Why should we become posthuman? There is only one morally compelling answer to this question: because posthumanity will be a more beneficial state, better than present humanity. This is the Posthuman Beneficence Argument, the centerpiece of the liberal transhumanist defense of “directed evolution.” In this article, I examine PBA and find it deficient on a number of lethal counts. My argument focuses on the writings of transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, who has developed the most articulate defense of PBA and disclosed (...) its metaethical framework. I begin by locating PBA in the context of wider transhumanist claims for the desirability of posthumanity. I identify two crucial components: a model of deliberative rationality, requiring reasons to endorse claims; and the reasons themselves. I examine these two conditions, in turn, specifying the claims that they ask us to accept. Following Bostrom, I argue that there is a need for a foundationalist approach that assures us of some universality in the process of valuation. This is required to appropriately ground the moral continuity and appeal to universality that PBA demands. I examine the reasons why this approach ultimately fails, leaving posthumanity as an unintelligible concept with no moral force. I conclude by identifying a more mature approach to the debate on human enhancement, one that forfeits the grandiose but baseless claims too often found in transhumanist defenses of directed evolution. In short, posthumanity may be a good science fiction trope, but it has no normative force in the moral philosophy of human enhancement. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation (CEC) has become all about right technique. When we encounter a case of conflict or confusion, clinical ethicists are expected to deploy a standardized, repeatable, and rationally defensible method for working toward a recommendation and/or consensus. While it has been noted previously that our techniques of CEC often foreclose on its internal goods, there remains an assumption that we must just find the _right_ efficient technique and the problem would be solved. In this paper, I question that (...) assumption, arguing that any standardized, identically repeatable model of CEC will pull us counterproductively away from ethical reflection, and toward the values of modern _techne_: primarily efficiency, efficacy, and repeatability. This is because standardized techniques of CEC pull the dynamism of being into what Catherine Pickstock calls “identical repetition,” a technologized ontology, which is fundamentally at odds with what being is. And, since ethics is a search for the good of being, avoiding the ontological heart of being severely restricts ethics. (shrink)

The ends of medicine are sometimes construed simply as promotion of health, treatment and prevention of disease, and alleviation of pain. Practitioners might agree that this simple formulation captures much of what medical practice is about. But while the ends of medicine may seem simple or even obvious, the essays in this issue demonstrate the wide variety of philosophical questions and issues associated with the ends of medicine. They raise questions about how to characterize terms like “health” and “disease”; whether (...) medicine’s goals should be extended to include enhancement beyond normal human function; and whether the ends of medicine are binding on those involved in health care outside of professional medicine, such as pharmaceutical companies. They also give philosophical attention to patient experiences, and so raise questions about whether current practices achieve the ends of medicine from the perspective of the patient. Together these essays demonstrate the important role played by a conception of medicine’s ends in a wide variety of issues and problems in the philosophy and ethics of medicine. (shrink)

Biomedical engineering technologies such as brain–machine interfaces and neuroprosthetics are advancements which assist human beings in varied ways. There are exciting yet speculative visions of how the neurosciences and bioengineering may influence human nature. However, these could be preparing a possible pathway towards an enhanced and even posthuman future. This article seeks to investigate several ethical themes and wider questions of enhancement, transhumanism and posthumanism. Four themes of interest are: autonomy, identity, futures, and community. Three larger questions can be asked: (...) will everyone be enhanced? Will we be “human” if we are not, one day, transhuman? Should we be enhanced or not? The article proceeds by concentrating on a widespread and sometimes controversial application: the cochlear implant, an auditory prosthesis implanted into Deaf patients. Cochlear implantation and its reception in both the deaf and hearing communities have a distinctive moral discourse, which can offer surprising insights. The paper begins with several points about the enhancement of human beings, transhumanism’s reach beyond the human, and posthuman aspirations. Next it focuses on cochlear implants on two sides. Firstly, a shorter consideration of what technologies may do to humans in a transhumanist world. Secondly, a deeper analysis of cochlear implantation’s unique socio-political movement, its ethical explanations and cultural experiences linked with pediatric cochlear implantation—and how those wary of being thrust towards posthumanism could marshal such ideas by analogy. As transhumanism approaches, the issues and questions merit continuing intense analysis. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is likely to undermine the anthropocentrism of humanism, the master narrative that undergirds the modern world. Humanity will need a new story to structure our beliefs and cooperation around. As different regions explore posthumanist alternatives through fiction, they bring with them distinct traditions of thought. The Swedish TV series _Real Humans_ (2012–2014) and its British remake, _Humans_ (2015–2018), dramatize the challenge of freeing oneself from cultural presumptions. When negotiating personhood with humanoid robots, the Swedish protagonist family presupposes a (...) social-democratic ethos, which is a trace of Scandinavian humanism that carries into the family’s posthumanist beliefs. Using Heideggerian and related perspectives, I analyze these series to make a case for a _dataist_ ontology with potential to re-enchant the modern world and bring forth a new epoch of being. Such a master narrative of _algorithmic universality_ could be facilitated by a new level of interconnectedness made possible by AI. This ontology fulfills the requirements of Robbins and Horta (Introduction, Cosmopolitanisms. New York University Press, New York, pp 1–17, 2017) who call for a cosmopolitanism of inclusivity with room for overlapping conceptions to remedy our present era’s international dysfunction. The Swedish and British TV series suggest that even if humanity’s uniting around a dataist master narrative were to be driven by intercultural competition, the decisive choice might be out of human hands. Paradoxically, such disempowering in terms of agency is portrayed as necessary for human _re-enchantment_. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

We begin by introducing our readers to the Extended Mind Thesis and briefly discuss a series of arguments in its favour. We continue by showing of such a theory can be resisted and go on to demonstrate that a more conservative account of cognition can be developed. We acknowledge a stalemate between these two different accounts of cognition and notice a couple of issues that we argue have prevented further progress in the field. To overcome the stalemate, we propose to (...) focus on the ethical implications of these theories. We link work conducted on the Extended Mind Thesis with contemporary transhumanist research and claim that extended may be ethically preferred over embedded because it is a more progressive and inclusive theory. (shrink)

Christians are not immune to psychological and psychiatric illness. Yet, Christians should also be careful not to permit popular cultural trends to shape the way that they think about the use of psychiatric treatment with medication. In this essay, I suggest that the tendencies for default usage of psychiatric medication can be problematic for Christians in contemporary culture where a technological imaginary exists. Modern scientific studies of psychiatric medication are partly constructive of how we imagine ourselves. The typical justification for (...) the usage of technology in contemporary culture is the theme of cocreation with God, where Christians see any usage of technology as equivalent to our participating in God’s ongoing creative activity. I challenge these ideas in the foregoing paper, noting that the modern technological imaginary that animates modern psychiatry is as constricting as it is enabling. I conclude with a different take on what it might mean for Christians to be cocreators with God. (shrink)

The essays in this issue of JMP are devoted to critical engagement of my book, The Anticipatory Corpse. The essays, for the most part, accept the main thrust of my critique of medicine. The main thrust of the criticism is whether the scope of the critique is too totalizing, and whether the proposed remedy is sufficient. I greatly appreciate these interventions because they allow me this occasion to respond and clarify, and to even further extend the argument of my book. (...) In this response essay, I maintain that the regnant social imaginary of medicine is the regnant social imaginary of our time. It is grounded in a specific ontotheology: where ontology is a power ontology; where material is malleable to the open-ended organization of power and dependent only on working out the efficient mechanisms of its enactment; where ethically it is oriented only to the immanent telos of utility maximization in the short run, and ultimately to some posthuman future in the long run. This ontotheology originates in the anticipatory corpse and is ordered toward some god-like posthuman being. The entire ontotheology finds enactment through the political economy of neoliberalism. This social imaginary constantly works to insulate itself from other social imaginaries through the use of its institutional power, through marginalization, circumscription, or absorption. The modern social imaginary of neoliberal societies marginalizes and politically isolates other social imaginaries, or transforms them into something acceptable to the neoliberal imaginary. Yet, these other social imaginaries could influence the larger social imaginary in novel ways, sometimes through withdrawal and sometimes through challenges. These other practices—again, usually practices ordered according to different ontological and teleological purposes—might serve as a source of renewal and transformation, but only if the practitioners of these other social imaginaries understand the ontotheological powers that they are up against. (shrink)

Human civilization, in its continuous evolution, remoulded itself from a biological organism to a biological and technological mixed being. Intensely developed technologies help human beings to make their bodily existence more powerful. Through body enhancement technology, human beings transform themselves into a transhuman and then to a posthuman, in an evolutionary manner. Whereas transhumanism depicts cultural, social, and mainly technological movements, posthumanism is popularized as a philosophical interpretation. Posthuman researchers make a new form of life through the amalgamation of human (...) biology and mechanical technology and portrayed it by the name ‘cyborg’. However, through such inventions, there arise some questions regarding the morality of cyborgs and its effects in the domain of human moral life. The main question addressed towards the enhancement of technology is, ‘Do cyborgs downgrade human values?’. Thus, the article focuses on how posthumanism creates its place in the recent world among other philosophical views. It is crucially important to give proper attention to posthumanism now, not only because of its recent and ongoing rise as a political and cultural force but because of the major breakthroughs that posthumanism emphasizes. Morality always stands as a firm discussion in the field of philosophy. Technological enhancements in human life bring a lot of moral questions about human life and sociocultural activity. In doing so, this article tries to light up on some ethical issues regarding posthumanism and at the same time tries to show how and why posthumanism and its morality are different from the modern or humanist approach and its ethical concepts. (shrink)