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

ieet.orgdirector@ieet.org