The possibility of human autonomy is underwritten in the physical structure of the universe by the limits of light speed and the distance between stars. A general method of realizing autonomy is described in abstract beginning with the phenomenology of G.W.F. Hegel and more concretely with the contemporary technology of consensus building, particularly as applied to utopian visions of the future. These are the main arguments of the present essay. Futhermore, it is argued that a sustained application of such a method would mark the historical end of modernity.
The opening argument for autonomy begins in the distant future. This may seem an unrealistic setting, one that verges on science fiction, but that impression cannot easily be avoided in an argument for human autonomy (freedom, independence and self-determination). Such an argument must necessarily grapple with the extreme limits of human possibility, which, not being issues of everyday application or discussion, naturally come across as “far fetched”. Even still, this is not necessarily a permanent situation. In the near future, people are likely to acquire the means of building consensus on issues of their own choosing. They will understand that by working together to build a consensus that is large enough in extent and long enough in duration they will be able to carry any issue through political channels.PC But the practice of consensus making cannot be exhausted in politics. Like seafaring explorers who gaze alternately on distant horizons, near shoals and fixed stars, those who confront the practical requirements of the political task at hand together with the hopeful expectation of “steering” society on an ideal course will necessarily find themselves seeking out the limits of possibility — the most desirable destinations to steer to, the worst dangers to avoid and the most reliable references to steer by.
Humanity faces a ongoing risk of destruction by natural causes. The risk level is uncertain, but more-or-less constant.
We also face a ongoing risk of destruction by man-made causes. The risk level is impossible to calculate, but known to be historically variable and relatively high at present.
We never agreed amongst ourselves or otherwise deliberately chose to accept or avoid these risks (1.1, 1.2).
Therefore:
Our continued survival is not under our control. Our existence in the future is contingent on accidents of nature and history.
However:
It is theoretically possible to travel to any star in the galaxy or neighbouring galaxies within the lifespan of the travellers. Owing to the limits of light speed the shortest duration for a long journey might be thousands of years or more. However, time dilation at relativistic speeds can reduce that to within ordinary human lifespans from the perspective of the travellers. They would journey not only far into space, but also far into the future. Such journeys are therefore one way.
For instance, the hundreds of millions of stars within our short, local “arm” of the galaxy are mostly within a distance of 5000 light years from the sun.OA That distance cannot be covered by any means in less than 5000 years. However, at a sustained acceleration and deceleration of 1 earth gravity, the travellers would age only 16 years and 7 months throughout the length of the journey.SR
Extrasolar planets have been discovered in 8 star systems to date, at distances ranging from 10 to 45 light years. Such distances could conceivably be reached in one or two generations at less than relativistic speeds.ESP
From 1.5 or 1.6:
It is theoretically possible for humanity to distribute itself among the stars.
The risk of natural and man-made destruction (1.1, 1.2) would decrease exponentially with the number of star systems in the distribution. The distances are such that no natural or man-made catastrophe could destroy all of humanity, only a coincidence of near-simultaneous catastrophes in all inhabited systems.
Therefore, with ongoing and extensive interstellar distribution:
Human existence would be perpetually guaranteed.
The projected level of technological development to achieve this form of immortality has been classified as Type 2 on the Kardashev scale. “When we reach the Type 2 stage, our civilization will no longer need to be concerned about either natural or man-made extinction events as it will have the capability to prevent or avoid these events.” Mit10
There is no other way to guarantee our existence than by interstellar distribution.
There is no other rationale for interstellar distribution than a guarantee of existence.
Interstellar distribution would require a tremendous effort of mankind.
Interstellar distribution is unlikely to occur by accident.
From 1.10 to 1.13:
A guarantee of human existence requires a deliberate, conscious effort of self-determination.
If we were to survive long enough to succeed in that effort, then:
Our continuing existence in the future would not be mere contingency nor could any accident bring it to an end. We could thenceforth say, “We shall exist forever only because we chose to exist.”
In other words, we would be autonomous in our immortality.
Therefore:
Autonomy is possible.
Also, from 1.14 and 1.16:
Autonomy is justified.
The significance of the argument might not lie in its conclusions (1.16 and 1.17). If the argument as a whole is correct, then its simple logic and its anchoring in physical facts may give it something of empirical leverage, making it useful for purposes of theory testing. Modern theory of autonomy begins most convincingly with Kant and Hegel, as related here by Robert Pippin:Pip91p13-14
Reason itself, in all its manifestations, does not, in Kant, discover the human place within Nature or serve some natural end or passion; it “legislates to Nature”; it does not discover the good life, it prescribes the rules for human activity, be Nature as it may. Such a “spontaneous subjectivity,” completely determining for itself what to accept as evidence about the nature of things, and legislating to itself its proper course of action, is, if nothing else, the appropriate image of modernity's understanding of itself as revolutionary and “self-grounding,” and so an invaluable focus for raising a number of questions. The general “German” idea of self-determination or a self-grounding is, Hegel says, the principle of modernity, as fundamental in that tradition to the modern authority of natural science as it is to modern claims for liberal-democratic institutions. ...
Thus on the reading I propose, the possibility if a “self-reassurance” of modernity does not finally depend on any technological success or failure, on “Cartesian foundationalism,” or on the achievement of any unified, scientific or naturalistic world view. Kant was, to a large and decisive degree, right about the limitations of all such proposals, and right that being modern demands instead being radically critical, that the modern subject can rely only “on itself,” it's own spontaneous self-legislation, in determining the agenda of an age freed from dogmatic dependence. Whatever ends up being the historically decisive result of the modern revolution — that, for example, we end up regarding ourselves and our capacities in essentially “neurophysiological” language, or on some sort of analogy with “texts” — it will, from this Kantian perspective, still be a self-determined result, one we shall end up imposing on ourselves, rather than simply discovering. And this means that such a proposal or historical event will simply re-open the central modern philosophical question: by what criterion should a collective self-determination occur, a criterion we cannot be said to “share” by being human, or to “find” inscribed in Platonic heaven?
Aspects of this radical autonomy are apparently incompatible with the previous argument, which has two possible readings in this context:
Human autonomy is thwarted by Nature, which forces us to engage in a star-faring mode of civilization against our will.
Alternatively:
Nature enables the most radical autonomy of all, where our very existence is self-determined as a matter of will.
The first reading (2.1) assumes that a star-faring mode of civilization is not something we would freely choose if, somehow, the accompanying existential threat could be removed. But neither reading seems to support the modern outlook, at least as related above. The total self-determination of “what to accept as evidence about the nature of things”, and the general indifference to imperatives of Nature and “technological success or failure” are at odds with a form of autonomy that is so dramatically enabled by Nature and so demanding of technological success in response.
Again, from 2.1:
A star-faring mode of civilization is not something we would freely choose if, somehow, the accompanying existential threat could be removed.
However:
The possibility of any continuation of existence assumes an existential threat, without which it is meaningless as a possibility. Even in the extreme, mortality and immortality are two sides of the same coin and cannot be understood in isolation of each other.
Therefore:
2.1 is false.
This implies that 2.2 is true. But, from Pippin's reading of modernity:
We are wholly self-determined and in no way reliant on Nature.
From 2.2 and 2.6, therefore:
That aspect of Nature that “enables the most radical autonomy” is an aspect of ourselves. The limits of light speed and the distance between stars must be considered a part of what we are.
Pippin continues:Pip91p14-15
This [re-opening of the “central modern philosophical question”] means the appropriate question at issue (asked many, many times after Kant) becomes whether such a subject can be so radically independent or self-determining, and especially whether such self-legislation can be said to be rational, whether its results can be said to apply universally to any agent attempting such critical freedom, all because the results are what such an agent “would himself determine.” On the account I present, Hegel best realizes such a project, or most successfully rejects Kant's inconsistent qualifications on such an enterprise, and attempts to think it through to its conclusion, and Nietzsche represents, in effect, Hegel's most problematic opponent, the thinker who best raises the question of the whole possibility and even desirability of such a “self-reassurance,” a self-conscious justification...
Fundamental to Hegel's phenomenology are the tripartite elements of (1) self, (2) negation of self as other, and (3) reflection of self in other,Heg07n18 elsewhere simply labeled as “thesis, antithesis and synthesis”. The surprising conclusion that such distant structures of Nature are somehow a part of us suggests that, in Hegel's dialectic, we and they are necessarily related in the sense of thesis and antithesis. A synthesis would then require that we view ourselves from that distant vantage and realize that we and they are one whole. Without a working-through of that realization, our understanding of who we are remains fundamentally incomplete.
If this conclusion holds (2.7), then we might further attempt to interpret it in light of Nietzsche's aesthetics. This seems promising both because of the critical relation between Hegel and Nietzsche, and also because of the practical requirement for aesthetics in visionary consensus making. As we may argue, no vision of the future could possibly hold as a consensus vision unless it were formed as a compelling work of art. Altogether, it would have to be bound up and binding in art, engineering, science and most other cultural spheres, a possibility that would take us (with Nietzsche) to the limits of modernity.
This section and the remainder of the essay have yet to be drafted. Next argument to outline: Hegel sees autonomy as an ongoing collective and historical process, and truth likewise as a dynamic whole, the essential moments of which include negatives, falsehoods or disparities that are not “thrown away, like dross from pure metal, not even like the tool which remains separate from the finished vessel”, but these disparities are ever “directly present” in the “living” whole.Heg07n39 This fits remarkably well with the contemporary technology of consensus making at the microscale, dependent as it is on evolving populations of text, continuous vote shifting and the ever-present opposition of critical, standing differences in the formalized structure of consensus.CB Interpreting Hegel's phenomenology in that technical context ought to render it, together with the branches of Western philosophy that derive from it, as serviceable for technological theory.
For the technical media of consensus building, see Stuff:Votorola/about.
For the revision history of this text, see http://reluk.ca/var/db/repo/autonomy/log/tip/autonomy/a/aut/aut.xht.
See the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Arm.
On the predicted means of political control, see Stuff:Votorola/about.
1.94 acosh( 5000/1.94 + 1) = 16.58 years
For the general equations, see http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html.