Talk: Science, modernity and the post-human

Are our brains little more than computing machines made out of meat?

This question of ‘What does it mean to be human’ has come up time and time again throughout my career as a doctor and ethicist. In the history of ideas, we have always used the leading technology of the age to help us tackle this question. Medieval and the early Enlightenment figures latched upon precision clockwork, then during the Industrial Revolution hydraulic steam power took over before that too was replaced by telegraphy. Now, our most advanced technology is the supercomputer and therefore the human mind must also be a supercomputer.

In February 2020, I gave a talk exploring this idea and where it is headed in the future as part of the Forming A Christian Mind conference in Cambridge. You can watch a video of this below:

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