Enhancing Who? Enhancing What? Ethics, Bioethics, and Transhumanism

Abstract

Transhumanists advance a "posthuman" condition in which technological and genetic enhancements will transform humankind. They are joined in this goal by bioethicists arguing for genetic selection as a means of "enhancing evolution," improving if not also the species then at least the potential lives of future individuals. The argument of both, this paper argues, is a new riff on the old eugenics tune. As ever, it is done in the name of science and its presumed knowledge base. As ever, the result is destructive rather than instructive, bad faith promoted as high ideal. The paper concludes with the argument that species advancement is possible but in a manner thoroughly distinct from that advanced by either of these groups.

Consideraciones bioéticas y biopolíticas acerca del Transhumanismo: El debate en torno a una posible experiencia posthumana

“…Las preguntas del presente en relación con el programa transhumanista de mejoramiento humano parecen ser inevitablemente entonces: ¿mejorar a quién?, ¿mejorar qué? (Koch 2010), ¿mejorar para qué? O bien, ¿qué derechos sociales, políticos, laborales, asistirán a estos nuevos sujetos y garantizarán su plena participación ciudadana y una distribución equitativa de las cargas y los benefi cios sociales que los defi nirán?…”

Sport and Genomics; prospects and ethical framing

“…Second, they apply a similarly mechanistic view to human society whose individual elements are fungible individuals to be simply modified or discarded in favor of the whole". 21,22 Transhumanist philosophy is often accompanied by a version of genetic reductionism 23 which assumes that athletic performance is primarily determined by the athlete's personal genetic make-up. Having a talent is simply a matter of having the appropriate genes.…”

Cosmopolitanism and the End of Humanity: A Grammatical Reading of Posthumanism

“… A focus on cosmopolitanism and global ethics can be distinguished from the foci of other academic disciplines, such as the ethics of enhancing and/or modifying human traits. See, for example, the Special Issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy which explores the ethics of transhumanism (Bess ; Bishop ; Bradshaw and Ter Meulen ; Jotterand ; Koch ; Persson and Savulescu ). …”