It's like The End of History; a silly title for a silly piece of writing.
Re:The end of Philosophy
by mechanical_fish on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @08:29PM
(#552033)
"The Singularity is an end-of-history notion. And it is showing its age, as most end-of-history notions do."
-- Bruce Sterling
(video link: http://fora.tv/2004/06/11/Bruce_Sterling#chapter_01 )
Re:The end of Philosophy
by davidmathers on Wednesday April 08, 2009 @07:24AM
(#552548)
When Francis Fukuyama said "the end of history" he meant that liberal democracy is the evolutionary end point of nation states. Meaning:
1. any nation state that is now a liberal democracy will remain so because there is nothing more advanced for it to evolve into
2. any nation state that is not a liberal democracy is merely not yet a liberal democracy and will eventually evolve into one
The singularity is the point at which rate of technological evolution becomes so rapid that it is essentially incomprehensible. That doesn't sound like an end of history notion to me.
It also seems to confuse moral philosophy and moral psychology. The former can use reason and arguments to attempt to justify practical principles and actions (at least somewhat) independently of how, psychologically, human agents, in fact, make moral judgements in real-life situations.
"The End of Philosophy" is a silly title because, for a start, what is discussed is only relevant to moral philosophy; and secondly, whatever firm scientific results may be produced regarding moral psychology, there are still endless issues that moral philosophers can continue to sensibly discuss, for example, the semantics of (what appear to be) deductive moral arguments.