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Webinar

Mikhail Sergeev, "The Issue of Self-Identity in Transhumanism and Bahá’í Writings"

Oct 25, 2020
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Transhumanism or H+ is an intellectual and cultural movement whose ultimate goal is to achieve “singularity” – the merging of human biology and computer technology in order to enhance human capabilities and, in the long run, to make humanity immortal. The concept of singularity applies first and foremost to the brain, which is the conduit for human mind, consciousness and self-identity. As a result, transhumanists find themselves at the center of millennia-old polemics about the origin of life and the nature of human soul. What happens if a person’s brain is irreversibly damaged and replaced by its artificial duplicate? Will it be the same human being or a different one? Where exactly can the seed of human identity be found? In this web presentation we will examine, from a Bahá’í perspective, these and similar questions arising in contemporary technological discourse that involve various competing theories of the human self.

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Mikhail Yu. Sergeev, PhD

University of the Arts, Philadelphia

Mikhail Sergeev (Ph.D. in religious studies from Temple University, 1997) is a religion, philosophy, and modern art historian. He has served as an editor of the book series Contemporary Russian Philosophy at Brill Publishers in the Netherlands (2016–2019) and as chair of the Department of Religion, Philosophy, and Theology at the Wilmette Institute (2017–21). Sergeev teaches courses in humanities at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, California). He is also an Affiliate Professor at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in New Brighton, Minnesota. Sergeev has published more than two hundred scholarly, literary, and journalistic articles in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Russia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan. He is the author and contributing editor of fourteen books, including Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology (Brill, 2020).  Web site: http://uarts.digication.com/msergeev/. See Faculty Bio

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