On the (Non-)Rationality of Human Enhancement and Transhumanism

Abstract

The human enhancement debate has over the last few decades been concerned with ethical issues in methods for improving the physical, cognitive, or emotive states of individual people, and of the human species as a whole. Arguments in favour of enhancement defend it as a paradigm of rationality, presenting it as a clear-eyed, logical defence of what we stand to gain from transcending the typical limits of our species. If these arguments are correct, it appears that adults should in principle be able to make rational and informed decisions about enhancing themselves. In this paper, however, we suggest that a rational and informed choice to enhance oneself may in some cases be impossible. Drawing on L. A. Paul’s work on ‘transformative experience’, we argue that some enhancements—such as certain moral or cognitive modifications—may give rise to unbridgeable epistemic gaps in key domains. Importantly, such gaps could prove to be not merely contingently unbridgeable due to a lack of information at a given moment, but radically unbridgeable, making someone in a non-enhanced state inherently unable to conceive of what it would be like to be enhanced in a particular way. Where this experience is key to understanding what values are being pursued by the enhancement itself, it may prove impossible for a person to be sufficiently informed, and to make a rational decision about whether or not to enhance herself. This poses a challenge for human enhancement proponents in general, and for transhumanists in particular.

When Two Become One: Singular Duos and the Neuroethical Frontiers of Brain-to-Brain Interfaces

“…Indeed, some have argued that it may be impossible to be sufficiently informed to rationally decide to undergo procedures that can be expected to radically alter one's values. 51 The literature around advance directives is vast, and we do not intend to argue for a particular position-our goal here has been to highlight its potential uses and limitations to the clinical side of mind mergers.…”

Degree of enhancement: A theoretical and formal definition

“…Toward enhancement, there are permissive (e.g., Earp, 2019 ), restrictive (e.g., Buttrey et al, 2022 ), and conservative (e.g., Fukuyama, 2003 ; Cohen, 2012 ) positions. In the continuum, conservationism stands for the complete preservation of human nature (Schermer, 2008 ), while transhumanism argues that the application of radical forms of enhancers is a natural evolutionary consequence and thus should be actively pursued (Lyreskog and McKeown, 2022 ). Some authors bisect enhancement into “traditional" and “modern” (Kudlek, 2022 ).…”

Golem vs. Transhuman: l’uomo del futuro tra biologia, nuove tecnologie, etica e sostenibilità. | Golem vs. Transhuman: the man of the future between biology, new technology, ethic and sustainability.

“…Ad es., l'idea centrale del potenziamento umano è la prospettiva di migliorare le capacità, le prestazioni o il benessere umano con mezzi biomedici o biotecnici (Savulescu & Bostrom, 2009;Bostrom & Roache, 2008). In genere, questo è visto come un'impresa in contrasto con l'utilizzo di mezzi simili per mantenere o ripristinare le capacità, le prestazioni o il benessere umano a livelli considerati in qualche modo normali, sebbene alcuni sostengano che questa dicotomia potrebbe essere problematica (Cwik, 2019; Earp et al, 2014) 9 .…”