My previous questions may be more intelligible (to me even) after this, so thank you for questioning me on the Kant point, Leonardo.

leonardomenderes wrote:
Lieing to avoid hurt
feeling sounds like later Kant,
if any.
I am less up on that.

It is later Kant, but this doesn't mean that duty isn't important to consider here. In fact, the casuistic questions that Kant poses are interesting because they appear to be cases in which we may break a duty, yet become more virtuous.

This may seem contradictory at first, but it is not. Virtue is not a matter of being good - someone with many vices can still be good merely by obeying the moral law. Virtue is the degree to which our inclinations seek agreement with the moral law.

Because actions that make us more virtuous manipulate our inclination towards our duty. Virtuous actions then are from a hypothetical imperative with the end of training us to be good. The question then is: are there cases in which we avoid duty in the interest of duty? I would say there are, and that this brings in some very existential concepts in to play such as love, forgiveness, grace and dignity which confound the moral law, yet provide the basis upon which humans are not slaves to morality, but themselves greater.

This provides us an interesting way of looking at the noble lie as a white lie on the scope of humanity, for while the lie is stricly speaking injurious to certain individuals and of benefit to others, it is in the greater interest of the whole of humanity.

Seems very bent from any Kant, though,
when you jump for Straussian rule
like that.
One mind or a group of minds decides
on that large load of highly subjective
qualities you mention, on the fly.
I dunno. No bedrock left, except
according to a winning ideological gang.

Before I saying anything else, just so I know whether I'm approaching this thread from the right angle, is your (Erosopher's) core question something having to do with our technological obligations or obligations in relation to techne?

Szavieur wrote:
Before I saying anything else, just so I know whether I'm approaching this thread from the right angle, is your (Erosopher's) core question something having to do with our technological obligations or obligations in relation to techne?

I would say that we could consider both. Maybe this is a good way to see this relationship:

Insofar as we are committed to the end of humanity, we are committed to develop technology.

The obligation we have from technology is to modify the noble lie until it is no longer necessary.

(right now we have a tentative and unspoken understanding of the end of humanity. But I think it is something like the highest good for a single person extended to be possible for all people - the good life for all agents.)

Erosopher wrote:
What is the best way to think about the end of humanity, if we are to think about such a thing at all? If we claim that we cannot, or should not, think about an end to humanity, what ramifications do we see this as having on the purpose of society, and to how we can think about ourselves in the world?

I tend to think of the end of humanity as if it would be either some capacity deeply woven into our nature that it takes a great deal of work to completely exercise or as a purpose we were to have been made for. But humanity in its entirety wasn't created at once, so it can't have been made for anything in the appropriate way, either (I mean, my parents created me, but were their relevant intentions part of some higher intent encompassing the entire world?).

Now also, if humanity were to collectively plan for something, then it would make for itself its own end, I guess.

How do we understand society when it no longer is concerned with our limitations in nature?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what this means, exactly, so... I mean, I don't think that I tend to think of society in terms of our natural limitations.

What is our duty to technology in the achievement of [the kingdom of ends]? Do we currently see this as our duty in some way?

I think from Kant's point of view that being able to sort of infuse apriority into the natural order by inventing machines that harness that order for the sake of our free purposes (social or epistemic or whatever) is a very good thing, involved in, for instance, the duty of self-perfection. I know that sanctifying nature, regarding it as more than just a tool, is also a widespread practice nowadays (and throughout history); also one I don't exactly disagree with, despite my kind of transhumanist faith. Therefore, while I don't know what "we" see as our obligation in this case, I know what I do, partly: to promote technology as much as possible consistent with environmental conservation (or something like that).

I see the idea of the telos of humanity coming about at its conception.

If I am a primitive human, I may see other humans as radically different than me, even though biologically we may be the same. I may fight with other humans, and struggle against them for my own survival, but it seems there is a change as soon as I recognize them as being like me and seeing that I can work with them.

In the idea of society starting so that people can satisfy their basic needs and protect the whole from outsiders, the end of humanity would be clearly defined as achieving just those purposes. Human desires exceed human needs, and humanity is a much more complicated concept than merely acquiring satisfaction of basic needs - even though this basic society I accounted for above is clearly a part of the conception we have today.

I see Kant as understanding something like this, and trying to build in the Doctrine of Right a picture of the concepts which first make up the idea of a society. The grounding concept for him seems to be the promise, since this frail thing is all was have to try to assure each other, at the formation of society, that we won't stab each other in the back.

Lots of empirical considerations other than promises come in to play with humanity. Some of these are necessary, and grounded in the essential aspects of being human, some are accidental to the time and place we live in in history. Technology contributes to this accidental aspect of the end of humanity, so do natural occurrences and the unpredictable results of human behavior, but ultimately it is the essential end of humanity that is served by the accidental no technology ever becomes essential to humanity. Any thoughts off of this?

(This may be a point interesting to trans-humanism, which, in light of this discussion, suggests that we make some technology part of our essence and therefore part of the essential end of humanity by incorporating it into us in some way. It seems that changing our bodies or life span doesn't achieve this, however, rather it would take fundamental, and at this point, unintelligible changes to the possibility of experience - alterations to a priori knowledge.)