to overthrow, one
by one, the many other strongholds which science is already besieging? The
vitalization of matter by the creation of super-molecules. The re-modeling of the
human organism by means of hormones. Control of heredity and sex by the
manipulation of genes and chromosomes. . . It is thus, step by step, that Man,
pursuing the flight of his growing aspirations, taught by a first success to be
conscious of his power, finds himself impelled to look beyond any purely
mechanical improvement of the earth’s surface and increase of his external
riches, and to dwell upon the growth and biological perfection of himself.”49
[Emphasis supplied]

BCI and other revolutionary technologies, are just the various means of
man in fulfilling his task of consciously accomplishing the goal of evolution.
Clearly therefore, human technology in general, far from dehumanizing him, are,
for Teilhard, catapulting him to higher heights of consciousness, to greater union

49
Ibid., Chapter 8 [b – c]

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with the rest of his kind, in short towards planetization, towards totalization. If this
is the case, then the entire prospect of the coming convergence of biological and
non-biological intelligence, are things that must not be feared, but welcomed with
calm and confidence.

This premise holds, even in the midst of the “apparently” widening gap
between our technical ability and moral maturity. Science and Technology must
be allowed to proceed, because as we develop scientifically and technologically,
we are forced to grow up. And as we become more morally matured, we will
discover ourselves how technology should be used, what technology should be
pursued, and what technology is too dangerous that it must be abandoned.

In the Philosophy of Teilhard, the prospect of all these technologies lead to

the creation of super-humans or immortal-humans is something that must not be
feared. Because humans in their ultimate or perfect form will realize that physical
escape in the coming end of his physical universe will not be possible. Salvation
can be achieved NOT in the direction of any temporal or spatial consolidation or
expansion but only by way of spiritual escape… something that his technology
can never provide.

And here, lies the real strength of Teilhard”s philosophy – His philosophy
synthesized the best of science and religion by providing the former with an ideal
to be reached, and the latter with basic factual objective. It transcends and gives
meaning even to the ultimate transhumanist challenge, that it may truly be
considered the philosophy of the future.

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