The posthuman or post-human, in critical theory, is a speculative being that represents or seeks to enact a re-writing of what is generally conceived of as human. It is the object of posthumanist criticism, which critically questions Enlightenment humanism, a branch of humanist philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from which human being emerge; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, instead understanding the world through context and heterogeneous perspectives while maintaining scientific rigor and a dedication to objective observations of the world. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one.^{[citation needed]} Posthuman Future by Michael Gibbs A posthuman or post-human is a hypothetical future being whose capabilities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by current standards. ... In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. ... Trinomial name Homo sapiens sapiens Linnaeus, 1758 Humans, or human beings, are bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo sapiens (Latin: wise man or knowing man) in the family Hominidae (the great apes). ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... // The Age of Enlightenment (French: ; German: ; Polish: ) was an eighteenth-century movement in European and American philosophy, or the longer period including the Age of Reason. ... Humanism[1] is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationalism. ... See also : Human nature (disambiguation) Human nature is the fundamental nature and substance of humans, as well as the range of human behavior that is believed to be invariant over long periods of time and across very different cultural contexts. ... In ontology, a being is anything that can be said to be, either transcendantly or immanently. ... Free-Will is a Japanese independent record label founded in 1986. ... There is no universally accepted theory of what the word existence means. ... In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek , genitive : of being (part. ...

The posthuman, and posthumanism with it, are philosophical positions that overlap and are constantly engaged with much of postmodern philosophy, biotechnology, and evolutionary biology, so the field is constantly changing. The notion of the (critical) posthuman is isolated from these fields as the embodiment of critical engagement itself; that is to say that the posthuman is not necessarily human in the first place, but is rather an embodied medium through which critical consciousness is manifested.^{[citation needed]} Postmodern philosophy is an eclectic and elusive movement characterized by its criticism of Western philosophy. ... This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size. ... Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication, and diversity over time. ... Embodiment is the way in which human (or any other animals) psychology arises from the brains and bodys physiology. ...

The posthuman is roughly synomous with the cyborg of "A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway.^[1] Haraway's conception of the cyborg is an ironic take on traditional conceptions of the cyborg that inverts the traditional trope of the cyborg whose presence questions the salient line between humans and robots. Haraway's cyborg is in many ways the "beta" version of the posthuman, as her cyborg theory prompted the issue to be taken up in critical theory.^[2] For other uses, see Cyborg (disambiguation). ... Donna Haraway, born in 1944 in Denver, Colorado, is currently a professor and former chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. ... Cyborg theory was created by Donna Haraway in order to critique traditional notions of feminism. ...

Following Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, whose book How We Became Posthuman grounds much of the critical posthuman discourse, lays out four points of the posthuman view. N. Katherine Hayles is a noted postmodern literary critic and theorist as well as the author of How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics which won the Rene Wellek Prize for the best book in literary theory for 1998–1999 [1]. // Background Hayles received her B...

First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a thinking mind, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Fourth, and most important, by these and other means, the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines.^[3]

The posthuman is a being that relies on context rather than relativity, on situated objectivity rather than universal objectivity, and on the creation of meaning through 'play' between constructions of informational pattern and reductions to the randomness of on/off switches, which are the foundation of digital binary.^{[citation needed]} Pattern recognition is a field within the area of machine learning. ... Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ... In philosophy, identity is whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable, in terms of possessing a set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from entities of a different type. ... René Descartes René Descartes (IPA: , March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Cartesius, worked as a philosopher and mathematician. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... An epiphenomenon is a secondary phenomenon that occurs alongside a primary phenomenon. ... With regard to living things, a body is the integral physical material of an individual, and contrasts with soul, personality and behavior. ... A United States Army soldier plays foosball with two prosthetic arms Jon Comer, professional skateboarder with a prosthetic leg. ... Trinomial name Homo sapiens sapiens Linnaeus, 1758 Humans, or human beings, are bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo sapiens (Latin: wise man or knowing man) in the family Hominidae (the great apes). ... Hondas humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... Look up binary in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

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