From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Sep 21 2002 - 07:32:41 MDT
On Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 05:35:46AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> Unfortunately in this case, Greg's book, "Redesigning Humans" works
> against the transhumanist perspective because it focuses on the
> modification of embryos and thus links the concept of changing
> "humanity" with reproductive and to a lesser extent therapeutic
> cloning (Greg doesn't really do this IMO, its Smith and presumably
> other conservatives that are/will). The debate would be slanted
> much differently if we were to link transhumanism to the modification
> of adult humans with rights of "self-direction".
This is true. However, I would argue that we cannot just focus on
postnatal changes, because our critics are essentially using prenatal
changes as a beach-head against transformations of the human condition.
While most of the critics do this simply because they feel strongly
about prenatal issues, some of the more strategic critics like Fukuyama
and Kass fully realize that it is just a convenient start for the real
struggle to prevent posthumanity (at least that is my impression from my
reading of their texts). Today the fetus, tomorrow your genes and on
wednesday AI, nanotech and cryonics.
>
> The real *crux* of the argument against the proposed "outlawing" is
> what right should a government have to prevent an individual from
> modifying his or her *own* DNA. Does it disallow gene therapies
> on embryos? (So you would allow a child to grow up with a severe
> mental defect that could only be corrected when they reach adulthood?
> Or even worse cause the child to die *before* they reach adulthood?).
Actually, here in Europe the European Comission on human rights have
claimed people have a right to be born with an unmodified genome (based
on some muddy reasoning) and I think UNESCO is also claiming something
similar. At the same time prenatal surgery is totally OK, which shows
that the debate is not really about the *outcome* but the means and the
misty connotations they have.
A transhumanist response to this would be to instead affirm morphological
freedom, and seek to figure out some regime for what prenatal changes
might be OK. The point is, we need to go on the ethical offensive from
the other side: most voluntary adult changes are OK, and prenatal changes
are also to a great extent OK, and must be judged by their actual effects
rather than imaginary threats or how they break some religious principle.
> If you *allow* "repairs" only to be applied to embryos then you
> are presumably attempting to repair "defects". Then the question
> arises -- What is a "defect"? Is everyone who will be estimated
> to gain an IQ of less than 100 defective? Or do you set the bar
> at 120? This immediately gives rise to the question of what is
> a "perfect" human. Or do you want to allow only "natural" humans.
These questions do crop up in bioethics, but my impression from the
debate is that people use their complexity as a weapon against
transhumanism: you name these hard questions, the listeners try to figure
them out and quickly realize that they are terribly hard and divisive, so
then you say that the best thing would be to ban most enhancing
technologies and everybody in the audience sighs with relief that they
don't have to deal with the mess. As transhumanists we better try to
answer them instead.
I would consider an enhancement to be something that increases the
ability for a person to live a good life, as judged by himself. Prenatal
modifications have to be guided what is likely to be viewed as beneficial
by the person-to-be once he has become a person. Note that this view
erases the dividing line between cures and enhancements totally; it is
more like Freitas voluntary subjective health.
> Worth noting is that Smith is a Senior Fellow at the the Discovery
> Institute (http://www.discovery.org) which is definately a
> conservative think tank with most probably evangelical leanings
> (they have pointers to articles involving C.S. Lewis as well as
> "The Politics of Revealation and Reason" by John G. West, Jr.
There is a cluster of transhumanism critics on the conservative side,
with Kass and Fukuyama as flagships. But nearly identical arguments are
used from the left and middle. It is really stasism vs. dynamism, not
left and right.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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