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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transhumanism | 7/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T04:24:32.037729+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Debate == The very notion and prospect of human enhancement and related issues arouse public controversy. Criticisms of transhumanism and its proposals take two main forms: those objecting to the likelihood of transhumanist goals being achieved (practical criticisms) and those objecting to the moral principles or worldview sustaining transhumanist proposals or underlying transhumanism itself (ethical criticisms). Critics and opponents often see transhumanists' goals as posing threats to human values. The human enhancement debate is, for some, framed by the opposition between strong bioconservatism and transhumanism. The former opposes any form of human enhancement, whereas the latter advocates for all possible human enhancements. But many philosophers hold a more nuanced view in favour of some enhancements while rejecting the transhumanist carte blanche approach. Transhumanists argue that parents have a moral responsibility called procreative beneficence to make use of these methods, if and when they are shown to be reasonably safe and effective, to have the healthiest children possible. They believe this responsibility is a moral judgment best left to individual conscience, rather than imposed by law, in all but extreme cases. In this context, the emphasis on freedom of choice is called procreative liberty. Some of the best-known critiques of the transhumanist program are novels and fictional films. These works, despite presenting imagined worlds rather than philosophical analyses, are touchstones for some of the more formal arguments. Various arguments have been made to the effect that a society that adopts human enhancement technologies may come to resemble the dystopia depicted in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World. Some authors consider humanity already transhuman, because recent medical advances have significantly altered our species. But this has not happened in a conscious and therefore transhumanistic way. From such a perspective, transhumanism is perpetually aspirational: as new technologies become mainstream, the adoption of still unadopted technologies becomes a new shifting goal. Giuseppe Vattino, a member of Italy's parliament, believes transhumanism will make people "less subject to the whims of nature, such as illness or climate extremes".
=== Feasibility === In a 1992 book, sociologist Max Dublin pointed to many past failed predictions of technological progress and argued that modern futurist predictions would prove similarly inaccurate. He also objected to what he saw as scientism, fanaticism and nihilism by a few in advancing transhumanist causes. Dublin also said that historical parallels existed between Millenarian religions and Communist doctrines. Although generally sympathetic to transhumanism, public health professor Gregory Stock is skeptical of the technical feasibility and mass appeal of the cyborgization of humanity predicted by Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, and Kevin Warwick. He said that, throughout the 21st century, many humans will be deeply integrated into systems of machines, but remain biological. Primary changes to their own form and character would arise not from cyberware, but from the direct manipulation of their genetics, metabolism and biochemistry. In her 1992 book Science as Salvation, philosopher Mary Midgley traces the notion of achieving immortality by transcendence of the material human body (echoed in the transhumanist tenet of mind uploading) to a group of male scientific thinkers of the early 20th century, including J. B. S. Haldane and members of his circle. She characterizes these ideas as "quasi-scientific dreams and prophesies" involving visions of escape from the body coupled with "self-indulgent, uncontrolled power-fantasies". Her argument focuses on what she perceives as the pseudoscientific speculations and irrational, fear-of-death-driven fantasies of these thinkers, their disregard for laymen and the remoteness of their eschatological visions. Another critique is aimed mainly at "algeny" (a portmanteau of alchemy and genetics), which Jeremy Rifkin defined as "the upgrading of existing organisms and the design of wholly new ones with the intent of 'perfecting' their performance". It emphasizes the issue of biocomplexity and the unpredictability of attempts to guide the development of products of biological evolution. This argument, elaborated in particular by the biologist Stuart Newman, is based on the recognition that cloning and germline genetic engineering of animals are error-prone and inherently disruptive of embryonic development. Accordingly, so it is argued, it would create unacceptable risks to use such methods on human embryos. Performing experiments, particularly ones with permanent biological consequences, on developing humans would thus be in violation of accepted principles governing research on human subjects (see the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki). Moreover, because improvements in experimental outcomes in one species are not automatically transferable to a new species without further experimentation, it is claimed that there is no ethical route to genetic manipulation of humans at early developmental stages. As a practical matter, international protocols on human subject research may not present a legal obstacle to attempts by transhumanists and others to improve their offspring by germinal choice technology. According to legal scholar Kirsten Rabe Smolensky, existing laws protect parents who choose to enhance their child's genome from future liability arising from adverse outcomes of the procedure. Transhumanists and other supporters of human genetic engineering do not dismiss practical concerns out of hand, insofar as there is a high degree of uncertainty about the timelines and likely outcomes of genetic modification experiments in humans. But bioethicist James Hughes suggests that one possible ethical route to the genetic manipulation of humans at early developmental stages is the building of computer models of the human genome, the proteins it specifies and the tissue engineering he argues that it also codes for. With the exponential progress in bioinformatics, Hughes believes that a virtual model of genetic expression in the human body will not be far behind and that it will soon be possible to accelerate approval of genetic modifications by simulating their effects on virtual humans. Public health professor Gregory Stock points to artificial chromosomes as a safer alternative to existing genetic engineering techniques. Thinkers who defend the likelihood of accelerating change point to a past pattern of exponential increases in humanity's technological capacities. Kurzweil developed this position in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near.