In its “Special Issue on Transhumanism”, the magazine Global Spiral gave guest editor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and five other authors – Ted Peters, Katherine Hayles, Don Ihde, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, and Andrew Pickering – all participants in a Templeton Foundation-funded project on transhumanism – an opportunity to critique transhumanism’s alleged faults. This responsive second Special Issue on Transhumanism is an opportunity for ten transhumanist authors to evaluate the criticisms and address concerns.
Nick Bostrom: “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity”
Max More: “True Transhumanism”
Aubrey de Grey: Aubrey de Grey’s Declaration
Natasha Vita-More: Bringing Arts/Sciences and Design Into the Discussion of Transhumanism
Russell Blackford: Trite Truths About Technology: A Reply to Ted Peters
Sky Marsen: Conceptualizing Future Identities
Michael LaTorra: Transhumanism: Threat or Menace? A Response to Andrew Pickering
Mark Walker: Ship of Fools: Why Transhumanism is the Best Bet to Prevent the Extinction of Civilization
Amara Graps: Reproductive Choices: The Promising Landscape of Assisted Reproductive Technology
Martine Rothblatt: From Mind Loading to Mind Cloning – Gene to Meme to Beme: A Perspective on the Nature of Humanity
It is inevitable that a movement that focuses on consciously transforming human nature is bound to arouse the fear that it is really about dominating mankind, not about promoting mankind’s progress. It certainly doesn’t help when one of the world’s most prominent transhumanists chooses to curry favor with the Bilderbergs.
If one goes beyond this primal distrust of transhumanist motives, there is still a more fundamental problem to contend with: the transhumanist movement simply isn’t necessary for (and is perhaps even counter-productive to) the pursuit of one’s personal happiness.
Whatever the span of my life may be, I can learn how to live it in a state of happiness–it is a reform of one’s attitudes towards life, not any technological breakthrough, that is the surest guarantee of coping with the prospect of pain and death.
Moreover, whatever the fate of mankind may be, you experience happiness as an individual, not as a part of any social collective. The future course of human evolution is simply irrelevant to your own prospects for happiness, so why put your happiness at risk trying to change large-scale social outcomes? Like many other utilitarian-type ideologies that promote social welfare, transhumanism commits a fallacy of composition when it treats goals characteristic of autonomous individuals (health, happiness, intelligence) as social goods.
That extreme individual focus isn’t the only way to look at the world, Vincent. Group identity matters greatly to countless people across the world. They feel happiness in the context of their social circumstances. You can’t successfully dismiss this longstanding aspect of human experience. I know I wouldn’t be terribly thrilled if I survived alone on a ruined planet.
Furthermore, personal health, intelligence, and consumption currently depend on social organization. I didn’t make the keyboard I’m typing this message on. I didn’t grow the beans and bulgur I ate earlier. Without others, I’d be fairly screwed. Perhaps technology will eventually grant me comfortable self-sufficiency, but I’ll have to rely on scientists to invent it. I’m part of a vast network of people and machines. I ignore this physical reality at my own peril.
For these reasons and many more, I reject your criticism. To the contrary, I say transhumanism needs to increase the focus on social welfare. The prospect of enhancements only being available to the elite creates grave moral and practical issues. We too handwave these problems away by invoking nanotechnology and AI genies. Unfortunately, technical capabilities don’t determine distribution. Politics do. We’ve have the ability to provide an excellent standard of living for everyone on the planet for decades now. It hasn’t happened. There’s little reason to assume technology alone will change this.