Category Archives: Transhumanism

allenJo Post 5

@miriam98 - Thats science fiction. I dont think in real life society would set those kinds of barriers, with the perfect breeds in one corner and the sub breeds in another corner.

Transhuman technology is there to benefit people. I think of things like electronic visors or implants that can enable people who are visually impaired to finally be able to see.

I dont envision the kind of world the article talks about, where people are equipped at every level with technology to enable them to do things. I think it would only be useful for remedying health problems.

Transhumanism seems to have become the subject of many science fiction movies, and in none of the movies is the result very good.

Years ago I watched a movie called Gattaca about this guy who had been genetically inferior from birth. Growing up, he wanted to be in the space program. However, the space program would not let you in if you were not a perfect genetic breed.

So this guy rips off the genetic identity of a perfect breed human and connives his way into the program. He borrowed the guys urine for the urine samples and other strange things like injecting himself with the guys DNA.

Well, thats what a transhuman society would lead to genetic perfection would be the coveted prize if you really wanted to succeed, and people would buy and barter DNA in order to have a chance at that kind of perfection. Is this what we want?

I don't know why transhumanism is criticized so much. I mean, most of the technology that transhumanists talk about utilizing already exists or is under-development. So this is not a far-off imaginative idea at all. It's very much possible and I think it will happen sooner or later. Denying it or refusing to consider it isn't going to get us far.

What I'm more interested in is if transhumanism will be available to all of humanity equally? Considering the fact that there is still huge gaps in wealth among humans in different parts of the world, I'm afraid that transhumanism will only be available to wealthy nations. I don't like the idea of some humans being 'superior' to others because they have more access to technology and money.

@burcidi-- Actually, you are right that a transhuman would not be a human. Transhumanists agree with this too and it's not seen as something undesirable by people who conform to this idea.

If you ask me, the goal of transhumanism has a lot to do with evolution. I think transhumanists believe that we are currently still in the beginning of our evolution and have a long way to go. As we are able to apply more scientific, genetic and technological advances, humans will keep evolving and come closer to our actual potential.

I personally like the concept of transhumanism. Who can deny that we are still evolving and who wouldn't want to live longer, be affected by less illness and to improve the human functions? I think it's a great concept and it has a very optimistic view about the future of humanity. I like that.

I don't think that transhumanism is possible. I mean look at nature. Whenever we try to eliminate something dangerous in nature, like a creature, a virus or bacteria, new ones emerge in a short time that undermines all of our work up to that point and we have to start over.

Similarly, if we were to eliminate disease and aging in humans, I'm sure new problems would come up that would still shorten our life span.

From a spiritual, religious point of view, it's not possible either because every living thing is destined to be born and to die at one point. A human that's void of disease and disability and that has numerous technological parts is not a human at all. It's essentially a robot, a machine.

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What is Transhumanism? (with picture) - wiseGEEK

Transhumanism is a global intellectual movement supporting the use of science and technology in order to improve human health, well-being and mental capacities. Many in the Transhumanism movement believe that disability, disease, and even aging are all aspects of the human condition that we shall be able to overcome in the future.

Using the very latest technologies, including biotechnology, advocates claim that every ailment and frailty will one day be a thing of the past. Our minds will be improved with the use of Artificial Intelligence and we'll be plugged in 100% of the time.

Join world-leaders in this new paradigm, Prof. Noel Sharky and Prof. Kevin Warwick, as they discuss the implications, technologies and oppositions to this modern day sci-fi world.

Welcome to YOUR future, the future of all mankind

Filmed in association with Edge Media TV.

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

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Amazon.com: Transhumanism: Robots, Cyborgs and Artificial ...

Wealthy, Healthy and Wise

Okay, let me see if I've got this right. I could stay young forever? Groovy. A complete backup of my brain? Copy that. What's this? An estimate? I knew it sounded too good to be true.

As with previous medical breakthroughs, it is possible that future human enhancements, like brain-machine interfaces and longevity drugs, at least initially, may only be affordable for the wealthy. The well-to-do, well could be, the next big thing.

Some future forecasters point out that many medical products and procedures have been expensive when they were first introduced. Prices can drop through competition, lower production costs and after patents run out.

Medical enhancements, however, may encounter unique barriers to lower prices.

Cosmetic surgeries and implants, for example, have been available for decades. Visit Beverly Hills and you'll see more lifts than a crane operator, but you'd be hard pressed to find a tightened temple in my neck of the woods.

What obstacles, wrinkles if you will, face society in providing available and affordable transhuman technology for everyone?

Wrinkle #1 - In the year 2050, 'transhuman technology for all', would mean advanced medical technology for an estimated 9 billion people.

Wrinkle #2 - Medical insurance policies will probably not cover human enhancements.

Wrinkle #3 - The fewer recipients, the higher the value to the consumer. What fun would Jeopardy be if everyone had an encyclopedia implant?

Wrinkle #4 - You just invented the Immortality pill. What price will you set?

Even with reasonable closing costs, brain implant surgery may not be in the budget for many people living in the transhuman age. No prescription for immortality, for those that cannot afford the pill. In the era of 'half human/machine', the gap between the Halves and the Halve-Nots, will be as large as the profits.

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Transhumanism | Posthumanism | Future For All

Transhumanism,social and philosophical movement devoted to promoting the research and development of robust human-enhancement technologies. Such technologies would augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans. Such modifications resulting from the addition of biological or physical technologies would be more or less permanent and integrated into the human body.

The term transhumanism was originally coined by English biologist and philosopher Julian Huxley in his 1957 essay of the same name. Huxley refered principally to improving the human condition through social and cultural change, but the essay and the name have been adopted as seminal by the transhumanism movement, which emphasizes material technology. Huxley held that, although humanity had naturally evolved, it was now possible for social institutions to supplant evolution in refining and improving the species. The ethos of Huxleys essayif not its lettercan be located in transhumanisms commitment to assuming the work of evolution, but through technology rather than society.

The movements adherents tend to be libertarian and employed in high technology or in academia. Its principal proponents have been prominent technologists like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil and scientists like Austrian-born Canadian computer scientist and roboticist Hans Moravec and American nanotechnology researcher Eric Drexler, with the addition of a small but influential contingent of thinkers such as American philosopher James Hughes and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. The movement has evolved since its beginnings as a loose association of groups dedicated to extropianism (a philosophy devoted to the transcendence of human limits). Transhumanism is principally divided between adherents of two visions of post-humanityone in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges.

The membership of the transhumanist movement tends to split in an additional way. One prominent strain of transhumanism argues that social and cultural institutionsincluding national and international governmental organizationswill be largely irrelevant to the trajectory of technological development. Market forces and the nature of technological progress will drive humanity to approximately the same end point regardless of social and cultural influences. That end point is often referred to as the singularity, a metaphor drawn from astrophysics and referring to the point of hyperdense material at the centre of a black hole which generates its intense gravitational pull. Among transhumanists, the singularity is understood as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses that of humanity, which will allow the convergence of human and machine consciousness. That convergence will herald the increase in human consciousness, physical strength, emotional well-being, and overall health and greatly extend the length of human lifetimes.

The second strain of transhumanism holds a contrasting view, that social institutions (such as religion, traditional notions of marriage and child rearing, and Western perspectives of freedom) not only can influence the trajectory of technological development but could ultimately retard or halt it. Bostrom and American philosopher David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with those social institutions to promote and guide the development of human-enhancement technologies and to combat those social forces seemingly dedicated to halting such technological progress.

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transhumanism | social and philosophical movement ...

June 15, 2015

The New Bioethics (vol. 21, no. 1, 2015) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: The subject of enhancement: Augmented capacities, extended cognition, and delicate ecologies of the mind by Darian Meacham Just a bit of fun': How Read More

May 26, 2015

(The Telegraph) Wealthy humans are likely become cyborgs within 200 years as they gradually merge with technology like computers and smart phones, a historian has claimed. Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the Read More

May 15, 2015

Dialog(vol. 54, no. 1, 2015) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: The boundaries of human nature by Ted Peters Beyond the boundaries of current human nature: Some theological and ethical reflections on transhumanism by James M. Childs Jr. Read More

May 8, 2015

Theology Today (Vol. 72, no. 1, 2015) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: Bodies, selves, and human identity: A conversation between Transhumanism and the Apostle Paul by Steven John Kraftchick

March 10, 2015

(ABC.net) Our knowledge of human biology in particular of genetics and neurobiology is beginning to enable us to directly affect the biological or physiological bases of human motivation, either through drugs, or through genetic selection or engineering, Read More

February 6, 2015

World Future Review (Vol. 6, No. 3, September2014) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: The Boundaries of the Human: From Humanism to Transhumanism byJos Cordeiro What is Future Human Evolution About? byTed Chu Human and Robots Interaction: Read More

January 12, 2015

NanoEthics (Volume 8, Issue 3, December2014) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: Ethical issues in cyborg technology: diversity and inclusion by Enno Park Human Enhancement? Its all about body modification! Why we should replace the term human Read More

December 25, 2014

Neuroethics(Volume 7, No. 3, December2014) is now available online by subscription only. Articles include: What to Enhance: Behaviour, Emotion or Disposition? by Karim Jebari Defining Moral Enhancement: A Clarificatory Taxonomy by Kasper Raus, et al Moral Enhancement and Self Subversion Read More

November 26, 2014

(Phys.org) What do pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, Iron Man and flu vaccines all have in common? They are examples of an old idea thats been gaining in significance in the last several decades: transhumanism. The word denotes a set of Read More

November 12, 2014

(Vox) Scientists have been making amazing advances inbionic technology in recent years: robotic exoskeletons that help people walk, artificial eyes that help blind people see. Some of these technologies are meant as medical aids to help people regain function. Read More

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Transhumanism | Bioethics.com

For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As "transhumanists" see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolutions blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species.

It is tempting to dismiss transhumanists as some sort of odd cult, nothing more than science fiction taken too seriously: Witness their over-the-top Web sites and recent press releases ("Cyborg Thinkers to Address Humanitys Future," proclaims one). The plans of some transhumanists to freeze themselves cryogenically in hopes of being revived in a future age seem only to confirm the movements place on the intellectual fringe.

But is the fundamental tenet of transhumanism that we will someday use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter, less prone to violence, and longer-lived really so outlandish? Transhumanism of a sort is implicit in much of the research agenda of contemporary biomedicine. The new procedures and technologies emerging from research laboratories and hospitals whether mood-altering drugs, substances to boost muscle mass or selectively erase memory, prenatal genetic screening, or gene therapy can as easily be used to "enhance" the species as to ease or ameliorate illness.

Although the rapid advances in biotechnology often leave us vaguely uncomfortable, the intellectual or moral threat they represent is not always easy to identify. The human race, after all, is a pretty sorry mess, with our stubborn diseases, physical limitations, and short lives. Throw in humanitys jealousies, violence, and constant anxieties, and the transhumanist project begins to look downright reasonable. If it were technologically possible, why wouldnt we want to transcend our current species? The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnologys tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.

The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created equal," and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct.

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the worlds poorest countries for whom biotechnologys marvels likely will be out of reach and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

Transhumanisms advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods? For all our obvious faults, we humans are miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts. Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we werent violent and aggressive, we wouldnt be able to defend ourselves; if we didnt have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldnt be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love. Even our mortality plays a critical function in allowing our species as a whole to survive and adapt (and transhumanists are just about the last group Id like to see live forever). Modifying any one of our key characteristics inevitably entails modifying a complex, interlinked package of traits, and we will never be able to anticipate the ultimate outcome.

Nobody knows what technological possibilities will emerge for human self-modification. But we can already see the stirrings of Promethean desires in how we prescribe drugs to alter the behavior and personalities of our children. The environmental movement has taught us humility and respect for the integrity of nonhuman nature. We need a similar humility concerning our human nature. If we do not develop it soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.

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Transhumanism | Foreign Policy