- New
-
Topics
- All Categories
- Metaphysics and Epistemology
- Value Theory
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Logic and Philosophy of Logic
- Philosophy of Biology
- Philosophy of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Computing and Information
- Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Physical Science
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Philosophy of Probability
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Science, Misc
- History of Western Philosophy
- Philosophical Traditions
- Philosophy, Misc
- Other Academic Areas
- Journals
- Submit material
- More
Switch to: References
Citations of:
In Defence of Posthuman Dignity
Bioethics 19 (3):202-214 (2005)
Add citations
You must login to add citations.
|
|
|
El transhumanismo como filosofía e ideología tecnologicista tiene cada vez más adeptos y se coloca en los ámbitos académicos como una posición positiva, posible y deseable. Su implementación aparece solapada en una vida cotidiana que depende, como nunca antes, de los avances tecnológicos. La posición que manejaremos es que esta ideología, que sobredimensiona el papel de la tecnología en la sociedad, tiene una visión limitada respecto con los conflictos éticos, económicos y sociales que dimanan de sus presupuestos. El problema no (...) No categories |
|
|
Limitless is a movie (released in 2011) as well as a novel (published in 2001) about a tormented author who (plagued by a writer’s block) becomes an early user of an experimental designer drug. The wonder drug makes him highly productive overnight and even allows him to make a fortune on the stock market. At the height of his career, however, the detrimental side-effects become increasingly noticeable. In this article, Limitless is analysed from two perspectives. First of all, building on (...) |
|
|
Conservative thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama have produced a battery of objections to the transhumanist project of fundamentally enhancing human capacities. This article examines one of these objections, namely that by allowing some to greatly extend their capacities, we will undermine the fundamental moral equality of human beings. I argue that this objection is groundless: once we understand the basis for human equality, it is clear that anyone who now has sufficient capacities to count as a person from the moral (...) |
|
|
A debate has emerged in the bioethics literature about the use of biotechnology to modify human nature. A failure to define humanness has produced conceptual confusion in this debate. We draw upon recent social psychological work on folk concepts of humanness and dehumanization to analyse the understandings of humanness that underpin the rival positions. We argue that advocates and opponents of human nature modification employ distinct conceptions of humanness, and that their differing evaluations of modification make sense in light of (...) |
|
|
Habermas’s argument from human nature, which speaks in favour of holding back the use of human germline editing for purposes of enhancement, has lately received criticism anew. Prominent are objections to its supposedly genetic essentialist and determinist framework, which underestimates social impacts on human development. I argue that this criticism originates from an instrumentalist reading of Habermas’s argument, which wrongly focuses on empirical conditions and means-ends-relations. Drawing on Habermas’s distinction of a threefold use of practical reason, I show how an (...) |
|
|
Drawing upon a concept of ‘critical bioethics’ [7] this paper takes a species-broad approach to the social and ethical aspects of enhancement. Critical Bioethics aims to foreground interdisciplinarity, socio-political dimensions, as well as reflexivity to what becomes bioethical subject matter. This paper focuses upon the latter component and uses the example of animal enhancement as a way to think about both enhancement generally, and bioethics. It constructs several arguments for including animal enhancement as a part of enhancement debates, and considers (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
This article offers a logical analysis of Slippery Slope Arguments. Such arguments claim that adopting a certain act or policy would take us down a slippery slope to an undesirable bottom and infer from this that we should refrain from this act or policy. Even though a logical assessment of such arguments has not received much careful attention, it is of vital importance to their overall assessment because if the premises fail to support the conclusion an argument is worthless. I (...) |
|
|
We present a hypothetical process of mind coalescence, where arti cial connections are created between two or more brains. This might simply allow for an improved form of communication. At the other extreme, it might merge the minds into one in a process that can be thought of as a reverse split-brain operation. We propose that one way mind coalescence might happen is via an exocortex, a prosthetic extension of the biological brain which integrates with the brain as seamlessly as (...) |
|
|
Imagining a future world in which people no longer die provides a helpful tool for understanding our present ethical views. It becomes evident that the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, and courage are options for reasonable people rather than rational requirements. On the assumption that the medical means to immortality are not universally available, even justice becomes detached from theories that tie the supposed virtue to the protection of human rights. Several stratagems are available for defending a categorical right to (...) |
|
|
This paper explores the consequences of transhumanism on free will based on the metaphysical aspect of the Botho perspective. Botho is an indigenous philosophy, prominent in Botswana, that expresses the essence of being a person. A human person from the Botho metaphysical point of view embodies material and immaterial aspects. This study seeks to answer the question: “Would certain transhuman changes to the material body affect the human person’s ability to judge and choose and hence the capacity for free will?” (...) No categories |
|
|
Die wachsende Nachfrage nach Anti-Aging-Medizin wirft die Frage auf, welche medizinischen Leistungen ein solidarisches Gesundheitssystem tragen sollte. Die deutsche Entscheidungspraxis beruft sich auf den Begriff der Krankheit. Im Blick auf Anti-Aging wäre demnach 1) zu klären, was der Krankheitsbegriff bedeutet, 2) zu prüfen, ob das Altern sich unter diesen Begriff subsumieren lässt, um 3) abzuleiten, inwieweit Anti-Aging-Maßnahmen zur Verfügung zu stellen sind. Dieses Prozedere führt jedoch zu keinem brauchbaren Ergebnis. Unter Berufung auf den Krankheitsbegriff allein ist der Umfang solidarischer Gesundheitsversorgung (...) No categories |
|
|
Abstract No one doubts the radically transformative power of contemporary technologies and technoscientific practices over the material dimensions of our experience. Yet with the coming of all the exciting changes and the promise of ever better material conditions, what kinds of lives are we implicitly being encouraged to live? One would think that current philosophical studies of technology would make this a central question, and indeed, a few have done so. But many do not. Following the lead of thinkers who (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
Medicalization has been a process articulated primarily by social scientists, historians, and cultural critics. Comparatively little is written about the role of bioethics in appraising medicalization as a social process. The authors consider what medicalization means, its definition, functions, and criteria for assessment. A series of brief case sketches illustrate how bioethics can contribute to the analysis and public policy discussion of medicalization. |
|
|
Emerging reprogenetic technologies may radically change how humans reproduce in the not-so-distant future. One foreseeable consequence of disruptive innovations in the procreative domain is an increase in the reproductive autonomy of intended parents. Regarding the prospective parental liberty of enhancing non-health–related traits of the offspring, one controversy has particularly dominated the literature. Does parents' choice of genetically enhancing the traits of their descendants compromise children's future personal autonomy? In this article, I will analyse the main arguments which posit that reprogenetic (...) No categories |
|
|
Tanto el transhumanismo como el posthumanismo filosófico han prestado una atención especial a la corporalidad humana en relación al avance tecnológico. En el presente artículo, se comienza señalando cómo ambos movimientos difieren significativamente respecto a la herencia del humanismo. Posteriormente, se aborda la noción transhumanista de la ‘libertad morfológica’ de la mano de More, Sandberg y Bostrom. A continuación, se presentan casos paradigmáticos de modificaciones corporales mediante implantes cibernéticos. En último lugar, se problematizan las cuestiones de la identidad, la corporalidad (...) |
|
|
This article examines the assertion that human embryonic stem cells patents are immoral because they violate human dignity. After analyzing the concept of human dignity and its role in bioethics debates, this article argues that patents on human embryos or totipotent embryonic stem cells violate human dignity, but that patents on pluripotent or multipotent stem cells do not. Since patents on pluripotent or multipotent stem cells may still threaten human dignity by encouraging people to treat embryos as property, patent agencies (...) |
|
|
The purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the main philosophical roots of Donna Haraway’s thinking, an issue she rarely discusses and which is frequently ignored in the literature, but which will allow us to not only better understand her thinking, but also locate it within the philosophical tradition. In particular, it suggests that Haraway’s thinking emanates from a Cartesian and Heideggerian heritage whereby it, implicitly, emanates from Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysical anthropocentrism to critique the divisions between human, (...) |
|
|
This paper provides a philosophically informed survey of transhumanism and ‘posthumanism(s)’ on education. It has two primary aims: (1) bringing clarity to the widespread confusion surrounding even the most basic theoretical contents and terminology of transhumanism (TH) and ‘critical posthumanism’ (CPH), the two dominant forms of posthumanism in academic and popular discourse, and (2) descriptively surveying the discourses of TH and CPH on education. The first section contains description of TH’s and CPH’s basic theoretical contents, brief histories of TH and (...) No categories |
|
|
The article looks at general problems associated with the explication of the concept of human dignity, then looks specifically at this in relation to bioethics and suggests possible solutions. The author explores the intellectual history of the concept and responds to the radical criticism that the concept of human dignity is useless and redundant in bioethical discourse scientific image of the world). He argues 1) that the ambiguity and relativity of the concept can be solved by precisely identifying the content (...) No categories |
|
|
This article explores the concept of human dignity in the work of French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. It demonstrates how this lesser-known aspect of his philosophical thinking is organic to his work and draws attention to the current relevance of the way he resolves the question of human dignity for philosophy and ethics. The first part of the article looks at the basic ideas behind Marcel’s understanding of man as a being on the road, as unfinished, temporal, in the process of (...) No categories |
|
|
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 (...) |
|
|
Since the turn of the millennium, theologians and secular scholars of religion have increasingly begun exploring the relationship between transhumanism and religion. However, analyses of anti-transhumanist apocalypticisms are still rare, and those that exist are situated mainly among broader explorations of religious and secular bioconservatism. This article addresses this lack of specificity by drawing analyses of transhumanism and religion into dialogue with explorations of contemporary demonology through a close study of the beliefs of the evangelical conspiracist Thomas Horn and the (...) |
|
|
The paper focuses on processes of normalization through which dis/ability is simultaneously produced in specific collectives, networks, and socio-technological systems that enable the construction of such demarcations. Our point of departure is the cochlear implant, a neuroprosthetic device intended to replace and/or augment the function of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sounds, the CI does the work of damaged hair cells in the inner ear by providing sound signals to the brain. We examine the processes of (...) |
|
|
According to the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, human life is filled with so much suffering that procreation is morally impermissible. In the first part of this paper I present Zapffe’s pessimism-based argument for anti-natalism, and contrast it with the arguments for anti-natalism proposed by Arthur Schopenhauer and David Benatar. In the second part I explore what Zapffe’s pessimism can teach us about biomedical enhancement. I make the case that pessimism counts in favor of pursuing biomedical enhancements. The reason is (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
The most contentious issue in current debates about human enhancement is whether it properly belongs to human aspiration to outstrip our human ceiling in cognition and longevity so radically that the result would not be improved human beings but instead "posthumans." Transhumanists answer strongly in the affirmative and hence vigorously support our directing available and foreseeable technologies to that end. According to Nick Bostrom, transhumanism is "an outgrowth of secular humanism and the Enlightenment." Our "ceasing to be human is [not] (...) |
|
|
To reassure those concerned about wholesale discontinuity between human existence and posthumanity, transhumanists assert shared ground with antiquity on vital challenges and aspirations. Because their claims reflect key misconceptions, there is no shared vision for transhumanists to invoke. Having exposed their misuses of Prometheus, Plato, and Aristotle, I show that not only do transhumanists and antiquity crucially diverge on our relation to ideals, contrast-dependent aspiration, and worthy endeavors but that illumining this divide exposes central weaknesses in transhumanist argumentation. What is (...) |
|
|
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: (...) |
|
|
In affective neuroscience, constructivist models are acutely influenced by the modern technological evolution, which underwrites an ongoing epistemological substitution of techne for episteme. Evidenced symptomatically in the influence of artificial intelligence (AI), affective artefacts, these models inform an ontological incursion of techne seen to coincide with posthumanist aspirations and anthropology. It is from the perspective of this neuroscientific techne that posthumanism views the human being as increasingly ill adapted to the modern technological civilization, which, conversely, is understood to require a (...) No categories |
|
|
Whole brain failure constitutes the diagnostic criterion for death determination in most clinical settings across the globe. Yet the conceptual foundation for its adoption was slow to emerge, has evoked extensive scientific debate since inception, underwent policy revision, and remains contentious in praxis even today. Complications result from the need to relate a unitary construal of the death event with an adequate account of organismal integration and that of the human organism in particular. Advances in the neuroscience of higher human (...) |
|
|
In this paper, I focus on the concept of human dignity and critically assess whether such a concept, as used in the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, is indeed a useful tool for bioethical debates. However, I consider this concept within the context of the development of emerging technologies, that is, with a particular focus on transhumanism. The question I address is not whether attaching artificial limbs or enhancing particular traits or capacities would dehumanize or undignify persons but (...) |
|
|
In this paper, I focus on the concept of human dignity and critically assess whether such a concept, as used in the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, is indeed a useful tool for bioethical debates. However, I consider this concept within the context of the development of emerging technologies, that is, with a particular focus on transhumanism. The question I address is not whether attaching artificial limbs or enhancing particular traits or capacities would dehumanize or undignify persons but (...) |
|
|
Research into human ageing is a growing field of research with two central foci: geriatric medicine works to reduce the incidence and severity of age-related diseases and disabilities by devising adequate therapeutic and preventive strategies. A second focus, this time in the emerging field of biogerontology, is to bring about a general retardation of the ageing process and by this increase the average and maximum human lifespan. This contribution looks into the second focus, i.e. the possibility of age retardation which, (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As visual technologies become increasingly networked online, websites like YouTube provide a space to share vlogs online, suggest related content for viewers, and help in/form virtual communities, including those of mental illness. Within this space, vlogs of schizophrenia and comments generated about them by other users can represent transitional, dialogical states of illness that speak back to the analog body and affect a body’s way of being in the world. Moreover, as vlogs create resistance against static definitions of schizophrenia, they (...) |
|
|
Fundamental differences between current and past knowledge in the field of biotechnology mean that we now have at our disposal the means to irreversibly change what is meant by ‘human nature’. This paper explores some of the ethical issues that accompany the attempt to increase scientific control over the human genetic code in what amounts to a diminishing of difference and the reduction of human life to scientific explanations at the expense of spiritual, cultural and communal considerations. Within such a (...) |
|
|
The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures, and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious effects of the colonisation of (...) |
|
|
Some bioethicists have argued that moral bioenhancement, complementing traditional means of enhancing individuals’ moral dispositions, is essential if we are to survive as a species. Traditional means of moral enhancement have historically included civil legislation, socially recognized moral exemplars, religious teachings and disciplines, and familial upbringing. I explore the necessity and feasibility of pursuing methods of moral bioenhancement as a complement to such traditional means, grounding my analysis within a virtue-theoretic framework. Specifically, I focus on the essential intellectual virtue for (...) |
|
|
We must undoubtedly take advantage of the benefits brought by new technologies, and we must apply them to the human being to the extent that a prolonged and serene reflection tells us that this application brings improvements in a full sense. But that does not mean that we should accept the ideological discourse of transhumanism. This discourse owes much of its power of conviction to certain philosophical assumptions that have not been sufficiently clarified and discussed. This article aims to highlight (...) |
|
|
CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing can and has altered human genomes, bringing bioethical debates about this capability to the forefront of philosophical and policy considerations. Here, I consider the underexplored implications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives for heritable human genome editing. Modification gene drives applied to heritable human genome editing would introduce a novel form of involuntary eugenic practice that I term guerrilla eugenics. Once introduced into a genome, stealth genetic editing by a gene drive genetic element would occur each subsequent generation irrespective (...) |
|
|
There is a growing tendency for medicine to be used not to prevent or heal illnesses, but to fulfil individual personal wishes such as wishes for enhanced work performance, better social skills, children with specific characteristics, stress relief, a certain appearance or a better sex life. While recognizing that the subject of wish-fulfilling medicine may vary greatly and that it may employ very different techniques, this article argues that wish-fulfilling medicine can be described as a cohesive phenomenon with distinctive features. (...) |
|
|
Drawing on Lennart Nordenfelt’s distinction between the four distinct senses of dignity, I elucidate the meaning of dignity in the context of research involving human subjects. I acknowledge that different interpretations of the personal senses of dignity may be acceptable in human subject research, but that inherent dignity (Menschenwürde) is not open to interpretation in the same way. In order to map out the grounds for interpreting dignity, I examine the unique application of the principle of respect for dignity in (...) |
|
|
The paper begins with the distinction between different ways of thinking about the posthuman. From the question about the possibility of the formulation of an ethics that goes beyond the precautionary principle the following thesis is defended: posthumanism, in its transhumanist interpretation, is the most consistent standpoint with normative ethics as we know it, if and only if the consequentialist approach characteristic of their supporters is complemented with the deontological one. For this two assumptions are made: the idea of a (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
Cognitive enhancement takes many and diverse forms. Various methods of cognitive enhancement have implications for the near future. At the same time, these technologies raise a range of ethical issues. For example, they interact with notions of authenticity, the good life, and the role of medicine in our lives. Present and anticipated methods for cognitive enhancement also create challenges for public policy and regulation. |
|
|
This paper investigates the compatibility of Hegel’s analyses of the mechanization of work in industrial society with Hegel’s notion of freedom as rational self-determination. Work as such is for Hegel a crucial moment on the way to a more complete realization of human freedom, but, as I maintain with Adorno, the technological developments of the last two centuries raise the question of whether the nature of work itself has changed since the industrial revolution. In his Jena lectures, Hegel recognized significant (...) |
PhilPapers logo by Andrea Andrews and Meghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see our terms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications). Use of this site is subject to terms & conditions.
All rights reserved by The PhilPapers Foundation
Server: philpapers-web-7c76586df8-4c2ch uwo