Transhumanism and Posthumanism (Part 1)
New technologies may soon begin to enhance the biological and physical realities of the human body, potentially creating bodies and minds that transcend human limitations. With such technologies come ethical questions about extended longevity, and re-engineering the human body to expand its functional capacity.
Transhumanism and posthumanism are worldviews that strongly favor the development and implementation of technologies which would eventually replace homo sapiens with biologically and technologically superior beings.
Transhumanism has been defined as "the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by using technology to eliminate aging and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities" (Bostrom, 1999). A posthuman would no longer be a human being, having been so significantly altered as to no longer represent the human species. Underlying this worldview is a core belief that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development, but rather its beginning(Bostrom, 1999).
The tools that transhumanists would use to achieve their ends include genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, cybernetics, pharmacological enhancement, and computer simulation.The most controversial transhumanist vision involves the concept of mind uploading. According to proponents, advances in computing and neurotechnologies will, within several decades, enable individuals to completely read the synaptic connections of the human brain, enabling an exact replica of the brain to exist and function inside a computer. This simulation could then "live" in whatever mechanical body-form it desired (Kurzweil).
The first assertion of transhumanist thinking is a rejection of the assumption that human nature is a constant (Bostrom, 1999). There is nothing sacred about nature in general, or about human nature in particular. Criticisms of attempts to modify nature as 'playing God" are rejected as inappropriate.
Katherine Hayles, in her book How We Became Posthuman (1999), describes four characteristic posthuman, or transhuman, assumptions. First, information patterns are more important or essential to the nature of being than any "material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life". Second, consciousness is an epiphenomenon. There is no immaterial soul. Thirs, the body is simply a prosthesis, albeit the first one we learn to use and manipulate. Therefore, replacing or enhancing human function with other prostheses is only a natural extension of our fundamental relationship with our begotten bodies.Lastly, the posthuman views the human being as capable of being "seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals".
These world views raise several significant ethical issues, one of which is: should human beings augment or enhance themselves and future generations?
~Kathy~
*To be continued in Part 2
*** Comments appreciated***
Internet Resources:
Bostrom, Nick. 1999. "The Transhumanist FAQ." Available from <http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/faq.html>
Bostrom, Nick. 2001. "What Is Transhumanism?" Available from: <http://www.nickbostrom.com>
Books:
Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
Kurzweil, Ray. 1999. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York:Viking.
