Prometheanism and the Scientific Image of Man
摘要
In this chapter I explore the distinctively Sellarsian cast of Promethean posthumanism, and how Sellars’ naturalist rationalism provides thinkers like Brassier, Negarestani, Wolfendale, and Christias with a way of thinking beyond Land’s accelerationism. I explain how they make use of Sellars’ distinction between the “manifest” and “scientific images” to articulate a technological “space of reasons” that would allow for the expansion of the manifest image far beyond the bodily and cognitive limitations of the human. I go on to explore the tensions between reductionism and eliminativism about the mind that this view brings with it, before explaining how, like Land, the Prometheans seem committed to the construction of an alien, inhuman, artificial intelligence.