General Information

The 2012 conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association will be held on 6 April 2012 from 9am to 5pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference is open to the public. Previous conferences sponsored by the Mormon Transhumanist Association include the 2010 Transhumanism and Spirituality conference and the 2009 Mormonism and Engineering conference.

Schedule

Speakers will address the themes of Mormonism, Transhumanism and Transfigurism, with particular attention to topics at the intersection of technology, spirituality, science and religion.

MORNING SESSION 9:00am-11:55pm

Conducting: Lincoln Cannon

9:00am-9:10am BUSINESS Lincoln Cannon

9:15am-9:25am KEYNOTE Chris Bradford on “Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves: Subverting Dogma in an LDS Context”

9:30am-9:40am Varden Hadfield on “How Amazing is Grace? The Role of Jesus Christ in Mormonism and Transhumanism”

9:45am-9:55am Dan Wotherspoon on “Things Mormon Transhumanist Nerds Should Keep in Mind When Interacting with Potential Non-Transhumanist Allies — Especially Ones within Their Own Tradition”

10:00am-10:10am Kathy Wilson on “From Mormon to Mystic”

10:15am-10:25am Brad Carmack on “Mormonism Beyond the Gender Binary”

10:30am-10:40am Evan Hadfield on “God as Universal Experience: A Buddhist and Mormon Perspective”

10:45am-10:55am Leonard Reil on “The Gods of Eternity”

11:00am-11:10am Don Bradley on “‘The Grand Fundamental Principle’: Friendship as Partaking of the Divine Nature”

11:15am-11:25am Karl Hale on “Worshiping an Extra-Terrestrial Humanoid Deity”

11:30am-11:40am Marcus Flinders on “Taxation in a Millennial World”

11:45am-11:55am KEYNOTE Chris Bradford on “Bodies Without End: Embodiment in a Substrate-Independent World”

LUNCH 12:00pm-12:55pm

AFTERNOON SESSION 1:00pm-5:00pm

Conducting: Chris Bradford

1:00pm-1:05pm BUSINESS Chris Bradford

1:10pm-1:40pm KEYNOTE Giulio Prisco on “The Turing Church of Transcendent Engineering”

1:45pm-1:55pm James Driessen on “Foundations of Skeptical Operation Systems, Using Non-Classical Suspension of a Logic Gate”

2:00pm-2:10pm James Carroll on “Epiphenomenalism, the Problem with Property Dualism”

2:15pm-2:25pm Eric Swedin on “Why Transhumanist Immortality is a Bad Idea”

2:30pm-2:40pm Carl Youngblood on “Compassionate Obsolescence: Coping with Technological Change”

2:45pm-2:55pm Adam Davis on “Scientific Realism and the Simulation Argument”

3:00pm-3:10pm Brent Allsop on “Ushering in the Millennium”

3:15pm-3:25pm Michael Ferguson on “Toward a Science of Spirituality”

3:30pm-3:40pm Mike Perry on “Christian Atheist Universal Immortalism”

3:45pm-3:55pm Dorothy Deasy on “Post-biological Transfiguration”

4:00pm-4:10pm Micah Redding on “Transhumanism and the Christian Story”

4:15pm-5:00pm KEYNOTE Lincoln Cannon on “The Consolation: An Interpretive Variation on the King Follett Sermon of Joseph Smith”

DINNER 6:00pm-8:00pm

Registration Discounts

If you are a voting member of the association, or if you are a speaker at the conference, the association will cover the cost of your admission and give your guest a discount. Also, if you represent a media outlet and would like to report on the conference, the associaiton may cover the cost of your admission. If any of these cases apply to you, please contact an association officer or email admin@transfigurism.org for your access code.

If you are a student, unemployed or resident of a less-developed country, discounts are available at registration time. Conference organizers will ask you to provide evidence of your student, unemployed or residency status when you check in at the conference.

Travel Assistance

The association may cover up to 50% of your travel costs to attend the conference if you meet the following criteria:

1) You must be a voting member of the association.

2) You must present a paper at the conference.

3) You must live at least 300 miles from Salt Lake City.

If you meet the above criteria, you may request assistance by contacting an association officer or emailing admin@transfigurism.org.

Food and Lodging

Lunch will be served at the conference and is included in the reservation price. During registration, you can designate whether you will join us for lunch, and whether you would like a vegetarian meal. Everyone attending the conference is also invited to gather for dinner at a nearby restaurant (to be determined) after the conference. Dinner is NOT included in the reservation price, but you can designate during registration whether you will join us, so that we may arrange a reservation at the restaurant.

The association cannot directly cover lodging expenses. However, association members living in Salt Lake City and nearby areas may be able to help. We encourage members willing to provide lodging in their homes and members seeking lodging to communicate on the association google group and facebook group.