J. Hughes
Ewha Institute for the Humanities/Korea Culture Research InstituteMapping Trans- and Posthumanism as Fields of Discourses28-29 May 2014
Abstract thought -> imagining radically improvement to human condition
Medicines and magical practices to improve health and grant wisdom
Myths of times and places without toil, conflict, or injustice, a more perfect world
Radically improved social and corporeal life possible in the immediate future
1. Autonomy of reason from faith and authority
2. Human perfectibility and social progress
3. Empirical optimism: sapere aude!
4. Legitimacy of government based on free association
5. Tolerance of diversity, freedom of thought
6. Ethical universalism – beyond nationalism, racism, sexism
Descartes, Locke, Pascal, Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet,
Rousseau
"Nature has set no term to the perfection of human faculties; the perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and the progress of this perfectibility, from now onwards independent of any power that might wish to halt it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has cast us."
HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon– portrayed future evolution of humanity
JBS Haldane, 1923, "Daedalus: Science and the Future“ – in vitro fertilization, genetic engineering
JD Bernal, 1929, "The World, the Flesh and the Devil” – first projection of cybernetic implants
JBS Haldane
Tech that will radically change the human brain: Psychopharmacology Genetic engineering Nanotechnology Artificial intelligence Cognitive science
The accelerating convergence of all these
“for improving human performance”
Curing disabilities
Health
Longevity
Intelligence
Emotional control
Heightened senses
Spiritual experience
Moral sentiment and cognition
Julian Huxley first director of UNESCO "Transhumanism“ "the human species can transcend itself."
“FM-2030” (FM Esfandiary) popularized term “transhuman” in the 1970s
Who is a citizen with a right to life?: abortion, stem cells, great ape rights, brain death, chimeras
Control of Reproduction: contraception, abortion, fertility treatments, genetic testing, germline gene therapies, cloning
Fixing Disabilities to “Human Enhancement”: cochlear implants, prosthetics, eye and brain chips, gene therapies, cosmetic procedures
Extending Life: from treatments for aging-related diseases, to anti-aging drugs and therapies
Control of the Brain: Ritalin and Prozac, psychoactive drugs, brain chips
Extropy Institute http://extropy.org Extropian
Principles
Max More
Ron Bailey
Leon Kass appointed Chair of President’s Council on Bioethics
Fukuyama’s Our Posthuman Future (2002)
Greg Stock’s Redesigning Humans (2002)
Christian Right’s Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity (2002)
Vatican’s "Human Persons Created in the Image of God“ (2002)
Bill McKibben Enough (2003)
PCB’s Beyond Therapy (2003)
Leon Kass
Chair, President’s
Council on
Bioethics
Religious Right
Deep Ecologists, Romantic Luddites
Left-wing/Feminist Critics of Biotech
Human-Exceptionalists
Pro-Disability Extremists
Transhumanists BioConservativesPersonhood, cyborg citizenship
Human-Exceptionalism: Humanness more important than personhood
Humanism, reason, individual liberty, progress, limits are just status quo bias
Sacred taboos, obvious red lines, “the natural”, yuck factor, romanticism
Risks are manageable Risks are unknowable; Punishment for hubris inevitable; Tech should be banned
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies ieet.org
Technoprog! (French Transhumanist Association)
Themes Technology needs public investment, robust
regulation and universal access
Transnational governance to prevent global catastrophic risks
Basic income guarantee to redress structural unemployment
Rights for non-human persons
Opposition to IP overreach, e.g. gene patenting
Singularity University Peter Diamandis Abundance
Entrepreneurs’ summer camp
Peter Thiel Christian conservative
Paypal, Facebook, Clarium
Dominance in H+: SIAI, SENS, Seasteading
Ron & Rand Paul, Hoover
Tea Party
Posthumanism with transhumanist tendencies
Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto
Socialist-feminist intervention to reject gender and nature/culture binaries of eco-feminism by embracing transgressive cyborg
Chris Hables Gray’s
Cyborg Bill of Rights
Cognitive liberty
Morphological freedom
Family/sex/gender freedom
Katherine Hayles
mind and body are translated into information
H+: Patternism as personal identity, substrate-independent
Posthumanism as a critique of humanist discourses
Beyond dualisms of nature/culture etc.
Specifically of the valorization of human reason and agency
Arguments within H+ and between H+ and other Enlightenment movements, such as posthumanism
A four hundred year-old churn where Enlightenment rationality, skepticism or respect for difference undermines other Enlightenment values and concepts such as ethical universalism, the self or progress.
Reason is not self-validating
Reason undermines itself
Faith in the inevitability of progress vs. radical uncertainty
Existential risks
Optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect
Respect for difference, critique of hegemonic discourse, an Enlightenment value
Posthumanists turn it against Enlightenment values
Co-evolution of humanity with technology
Creating a non-anthropocentric basis for ethics
Beyond binary gender
The decentered self
Re-conceptualizing bio-socio-technical co-evolution
Latour: We are formed by technology, not enabled
Power and intention are built into technology
Prosthetics, cosmetic surgery
Meta-ethics challenge: How we can assert ethics while aware of its ungrounded, historically-bounded limitation?
How can a posthuman ethics incorporate neuroscience and evolution without committing the naturalistic fallacy?
Animal uplift debate
Ethics for machine minds
Moral enhancement debate
Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex
Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto
Post-genderism
Martine Rothblatt
Anne Balsamo
Judith Butler
Andy Clark, Robert Pepperell: Extended Mind: Consciousness is not just in the brain
Building the “Exocortex”
Self in social media
Cognitive liberty beyond the Myth of Self
Beyond authenticity: moral enhancement, memory modification
Transhumanists have a revolutionary project rooted in the Enlightenment.
Posthumanists are deconstructing that project’s categories and agendas so that the revolution will be truly liberatory.
Transhumanists ground the posthumanists in biopolitics.
The posthumanists deepen and challenge the transhumanists.
The two communities have much to gain from dialogue.
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies