In Defence of the Human Being - Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology (Relié)

With the progress of artificial intelligence (AI), the digitalization of the lifeworld,and the reduction of the mind to neuronal processes, the human being appears more and more as a product of data and algorithms. Thus, we conceive ourselves "in the image of our machines," and conversely, we elevate our machines and our brains to new subjects. At the same time, demands for an enhancement of human nature culminate in transhumanist visions of taking human evolution to a new stage.
Against this self-reification of the human being, the present book defends a humanism of embodiment : our corporeality, vitality, and embodied freedom are the foundations of a self determined existence, which uses the new technologies only as means instead of submitting to them. The book offers an array of interventions directed against a reducrionist naturalism or transhumanism in various areas of science and society.
As an alternative offers an embodied and enactive account of the human person : we are neither pune mind nor brains, but primarily embodied, living beings in relation with others. This general concept will be applied to issues such as Al, transhurnanism and enhancement, virtual real, neuroscience, embodied freedom, psychiatry, and finally to the accelerating dynamics of current society which lead to an increasing disembodiment of our everyday conduct of life.
The book thus applies cutting-edge concepts of embodiment and enactivism to current scientific, technological, and cultural tendencies that will crucially influence our society's development in the twenty-first century.