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Transhumanism is the idea that human beings, as a whole, can be drastically improved in physical and mental areas with technologies, such as cloning, genetic modification, bionics, nanotechnology, drugs, etc. The great majority of transhumanists believe that the human species has evolved and that science can provide a kind of artificial, directed evolution. Transhumanists look to the future and believe the human condition will see improvement in physical ability, lifespan, and mental acuity, and health. In addition, the world condition can also be improved by reducing starvation and poverty. Such technological advancements, some have said, would even redefine what it means to be human.

Some of the areas the trans-humanists propose can be assisted and or improved by technology are as follows:

Some trans-humanists have even proposed the idea of transferring human consciousness into the machine in order to vastly extend lifespans.

Philosophers and ethicists have been delving into the theological and moral issues related to the advancement of technology as a relates to altering human capabilities, mental states, duration of life, etc. Many questions have arisen that dont, as yet, have answers.

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What is transhumanism? Can humans and technology meld together?

Political ideology

Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology.

The term "transhumanism" with its present meaning was popularised by Julian Huxley's 1957 essay of that name.[1]

Natasha Vita-More was elected as a Councilperson for the 28th Senatorial District of Los Angeles in 1992. She ran with the Green Party, but on a personal platform of "transhumanism". She quit after a year, saying her party was "too neurotically geared toward environmentalism".[2][3]

James Hughes identifies the "neoliberal" Extropy Institute, founded by philosopher Max More and developed in the 1990s, as the first organized advocates for transhumanism. And he identifies the late-1990s formation of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), a European organization which later was renamed to Humanity+ (H+), as partly a reaction to the free market perspective of the "Extropians". Per Hughes, "[t]he WTA included both social democrats and neoliberals around a liberal democratic definition of transhumanism, codified in the Transhumanist Declaration."[4][5] Hughes has also detailed the political currents in transhumanism, particularly the shift around 2009 from socialist transhumanism to libertarian and anarcho-capitalist transhumanism.[5] He claims that the left was pushed out of the World Transhumanist Association Board of Directors, and that libertarians and Singularitarians have secured a hegemony in the transhumanism community with help from Peter Thiel, but Hughes remains optimistic about a techno-progressive future.[5]

In 2012, the Longevity Party, a movement described as "100% transhumanist" by cofounder Maria Konovalenko,[6] began to organize in Russia for building a balloted political party.[7] Another Russian programme, the 2045 Initiative was founded in 2012 by billionaire Dmitry Itskov with its own proposed "Evolution 2045" political party advocating life extension and android avatars.[8][9]

In October 2013, the political party Alianza Futurista ALFA was founded in Spain with transhumanist goals and ideals inscribed in its statutes.[10]

In October 2014, Zoltan Istvan announced that he would be running in the 2016 United States presidential election under the banner of the "Transhumanist Party."[11] By November 2019, the Party claimed 880 members, with Gennady Stolyarov II as chair.[12]

Other groups using the name "Transhumanist Party" exist in the United Kingdom[13][14][15] and Germany.[16]

According to a 2006 study by the European Parliament, transhumanism is the political expression of the ideology that technology and science should be used to enhance human abilities.[17]

According to Amon Twyman of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), political philosophies which support transhumanism include social futurism, techno-progressivism, techno-libertarianism, and anarcho-transhumanism. Twyman considers such philosophies to collectively constitute political transhumanism.[18]

Techno-progressives, also known as Democratic transhumanists,[19][20] support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and prevent technologies from furthering the divide among socioeconomic classes.[21] However, libertarian transhumanist Ronald Bailey is critical of the democratic transhumanism described by James Hughes.[22][23] Jeffrey Bishop wrote that the disagreements among transhumanists regarding individual and community rights is "precisely the tension that philosophical liberalism historically tried to negotiate," but that disagreeing entirely with a posthuman future is a disagreement with the right to choose what humanity will become.[24] Woody Evans has supported placing posthuman rights in a continuum with animal rights and human rights.[25]

Riccardo Campa wrote that transhumanism can be coupled with many different political, philosophical, and religious views, and that this diversity can be an asset so long as transhumanists do not give priority to existing affiliations over membership with organized transhumanism.[26]

Truman Chen of the Stanford Political Journal considers many transhumanist ideals to be anti-political.[27]

Anarcho-transhumanism is a philosophy synthesizing anarchism with transhumanism that is concerned with both social and physical freedom respectively.[29] Anarcho-transhumanists define freedom as the expansion of one's own ability to experience the world around them.[30] Anarcho-transhumanists may advocate various praxis to advance their ideals, including computer hacking, three-dimensional printing, or biohacking.[31][29]

The philosophy draws heavily from the individualist anarchism of William Godwin, Max Stirner and Voltairine de Cleyre[32] as well as the cyberfeminism presented by Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto.[33] Anarcho-transhumanist thought looks at issues surrounding bodily autonomy,[34] disability,[35] gender,[34][29] neurodiversity,[36] queer theory,[37] science,[38] free software,[29] and sexuality[39] whilst presenting critiques through anarchist and transhumanist lens of ableism,[36] cisheteropatriarchy[34] and primitivism.[40] Much of early anarcho-transhumanist thought was a response to anarcho-primitivism. Anarcho-transhumanism may be interpreted either as criticism of, or an extension of humanism, because it challenges what being human means.[29]

Anarcho-transhumanists also criticise non-anarchist forms of transhumanism such as democratic transhumanism and libertarian transhumanism as incoherent and unsurvivable due to their preservation of the state. They view such instruments of power as inherently unethical and incompatible with the acceleration of social and material freedom for all individuals.[41] Anarcho-transhumanism is generally anti-capitalist, arguing capitalist accumulation of wealth would lead to dystopia while partnered with transhumanism, instead advocating for equal access to advanced technologies that enable morphological freedom and space travel.[42][43]

Anarcho-transhumanist philosopher William Gillis has advocated for a 'social singularity', or a transformation in humanity's morals, to complement the technological singularity. This social singularity will ensure that no coercion will be required to maintain order in a future society where people are likely to have access to lethal forms of technology.[44]

Democratic transhumanism, a term coined by James Hughes in 2002, refers to the stance of transhumanists (advocates for the development and use of human enhancement technologies) who espouse liberal, social, and/or radical democratic political views.[45][46][47][48]

According to Hughes, the ideology "stems from the assertion that human beings will generally be happier when they take rational control of the natural and social forces that control their lives."[46][49]The ethical foundation of democratic transhumanism rests upon rule utilitarianism and non-anthropocentric personhood theory.[50] Democratic transhumanists support equal access to human enhancement technologies in order to promote social equality and to prevent technologies from furthering the divide among the socioeconomic classes.[51]While raising objections both to right-wing and left-wing bioconservatism, and libertarian transhumanism, Hughes aims to encourage democratic transhumanists and their potential progressive allies to unite as a new social movement and influence biopolitical public policy.[46][48]

An attempt to expand the middle ground between technorealism and techno-utopianism, democratic transhumanism can be seen as a radical form of techno-progressivism.[52] Appearing several times in Hughes' work, the term "radical" (from Latin rdx, rdc-, root) is used as an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the root or going to the root. His central thesis is that emerging technologies and radical democracy can help citizens overcome some of the root causes of inequalities of power.[46]

According to Hughes, the terms techno-progressivism and democratic transhumanism both refer to the same set of Enlightenment values and principles; however, the term technoprogressive has replaced the use of the word democratic transhumanism.[53][54]

Hughes has identified 15 "left futurist" or "left techno-utopian" trends and projects that could be incorporated into democratic transhumanism:

These are notable individuals who have identified themselves, or have been identified by Hughes, as advocates of democratic transhumanism:[55]

Science journalist Ronald Bailey wrote a review of Citizen Cyborg in his online column for Reason magazine in which he offered a critique of democratic transhumanism and a defense of libertarian transhumanism.[22][23]

Critical theorist Dale Carrico defended democratic transhumanism from Bailey's criticism.[56] However, he would later criticize democratic transhumanism himself on technoprogressive grounds.[57]

Libertarian transhumanism is a political ideology synthesizing libertarianism and transhumanism.[45]

Self-identified libertarian transhumanists, such as Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, are advocates of the asserted "right to human enhancement" who argue that the free market is the best guarantor of this right, claiming that it produces greater prosperity and personal freedom than other economic systems.[58][59]

Libertarian transhumanists believe that the principle of self-ownership is the most fundamental idea from which both libertarianism and transhumanism stem. They are rational egoists and ethical egoists who embrace the prospect of using emerging technologies to enhance human capacities, which they believe stems from the self-interested application of reason and will in the context of the individual freedom to achieve a posthuman state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.[60] They extend this rational and ethical egoism to advocate a form of "biolibertarianism".[58]

As strong civil libertarians, libertarian transhumanists hold that any attempt to limit or suppress the asserted right to human enhancement is a violation of civil rights and civil liberties. However, as strong economic libertarians, they also reject proposed public policies of government-regulated and -insured human enhancement technologies, which are advocated by democratic transhumanists, because they fear that any state intervention will steer or limit their choices.[23][61]

Extropianism, the earliest current of transhumanist thought defined in 1988 by philosopher Max More, initially included an anarcho-capitalist interpretation of the concept of "spontaneous order" in its principles, which states that a free market economy achieves a more efficient allocation of societal resources than any planned or mixed economy could achieve. In 2000, while revising the principles of Extropy, More seemed to be abandoning libertarianism in favor of modern liberalism and anticipatory democracy. However, many Extropians remained libertarian transhumanists.[45]

Critiques of the techno-utopianism of libertarian transhumanists from progressive cultural critics include Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron's 1995 essay The Californian Ideology; Mark Dery's 1996 book Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century; and Paulina Borsook's 2000 book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech.

Barbrook argues that libertarian transhumanists are proponents of the Californian Ideology who embrace the goal of reactionary modernism: economic growth without social mobility.[62] According to Barbrook, libertarian transhumanists are unwittingly appropriating the theoretical legacy of Stalinist communism by substituting, among other concepts, the "vanguard party" with the "digerati", and the "new Soviet man" with the "posthuman".[63] Dery coined the dismissive phrase "body-loathing" to describe the attitude of libertarian transhumanists and those in the cyberculture who want to escape from their "meat puppet" through mind uploading into cyberspace.[64] Borsook asserts that libertarian transhumanists indulge in a subculture of selfishness, elitism, and escapism.[65]

Sociologist James Hughes is the most militant critic of libertarian transhumanism. While articulating "democratic transhumanism" as a sociopolitical program in his 2004 book Citizen Cyborg,[48] Hughes sought to convince libertarian transhumanists to embrace social democracy by arguing that:

Klaus-Gerd Giesen, a German political scientist specializing in the philosophy of technology, wrote a critique of the libertarianism he imputes to all transhumanists. While pointing out that the works of Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek figure in practically all of the recommended reading lists of Extropians, he argues that transhumanists, convinced of the sole virtues of the free market, advocate an unabashed inegalitarianism and merciless meritocracy which can be reduced in reality to a biological fetish. He is especially critical of their promotion of a science-fictional liberal eugenics, virulently opposed to any political regulation of human genetics, where the consumerist model presides over their ideology. Giesen concludes that the despair of finding social and political solutions to today's sociopolitical problems incites transhumanists to reduce everything to the hereditary gene, as a fantasy of omnipotence to be found within the individual, even if it means transforming the subject (human) to a new draft (posthuman).[66]

See the article here:

Transhumanist politics - Wikipedia

The future seems to arrive at an increasingly faster pace. It is as if humanity collectively ordered express delivery robots with advanced artificial intelligence to deliver a ticket to space. But we didnt sit down to order this package, did we? And will there be enough tickets for everyone? Here the philosophy of transhumanism enters because it grapples with questions about the future. What is the best way to develop humanity with growing access to new gadgets, robots, and space? Some think we should colonize space, others think that a built-in communications device installed below the skin is the way to go. Maybe you want your consciousness uploaded to the cloud? Or perhaps you want to live forever?

InA History of Transhumanist Thought, the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom outlines the history of transhumanism in a straightforward and well-argued manner. Bostrom locates the first notion of extending human life as far back as theEpic of Gilgamesh(1700 B.C.). Transhumanism, according to Bostrom, began with the publication of DarwinsOrigin of Species(1859) and Nietzsches conception of thebermensch, inThus Spoke Zarathustra(1883).

Both these books are important because they form the beginning of the philosophical foundation of transhumanism. Each of them suggests a novel understanding of humanity which does not see humanitys current stage as the endpoint of evolution but rather as a possibly quite early phase (Bostrom, 2005). For Bostrom and other transhumanists, this means that the phase humanity is currently in could potentially (and perhaps should) be transcended. Transcendence (the term from which transhumanism takes its prefix), or overcoming our present physical, mental, economic, or technological limitations, is a vital aim for most transhumanists. Let us continue to the development of transhumanism as a philosophical position.

In the years after WWII, the genre of science-fiction developed and caught the imagination of the public. Writers likeKarel apek,Isaac Asimov,Stanisaw Lem, andArthur C. Clarke became important figures whose visions shaped an entire generations conception of the future. One of the early science fiction hallmarks was a techno-optimism that envisioned the unlimited possibilities for human development and property. However, contemporary science-fiction series likeBattlestar Galactica,ElysiumorThe Expanse have taken a more dystopian perspective on humanitys future.

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From techno-optimism to techno-scepticism or pessimism, this change seems to mirror the growing realization on the fragile nature of humanity. The fact that a single asteroid could potentially exterminate humankind is, if not a stark reminder of our mortality, at least a wake-up call. It is precisely a wake-up call that these realizations have impacted on transhumanism, helping it develop into a philosophy aiming at saving humanity from impending destruction. Books, TV shows, films, and plays have been created as thought experiments for examining possible future scenarios for humanitys development.

Two events were necessary for the intellectual development of transhumanism as a philosophical position. The first event was the publication ofAre you a Transhuman?(1989) byFM-2030(formerly known as F.M. Esfandiary). This book played a huge role in making the theory a proper philosophical position, bringing it out of darkened bedrooms of geeks and into the world of academia.

The second event, the founding ofThe World Transhumanist Association in 1998, helped shape the current transhumanist program into its contemporary form. Transhumanism became a political agenda that seeks, on one hand the betterment, and on the other, the survival of humanity. This began when transhumanism attracted fame by drawing in philanthropists such as Elon Musk, making it relevant for popular news outlets to engage with this philosophy. A political party has even been created in the US, which espouses a fundamental transhumanist position.

In general, transhumanism is often described as an umbrella term for technology-optimistic philosophies concerned with these three general characteristics:

More often than not, these concerns overlap because any new solution to one impacts another.

Lets begin by looking at the first characteristic: in our day and age, threats humanity faces have shifted focus. Before, we feared that the Cold War would end in a nuclear holocaust. Today, our concerns surround viruses, climate change, AI, or the possibility of asteroids colliding with Earth. This leads to the question of whether or not we should fear the future.

The second characteristic focuses on improving humanitys inherent abilities and capabilities to make humanity and society better. Philosophers tend to ask: do we need to be better to live a good life?

The third and final characteristic is overcoming natural limits, such as only perceiving light from a limited range of wavelengths, limited strength and intellectual capacities, and even our own death. The response:is immortality as great as it appears?

Transhumanists come in many shapes and sizes. Like Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk, some worry about the survival of humanity, about the dangers posed by asteroids orartificial intelligence. Others again wish to experiment with the human body to enhance its capabilities or toextend lifeindefinitely. With the wide-ranging interests of transhumanists, it can be hard to describe them as a uniform group.

Most transhumanists do, however, agree with theTranshumanist Declarationpublished by the non-profitHumanityPlus. The points of agreement that most transhumanists share could be paraphrased as follows:

Based on these eight points, we see transhumanists have a common concern. They wish to make the future world as pleasant as possible, not only for humans but also for animals and for artificial intelligence. Bostrom, FM-2030 (Esfandiary) and other transhumanist thinkers such as Anders Sandberg, Max More, and Natasha Vita-More are only a few of the original signatories of the Transhumanist Declaration.

Today, many philanthropists have been convinced of the Transhumanist cause. Elon Musks goal of colonizing Mars could easily be conceived of as a Transhumanist endeavour to make humanitya multi-planetary species. Both Musks and Bill Gates fear of artificial intelligence has spurred research into what Nick Bostrom and Stuart Russell has called thecontrol issue. The problem can be boiled down to the question of how to stop a super-intelligent AI from turning humanity into a cog in its wheel. Think of the movie The Matrix, 1999, and you get the sense of how such a future might look.

When it comes to asteroids hitting Earth, one potential threat to the planet, people at NASAsCenter for Near-Earth Object Studies(CNEOS) in California are hard at work. Prominent transhumanists such asElon MuskandNick Bostromare outspoken advocates of the view that humanity must seek to reduce its existential risks. The transhumanist answer to whether humanity should colonize Mars would be to consider the risk of two asteroids hitting both Mars and Earth simultaneously. The chances of this are small, which entails that if humanity inhabits both planets, the risk of extinction becomes smaller.

The philosophy of transhumanism can be seen as preparation for human extinction a sort of survivalist philosophy on a global scale. Instead of preparing to save ones immediate family, transhumanists want to safeguard the human race.

When not looking to secure humanitys survival, transhumanists often look towards enhancements to improve the capabilities of humans. Some prefer to use herbal or chemical supplements to boost their mental abilities. Others install electronic devices in their bodies or experiment with genetic modification of their genes outside of the restrictions imposed by governments. Many of these treatments are considered controversial, while others might be illegal depending on the country. Lumped together, all of those engaging in these practices share a common goal; to enhance and further humanitys capabilities at withstanding the tests of time and space.

Another goal at which many transhumanists aim for is the desire to overcome natural limitations. Longevity, or the prolongation of human lifespan, is sought as a goal among transhumanists, and the final goal is immortality. This aim is the subject of philosophical criticism because death, within certain philosophical traditions, is considered a necessary condition of life. But according to transhumanism, such thinking is outdated because of the advances in technology and medical capabilities involved in keeping the human body alive.

I will now attempt to sum up the philosophy of transhumanism in a single sentence. Transhumanism is a philosophy that seeks to make human life better by advancing human capabilities and survivability. It is, however, essential to keep in mind that transhumanisms fixescould potentially create further inequalities between those who have enhancements and those who do not.

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Should We Fear the Future? The Philosophy of Transhumanism - TheCollector