Category Archives: Transhumanist

An over-caffeinated hysteria is the backdrop against which the Presidency of Donald Trump has begun.

At first, the hysteriaseemed the inevitable aftermath of a particularly nasty and at times vitriolicpolitical campaign. With two such dislikable and polarizing candidates, a winter of discontent was comingno matter who became the 45th President of the United States.

But the range and intensityof the outrageseems to be growing every morning, and in a manner asymmetric with past elections.

The asymmetry invites further reflection.

It seems to me that the range is boundless because Hillary Clintons loss wasnt just a political defeat. It was a radical contradiction of the progressives worldview convictions.

The postnationalist corporations a designation which includes celebrities, the media, multinational corporations, and various international agencies are predicated upon a globalism built on technology that seeks to remove all boundaries, particularly of a moral nature; on the other hand, President Trump has clearly defined boundaries to his vision for America, and upholds the historic position that as President, his prime responsibility should be to his country: America first.

President Trumps stances are problematic for politicians and institutions around the globe that have been thinning borders of all sorts for a generation. As the lead actor on the international stage, the multinationalists recognize that the United States lead will force the political class of other countries to change. A Brexit-like effect will require them to demonstrate a similar patriotism and priority of care for their own citizens, not just the good of the wealthy multinationals that live in every country.

Trickle down multinational economics and open tap immigration policies arent working for Middle America, or the first world for that matter.

Instead of a localized earthquake that shakes American politics like the Tea Party, the reaction to Trump is a global tsunami of the expressive individualism that forms the civil religion of the global elite. And because it is an establishment rebellion, it comes not from the mouths of the ordinary people of middle America, but those of the good and the great, or in the debauched equivalents of our day, the celebrities and the CEOs of multinational corporations.

It is symbolic that Starbuckshas capitalized on the feeling to advertise its internationalist and borderless bona fides, because it is serving up the antithesis of the Tea Party movement.

We might call it a neo-Marxist Fairly Traded Coffee Party.

The defeat of the technocratic, postnationalist establishment

It seems irrelevant to them that some of President Trumps policies sound a lot like those of Bernie Sanders, whose stances were wildly popular with many in the Democrat ranks. It is irrelevant because the Fairly Traded Coffee Party is not a popular revolt, it is an organized establishment pushback manipulating the causes of the various identity groups of its anti-establishment base to foment insurrection against their common enemy.

However much she was disliked, Hillary Clinton representedcontinuitywith the consensus that existed across political party lines. That movement didnt need a leader with policies. It simply needed a likable figurehead. It had that in Barack Obama, just as it has one now in Canada in the avatarthat is Justin Trudeau.

The consensus uponwhich these figureheads govern exist on amyriad of faith commitments ofthe technocratic elites. But taken as a whole, they relate to the hopefultranshumanist and posthumanist agenda tochange humanityfundamentally.

President Obama was a perfect leader for them. His hope and change were vague slogans. While the slogans resonated withthe needs of the rust belt andAmericas heartland, the same voters that Trump has just captured, it became clear that Obamaspolicies of hope and change were transnationalist policies more in tune with the agenda of the UN, Silicon Valley, the Ivy League, and the European technocratic elite than with jobs for middle America.

The change the coastal elites had in view, which President Obamadelivered on, was an intensification of the transformations of human nature that had been taking place in evolutionary biology and research institutes at least since C.S. Lewis identified them in 1943 inThe Abolition of Man. With respect to sexuality and the family, it had atranshumanistimpulse; with respect to the environment, it wasposthumanist.

To both the transhumanist and posthumanist movements, the deeply defined social relationships and implications of a Biblical norm for sex, marriage, family, church, school, business, community, and nation the very things that made America great were the obstaclesit was managing to eradicate at an extraordinary rate across the globe.

Trumps promise to restore, strengthen and defend the boundaries around these things by putting America firstis a strike at their abolition of man.

All the coffee in Starbucks wont wake his opponents from that living nightmare.

And the rage is served hot every morning, individualized to the customers antinomian taste.

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The Fairly Traded Coffee Party - Patheos (blog)

Image Credits: Vertigo

In the 1990s,Warren EllisandDarick Robertson foresaw a future of twisted behavior, renegade politics, and uncontrollable technology inTransmetropolitan. Wererevisiting the series book by book, because in a time of unrest anduncertainty we could all usesome Filthy Assistance.

In book two, Lust For Life, the world is brought into sharper relief as the new and the old crash into each other repeatedly, leaving our characters dealing with the fallout. Spider Jerusalem also confronts assassins putting a hit on his life as part of a convoluted scheme tied up in a messy divorce in a storyline that may go a bit too far

In the second volume of Transmetropolitanthe world and our narrator and guide to it come into focus more clearly.

Three one-shot stories open the volume, which was written by Ellis, with pencils by Darick Robertson, inks by Rodney Ramos, colors by Nathan Eyring, and letters by Clem Robbins. In the first, Channons boyfriend is leaving her, joining a transhumanist movement where he is literally going to be uploaded to the cloud. (If Dropbox formed a human face and created flowers, I might be more forgiving of those times theres a data breach that leaks all its files to the world.)

Neural uploading nicknamed braintaping in the cyberpunk fiction I read growing up, back when magnetic tapes existed and the occasional dinosaur roamed the Earth is a long-speculated end goal for transhumanist perspectives on the human race, a cure for death itself. Heaven on Earth. Except that in Transmetropolitan, anyone selling you on Heaven is either lying to you or to themselves.

One of Channons boyfriends first acts as a foglet is to get intimate with another foglet, right in front of Channon, andthe story ends with Spider in the unique position of running out to comfort Channon. All this brings into sharp relief one of the running themes of Transmetropolitan: that better cars and better computers didnt make us better people, and the worst frailties of the human condition are frailties of compassion and the heart.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the second story, arguably the best story in all of Transmetropolitan, and certainly my favorite. Spooling out of a single panel of shell-shocked street people in the first issue, this story takes the promise of the post-death future and reaches back into the past, to tempt us with it; you too, can be immortal, since in the future death will have been conquered.

But none of us float alone in a void; all of us are shaped by the forces around us. (This life extension service is specifically only available in first-world countries; like William Gibson said, the future is here, but unevenly distributed, and the fly in the ointment of transhumanism is that one-third of the world still lacks electricity.) We have family; we have friends; we have a society we understand, jobs we know how to do, favorite hobbies, favorite keepsakes, wedding bands and knickknacks, and our favorite coffee mugs.

For Mary, the subject of the story that Spider tells the reader, all of this is stripped away as she is reborn in a future that doesnt preserve any of that (or it does see the next story but again, the future is distributed unevenly). She is even stripped of most of her voice there is only the bare snippet of a conversation with a faceless man, the rest conveyed via Spiders writing, which forces us to look at her at a remove, and to empathize with her anyways.

She is shoved out into the world without all of the context that makes her her, and she is lost without it, realizing just how small in the face of the towering forces of society we all are, buoyed along by an ocean we cant tame and a wind we cant predict. The future is a place where death has been beaten back, making life so cheap that any excuse not to care about it is one that societys taken.

The last of the three one-shot stories is about the future reaching back into the past via different means, sending people back to live out the ultimate in LARPing, fully stepping into a long-decayed culture. That no-one thinks to match up the Revivals of the previous story with one of the cultural preserves from this story, where they might live in comfort, is a testament to how much the City suffers from institutional failure; an obvious solution forgotten because, again, not enough people care.

One of the preserves is less a preserve of times long past and more a quarantine zone where legal regulations of technology are relaxed, and it sets up years in advance Spiders tragic ailment, a testament to the power that playing the long game can bear out, much as it did with Preacher. Robertson and Nathan Eyring are the stars of this one shot, illustrating a variety of cultural periods and a realm of future-tech beyond the neon-cyberpunk aesthetic of the City proper.

The final story in the book, clocking in at multiple chapters, is an extended shaggy dog story with a literal shaggy dog (okay, a sentient shorthaired pitbull who also is a cop, because comics are great). Spider is deprived of his legal protections and attacked in his home

and the artful cussing and choreography of, say, Preacher is a million miles away. The fight is bloody and horrifying, making Spider sick, and robbing him of his gift with words.

It also does some notable worldbuilding, based around Ellis and Robertsons conception of the future as monocultural in many ways, down to the French language being eradicated in the name of the cultural supremacy of English, showing us a world where colonialism marches on in search of new targets to eradicate. It also gives us naked newscasters, which became a reality one year later. (Okay, so that wasnt a difficult one to predict.)

It also features an extremely sketchy plot point, in the form of Indira Ataturk, the woman on the inside who helped orchestrate an assassination attempt on Spider as part of the longest, messiest divorce in history. In The Words medieval-style interrogation room, she confesses that due to at best criminal negligence and at worst deliberate action, going on assignment with Spider exposed her to the electronic equivalent of an aphrodisiac, and she was filmed having sex with an entire room.

While underage.

This feels like it crosses a line, since shes made out to be a villain of a sort, but her motivation is honestly 100% justifiable. Spider is meant to be a good journalist, but this is the action of a bad one; hes supposed to be a charming bastard, our bastard, but this just makes him into a bastard. It barely comes up again, other than a running gag about how Spider treats his assistants, and I have to ask if the creators decided this was best swept under the rug.

Of course, nothing stays buried under the rug forever, especially in politics, and in the next volumeSpider confronts the journalists natural enemy: politicians. Well see you all next time, two weeks into the future.

If you would like to support good journalism which never stops being necessary in any era these organizations can always use your help:

Next: Five Comics To Read To Prepare You For Trump's America

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Filthy Assistance: Revisiting 'Transmetropolitan: Lust for Life' - ComicsAlliance

In the second and third centuries A.D., some Christian leaders felt it necessary to speak out against a movement of thought that had emerged within the early Church. They believed this new movement conflicted with the orthodox view handed down by the apostles and the Old Testament scriptures. The emerging movement, which was heavily influenced by the ideas of Plato, held that the material world was inherently corrupt and debasing, and our physical bodies were a type of prison. Our souls, on the other hand, were pure and eternal. The end goal of this movement was for ones soul to be released from the bondage of the physical world, and to exist eternally in an ethereal heaven. This movement became known as Gnosticism.

While self-professed Gnostics are rare today, Gnosticisms core beliefs live on in various forms, one of them being transhumanism. In its most general sense, transhumanism is not necessarily incompatible with Christianity they share many of the same values but there is definitely a prominent thread of transhumanist thought that has more in common with Gnosticism than Orthodoxy.

Consider the attitude that both Gnostics and some transhumanists have toward bodily appetites like food and sex. Because Gnostics greatly devalued the material world and our physical bodies as either unimportant or degrading, many of them engaged in ascetic practices. They would, for example, go on long fasts or strict diets, or abstain from sex altogether. At best, Gnostics viewed bodily pleasures as worldly distractions from greater pursuits; at worst, they viewed such pleasures as sinful regressions from their true purpose.

Christians also abstain from food and sex at times, but for very different reasons. It is not because they view bodily pleasures as unimportant, degrading, or inherently sinful. On the contrary, Christians recognize the inherent goodness and joy of these pleasures, and consider them important gifts from God. However, they might choose to abstain from them for a time in order to practice balance, to refocus, or to simply give up something they enjoy as an act of worship.

As another example, consider the attitude that some transhumanists display toward sex when speculating how human relationships will be affected by digital technologies:

Mammals use sex as a means to generate offspring, to experience pleasure, and for bonding with partners Erogenous zones and orgasms are simply the product of chemicals firing in the brain. If scientists can replicate that feeling by firing signals from an implanted chip or a brain wave headset, then it might even be the end of sex altogether.

Transhumanists envision a future where all human interactions are digitally simulated, even sex. As they see it, technology will make it unnecessary to even touch your lovers body; we can experience all the same pleasure and intimacy, they think, through digital simulation.

But it doesnt stop there. Even music cannot escape the reductionism of the transhumanist view. Consider this article imagining a future in which music is purely telepathic:

In all of these examples, we see transhumanists devaluing our bodily experience of the world, just as the Gnostics did.

In the case of food, transhumanists assume that we will not miss anything of importance by changing the way we feed our bodies; what matters most is nutrition and efficiency. Eating solid meals could then become just a leisure activity (i.e., non-essential, unnecessary) as Soylent creator Rob Rhinehart has suggested. In the case of sex, transhumanists assume that we will not miss anything of importance by changing the way we bond with our partners or experience sexual pleasure; what matters is simply having the right chemicals firing in the brain. Biological union is unnecessary. And in the case of music, it is not the sound waves produced by an instrument that are important; what matters is how your brain interprets those signals. If we can digitally simulate those same signals in the brain, we can have music without sound.

C.S. Lewis well described the ultimate hope of transhumanism in his 1945 novel That Hideous Strength. In a telling dialogue, one of the main characters, Professor Filostrato, imagines:

A great race, further advanced than we. A pure race. They have cleaned their world, broken free (almost) from the organic They do not need to be born and breed and die; only their common people, their canaglia do that. The Masters live on. They retain their intelligence: they can keep it artificially alive after the organic body has been dispensed with a miracle of applied biochemistry. They do not need organic food. They are almost free of Nature, attached to her only by the thinnest, finest cord.

Even though the transhumanist vision of the future is fueled by technologies that are relatively new, the values and assumptions that inform it are not. Those values were around in Lewis time, and they were around in Irenaeus time. But what if, in all their excitement to jettison their biological limitations, transhumanists, like the Gnostics before them, have overlooked something essential? What if transhumanist assumptions about the world are horribly mistaken, both on a value level and on a physical level? What if there is something really important, even sacred, about the way we currently feed our bodies? What if the only way to experience the deep oneness of a sexual bond is through biological union by becoming one flesh with another person? What if part of the transcendent beauty of music is due to the material way it is transmitted? What if consciousness is not something that can be digitally simulated? What if we were never meant to be free of Nature? These are all very relevant questions that I do not hear many transhumanists asking. Perhaps they should.

And perhaps, with transhumanist ideas becoming more and more popular, Christians should, in turn, be reminded of the goodness of Gods creation. With the amount of corruption, disease, and injustice in the world, it is easy for many Evangelicals to develop an attitude of negativity toward our terrestrial existence and instead, dream of a home in the skies future in which God destroys the universe and our souls escape to heaven, eternally liberated from our physical substrate. But thats not the future that the biblical writers envisioned. They looked forward to a time when God would redeem the physical universe, not annihilate it; a time when they would live on a renewed Earth in renewed physical bodies. And they looked forward to that future because they believed the past they believed Gods joyous declaration over the physical world: It is very good.

Transhumanism is not really new. It is Gnosticism for the new millenium. Many transhumanists operate on the same values and assumptions as the Gnostics of the second and third centuries. The Christians of that time thought the distinction between Gnosticism and Orthodoxy, however nuanced, was worth pointing out. Perhaps it still is.

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James Hoskins

James Hoskins is a teacher, freelance writer, and musician. He has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a M.A. in Science & Religion from Biola University. James teaches philosophy and science classes at a college-prep high school. He writes about reason, faith, and culture at his blog PhiloLogos.

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Transhumanism Is the New Gnosticism - Christ and Pop Culture

ExtremeTech has never been particularly interested inpolitics. That being said, as the focus of politics and politicians inexorably shifts towards technology, we might just jump in the water for a dip.

Many might imagine that concerns of a more socio-political nature like who is able to accrue what particular powers or possessions, and from whom would persist independently of technological influence. Others, like the Transhumanist Party founderZoltan Istvan, might offer that socio-political issues already are, at heart, technological issues. Now seizing the day, and a rapidly expanding number of like-minded transhumanists, Istvanhas announced that he will be a contender in the 2016 US presidential race.

If you havent heard of transhumanism, or youre not quite sure what it means, I suggest you read our introductory story about transhumanism before diving into the rest of this story. In short, though, transhumanism (sometimes referred to as H+) is about improving or transforming the human condition through technology. Brain implants, genetic engineering, bionic limbs, indefinite life extension these are all examples of the topics (and elective surgeries) that a transhumanist would be interested in.

In his recentbook The Tranhumanist WagerIstvan outlines three laws:

If energetically adopted, these deceptively simple maxims ultimately compel the individual to pursue a technologically enhanced and extended life. Zoltan and other supporters of transhumanism have come to see the choice to accept or reject these principles as something far more fundamental than the choice between liberal or conservative principles. In other words, it is a more compact predictor, a simpler explanation of your worldview, motivations, and actions than any current party provides.

It is for these reasons that Zoltan has founded the Transhumanist Party and is now taking this first major step to grow it. At this point in the game, the next major step getting access to all the state ballots could prove challenging. With these ideas in mind, we present an interview with (possibly) the next US president: Zoltan Istvan.

Zoltan Istvan

Why did you decide to run for the US presidency?

Zoltan Istvan The most important goal of the Transhumanist Party and my 2016 presidential campaign is to spread awareness of transhumanism and to address the issue that society will be greatly changed by radical science and technology in the next 5-15 years. Most people are unaware how significant these changes could be. For example, we might all be getting brain implants soon, or using driverless cars, or having personal drones follow us around and do our shopping for us. Things like anonymity in the social media age, gender roles, exoskeleton suits for unfit people, ectogenesis, and the promise of immersive virtual reality could significantly change the way society views itself. Transhumanism seeks to address these issues with forward-thinking ideas, safeguards, and policies. It aims to be a bridge to a scientific and tech-dominated future, regardless what the species may eventually become.

While the Transhumanist Party has almost no chance of winning this election, its goal is to get on as many state ballots as possible, so people will see its promise and recognize what it stands for. By doing so, well let citizens know an exciting political movement is afoot that focuses on using technology and science to enhance the human species. And maybe sometime in the future, many people will want to join it. Furthermore, Im hopeful other political parties will take notice of transhumanism and incorporate its ideas into their own philosophies.

On a final note, its my hope that others will start to run for various political offices, both locally and nationally, under the Transhumanist Party banner. This way we can show the country that future politics should be far more science and technology inspired. This would be a great step for the direction of the America.

Next page: On transhumanism and religion

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An interview with Zoltan Istvan, leader of the Transhumanist ...

What is the Mormon Transhumanist Association?

The Mormon Transhumanist Association is the worlds largest advocacy network for ethical use of technology and religion to expand human abilities, as outlined in the Transhumanist Declaration and the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation. Although we are neither a religious organization nor affiliated with any religious organization, we support our members in their personal religious affiliations, Mormon or otherwise, and encourage them to adapt Transhumanism to their unique situations.

Increasingly, persons are recognizing parallels and complements between Mormon and Transhumanist views. On the one hand, Mormonism is a religion of the Judeo-Christian tradition that advocates immersive discipleship of Jesus Christ that leads to creative and compassionate works. On the other hand, Transhumanism is a mostly secular ideology that advocates ethical use of technology to expand human abilities. However, Mormonism and Transhumanism advocate remarkably similar views of human nature and potential: material beings organized according to natural laws, rapidly advancing knowledge and power, imminent fundamental changes to anatomy and environment, and eventual transcendence of present limitations. Resources available through this site provide details on the relation between Mormon and Transhumanist views.

Transfigurism is religious Transhumanism, exemplified by syncretization of Mormonism and Transhumanism. The term transfigurism denotes advocacy for change in form, and alludes to sacred stories from many religious traditions, such as the Universal Form of Krishna in Hinduism, the Radiant Face of Moses in Judaism, the Wakening of Gautama Buddha in Buddhism, the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ in Christianity, and the Translation of the Three Nephites in Mormonism. Transfigurism also alludes to prophecies, such as the Rapture in Christianity and the Day of Transfiguration in Mormonism.

The 14 founding members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association began organizing on 3 March 2006 and adopted a constitution on 13 May 2006. We incorporated in Utah of the United States on 4 August 2006, and received 501c3 nonprofit status in the United States, effective the same date. We affiliated with Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association) on 6 July 2006 and renewed our affiliation on 2 October 2010.

As of September 2015, the Mormon Transhumanist Association consisted of 549 members, with approximately 24% living in Utah and 65% living in the United States. According to a survey in 2014, 62% of our members were also members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the largest Mormon denomination) and 59% identified as theists. On social politics, 53% identified as progressive, 20% as conservative, and 18% as moderate. On economic politics, 32% identified as moderate, 32% as progressive, and 29% as conservative. All members of the association support the Transhumanist Declaration and the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation.

The association requires that all members support the Transhumanist Declaration and the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation. Support does not entail a specific interpretation or perfect agreement with these statements. A person may be a member of the association in good standing while sincerely holding to an interpretation of the statements that differs from that of another member, or while not fully agreeing or even constructively disagreeing with parts of these statements, so long as that person supports the Declaration and Affirmation on the whole. For example, the gospel of Jesus Christ is defined in the Affirmation as to trust in, change toward, and fully immerse our bodies and minds in the role of Christ, to become compassionate creators. Support for this statement may not require belief in or specific beliefs about the existence of God. Interpretation of the Declaration and Affirmation is ultimately the responsibility of each member. The association does not sanction a specific interpretation, and it does not expect perfect agreement.

The Mormon Transhumanist Association shares media, news, and opinions about the intersection of Mormonism with science and technology and Transhumanism with religion and spirituality. We engage as a community in discussions and conferences about prophetic vision, scientific discovery, technological innovation, as well as opportunities and risks in our rapidly changing world. We also act with common purpose on team projects to cure disease, and extend and enhance life.

Help the Mormon Transhumanist Association promote radical flourishing in compassion and creation through technology and religion. Join the association and engage in online or offline discussions. Link your website to ours. Start a blog on religion, science, spirituality or technology, and tell us about it. Attend a conference. Participate in a team project. Donate to the cause. Thank you!

You may contact us by email:

admin@transfigurism.org

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Mormon Transhumanist Association 21 Quiet Meadow Lane Mapleton UT 84664 USA

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In his Global Spiral paper, Of Which Humans Are We Post? Don Ihde wonders whether all this bother about the concepts of human, transhuman, and posthuman arose with Foucault. The answer is no, they did not. Much earlier thinkers raised these questions in one form or another. Foucaults discussion in the Order of Things appeared only in 1973. Even if we limit ourselves to modern discussions of these concepts, Foucault is almost irrelevant. This is certainly true of the kinds of thinkers with whom Ihde concerns himself. The only people he actually names are Hans Moravec, Marvin Minsky, and Ray Kurzweil, but Ihde is clearly commenting on the general thrust of modern transhumanist thought.

Our modern biologically and genetically-defined sub-species, Homo sapiens sapiens, has been around for 100,000 to 200,000 years. Theres some plausibility in Ihdes suggestion that the modern concept of human formed only in the last 3 or 4 centuries: the Cartesian-Lockean human. The emphasis on the rational capacities of human beings, however, lies further back with Plato and Aristotle (in their two quite differing ways). Aristotle didnt have the Lockean notion of individual rights, but they werent a big stretch from the Great Greeks view of the individual good as personal flourishing through the development of potentialdevelopment that would need a protected space. The Cartesian-Lockean human was crucially followed by the Darwinian and Freudian human, which took human beings out from the center of creation and some distance away from the transparently rational human of the old philosophers. Even so, I heartily agree that reassessing our interpretation of the human is timely and important.

The biologists conception of what it is to be a member of the human species so far remains useful: Our species is a group of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.1 Although useful, that species-based definition and the related genetically-delimited identification of human is becoming increasingly inadequate as our further evolution depends more on the scientific and technological products of our minds. The transhumans or posthumans we may become as individuals (if we live long enough) or as a species may quite possibly share our current DNA, but implants, regenerative medicine, medical nanotechnology, neural-computer interfaces, and other technologies and cultural practices are likely to gradually render our chromosomes almost vestigial components of our individual and species identity.

While I agree with Ihde on the need for (further) discussion of the concepts and significance of human, transhuman, and posthuman, I find many of his comments to be directed at transhumanists who barely exist (if at all). I resonate with the project of understanding potentially obfuscating idols such as Bacon described. But Ihdes discussion of his own four idols seems to be more of a straw man than an accurate critique of contemporary transhumanist views. I find this to be true especially of his Idol of Paradise and Idol of Prediction. The other two idolsof Intelligent Design and the Cyborg contain relatively little critical commentary, and so I find less in them to object to.

True Transhumanism

A few years ago, I received a telephone call from researchers from the Oxford English Dictionary who were looking into the possibility of adding transhumanism to that authoritative bible of word usage. That addition has just now happeneda little behind the widespread adoption of the term around the world. Although Dante and Huxley used the term earlier, I first (and independently) coined the modern sense of the term around two decades ago in my essay Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy. My currently preferred definition, shared by other transhumanists is as follows:

Since I will argue that most of Ihdes critical comments and Idols succeed in damaging only views that few or no transhumanists actually hold, it makes sense for me to establish my knowledge of those views. Apart from first defining and explaining the philosophical framework of transhumanism, I wrote the Principles of Extropy and co-founded Extropy Institute to explore it and to spur the development of a movement (for want of a better term) based on transhumanism. That movement has grown from numerous sources in addition to my own work and become a global philosophy attracting a remarkable amount of commentary, both pro and con. In some minds (certainly in that of Francis Fukuyama) it has become the most dangerous idea in the world.

Ihdes own four idols of thought refer more to straw positions than to real views held by most contemporary transhumanists. That doesnt mean that he went astray in choosing Francis Bacon and his four idols from his 1620 work Novum Organum2 as an inspiration. Around the same time that I defined transhumanism I also suggested that transhumanists consider dropping the Western traditional but terribly outdated Christian calendar for a new one in which year zero would be the year in which Novum Organum was published (so that we would now be entering 389 PNO, or Post Novum Organum, rather than 2009). Despite Aristotles remarkable work on the foundations of logic and his unprecedented study On the Parts of Animals, Bacons work first set out the essence of the scientific method. That conceptual framework is, of course, utterly central to the goals of transhumanismas well as the key to seeing where Ihdes Idols (especially that of Paradise) fail accurately to get to grips with real, existing transhumanist thought.

Bacons own four idols still have much to recommend them. His Idols of the Tribe and of the Cave could plausibly be seen as the core of important ideas from todays cognitive and social psychology. These idols could comfortably encompass the work on biases and heuristics by Kahneman and Tversky and other psychologists and behavioral finance and economics researchers. The Idols of the Cave are deceptive thoughts that arise within the mind of the individual. These deceptive thoughts come in many differing forms. In the case of Don Ihdes comments on transhumanist thinking, we might define a sub-species of Bacons Idol and call it the Idol of Non-Situated Criticism. (A close cousin of The Idol of the Straw Man.)

Many of Ihdes comments sound quite sensible and reasonable, but to whom do they apply? The only transhumanists Ihde mentions (without actually referencing any specific works of theirs) are Hans Moravec, Marvin Minsky, and Ray Kurzweil. In The Idol of Prediction, Ihde says In the same narratives concerning the human, the posthuman and the transhuman but never tells us just which narratives hes talking about. The lack of referents will leave most readers with a distorted view of true transhumanism. There are silly transhumanists of course, just as silly thinkers can be found in any other school of thought. I take my job here to be distinguishing the various forms of transhumanism held by most transhumanists from the easy but caricatured target created by Ihde (and many other critics).

Critics misconceptions are legion, but here I will focus on those found in Ihdes paper. I declare that:

From Utopia to Extropia

According to Ihde, technofantasy hype is the current code for magic. As an example, he picks on the poor, foolish fellow (Lewis L. Strauss) who fantasized that nuclear fission would provide a limitless supply of energy too cheap to meter. Technofantasy is magical thinking because magic produces outcomes that are completely free of trade-offs and unclear and unintended consequences. Magical technologies simply make it so. In these technofantasies, only the paradisical [sic] results are desired. It might have been better if Ihde had talked of divine thinking rather than magical thinking since, in a great many fables and other stories, the use of magic does bring unintended consequences (perhaps most famously in the various genie-in-a-bottle tales). Still, the point is clear. But does it apply to actual transhumanist thinkers? After all, Ihdes well-worn example is not from a transhumanist, but from an excessively enthusiastic promoter of nuclear fission as an energy source.

It is easy to throw around a term like technofantasy, but exactly is it? What appears to be fantasy, what appears to be a magical technology, depends on the time frame you adopt. Clearly many of todays technologies would appear magical to people from a few centuries ago. That point was stated memorably in Arthur C. Clarkes Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.3 Take someone from, lets say, the 15th century, and expose them to air travel, television, or Google and they would probably ask what powerful demon or mage created them.

Of course there is such a thing as technofantasy: its imaginary technology that ignores the laws of physics as we currently understand them. Any remarkable technology, so long as it is not physically impossible, cannot reasonably be described as magical thinking. Projecting technological developments within the limits of science is projection or exploratory engineering, not fantasya distinction crucial to separating the genres of hard science fiction from soft SF and outright fantasy. Seamless and magical operation remains a worthy goal for real technologies, however difficult it may be to achieve (as in transparent computing). Hence the ring of truth from Gehms Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

Although seamless and reliable technologies deserve a place as a goal for transhumanists, the ideas of perfection and paradise do not. We find those concepts in religious thinking but not in transhumanism. There are one or two possible exceptions: Some Singularitarians may be more prone to a kind of magical thinking in the sense that they see the arrival of greater than human intelligence almost instantly transforming the world beyond recognition. But even they are acutely aware of the dangers of super-intelligent AI. In contrast to Ihdes straw man characterization, most transhumanistsand certainly those who resonate with the transhumanist philosophy of extropydo not see utopia or perfection as even a goal, let alone an expected future posthuman world. Rather, transhumanism, like Enlightenment humanism, is a meliorist view. Transhumanists reject all forms of apologismthe view that it is wrong for humans to attempt to alter the conditions of life for the better.

The Idol of Paradise and the idea of a Platonically perfect, static utopia, is so antithetical to true transhumanism that I coined the term extropia to label a conceptual alternative. Transhumanists seek neither utopia nor dystopia. They seek perpetual progressa never-ending movement toward the ever-distant goal of extropia. One of the Principles of Extropy (the first systematic formulation of transhumanist philosophy that I wrote two decades ago) is Perpetual Progress. This states that transhumanists seek continual improvement in ourselves, our cultures, and our environments. We seek to improve ourselves physically, intellectually, and psychologically. We value the perpetual pursuit of knowledge and understanding. This principle captures the way transhumanists challenge traditional assertions that we should leave human nature fundamentally unchanged in order to conform to Gods will or to what is considered natural.

Transhumanists go beyond most of our traditional humanist predecessors in proposing fundamental alterations in human nature in pursuit of these improvements. We question traditional, biological, genetic, and intellectual constraints on our progress and possibility. The unique conceptual abilities of our species give us the opportunity to advance natures evolution to new peaks. Rather than accepting the undesirable aspects of the human condition, transhumanists of all stripes challenge natural and traditional limitations on our possibilities. We champion the use of science and technology to eradicate constraints on lifespan, intelligence, personal vitality, and freedom.

Or, as I put it in a Letter to Mother Nature: We have decided that it is time to amend the human constitution. We do not do this lightly, carelessly, or disrespectfully, but cautiously, intelligently, and in pursuit of excellence. We intend to make you proud of us. Over the coming decades we will pursue a series of changes to our own constitution

Ihdes positioning of transhumanist thinking as paradisiacal is particularly odd and frustrating given the rather heavy emphasis on risks in modern transhumanist writing. Personally, I think that emphasis has gone too far. Reading Ihde and many other transhumanist-unfriendly critics, you get the impression that transhumanists are careening into a fantastically imagined future, worshipping before the idols of Technology and Progress while giving the finger to caution, risk, trade-offs, and side-effects. These critics cannot have actually read much transhumanist writingcertainly not anything written in the last decade. If they had, they would have immediately run into innumerable papers on and discussions of advanced artificial intelligence, of runaway nanotechnology, of existential risk. They would have come across risk-focused worries by organizations such as the Foresight Institute and the Council on Responsible Nanotechnology. They would have come across my own Proactionary Principle, with its explicit and thorough consideration of risks, side-effects and remote, unforeseen outcomes, and the need to use the best available methods for making decisions and forecasts about technological outcomes.

Intelligent Design and Intelligent Technology

In what seems to me like something of a tangent to his discussion of magical thinking, Ihde says that Desire-fantasy, with respect to technologies, harbor an internal contradiction. He sees a contradiction in wanting to have a technological enhancement and in having that enhancement become (a part of) us. On one hand, if we define the terms just right, it has to be a contradiction to simultaneously have an enhancement and to be enhanced.

But there is no contradiction in the idea that a technology can develop so that it enhances us and eventually becomes part of us. I explored this idea in detail in my doctoral dissertation, The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation.4 If we absorb a technology, integrating it into ourselves, we can both have and be the technology in the relevant senses. This is much like taking a vaccine nowits an externally devised technology that alters our immune system, but it alters and becomes part of us. Or consider how an externally developed technology like gene therapy or artificial neurons can become integrated into who we are.

Ihde refers to the Idol of Intelligent Design as a kind of arrogance connected to an overestimation of our own design abilities, also embedded in these discussions. Again, he provides no referents for these discussions. He contrasts this idol with a human-material or human-technology set of interactions which through experience and over time yield to emergent trajectories with often unexpected results. This idol is indeed a problem. But Ihdes discussion implies that its a problem among transhumanist thinkers. Given the absence of actual examples, its hard to evaluate this implicit claim. His loaded term arrogance doesnt help. When does confidence become arrogance? Were the Wright brothers arrogant in their belief that they could achieve flight?

What really distinguishes transhumanist views of technology is expressed by what I called Intelligent Technology in the Philosophy of Extropy. I declared that Technology is a natural extension and expression of human intellect and will, of creativity, curiosity, and imagination. I expressed the transhumanist project of encouraging the development of ever more flexible, smart, responsive technology. I spoke for practically all transhumanists in suggesting that We will co-evolve with the products of our minds, integrating with them, finally integrating our intelligent technology into ourselves in a posthuman synthesis, amplifying our abilities and extending our freedom. As bold and unapologetic a statement as this is (befitting a transhumanist declaration) it says nothing about expecting perfectly reliable technologies that have no unintended consequences or outcomes that may trouble us.

Along with an overall (practical or active) optimism regarding technology, theres a strong strain among transhumanists (and especially in the Principles of Extropy) of critical rationalism and spontaneous order. Its true that older technophilesespecially those who might reasonably be labeled technocratshave sought to impose on society a technologically mediated vision of a better future. Transhumanists have far more often challenged this approachwhat Hayek called constructivist rationalism, preferring a self-critical rationalism (or pancritical rationalism5). Critical rationalism distinguishes us from Bacon who, like Descartes, believed that the path to genuine knowledge lay in first making a comprehensive survey of what is reliably known rather than merely believed.

Adding to the limits to confidence imposed by critical rationalism as opposed to constructivist rationalism, many transhumanists show a great appreciation for spontaneous order and its attendant unintended consequences, as outlined in my Order Without Orderers.6 Outcomes of people using technologies will never be quite as we might expect. Technology-in-use can differ drastically from technology-as-designed. When particle physicists starting using Tim Berners Lees hypertextual Web at the start of the 1990s, they had no idea what would quickly develop out of it. But these unexpected outcomes and spontaneous developments dont mean that we should stop trying to design better technologies and to improve our abilities at foreseeing ways in which they could go wrong.

The Body in Transhumanism

Ihde is right that the cyborg can be an idol. In his discussion of this idol, however, he never explicitly suggests that transhumanists idolize the cyborg. Thats just as well, since transhumanists generally look down on the Cyborg concept as primitive and unhelpful. It is the critics who try to force the square peg of transhumanist views of the body into the round hole of the cyborg. This most often takes the form of accusing us of seeking to mechanize the human body, or of fearing, hating, or despising our fleshiness, the fallacies of which I discussed in Beyond the Machine: Technology and Posthuman Freedom.7 A classic example of this straw man construction can be found in Erik Davis Techgnosis. Thankfully, Ihde does not repeat this error.

True transhumanism doesnt find the biological human body disgusting or frightening. It does find it to be a marvelous yet flawed piece of engineering, as expressed in Primo Posthuman.8 It could hardly be otherwise, given that it was designed by a blind watchmaker, as Richard Dawkins put it. True transhumanism does seek to enable each of us to alter and improve (by our own standards) the human body. It champions what I called morphological freedom in my 1993 paper, Technological Self-Transformation.

The Role of Forecasting

Idolatrous technofantasies arise again, according to Ihde In the same narratives concerning the human, the posthuman and the transhuman. Which narratives are these? Again, we are left without a referent. The point of his discussion of prediction is to repeat his point about unintended consequences and difficulties in knowing how technologies will turn out. In this section, Ihde does finally mention two people who might be called transhumanistsHans Moravec and Ray Kurzweilalthough Kurzweil definitely resists the label. Ihde calls them worshippers of the idol of prediction and asks if they have any credibility. Instead of addressing that, he makes some comments on unintended consequences that might arise from downloading the human mind into a computer.

Both Moravecs and Kurzweils forecasts of specific technological trends have turned out rather well so far. Of course it is easy to find lists of predictions from earlier forecasters that now, with hindsight, sound silly, and Ihde treats us to a few of them. Even there, and even with the assumption that accurate predicting is what matters in the whole transhuman/posthuman discussion, he fails to make a strong case for the futility or foolishness of predicting. He mentions an in-depth survey of predicted technologies from 1890 to 1940, noting that less than one-third of the 1500 predictions worked out well. He adds: Chiding me for pointing this out in Nature and claiming these are pretty good odds, my response is that 50% odds are normal for a penny toss, and these are less than that!?

The critics who chided Ihde for this are perfectly justified. He just digs himself deeper into the hole of error by bringing up the coin toss analogy. A coin has two sides, yielding two possibilities, so that the chance of a random prediction coming true is 50%. But technologies can develop in innumerable possible ways, not only because of future discoveries about that technology, but because of interactions with other technologies and because how technologies turn out usually depends heavily on how they are used. This error is especially odd considering how frequently Ihde flogs the dead horse of trade-offs and unintended consequences.

More importantly for these discussions of the transhuman and posthuman, it seems to me that Ihde doesnt understand futurology or forecasting. The purpose of thinking about the future is not to make impossibly accurate pinpoint predictions. Its to forecast possible futures so that we can prepare as well as possible for the upsides and downsidesso we can try to anticipate and improve on some of the trade-offs and side-effects and develop resilient responses, policies, and organizations. Rather than throwing up our hands in the face of an uncertain future, transhumanists and other futurists seek to better understand our options.

Ultimate skepticism concerning forecasting is not tenable, otherwise no one would ever venture to cross the road or save any money. Should we look at the uncertainty inherent in the future as an impenetrable black box? No. We need to distinguish different levels of uncertainty and then use the best available tools while developing better ones to make sense of possible outcomes. At the lowest level of uncertainty, there is only one possible outcome. In those situations, businesses use tools such as net present value.

Raise the level of uncertainty a bit and youre in a situation where there are several distinct possible futures, one of which will occur. In these situations, you can make good use of tools such as scenario planning, game theory, and decision-tree real-options valuation. At a higher level of uncertainty, we face a range of futures and must use additional tools such as system dynamics models. When uncertainty is at its highest and the range of possible outcomes is unbounded, we can only look to analogies and reference cases and try to devise resilient strategies and designs.9

Transhumanists are far from being dummies when it comes to looking ahead. But its true that many transhumanists are far from perfect in their approach to forecasting and foresight. My biggest complaint with many of my colleagues is that their vision is overly technocentric. Rather than The Idol of Prediction, a better critical construct would have been The Idol of Technocentrism. Not surprisingly, many transhumanists have a heavily technical background, especially in the computer and information sciences and the physical sciences. With my own background in economics, politics, philosophy, and psychology, I see a paucity of the social sciences among even sophisticated seers such as Ray Kurzweil, which I debated with him in 2002.10

None of Ihdes Idols apply to true transhumanism. But they do add up to a simple message: Peoples actions have unintended consequences, people are clueless about possible futures, and it is arrogant and hubristic to pursue fundamental improvements to the human condition. This ultimately pessimistic and existentially conservative message does indeed conflict directly with true transhumanism. Transhumanists do in fact understand unintended consequences and limits to our understanding, but they continue to strive for fundamental advances. I am wary of all isms, but these kinds of critiques of transhumanism spur me to renew my identification with that label even as I engage more deeply in cleaning up such misconceptions.

Endnotes

8. Vita-More. 1997, 2004.

10. Kurzweil and More, 2002.

Bibliography

Bacon, Francis, 1620, Novum Organum.

Clarke, Arthur C., Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination in Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973).

Courtney, Hugh, 2001, 20/20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World. Harvard Business School Press.

Davis, Erik, 2005, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information. Five Star.

Ihde, Don, 2008, Of Which Human Are We Post? The Global Spiral.

Kurzweil, Ray, 2006, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin.

Kurzweil, Ray and Max More, 2002, Max More and Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity. KurzweilAI.net. <http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0408.html?m=1>

Mayr, Ernst: 1963, 1970, Population, Species, and Evolution. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More, Max, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1998, Principles of Extropy

1990, 1994, 1996, Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy. Extropy #6.

1991, Order Without Orderers, Extropy #7.

1993, Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy. Extropy #10, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 15-24.

1994a, On Becoming Posthuman. Free Inquiry.

1994b, Pancritical Rationalism: An Extropic Metacontext for Memetic Progress.

1995, The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation. <http://www.maxmore.com/disscont.htm>

1997, Beyond the Machine: Technology and Posthuman Freedom. Paper in proceedings of Ars Electronica. (FleshFactor: Informationmaschine Mensch), Ars Electronica Center, Springer, Wien, New York, 1997.

1998, Virtue and Virtuality (Von erweiterten Sinnen zu Erfahrungsmaschinen) in Der Sinn der Sinne (Kunst und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Gottingen.)

1999, Letter to Mother Nature (part of The Ultrahuman Revolution: Amendments to the Human Constitution.) Biotech Futures Conference, U.C. Berkeley.

2004a, The Proactionary Principle. <http://www.maxmore.com/proactionary.htm>

2004b, Superlongevity without Overpopulation, chapter in The Scientific Conquest of Death. (Immortality Institute.)

2005, How to Choose a Forecasting Method, ManyWorlds. <http://contribute.manyworlds.net/301/content/Models/CO1118051055599.pdf>

Vita-More, 1997. Primo Posthuman future Body Prototype http://www.natasha.cc/primo.htm and http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0405.html

Vita-More, 2004. The New [human] Genre Primo Posthuman. Delivered at Ciber@RT Conference, Bilbao, Spain April, 2004,

Read this article:
H+: True Transhumanism - Essentials | Metanexus

Gennady Stolyarov II

The Transhumanist Party is pleased to announce the revitalization of an ongoing official activism project one that all members, irrespective of geographical location, can easily join. This is a project that utilizes our favored approach of direct, individually attainable action toward the creation of a brighter future.

You can personally help advance the fight against a multitude of diseases such as Alzheimers Disease, Parkinsons Disease, and many cancers.

The Longevity Meme Folding@home team a group of volunteers who donate their computing power to perform protein-folding simulations that could one day result in cures for major diseases and the lengthening of human lifespans has been operating for years, contributing otherwise idle computer resources to actual meaningful biological research.

To take part in this effort, just download the client for the Folding@home project at http://folding.stanford.edu/. Then join The Longevity Meme team here, and your computer will do the rest over time. I have personally been engaged in this effort for over six years.

If you would like a digital reward for contributing to this project, I am able to give five levels of digital Open Badges via Credly. Here is a page describing the various tiers of badges.Once you have reached the requisite number of Folding@home points to claim each badge, just contact me via e-mailhere with a message that includes your user name and an e-mail address.

The Transhumanist Party supports Lifespan.io and CellAge in their work towards groundbreaking scientific life-extension research. Finding a way to repair age-related damage to senescent cells would be a fundamental breakthrough for transhumanism, and we offer our best wishes and support for those striving towards these new technologies.

From Lifespan.io and CellAge:

Our society has never aged more rapidly one of the most visible symptoms of the changing demographics is the exponential increase in the incidence of age-related diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and osteoarthritis. Not only does aging have a negative effect on the quality of life among the elderly but it also causes a significant financial strain on both private and public sectors. As the proportion of older people is increasing so is health care spending. According to a WHO analysis, the annual number of new cancer cases is projected to rise to 17 million by 2020, and reach 27 million by 2030. Similar trends are clearly visible in other age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Few effective treatments addressing these challenges are currently available and most of them focus on a single disease rather than adopting a more holistic approach to aging.

Recently a new approach which has the potential of significantly alleviating these problems has been validated by a number of in vivo and in vitro studies. It has been demonstrated that senescent cells (cells which have ceased to replicate due to stress or replicative capacity exhaustion) are linked to many age-related diseases. Furthermore, removing senescent cells from mice has been recently shown to drastically increase mouse healthspan (a period of life free of serious diseases).

Here at CellAge we are working hard to help translate these findings into humans!

CellAge, together with a leading synthetic biology partner, Synpromics, are poised to develop a technology allowing for the identification and removal of harmful senescent cells. Our breakthrough technology will benefit both the scientific community and the general public.

In short, CellAge is going to develop synthetic promoters which are specific to senescent cells, as promoters that are currently being used to track senescent cells are simply not good enough to be used in therapies. The most prominently used p16 gene promoter has a number of limitations, for example. First, it is involved in cell cycle regulation, which poses a danger in targeting cells which are not diving but not senescent either, such as quiescent stem cells. Second, organism-wide administration of gene therapy might at present be too dangerous. This means senescent cells only in specific organs might need to be targeted and p16 promoter does not provide this level of specificity. Third, the p16 promoter is not active in all senescent cells. Thus, after therapies utilizing this promoter, a proportion of senescent cells would still remain. Moreover, the p16 promoter is relatively large (2.1kb), making it difficult to incorporate in present gene therapy vehicles. Lastly, to achieve the intended therapeutic effect the strength of p16 promoter to drive therapeutic effect might not be high enough.

CellAge will be constructing a synthetic promoter which has a potential to overcome all of the mentioned limitations. A number of gene therapy companies, including uniQure, AGTC and Avalanche Biotech have successfully targeted other types of cells using this technology. With your help, we will be able to use same technology to develop tools and therapies for accurate senescent cell targeting.

Gennady Stolyarov II

The United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN) has taken notice of the Transhumanist Party on its website, where it republished an article originally written by Dylan Love of NBC News. This November 18, 2016, article is titled The Next Global Race Aims to Perfect Artificial Intelligence and highlights Zoltan Istvans discussion of possibilities for the future of artificial intelligence, as well as concerns about geopolitical competition over AI development.

An excerpt from the article shows how the Transhumanist Party has contributed to discussion of this issue in a manner that the UN has deemed noteworthy:

Zoltan Istvan is founder of the Transhumanist Party, a legally recognized and PR-minded political effort that calls attention to what tomorrows mainstreaming of todays rapidly developing technology could mean for human life.

Istvan campaigned for the U.S. presidency in 2016 on the platform of harnessing existing technologies to maximize both the quality and duration of ones life. Though his theoretical thinking may seem to border on the fantastic, Istvan has enough street cred at the intersection of politics and technology that he has consulted with the U.S. Navy on the geopolitical implications of artificial intelligence. He readily identifies it as nothing less than a national security concern.

The Transhumanist Party encourages a diversity of perspectives from its members regarding the future potential, promise, and risks of artificial intelligence. In accord with its stepwise shift to a more participatory and member-driven governance model, the Transhumanist Party will soon be hosting discussion panels on a wide array of emerging technologies and their political and societal implications. Artificial intelligence will be among the first areas of technology discussed.

Gennady Stolyarov II

The following is the draft sample ballot generated thus far as a compilation of the suggestions provided during the 30-day exposure period for the Transhumanist Bill of Rights. The exposure period will continue until 12:01 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time on December 25, 2016,and comments will continue to be solicited until that time, with any further reasonable suggestions incorporated into the draft sample ballot until the end of the exposure period.

The draft sample ballot is a work in progress and will be revised on this page as further input is received. The purpose of releasing the sample ballot at this time is to provide insight into the structure of the voting and the options that have already been generated, so as to enable any interested members of the Transhumanist Party to read and understand the available options and propose further refinements and alternatives.

After the exposure period, a 7-day electronic voting period will occur from 12:01 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time on December 25, 2016, to 12:01 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time on January 1, 2017. Instructions for electronic voting will be sent to members of the U.S. Transhumanist Party via e-mail. All individuals who are members of the U.S. Transhumanist Partyas of the end of the exposure periodand who have expressed agreement with its threeCore Idealswill be eligible to vote thereafter.

Electronic voting will be conducted by a ranked-preference method on individual articles where more options are possible than would be accommodated by a simple Yes or No vote. Members should keep in mind that the ranked-preference method eliminates the incentives for strategic voting so members are encouraged to vote for the options that reflect their individual preferences as closely as possible, without regard for how other members might vote.

NOTE: The titles of the questions and potential Articles are descriptive and informational only and will not appear in the final adopted Transhumanist Bill of Rights. They are intended as concise guides to the subject matter of the questions and potential Articles. Likewise, the numbers or letters assigned to Articles within this ballot will not reflect the numbering in the final adopted Transhumanist Bill of Rights, which will depend on which Articles are selected by the membership. For purposes of convenient distinction, the original Articles developed by Zoltan Istvan are assigned Arabic numerals (1 through 6), while the new Articles proposed by the membership are assigned Latin letters (A through R, thus far).

NOTE II:The inclusion of any proposals on this ballot doesnot indicate any manner of endorsement for those proposals by the U.S. Transhumanist Party at this time except to place those proposals before the members to determine the will of the members with regard to whether or not the Transhumanist Bill of Rights should incorporate any given proposal.

Rank-order the Preamble Options that you support. Choose 1 for your most highly favored option, 2 for your second-most highly favored option, etc. If you choose Abstain, then do not rank-order any options, as you will be considered to have skipped this question.

Preamble Option 1 [Original Text by Zoltan Istvan]. Whereas science and technology are now radically changing human beings and may also create future forms of advanced sapient and sentient life, transhumanists establish this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS to help guide and enact sensible policies in the pursuit of life, liberty, security of person, and happiness.

Preamble Option 2. Transhumanist evolution is underway and establishes life principles that allow a sentient entity to alter, augment, and perform self-improvement efforts utilizing science and technology to achieve supreme intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. This TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS extends sentient rights to enhanced neo-humans, cybernetic, transgenic, anthropomorphic, and avatar beings. The TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS provides a sentient entity the right to procreate, clone, and form, the right to expand and extend life beyond biological fundamental boundaries, and to live life without illness, aging, and catastrophic loss of self in pursuit of immortality. This TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS provides principles for intellectual and inclusive policies for all sentient entities in pursuit of life, liberty, eternal existence, and freedom to be different.

The TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS is not static. As the collective of sentient entities continues to unravel the mysteries of the Universe and discover more facts, the TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS will change. We (sentient entities) must be malleable, inclusive, and understanding in thought and spirit at the same pace as society evolves. We must continue to aspire, gain knowledge, and improve life.

Preamble Option 3. Transhumanist evolution is underway and establishes life principles that allow a sentient entity to alter, augment, and perform self-improvement efforts utilizing science and technology to achieve supreme intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities; to provide a sentient entity the rights to procreate, clone, and adapt form; to expand and extend life beyond present-day boundaries; and to live life without illness and loss of self in pursuit of immortality. We organize to provide principles for intellectual and inclusive policies for all sentient entities in pursuit of life, liberty, and eternal existence. This TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS extends sentient rights to all humans, cyborgs, transgenic, anthropomorphic, avatar, and yet-to-be-identified beings as defined herein.

The TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS is not static. As the collective of sentient entities continues to unravel the mysteries of the Universe and discover more facts, the TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS will change. We (sentient entities) must be malleable, inclusive, and understanding in thought and spirit at the same pace as society evolves. We must continue to aspire, gain knowledge, and improve life.

Preamble Option 4 [Usable if Option II(e) or Option II(f) below is adopted as well]. Transhumanist evolution is underway and establishes life principles that allow a sentient entity to alter, augment, and perform self-improvement efforts utilizing science and technology to achieve greaterintellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. This TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS extends sentient rights to enhanced neo-humans, cybernetic, transgenic, anthropomorphic, and avatar beings as well as any other being that demonstrates meta-cognition and self-directed awareness, which is capable of simultaneously modeling itself and its relation to the external reality, and whose cognitive processes can be described as lucid (characterized by continuous integration of information at Level 5 or a higher level as defined herein). The TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS provides a sentient entity the right to procreate, clone, and form, the right to expand and extend life beyond unenhanced biological fundamental boundaries, and to live life without illness, aging, and catastrophic loss of self in pursuit of immortality. This TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS provides principles for intellectual and inclusive policies for all sentient entities in pursuit of life, liberty, eternal existence, and self-actualization.

The TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS is not static. As the collective of sentient entities continues to unravel the mysteries of the Universe and discover more facts, the TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS will change. We (sentient entities) must be malleable, inclusive, and understanding in thought and spirit at the same pace as society evolves as we push mankind forward. We must continue to aspire, gain knowledge, and improve life.

Abstain.

Version 1 of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights uses the enumeration of human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms in each Article to refer to the entities encompassed by that Article. It has been suggested, instead, that a more concise term might be used in the Preamble to encompass all of the above-enumerated entities and perhaps others.

Such phrasing would be of the following form:

As used in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS, the term [CHOSEN TERM] includes human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms.

Shall the Preamble be amended to include the above-quoted statement and, in all Articles, replace the enumeration of human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms withthe term selected as [CHOSEN TERM]?

Rank-order your preference for whether to use such a more concise all-encompassing term and, if so, what that term might be. Choose 1 for your most highly favored option, 2 for your second-most highly favored option, etc. If you choose Abstain, then do not rank-order any options, as you will be considered to have skipped this question.

Option II(a). Keep the enumeration of human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms in each article.

Option II(b). Use thought-capable individuals as the chosen term.

Option II(c). Use advanced sapient life forms as the chosen term and remove that term from the longer descriptive listing. If this option is chosen, advanced sapient life forms will be defined to mean human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other beings of comparable cognitive capability.

Option II(d). Use sentient entities as the chosen term.

Option II(e).Use sentient entities as the chosen term, with a hierarchical definition of sentience as described below:

Sentient entities are defined by information-processing capacity such that this term should not apply to non-self-aware lifeforms, like plants and slime molds. Biological processing substrates are referred to as using an analogue intelligence, whereas purely electronic processing substrates are referred to as digital intelligence (instead of sentient artificial intelligences), and processing substrates that utilize quantum effects would be considered quantum intelligence.

Sentience is ranked as Level 5 information integration according to the following criteria:

Option II(f).Use sentient entities as the chosen term, with a further clarification that sentient entities include all entities exhibiting Level 5 information integration, or lucidity meaning that any such entity is meta-aware aware of ones own awareness, aware of abstractions, aware of ones self, and therefore able to actively analyze each of these phenomena.

Abstain.

Shall the definition of beings to whom the Transhumanist Bill of Rights applies include a specific mention of Gods and Archangels? Select one of the following options?

Yes.

No.

Abstain.

Shall the definition of beings to whom the Transhumanist Bill of Rights applies include a specific mention of genetically modified humans? Select one of the following options.

Yes.

No.

Abstain.

Shall the definition of beings to whom the Transhumanist Bill of Rights applies include a specific mention of intellectually enhanced, previously non-sapient animals? Select one of the following options.

Yes.

No.

Abstain.

Shall the definition of beings to whom the Transhumanist Bill of Rights applies include a specific mention of any species of plant or animal which has been enhanced to possess the capacity for intelligent thought? Select one of the following options.

Yes.

No.

Abstain.

Rank-order the Article 1 Options that you support. Choose 1 for your most highly favored option, 2 for your second-most highly favored option, etc. You may include the option for No Article of this sort in your rank-ordering, and it does not need to be your most favored option if you do so. (For instance, some voters might favor some options but think that no language is preferable to some of the other options.)

If you choose Abstain, then do not rank-order any options, as you will be considered to have skipped this question.

Option 1-1 [Original Text by Zoltan Istvan]. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms are entitled to universal rights of ending involuntary suffering, making personhood improvements, and achieving an indefinite lifespan via science and technology.

Option 1-2. Any sentient entity is entitled to enhance bodily and sensory capabilities, expand life, live free, and achieve eternal existence without suffering by utilizing science and technology.

Option 1-3.All human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms have the right to pursue transcendence of physical and mental limitations.

Option 1-4. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms are entitled to universal rights of ending involuntary suffering, making personhood improvements, and achieving an indefinite lifespan via science and technology, as well as any other behaviors constituting life enhancement.

Option 1-NO. No Article of this sort.

Abstain.

Rank-order the Article 2 Options that you support. Choose 1 for your most highly favored option, 2 for your second-most highly favored option, etc. You may include the option for No Article of this sort in your rank-ordering, and it does not need to be your most favored option if you do so. (For instance, some voters might favor some options but think that no language is preferable to some of the other options.)

If you choose Abstain, then do not rank-order any options, as you will be considered to have skipped this question.

Option 2-1 [Original Text by Zoltan Istvan]. Under penalty of law, no cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives influencing government policy can impede life-extension science, the health of the public, or the possible maximum amount of life hours citizens possess.

Option 2-2. Under penalty of law, no cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives influencing government policy can impede life-extension science, the health of the public, body modification, morphological enhancement, or the possible maximum amount of life hours citizens possess.

Option 2-3. Legal safeguards should be established to protect individual free choice in pursuing peaceful, consensual life-extension science, health improvements, body modification, and morphological enhancement. While all individuals should be free to formulate their independent opinions regarding the aforementioned pursuits, no hostile cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives should be entitled to apply the force of law to erode the safeguards protecting peaceful, voluntary measures intended to maximize the number of life hours citizens possess.

Option 2-4. Legal safeguards should be established to protect individual free choice in pursuing peaceful, consensual life-extension science, health improvements, body modification, and morphological enhancement. While all individuals should be free to formulate their independent opinions regarding the aforementioned pursuits, no intolerant cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives should be entitled to apply the force of law to erode the safeguards protecting peaceful, voluntary measures intended to maximize the number of life hours citizens possess.

Option 2-5. No government or irrational group should be permitted to systematically deny any person or persons access to a life-enhancing technology or the freedom to pursue scientific and technological avenues for their betterment.

Option 2-6. No government or irrational group should be permitted to systematically deny any sapient beingaccess to a life-enhancing technology or the freedom to pursue scientific and technological avenues for their betterment or self-actualization.

Option 2-7. No government or private entity should be permitted to systematically deny any person or persons access to a life-enhancing technology or the freedom to pursue scientific and technological avenues for their betterment.

Option 2-8. Under penalty of law, no cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives influencing government policy can impede efforts at transcending physical and mental limitations, improving the health of the public, or the possible maximum amount of life hours citizens possess.

Option 2-NO. No Article of this sort.

Abstain.

Rank-order the Article 3 Options that you support. Choose 1 for your most highly favored option, 2 for your second-most highly favored option, etc. You may include the option for No Article of this sort in your rank-ordering, and it does not need to be your most favored option if you do so. (For instance, some voters might favor some options but think that no language is preferable to some of the other options.)

If you choose Abstain, then do not rank-order any options, as you will be considered to have skipped this question.

Option 3-1 [Original Text by Zoltan Istvan].Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms agree to uphold morphological freedomthe right to do with ones physical attributes or intelligence (dead, alive, conscious, or unconscious) whatever one wants so long as it doesnt hurt anyone else.

Option 3-2. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms agree to uphold morphological freedomthe right to do with ones physical attributes or intelligence (dead, alive, conscious, or unconscious) whatever one wants so long as it does not harm others.

Option 3-3. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms agree to uphold morphological freedomthe right to do with ones physical attributes or intelligence whatever one wants so long as it does not harm others.

Option 3-4. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms agree to uphold morphological freedomthe right to do with ones physical attributes or intelligence whatever one wants so long as it does not harm others. This right includes the prerogative for a sentient intelligence to set forth in advance provisions for how to handle its physical manifestation, should that intelligence enter into a vegetative, unconscious, or similarly inactive state, notwithstanding any legal definition of death.

Option 3-5. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms agree to uphold morphological freedomthe right to do with ones physical attributes or intelligence whatever one wants so long as it does not harm others. This right includes the prerogative for a sentient intelligence to set forth in advance provisions for how to handle its physical manifestation, should that intelligence enter into a vegetative, unconscious, or similarly inactive state, notwithstanding any legal definition of death. For instance, a cryonics patient has the right to determine in advance that the patients body shall be cryopreserved and kept under specified conditions, in spite of any legal definition of death that might apply to that patient under cryopreservation.

Option 3-NO. No Article of this sort.

Abstain.

If Article 3 on morphological freedom is adopted, shall one of the followingsentences be appended after the base text of the article?

Choose 1 for your most highly favored option, 2 for your second-most highly favored option, etc. You may include the option Do not add anysentence of this sort in your rank-ordering, and it does not need to be your most favored option if you do so. (For instance, some voters might favor some options but think that no language is preferable to some of the other options.)

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U.S. Transhumanist Party PUTTING SCIENCE, HEALTH ...

Transhumanisme is een recente vorm van speculatieve filosofie die probeert om de door de natuur gestelde grenzen van het menselijke bestaan te doorbreken.

De aanhangers van deze filosofie noemen zich 'transhumanisten' en beweren dat de mens is beland in het post-Darwin tijdperk en zijn evolutie in eigen hand kan gaan nemen. Transhumanisten onderschrijven over het algemeen de standpunten van het traditionele humanisme maar beogen wel het tot de uiterste grens te verkennen en zelfs te overstijgen. Zij propageren dat de mens zich fysiek zal en moet verbeteren of, naar analogie met computers en software, upgraden met technieken als nanotechnologie, genetische manipulatie en vergaande integratie van computertechniek in het menselijk lichaam. Het doel waar transhumanisten naar streven is om posthumanisten te worden.

Bioloog Julian Huxley, broer van Aldous Huxley, definieerde transhumanisme in 1957 als:

"de mens blijft menselijk, maar overstijgt zichzelf, door het realiseren van nieuwe mogelijkheden voor zijn menselijke natuur".

In 1966, begon FM-2030 (voorheen F.M. Esfandiary), een Iraans-Amerikaans futuroloog die de 'nieuwe concepten van de Mens' onderwees aan de New School University, mensen als 'transhumanist' (van 'transitory human'= tussenstadium tussen huidige mens en posthumanist) te identificeren omdat ze nieuwe technologien, levensstijlen en wereldvisies aannamen.

In 1968 verwees Abraham Maslow naar transhumanisme in Towards a psychology of Being.

Met de publicatie van het boek Future Shock (1970) van Alvin Toffler werd de term transhumanisme breder bekend onder het publiek, vooral in de VS.

In 1972 verwees Robert Ettinger naar transhumanisten in Man to Superman.

In 1990 gaf Max More de opkomende filosofie van het Transhumanisme zijn moderne definitie:

Transhumanisme is een klasse van filosofien die probeert ons te begeleiden naar de posthumanistische conditie. Transhumanisme neemt veel elementen van het humanisme over, zoals respect voor rede en wetenschap, een nadruk op vooruitgang en een waardering voor het menselijke (of transhumane) bestaan in dit leven.[...] Transhumanisme verschilt van humanisme in het erkennen en anticiperen van de radicale veranderingen in de natuur en mogelijkheden van onze levens door de verschillende wetenschappelijke en technologische disciplines[...].

De transhumanistische FAQ, opgesteld door de Wereld Transhumanistische Associatie, geeft de volgende twee formele definities:

Transhumanisten willen hun huidige lichaam upgraden met nieuwe technieken, zodat het niet meer veroudert en meer zou presteren dan "natuurlijk" is, bijvoorbeeld door een verbinding van hersenen en computer voor meer intelligentie, zodat de mens een cyborg wordt en evolueert tot posthuman. Volgens hen zijn de huidige prothesen zoals brillen, hoorapparaten en kunstledematen, die tegenwoordig steeds verbeterd worden, al voorlopers van deze ontwikkeling. Recentelijk (2004) is men er al in geslaagd om een verlamd persoon via een sensorimplantaat in zijn hersenen een computer te laten besturen. Hierdoor kan hij met zijn gedachten pc-spelletjes spelen en e-mail openen. In september 2005 kwam het bericht in de media dat nu zonder hersenimplantatie, maar met een soort helm op het hoofd met zeer gevoelige sensors, hetzelfde mogelijk is. Er werd zelfs een demonstratie gegeven hoe een getraind persoon zich in een virtual realityomgeving naar wens in elke richting kon bewegen door dat te "denken".

Volgens de deskundigen is dit nog maar het begin van een razendsnelle ontwikkeling en verbetering van mens-computer interfaces. In de verdere toekomst versmelten mens en computer wellicht zover dat er zelfs tussen de software van het 'computerdeel' en de geest van het 'mensdeel' nog nauwelijks onderscheid te maken is. Dan komt het concept van uploading in beeld.

Bij uploading wordt door transhumanisten aangenomen dat het in de (nabije) toekomst mogelijk is de menselijke geest geheel in software te vangen. Hierdoor zou het in principe mogelijk zijn om deze software op een ander, "beter" substraat over te zetten, zoals een zeer geavanceerde computer die alle hersenfuncties kan dupliceren. Dit is uploading van mensen in een virtuele wereld, net zoals internetters bijvoorbeeld een homepage uploaden naar het web. De film The Matrix (1999) geeft een voorbeeld van zo'n virtuele wereld. Hiermee zou bij het eventueel sterven van het lichaam de persoon toch verder kunnen 'leven'. Hierbij komen wel allerlei nieuwe ethische vragen om de hoek kijken: software kan men heel gemakkelijk kopiren. Dit zou dan ook met 'menselijk software' mogelijk zijn. Wat moet men dan aan met begrippen als bv. 'individualiteit', 'ziel' of 'persoonlijkheid'?

Transhumanisten trachten zelfs nu al de definitieve lichamelijke dood "te voorkomen", bijvoorbeeld door overledenen vlak na het sterven in te vriezen. De bovengenoemde Robert Ettinger is de stichter van Alcor, een Amerikaanse organisatie die dode mensen diepvriest met de bedoeling ze weer tot leven te wekken als wetenschap en techniek er klaar voor zijn. Volgens hem zal de voortsnellende techniek het in de toekomst mogelijk maken om deze "diepvriesdoden" weer tot leven te wekken.

In de verdere toekomst als de mensheid de zogenaamde technologische singulariteit bereikt worden volgens hedendaagse transhumanisten de mogelijkheden welhaast onbegrensd. Zo verwachten transhumanisten zelfs dat ook de Aarde zelf, het zonnestelsel en uiteindelijk eventueel de rest van het universum worden aangepast aan de behoeftes en wensen van de posthumans met behulp van Megaschaal Technologie[1] en Ruimte-Tijd Technologie.[2]

Veel transhumanisten verafschuwen sociale status en zijn een voorstander van een libertarische maatschappij. Ze propageren vaak zelfs een anarchistische wereld, dus zonder een enkele vorm van overheid. Ook de huidige toenemende "democratisering" en "verwestering" van de wereld, waarbij autoritaire regimes, maatschappijvormen en culturen steeds meer macht verliezen, is volgens hen een aanwijzing dat de wereld die kant op gaat. Sommigen werpen op dat conservatieve en fundamentalistische elementen uit deze culturen toch veel schade kunnen aanrichten (zie bijvoorbeeld het moslimfundamentalisme) die wellicht zelfs de hele westerse maatschappij kunnen ontwrichten. Maar volgens transhumanisten zijn dit de laatste wanhoopsuitvallen van extremisten die voor een uiteindelijk verloren zaak strijden: de overgrote meerderheid van de mensheid beweegt zich, weliswaar soms erg langzaam, maar onafwendbaar richting meer individualisme, democratie, gelijkheid en anti-autoritairisme.

Een toenemend aantal transhumanisten ziet transhumanisme als een logisch vervolg van de evolutie van de mensheid. Onder hen zijn bekende wetenschappers als Barrow, Kurzweil, Moravec en Tipler, die allen in meerdere of mindere mate gemeen hebben dat zij genspireerd zijn door het werk van de in 1955 overleden Franse priester en paleontoloog Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Deze vorm van transhumanisme combineert wetenschappelijke studie van de evolutie en een open houding tegenover technische vooruitgang met een sterk geloof in een verheven toekomst van de mensheid. Deze stroming omvat zowel athesten als religieus ingestelde mensen. De nadruk wordt gelegd op een toenemende psychische verbondenheid van alle mensen, die daarbij gesteund worden door geavanceerde communicatiemiddelen en een verdere computerisering van de maatschappij. Deze ontwikkeling zal niet ten koste gaan van humane verworvenheden als empathie, vrijheid en zelfverwerkelijking. Immers het kenmerk van de evolutie is dat de echt nuttige en waardevolle eigenschappen behouden blijven. In een nieuwe transhumane samenleving overstijgt de mens zichzelf. Het bewustzijn heeft bij de transhumane mens een hogere dimensie bereikt, waarbij beperkingen van ruimte en tijd nog maar een ondergeschikte rol spelen. In een toekomstig punt Omega bereikt de mensheid een vorm van uiterste psychische concentratie. Teilhard de Chardin spreekt in dit verband over een collectieve personalisatie. Het individuele, tijdgebonden menselijke bewustzijn speelt dan geen rol van betekenis meer, maar is geheel overgegaan (getransformeerd) in een hogere werkelijkheid. Dit laatste is uiteraard in volkomen tegenstelling met de opvattingen van de cryo-transhumanisten en van de sceptici.

Transhumanisme wordt door sceptici beschouwd als de diepgewortelde behoefte van de mens, en ook de wetenschappelijk georinteerde en materialistische mens, om toch het paradijs te scheppen met behulp van supertechnologie waarbij de mens boven zijn grenzen uitstijgt en zichzelf tot God transformeert. Vele sceptici zijn van mening dat uiteindelijk alleen de rijke en machtige toplaag van de mensheid (voorbeelden zijn dictators en andere machthebbende politici, toplieden van het zakenleven en rijke mediasterren) zal profiteren van de voortschrijdende technieken tot het zichzelf verbeteren en zich zullen transformeren tot een gesloten kaste van 'superhumans' die de rest van de mensheid voor onbepaalde tijd in hun greep kunnen houden (zie ook Technologische singulariteit). Met dezelfde technieken die het deze elite mogelijk maakt om superintelligent te worden kunnen ze ook dissidenten opsporen en 'heropvoeden' of uitschakelen. De filmmaker Aaron Franz maakte in 2008 een documentaire[3] waarin het moderne transhumanisme wordt omschreven als een voortzetting van de eugenetica van 1900 tot aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De eugenetica, waarvan ook 'pre-transhumanisten' zoals Julian Huxley voorstanders waren, had haar wortels in het sociaal darwinisme en veronderstelde dat door de medische vooruitgang steeds meer 'ongewenste elementen' zoals zieke en zwakke mensen, geestelijk en lichamelijk gehandicapten en 'asocialen' in leven bleven en zich konden voortplanten en daarmee het menselijke ras biologisch verzwakten. In de VS en Zweden werden zelfs door de regering wetten aangenomen die het mogelijk maakten om deze groepen te steriliseren waarvan uiteindelijk ook velen daadwerkelijk gesteriliseerd werden. De nazi's ontleenden veel van hun racistische ideologie aan de eugenetica (zie Ubermensch en Untermensch) en brachten die nog verder in de praktijk met actief stimuleren van het 'veredelen' van de maatschappelijke elite (zie Lebensborn) en het vernietigen van 'asocialen' en ongewenste rassen zoals Joden en Slaven.

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Transhumanisme - Wikipedia

Psychological and Ideological Aspects of Human Cloning: A Transition to a Transhumanist Psychology

Nestor Micheli Morales

Social Science Department New York City College of Technology The City University of New York

Abstract

The prospect of replication of human beings through genetic manipulation has engendered one of the most controversial debates about reproduction in our society. Ideology is clearly influencing the direction of research and legislation on human cloning, which may present one of the greatest existential challenges to the meaning of creation. In this article, I argue that,in view of the possibility that human cloning and other emerging technologies could enhance physical and cognitive abilities, there is a need for a different way of thinking about life, new technologies and creation. New scientific discoveries require a shift in the way psychology takes responsibility to help individuals and society. Today, psychology needs to follow the progress that humans are taking toward a transhuman stage of development as a transition to a later posthuman stage.

Introduction

Science and technology are advancing so fast that society has difficulties in keeping pace with the complexities that new developments bring. Human reproductive techniques have progressed rapidly in the past three decades, and other new techniques such as cloning have been introduced (Kirkman, 2001; Roberts, 1998; Williamson, 1999b).

Speculations about the idea of cloning emerged in the early 1960s, and ideas of human cloning in particular were discussed in the 1970s, followed by some innovations in nuclear transfer in the early 1980s.Human cloning represents asexual reproduction, and the critics of human cloning often assume that the result of cloning is not a unique individual. This has led to condemnations of human cloning from the politicians side and to fear, ignorance, and clonophobia from the publics side (Pence, 1998b).

The cloning debate has also been reinforced with ethical, religious, scientific, moral, medical, and political issues, since human cloning became a more plausible prospect in the late 1990s (Baird, 1999; Fiddler, Pergament, and Pergament, 1999; Fung, 2000; Madigan, 1998; Shannon, 1998; Shapiro, 1999; Vastag, 2001; Wills, 1998).

Emotional responses have dominated the debate on human cloning, and although emotions can sometimes be justified, many times they can be caused by prejudice. Gregory E. Pence (1998b) maintains that physicians, bioethicists, and scientists have done poorly in helping to reduce the publics fears and misconceptions. For several years, research on cloning has been placed at the center of interest and debate among scientists of different disciplines. Albee (2002),for example, argues that there is increasing political pressure on science and scientists in respect of issues such as cloning and genetic engineering, whose implications are important and gradually affect major national and political decisions.

The critics of human cloning, however, argue that there are many unaddressed problems, among them the implications of the harm issue (Kassirer and Rosenthal, 1998). Other important concerns are related to family, such as family interactions (in the case of a cloned family member), adults rights to procreative liberty, childrens rights to privacy and equality, and commercial surrogacy. These are only a few of the areas of concern that can be related to human cloning.Some reports have also indicated that it is important to study the possible psychological and emotional state of individuals produced by cloning, the social aspects of their families, and the possible effects on society (Presidents Council, 2002).

In this paper, I argue that an individual created through the application of human cloning techniques, or other similar techniques,or any other type of genetic manipulation, will not show the donors characteristics to the extent of compromising uniqueness. The creation of genetically identical individual/s will never lead to the replication of the donors experiences. In addition, human experiences are not independent of space and time, and,since every human clone, or multiple clones, of an individual will be born in a unique context, cloned human beings experiences will be unique in each case. Therefore, cloned individuals will be able to develop their own identities, their own personalities, and the uniqueness of any other human being. Furthermore, advances in biotechnology will offer human beings the possibility of enhancing their physical and cognitive abilities, as well as extending their life spans. These changes will not be able to take place without similar advances in the social sciences.

I also argue that a different approach to psychology is necessary to accompany the profound changes in society, and in the concept of human nature,that these biotechnological advances will bring. A new and different approach is imperative, in order to help human beings with new challenges and with the new mental processes they can be expected to face during a transition from a transhuman stage, which is already taking place on our planet, toward a future posthuman stage that appears to be inevitable.

Criticism of human cloning

In regard to criticism of human cloning, Lipschutz (1999) has suggested that the debate should not be labeled with a question about whether cloning is wrong, but rather with the question, When is cloning wrong? Some of the objections to human cloning that have been presented are to the effect that it would have compromising effects on the welfare of the child (Burley and Harris, 1999; Yanagimachi, 2001). Burley and Harris (1999) describe the different forms of harm that, according to the critics of human cloning, a cloned child could suffer. The three types of harm they consider are:

1. Clones will be harmed by the prejudicial attitudes people may have towards them.

2. Clones will be harmed by the expectations and demands from parents or genotype donors.

3. Clones will be harmed by their own awareness of their origins.

In addition, Burley and Harris argue that the above objections to human cloning, based on child welfare, are misleading. They do not question the motivation of the objections, but consider that these formulations of the anti-cloning position do not provide a convincing argument. They do not deny that cloned individuals might indeed suffer some welfare deficits. However, they suggest, these deficits are not sufficient to warrant state interference with the choices of people who wish to clone their genes.

From a standpoint very critical of human cloning, presented in testimony to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on March 14, 1997, Leon R. Kass has questioned whether human procreation will remain human and whether children are going to be made rather than begotten. He suggests that offensive, grotesque, revolting, repugnant, and repulsive are the words most commonly heard in the street, and from intellectuals, believers, atheists, humanists, and scientists, regarding the prospect of human cloning (Kass 1997, 2002; Kass and Wilson, 1998).

Even though opposition to reproductive cloning is shared by many, the supporters of cloning have pointed out that the arguments presented by Kass are an emotional response to a new technology, and they do not provide a sufficient analysis of the risks, and the technologys benefits (Caplan 2002/2003; Kimberly, 2002; Reynolds, 2001; Rosen, 2003).In addition, according to Caplan, the arguments against cloning, endorsed by Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama and others, are presented as if their authors hold the moral high ground in the public debate. Caplan suggests that these arguments are mostly based on pseudoscience, ideology, and plain fear mongering, which are then used to manipulate public opinion.

The implication of the harm issue in human cloning

The implications of the harm issue, as presented by the critics of human cloning, have played an important role in moulding the attitudes of the public. According to Kass, these implications have also played an important role for the policy makers and the researchers themselves (Kass, 1997; Kass and Wilson, 1998).Certainly, harm to offspring needs to be assessed before evaluating the choice of whether to clone in a specific instance, and in evaluating these choices the expected burdens and benefits need to be weighed against each other (Roberts, 1998).

There are numerous implications and consequences of advanced technologies such as human cloning and genetic engineering (Satava, 2002). For instance, what are the implications for individuals behavior? What will the societal implications be, and what fundamental ethical principles will be challenged? There are also many unanswered questions related to human cloning, such as possible psychological harm to children, and attitudes toward cloned children (Burley and Harris, 1999; Pence, 1998a). Other aspects linked to the harm issue are identity formation, gender identity, and other topics related to developmental psychology (Annas, 1998; Gonnella and Hojat, 2001).

According to Pence (1998b), cloning can be associated with both physical and psychological harm, and the physical harm can be related to genetic harm to the child. Other scholars, among the critics of cloning, also argue that human cloning could create serious psychological issues, which might include identity and individuality issues, as well as other aspects related to how we define ourselves (Annas, 1998; Andrews, 2000; Baird, 1999; Evers, 1999; Fung, 2000; Kass, 1997, Kass and Wilson, 1998; McGee, 2000a; Williamson, 1999a; Wills, 1998).

Unresolved social and psychological aspects of human cloning

According to McGee (2001), society needs to resolve many questions about human cloning, such as those relating to its social, reproductive, therapeutic, and ethical aspects. For example, concerning social aspects, cloning might challenge the social responsibility of parenthood and the nature of the family (Andrews, 1999). Children produced by cloning might have psychological problems of identity and individuality (Presidents Council, 2002).

Many have speculated that human clones would lack the necessary traits for true independence from progenitors. McGee (2001) questions whether a clone could feel that her/his progenitor, who genetically would be its monozygotic twin, might become an appropriate parent. Baird (1999) argues that there would be social consequences from human cloning and questions how to organize and provide financial resources and services for cloned people. So far, there are no developed plans about how to place cloned individuals in society.Broader societal interests also need to be taken into account in designing policies for human cloning, and it would be misleading to view decisions about cloning solely as matters of individual choice. Many aspects of human cloning may bring uncertainties about how the relationship between parent and child will develop. The childs interest should be considered an important factor in human reproductive cloning (Biological uncertainties, 2001).

Problems related to the concept of uniqueness

Opponents of human cloning have stated that it is problematic because it would deny the cloned person his or her uniqueness and identity. Some of the possible psychological problems that cloned individuals might experience are related to these (Annas, 1998; Baird, 1999; Evers, 1999; Fung, 2000; Kass and Wilson, 1998; McGee, 2000b; Williamson, 1999a; Wills, 1998). Baird (1999) and Robertson (1998b) conclude that it is not known whether cloned humans will have psychological problems; however, Baird mentions some issues related to possible psychological/social harm:

1. In individuals originating from transfer of an adults nucleus, the knowledge that one is the result of cloning may diminish ones sense of uniqueness.

2. Individuals originating from embryo splitting carried in the same pregnancy, such as twins or triplets, may have problems in defining expectations of themselves and for their future, because they know there is another genetically identical individual.

3. Individuals originating from embryo splitting, where embryos are frozen and implanted at different times or in different women, may have to deal with the knowledge that they have not originated from an undirected combination of two particular genomes (instead, someone has determined who they are genetically).

This position maintains that many adopted children or children born with donor insemination have a need to know about their biological origins. Critics of human cloning argue that cloned children may not have the sense of coming from a maternal and paternal line with attributes coming from both parents, and may not feel that they are unique individuals. In that case, clones will have a psychological need to have a personal history and a sense of self. The first person born through nuclear transfer cloning would have to deal not only with being a genetic copy of another person, but with the fact of being a person who did not come from the joining of egg cell and sperm.

An opposing view to the critics of human cloning is presented by Madigan (1998), who states that a person who has been cloned will not be a simple replica of another human being but a unique person. According to Madigan, a human clone is an identical twin delayed in time. She is a much younger identical twin, reared in a different environment, at a completely different time and with the benefits of not being treated in the same way. The basic fear of cloning is in regards to the nature of a newly created person. Specifically, the fear is that human cloning will be the creation of an identical copy of a particular person; however, this does not have to be so.

Although human clones may have the same nuclear genes as others, as in the case with monozygotic or identical twins, there is no evidence or reason to believe they will not be unique individuals with their own personalities and philosophies of life (Evers, 1999; Madigan, 1998; McConville, 2001; Pence, 1998a; Shannon, 1998; Strong, 2005a; Wills, 1998).Taking into consideration the extensive research on twin studies, especially on monozygotic twins, there is evidence to support the idea that personality differences, identity development and the uniqueness of human clones, created through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) or by any other type of genetic manipulation, will be shaped by the interaction between genetic and environmental factors.

Some answers related to human cloning, the concept of uniqueness, and twin studies

In regard to the concept of uniqueness, several authors (Elliott, 1998; Jamieson, 1998; Resnik, 2001) emphasize that people with the same genes, such as monozygotic twins, who are supposed to be genetically identical, are not the same people. The same can be said about cloned human beings, who will have physiological differences, as well as different behavioral traits. This led Shermer (1999) to question why moralists are not crying for legislation against twinning, when nature has already done the cloning, and the result is called identical twins. In addition, some authors such as Pence (1998a) indicate that a cloned person would not be an exact copy of an adult human being.Although the gene structure would be very similar, at the molecular level there will be many differences.Moreover, Pence (1998a) and Strong (2005b) point out that the brain cannot be cloned or duplicated, and most importantly, the experiences of a human being cannot be replicated at all by cloning. Many of these wrong ideas, such as those to do with the duplication of the mind, are captured from pure science fiction, poorly informed politicians, and irresponsible journalism.

In the field of psychology, we have no evidence that it is possible to replicate individual human experience in exact detail. Many studies on monozygotic twins (Baker, Mazzeo and Kendler, 2007; Button, et al., 2007; Brent and Melhem, 2008; Eley, et al., 2007; Ge, et al. 2007; Hicks, et al., 2007) indicate that, even when they share a high correlation in terms of intelligence, personality features, and mental disorders, these correlation values are not equal, their behaviors and cognitive functions are not identical, and the twins are different in terms of individual experiences (Bouchard, 1997). The majority of the studies provide evidence of moderate heritability, non-shared environmental influences, and modest shared environmental influences (Asbury, et al., 2008; Hansson, et al., 2008; Harlaar, et al., 2008; Kato and Pedersen, 2005; Kovas and Plomin, 2007; Saudino, 2005; Simberg, et al., 2009; Su, et al., 2005). The experiences of identical twins are individual, unique,and always different, even when they have been reared together, with the same mother, the same father, and in the same environment.

In general terms, there are two kinds of environmental effects to be considered: family effects that are usually shared by siblings, and make them prone to be similar; and nonshared environmental effects. Nonshared environmental effects are the type of environmental influences that affect individuals, and in this case monozygotic twins, in a unique fashion. In spite of the fact that monozygotic twins, like potential human clones, are genetically identical, and although they will typically share the same family environment, these identical twins or potential human clones do not have identical personalities. They are not able to experience or interpret an event in exactly the same manner, even though they are genetically identical. Radical differences between identical twins are caused by nonshared environmental effects.

Nonshared environmental effects are found in most studies of monozygotic twins to be more significant than shared environmental effects. Based on the available evidence, we can conclude that the experiences of monozygotic twins, or the experiences of potential human clones,can be more similar than average. However, there is no evidence in the field of psychology that the experiences of monozygotic twins, or the experiences of future human beings created through genetic manipulation, can be identical or that they can be replicated. Since most of a human beings personality and identity development is built on experiences of life events, monozygotic twins and potential human beings created through any type of genetic manipulation will have the uniqueness of any other human being.

Furthermore, kinship research that compares identical twins with fraternal twins in regards to the contribution of heredity and environment on complex human characteristics, such as intelligence and personality development, also show no significant results that could be used to support the idea that complex human characteristics would be exactly replicated when using genetic manipulation to create human clones. For example, research based on kinship studies supports only a moderate influence of heredity. Twin studies show that the correlations between the scores of monozygotic twins are higher than the scores of fraternal twins in terms of intelligence, personality characteristics, mental disorders, and disorders usually first diagnosed in infancy, childhood, or adolescence (Kas, et al., 2007; Kato and Pedersen, 2005; Kovas and Plomin, 2007; Polderman, et al., 2007; Scarr, 1997; Van Hulle, Lemery-Chalfant, and Goldsmith, 2007; Wade, Gillespie, and Martin, 2007). However, even when the studies show that the correlations between the scores of monozygotic twins are high, they also show that the scores are not identical correlations, and that gene-environment interaction and nonshared environmental influences are important to explain these differences, which will lead those twins to become unique individuals.

Identity and human cloning

Among the critics of human cloning, Baird (1999) claims that human cloning presents a threat to our concepts of human identity and individuality. Baird argues that when a child of a particular genetic constitution is deliberately made, it is easier to consider the child as a product rather than a gift of providence. Kass (1997) also writes about some of the psychological consequences that a cloned human might experience in her/his life in society. He states that cloning will create serious issues of identity and individuality. According to Kass, a person who has been cloned may experience serious concerns about her or his identity, not only because of identical appearance to another human being, but because her identical twin might be her father or mother. In addition, Kass suggests that people in society will be prone to compare the performances of a cloned person with the performances of her alter ego.

However, according to Caplan (2002/2003),the arguments against cloning endorsed by Kass and other critics of human cloning are presented as if they possess the moral high ground in the public debate. Caplan argues that the arguments of Kass and others are, instead, mostly based on pseudoscience, ideology, and plain fear mongering, which are used to manipulate public opinion. Evers (1999) has also criticized the opponents of human cloning, and maintains that the concept of identity is ambiguous. Accordingly, the statement that cloning produces identical individuals is not meaningful, unless the concept is clarified.

Identity is defined as an organized conception of the self, in which the person can define his or her own values, goals, and beliefs. It is the immediate perception of ones selfsameness and continuity in time, with the simultaneous perception of the fact that others recognize ones sameness and continuity (Erikson, 1959). Identity is also defined as a clearly expressed theory of oneself as someone who can act on the basis of reason, can explain her or his own behavior and own actions, and take responsibility for these actions (Moshman, 1999). Identity is reached through a series of stages in life (Marcia, 1966, 1980), and each of these is experienced differently by each individual during development and throughout the entire lifespan (Erikson, 1950, 1968).

Identity is also the result of a continuous enriching process in which our entire personality acquires those individual characteristics that differentiate us from others.

The idea that creating another human being with exactly the same genotype would mean creating another human being with the same identity, and the same personality, is fundamentally wrong. At this point, the latter is impossible for us as human mortals. Furthermore, in the hypothetical case that scientists one day could create multiple human beings with exactly the same genotype, the creation of these genetically identical individuals would not lead to the production of individuals with the same identity and personality. The creation or production of human beings with the same personality, and without uniqueness, will not be possible, at least based on all the evidence from research on human beings with identical or nearly identical DNA.

Furthermore, even if two or more human beings could acquire the same brain structures through genetic manipulation, this would not provide a basis for them to develop identical personalities. Even the same brain in those human beings would never allow them to have the same experiences, since events are always experienced in relationship to time and space. Experiences, of course, are also related to perception. However, the perception of time and space is for us human beings, in this universe, a subjective individual experience. Even if space and time are not the ultimate structure of the objective world, they are necessary parts of a framework within which we organize our experiences.

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Psychological and Ideological Aspects of Human Cloning

Recently, our campaign received a letter that made our day.

Susan Sarandon wrote to us, and has now officially endorsed Jill!

Because she knows what you know - that we must build a progressive social movement to counter both Donald Trump AND Hillary Clinton.

According to The Young Turks and the Washington Times, Ms. Sarandon said:

Theyre both (Trump and Clinton) talking to Henry Kissinger. She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things - and very callously. I dont know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is. That scares me. I think well be in Iran in two seconds.

And that is exactly what Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka have been saying. And Dr. Cornel West. And Medea Benjamin. And Chris Hedges. And you. (Hey, you are in pretty good company).

Heres the letter from Ms. Sarandon to our campaign below.

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One week before whats shaping up to be an historic presidential election, Tavis Smiley on PBS will host a presidential forum featuring the third party candidates, Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.

This forum will be taped live Monday, October 31, 2016, in the shows Los Angeles studio and air on Tavis Smiley over two nights next week on Monday evening and Tuesday, November 1 on PBS. An additional thirty (30) minute conversation, with questions selected entirely from social media will be available exclusively online at the Tavis Smiley PBS website.

Viewers may submit questions to the candidates via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the hashtags: #TavisSmileyForum, #AskJill or #AskGary.

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We offer the only alternative to a noxious buffoon on the one hand, and a representative of the corporate and military status quo on the other

Donald Trumps self-inflicted wounds and propensity for public meltdowns had pushed the public-opinion needle toward Hillary Clinton, according to recent polls. That may have changed a little in the aftermath of the FBIs renewing of its email probe last week. But even so, the fears of many voters that a Donald Trump presidency might become a reality have abated.

Those fears are not unfounded. Trumps failings as a candidate and a person are manifest, and he would be in a position to wreak considerable havoc if elected. Thats especially true at the agency level, with the judiciary and in other arenas where the president can wield executive power. The wildcard aspect of his personality poses risks that cant be predicted, nor can anyone know the degree to which congress would be inclined to obstruct or approve his most damaging initiatives.

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In 1854, a few thousand people gathered in Jackson, Michigan to launch an independent challenge to a national political system dominated by two parties. "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements," a party leader later recalled, "we gathered from the four winds[with] every external circumstance against us." This challenge was fueled by the radical abolitionist movement that united white workers and formerly enslaved Africans against the criminal institution of slavery, as a response to the political crisis caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

In just two years, this insurgent third party created by movement activists had gained ground across the Northern states, challenging the Whig Party. In short order this insurgent "third party" had become a major opposition party. By 1858 they had won an influential foothold in Congress, and by 1860, that party leader Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

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Join with thousands of your neighbors to build the momentum for real change. Support Jill Stein's people-powered campaign today! Any amount you give will go to support the candidate who puts people, planet, and peace over profitevery time. DONATE

Link:
Jill Stein for President