Abstract
While there is a remarkable range of views on what defines the human experience, what seems relatively uncontroversial is the conviction that it is fundamentally dependent on the ways in which we interact with the world as embodied agents. If we take this position seriously, we must acknowledge that any changes made to the physical setup of individual humans (ontogenesis), or to our setup as a species (phylogenesis), must necessarily also result in a shift in individual, shared experience of human life. Studies have already presented evidence towards changes in behaviour, cognitive capabilities due to technologically enhanced ways of interacting with the world, an effect also observed in connection with cultural tools such as notational systems. Novel human-world interfaces are therefore likely to introduce new ways of experiencing the world. Any such fundamental changes can have critical real-world impacts, resulting in a loss of common, shared experience. It is, therefore, crucial to consider how such changes affect the social fabric of societies: the more diverse humanity becomes, the more important issues of equality, participation will be. Therefore, the challenges of such a development are threatening the functioning, cohesion of human society, rather than humanity as such.
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Notes
- 1.
In fact, this chapter argues that posthumanism and transhumanism are more closely related than both posthumanists as well as transhumanists usually care to concede. While I agree with claims made by transhumanists such as Sorgner, who argues that ‘[metahumanism, posthumanism and transhumanism] have to be clearly distinguished’ (2016, 66), it seems necessary to point out that they nonetheless have to be conceptualised and comprehended within a common framework, and more importantly, operate within society in close conjunction.
- 2.
For an overview of the connection between transhumanism and modern renderings of apocalyptic scenarios, see Hughes (2012).
- 3.
This solely applies to the adjective posthuman, not to posthumanism.
- 4.
This is contested by Bostrom, who only finds ‘surface-level similarities with the Nietzschean vision’ (2005, 4), but Sorgner concedes that this tendency of transhumanists to distance themselves from Nietzsche is due to his stigmatisation rather than actual conceptual differences (2016, 111).
- 5.
The German ‘Weiterentwicklung’ carries positive connotations and within a technophile context clearly implies ‘improvement’.
- 6.
Or rather, it seems to commit the mistake of adopting something as a metaphor and then consequently taking the metaphor literally, which is quite a common fallacy at the meeting point between sciences and humanities.
- 7.
This is partly driven by the conviction that it is usually better to reclaim a term than to abandon or simply reject it.
- 8.
Nietzsche’s criticism of the focus on survival is derived from his anthropology. In other words, while Darwin’s theory of evolution allows us to explain and understand human behaviour as a specific form of more general principles, the opposite is true for Nietzsche’s understanding of evolution, which requires the superimposition of an abstract ideal of power onto evolutionary processes, implying a qualitative shift towards a normative understanding of evolution and adaptation.
- 9.
Transhumanists seem to reject humanism’s anthropocentrism while at the same time adopting its categories of thought, which is an ambiguous position at best.
- 10.
It may also be helpful to remind ourselves that the question of humanity is not one that has a right answer, but as one that is constantly re-negotiated and for which a failure of agreement does not result in a fundamental problem, but rather (at its most extreme) in a pragmatic breakdown.
- 11.
‘Psychobiology suggests […] emergentism, i.e., the thesis that mentality is an emergent property possessed only by animals endowed with an extremely complex and plastic nervous system’ (Bunge 1980, 216–217) It is of course possible to reject this approach in line with Dennett (1991, 2018) and others, but this would seem to go against the underlying sentiment of transhumanism and will therefore not be pursued further.
- 12.
In line with the emergentist approach referenced above, mentalism can sufficiently construed as a higher-order physicalism.
- 13.
‘Alternative embodiments are contemplated in psychological, spiritual and religious domains.’ (Ferrando 2014, 155).
- 14.
For clarification on the subject of supervenience and its role in the mind–body-dualism-debate, see Kim (1984).
- 15.
This is not restricted to the brain, where the relation is rather obvious and also evidenced by innumerable studies. Loss of limb, for example, is often associated with complex phenomena such as phantom limbs (Crawford 2014).
- 16.
I want to avoid the term ‘enhancement’ as it generally suggests that alterations are (or at least tend to be) improvements, which is very much up for debate.
- 17.
Which can (and often is) argued for many of the problems that transhumanists are proposing solutions to.
- 18.
For arguments against modularity of the brain, see Dehaene (2005).
- 19.
- 20.
Personally, I think that it is quite likely that anyone achieving such ‘immortality’ would likely be killed in an uprising of the disenfranchised.
- 21.
For a discussion of biases contributing to failures of facial recognition technology when faced with people of colour, see Celis and Rao (2019).
- 22.
This is further underlined by recent trends in growing inequality within the group of the wealthiest, with wealth concentrated on ever fewer individuals (Perez-Arce et al. 2016).
- 23.
This is of course just another way of acknowledging that many of them are socially constructed and thus contingent on historical developments, events, and choices.
- 24.
One need only take a look at the makeup of the staff at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the foremost transhumanist thinktank, to appreciate just how white and male transhumanism as a movement is at its core.
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Auer, R.M. (2022). Mens Humana in Corpore Humano—Body-Hacking the Human Experience. In: Tumilty, E., Battle-Fisher, M. (eds) Transhumanism: Entering an Era of Bodyhacking and Radical Human Modification. The International Library of Bioethics, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14328-1_5
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