Well-being and human enhancement: towards human nature developmentalism
Abstract
Nesta tese, apresento a visão que designo de Natureza Humana Desenvolvimentalista. O debate parte da premissa basilar de que uma ideia de natureza humana deve anteceder e fundamentar qualquer problematização em torno da permissibilidade moral de utilizar tecnologias de melhoramento humano. Nessa medida, entendo o ser humano, essencialmente, como agente criativo propositivo. Isto é, o ser humano realiza-se através do trabalho, que defino como o exercício livre, racionalmente controlado e dirigido para o exercício, desenvolvimento e fruição de um conjunto específico de capacidades, aqui denominadas componentes do florescimento. Resulta, pois, que somos seres ontológica e sociohistoricamente constituídos: agentes cuja necessidade ontológica de criar permite a atualização das capacidades por via de um trabalho cujas condições de efetivação são, necessariamente, social e tecnicamente contingentes. Daqui resulta a tarefa de identificar que bens e atividades são nãoinstrumentalmente bons para o ser humano enquanto agente criativo propositivo: o que é bom e porquê só pode ser explicado e justificado à luz deste conceito de natureza humana. Note-se que o debate em torno da ética do melhoramento humano nunca deixou de estar profundamente ancorado em noções particulares de natureza humana. O que a minha abordagem traz de novo é o seguinte: i) um conceito distinto de natureza humana; ii) uma teoria distinta de bem-estar; e iii) um modelo polivalente de aconselhamento. As conceções de uma natureza humana e de uma teoria do bem-estar desenvolvimentalistas dão-nos o alicerce prudencial, ético e político para avaliar a permissibilidade de qualquer intervenção genética. Surge a seguinte cláusula: “as intervenções genéticas na linha germinativa são moralmente permissíveis se e somente se resultarem num incremento do nosso poder desenvolvimental ou contribuírem para o nosso florescimento como agentes criativos propositivos”. Demasiado geral, abstrata e permissiva, a cláusula requer o desenvolvimento de um modelo desenvolvimentalista de aconselhamento. As equipas de aconselhamento são formadas por profissionais de várias áreas cujas competências principais consistem na prestação de auxílio médico, ético ou religioso e na obtenção de um consentimento informado reforçado dos potenciais pacientes que desejem submeter-se a intervenções. Este é um modelo de tomada de decisão partilhada em que o que significa ser humano e viver uma vida boa conduzirão o debate.
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Jorge Daniel Martins Mateus Well-Being and Human Enhancement: Towards Human Nature Developmentalism October 2023 Well-Being and Human Enhancement: Towards Human Nature Developmentalism Jorge Daniel Martins Mateus UMinho|2023 Universidade do Minho Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas
Jorge Daniel Martins Mateus Well-Being and Human Enhancement: Towards Human Nature Developmentalism October 2023 Doctoral Thesis PhD Thesis in Philosophy Work developed under supervision of Professor João Cardoso Rosas and Professor João Ribeiro Mendes Universidade do Minho Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas
ii DIREITOS DE AUTOR E CONDIÇÕES DE UTILIZAÇÃO DO TRABALHO POR TERCEIROS Este é um trabalho académico que pode ser utilizado por terceiros desde que respeitadas as regras e boas práticas internacionalmente aceites, no que concerne aos direitos de autor e direitos conexos. Assim, o presente trabalho pode ser utilizado nos termos previstos na licença abaixo indicada. Caso o utilizador necessite de permissão para poder fazer um uso do trabalho em condições não previstas no licenciamento indicado, deverá contactar o autor, através do RepositóriUM da Universidade do Minho. COPYRIGHT AND TERMS OF USE BY THIRD PARTIES This is an academic work that may be used by third parties as long as internationally accepted copyright and related rights rules and good practices are respected. Thus, this work may be used under the terms specified in the license indicated below. If the user requires permission to use the work in ways not covered by the provided license, they should contact the author through the University of Minho’s RepositóriUM. CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am profoundly grateful to my supervisors, Professors João Cardoso Rosas and João Ribeiro Mendes, for their constant support and advice throughout my doctoral journey. I extend my gratitude to all my colleagues and the staff members at the Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society (CEPS) of the University of Minho. I owe Rui Mateus and Patrícia Fernandes a special debt of gratitude. I express my appreciation to António Baião, Bernhard Sylla, Daniele Santoro, José Rosa, Nicola Piras, and Stefano Calboli for numerous insightful remarks, which significantly enriched and guided my research endeavours. I thank Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for providing the funding (SFRH/BD/145789/2019) to conduct this research. Finally, to all those who, willingly or unwillingly, contributed to the completion of this project, my genuine gratitude.
iv DECLARAÇÃO DE INTEGRIDADE Declaro ter atuado com integridade na elaboração do presente trabalho académico e confirmo que não recorri à prática de plágio nem a qualquer forma de utilização indevida ou falsificação de informações ou resultados em nenhuma das etapas conducente à sua elaboração. Mais declaro que conheço e que respeitei o Código de Conduta Ética da Universidade do Minho. STATEMENT OF INTEGRITY I hereby declare having conducted this academic work with integrity. I confirm that I have not used plagiarism or any form of undue use of information or falsification of results along the process leading to its elaboration. I further declare that I have fully acknowledged the Code of Ethical Conduct of the University of Minho.
v Bem-Estar e Melhoramento Humano: Rumo à Natureza Humana Desenvolvimentalista RESUMO Nesta tese, apresento a visão que designo de Natureza Humana Desenvolvimentalista. O debate parte da premissa basilar de que uma ideia de natureza humana deve anteceder e fundamentar qualquer problematização em torno da permissibilidade moral de utilizar tecnologias de melhoramento humano. Nessa medida, entendo o ser humano, essencialmente, como agente criativo propositivo. Isto é, o ser humano realiza-se através do trabalho, que defino como o exercício livre, racionalmente controlado e dirigido para o exercício, desenvolvimento e fruição de um conjunto específico de capacidades, aqui denominadas componentes do florescimento. Resulta, pois, que somos seres ontológica e sociohistoricamente constituídos: agentes cuja necessidade ontológica de criar permite a atualização das capacidades por via de um trabalho cujas condições de efetivação são, necessariamente, social e tecnicamente contingentes. Daqui resulta a tarefa de identificar que bens e atividades são nãoinstrumentalmente bons para o ser humano enquanto agente criativo propositivo: o que é bom e porquê só pode ser explicado e justificado à luz deste conceito de natureza humana. Note-se que o debate em torno da ética do melhoramento humano nunca deixou de estar profundamente ancorado em noções particulares de natureza humana. O que a minha abordagem traz de novo é o seguinte: i) um conceito distinto de natureza humana; ii) uma teoria distinta de bem-estar; e iii) um modelo polivalente de aconselhamento. As conceções de uma natureza humana e de uma teoria do bem-estar desenvolvimentalistas dão-nos o alicerce prudencial, ético e político para avaliar a permissibilidade de qualquer intervenção genética. Surge a seguinte cláusula: “as intervenções genéticas na linha germinativa são moralmente permissíveis se e somente se resultarem num incremento do nosso poder desenvolvimental ou contribuírem para o nosso florescimento como agentes criativos propositivos”. Demasiado geral, abstrata e permissiva, a cláusula requer o desenvolvimento de um modelo desenvolvimentalista de aconselhamento. As equipas de aconselhamento são formadas por profissionais de várias áreas cujas competências principais consistem na prestação de auxílio médico, ético ou religioso e na obtenção de um consentimento informado reforçado dos potenciais pacientes que desejem submeter-se a intervenções. Este é um modelo de tomada de decisão partilhada em que o que significa ser humano e viver uma vida boa conduzirão o debate. Palavras-Chave: Bem-estar; Melhoramento Humano; Natureza Humana; Natureza Humana Desenvolvimentalista.
vi Well-Being and Human Enhancement: Towards Human Nature Developmentalism ABSTRACT In this thesis, I present the view that I call Human Nature Developmentalism. The discussion starts from the basic premise that an idea of human nature must precede and underpin any problematisation around the moral permissibility of using human enhancement technologies. Therefore, I understand the human being essentially as a purposive creative agent. In other words, human beings realise themselves through labour, which I define as the freely undertaken, rationally controlled exercise directed towards the exercise, development, and enjoyment of a specific set of capacities, here called the components of flourishing. It follows, then, that we are ontologically and socio-historically constituted beings: agents whose ontological need to create allows for the actualisation of capacities through labour, the conditions for which are necessarily socially and technically contingent. This is followed by the task of identifying which goods and activities are non-instrumentally good for human beings as purposive creative agents: what is good and why can only be explained and justified at the light of this concept of human nature. It should be noted that the debate surrounding the ethics of human enhancement has never ceased to be deeply anchored in particular notions of human nature. What my approach brings that is new is the following: i) a distinct concept of human nature; ii) a distinct theory of well-being; and iii) a multi-purpose model of counselling. The developmental conceptions of human nature and well-being provide us with the prudential, ethical, and political foundation for assessing the permissibility of any genetic intervention. The following proviso emerges: “germline genetic interventions are morally permissible if and only if they increment our developmental power or otherwise contribute to our flourishing as creative purposive agents”. Too general, abstract, and permissive, the proviso calls for the development of a developmental model of counselling. Counselling teams are made up of professionals from various fields whose core competencies consist of providing medical, ethical, or religious guidance and obtaining enhanced informed consent from potential patients who wish to undergo interventions. This is a model of shared decision-making in which what it means to be human and to live a good life will lead the debate. Keywords: Human Enhancement; Human Nature; Human Nature Developmentalism; Well-Being.
TABLE OF CONTENTS DIREITOS DE AUTOR E CONDIÇÕES DE UTILIZAÇÃO DO TRABALHO POR TERCEIROS .............. ii COPYRIGHT AND TERMS OF USE BY THIRD PARTIES ................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. iii DECLARAÇÃO DE INTEGRIDADE ............................................................................................... iv STATEMENT OF INTEGRITY ...................................................................................................... iv RESUMO ................................................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 Pretext, Context, Text ............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 ............................................................................................................................ 17 Transformation ....................................................................................................................... 17 a. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 17 b. Trans; ............................................................................................................................ 18 i. Movement; ................................................................................................................. 20 ii. Transition; .................................................................................................................. 24 iii. Transgression; ........................................................................................................... 29 c. Form; ............................................................................................................................. 32 d. Action; ........................................................................................................................... 46 i. Worldview; ................................................................................................................. 46 ii. Power and Mastery; .................................................................................................... 49 e. Conclusions: What to be? What to do? Where to go? ........................................................ 64 CHAPTER 2 ............................................................................................................................ 66 An Enquiry Concerning Well-Being........................................................................................... 66 a. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 66 b. Different Accounts of Human Enhancement .................................................................... 66 i. The Augmentative Account; ........................................................................................ 69
5 Macpherson’s focus was primarily on what he considered external impediments to human flourishing, particularly those related to the lack of access to the means of life and labour, as opposed to internal impediments, like congenital diseases. Here, part of my work consisted in adapting the concept of developmental power to encompass the removal of internal impediments. Contrary to Macpherson’s perspective, I argue that not all internal impediments necessarily stem from or are a byproduct of external impediments. Also, I contend that there isn’t a straightforward moral justification for prioritising the removal of external impediments over internal ones, or for addressing internal impediments only after the external ones have been removed (cf. 1973, 76). Before moving on, it is also worth noting the following: I believe it’s more appropriate to talk of incrementing our developmental power than maximising it. The former amounts to make small, incremental changes conducive to the improvement of one’s capacities in ways that, if possible, are not too disruptive towards our agency. Instead of arguing for the maximisation of one’s developmental power so that one can reach his highest level of potential, as a perfectionist approach would recommend, the developmental approach benefits from this gradual, moderate approach. Contrary to what much of the transhumanist philosophy conveys, biomedical interventions should not be seen as a strategy to give each and every person superhuman powers, implying a radical maximisation of our current capacities. And while it is important to recognise that biomedical interventions should not aim to endow every person with superhuman powers, opposing bioconservative views that advocate for a complete ban of interventions and a passive acceptance of what’s given by nature also miss the point of what is good for us. There are two main reasons in favour of the incremental approach. First, to maximise one’s capacities may require a significant degree of effort, sacrifice, and risk, and could also entail that one ought to undergo a complex, costly, and disruptive programme of radical human enhancement to achieve such a goal. Predictably, “making radical changes to our bodies undoubtedly will have surprising sideeffects” (Allhoff et al ., 2010, 15). Such an approach is, of course, in line with those versions of transhumanism that advocate for a radical transformation of the human condition, espousing various different forms of the proactionary principle. Among the most relevant challenges here, it can be expected that radical transformations would have a significant impact on our sense of identity and authenticity. Developmentalism markedly departs from these approaches. Second, it is most likely that for this radical transformation of the human condition to occur, a significant distributive effort must be made to ensure that every individual is guaranteed the access to the necessary resources required to maximise his capacities. While some of the most basic enhancement technologies, like pills or minor cosmetic surgeries, might be cheap, easily performed, and widely
6 accessible, some genetic services, like gene editing, will involve a high financial burden to the clients and the state due to their technical and scientific complexity and the quantity and quality of resources required (cf. Singer, 2009, 285). Developmentalism recommends the use of highly complex and expensive interventions, but to argue for the incrementing of our developmental power does not necessarily require the same level of resource allocation and effort as maximisation. While the incremental approach will require some level of resource control and allocation to safeguard universal access to interventions, maximisation would predictably require significant distributive efforts to the greatest maximal enhancement outcomes for everyone. Take gene editing as an example. The incremental approach focuses on gradual, moderate improvements with the aim of incrementing the developmental power of the person up to a certain threshold that corresponds to the level at which a satisfactory engagement with the components of flourishing is possible. It is not about choosing the best possible genes to live the “best life” possible (cf. Savulescu, 2001), but to enable the person to have access to enough developmental power to live a well-rounded and flourishing life. The maximisation approach would be more favourable to prioritise costly and radically transformative interventions to achieve the goal of maximum growth, whereas the incremental approach considers not only the feasibility and sustainability of resource allocation in the pursuit of interventions, but also their potential disruptive effects to our agency. This helps explaining why I focus on developmental counselling as a collaborative reflective process involving both counsellors and patients in a holistic evaluation of what enhancements are and what their importance is for one’s overall life. But even if achieving maximum developmental power were cost-effective, it could still significantly endanger our well-being because of its potential to disrupt our personhood, our identity and autonomy, our social cohesion by creating a radical ability divide and a potential gap between enhanced and unenhanced, rich and poor, and undermine the foundations of human dignity which are rooted in our capacity to create (cf. Allhoff et al. , 2010; cf. Wolbring, 2006; cf. Silver, 1999). My argument goes in the following direction: we need to have a sufficient amount of developmental power so we can engage properly with the non-instrumental goods and activities that enable us to actualise our capacities and thus realise our human nature as purposeful creative agents. I do not endorse a monist view on this. There is a plurality of non-instrumentally valuable goods and activities, and there is a plurality of ways in which different individuals may flourish and live well-rounded lives. Here, I faced another challenge. Virtually any intervention that increments one’s well-being as a purposeful creative agent would be permissible. Although this needs not be problematic per se , a closer examination of specific cases reveals that certain interventions do indeed appear problematic. On the one
7 hand, interventions aimed at promoting positional goods, like height, sex, or eye colour, seemed to be, prima facie , impermissible, as they confer an unjust advantage to those benefiting from them solely on the basis of others lacking these goods. But in certain cases, positional goods may contribute to an individual’s flourishing to the same extent as non-positional goods. Education can be one of these goods. Take the case of two individuals who both aspire to flourish in their careers. One might be driven by a desire for personal achievement and recognition, while the other is focused on personal development and job satisfaction. While the first works diligently to secure a prestigious job title and a corner office with a view, the latter works for his personal fulfilment. To the first individual, his prestigious job title and the corner office are positional goods: these possessions contribute to his sense of flourishing and well-being because others lack access to them. To the second individual, non-positional goods such as personal fulfilment and a meaningful occupation, are the key factors contributing to his flourishing and well-being. In the final analysis, both positional and non-positional goods can decisively play a crucial role in a person’s well-being and flourishing. On the other hand, how do we go about defining what constitutes a sufficient amount of developmental power? The obvious challenge here is that developmental power is not only agent-relative, but also context-relative, time-relative, and culturally relative. Despite developmentalism being an objective account of well-being according to which the good life for a human being is determined by the specific set of capacities constitutive of our human nature and whose exercise is non-instrumentally good for us, this still leaves plenty of room for indeterminacy concerning the ways we flourish. Different creative agents in different contexts, in different times, and in different cultures flourish differently. The issue does not primarily concern the meaning of flourishing, as this was established as soon as I laid out human nature developmentalism: flourishing is a state that humans aspire to for its non-instrumental value. The challenge lies in determining the factors that influence flourishing and the specific role that human enhancement should take in enabling an agent’s flourishing vis-à-vis alternative strategies ( e.g. , socioeconomic strategies). These challenges, along with the examination of two paradigmatic cases in bioethics, ultimately guided me to the solution I propose in the final chapter of the thesis: developmental counselling. In the end, the challenge will not revolve around quantifying the precise amount of developmental power required for flourishing (the pursuit of a general universal principle to establish this is not feasible). Rather, the goal is to establish a developmental framework that provides guidance to counselling teams in their role of assisting patients who wish to undergo interventions.
8 I mentioned how important two paradigmatic cases in bioethics were for me to arrive at the idea of developmental counselling. Truth be told, counselling is not a groundbreaking idea in the field of medical ethics, nor is the idea that, under specific circumstances, we must obtain an enhanced form of consent from patients in order to proceed with research. For example, Julian Savulescu, in his 2001 classical article on the principle of Procreative Beneficence, had already discussed the Principle of NonDirective Counselling, to which he doesn’t strictly adhere. From a developmental stance, this principle is problematic for the reason that it shuns away from providing any guidance other than “information about risk and options available to reduce that risk” (Savulescu, 2001, 419). The central idea behind developmental counselling is to help individuals make informed decisions that promote their well-being and flourishing as creative purposive agents. It recognises that individuals may benefit from ethical and practical advice when navigating complex decisions related to human enhancement. Also, it acknowledges that the counselling process is non-neutral, and that providing guidance within the developmental framework serves two key purposes. First, it goes beyond the traditional concept of informed consent by offering individuals a more comprehensive and personalised guidance in order to obtain their fully informed and enhanced consent. Second, it seeks to facilitate a holistic understanding of one’s general condition and circumstances by means of a collaborative and reflective developmental shared decision-making model between counselling teams and prospective patients. To resume the argument, the first controversial case in bioethics I’m referring to here is that of a deaf lesbian couple who voluntarily chose to have a deaf child (cf. Spriggs, 2002; cf. Wallis, 2020). I had two major concerns regarding this case. The first was whether a deaf child could have a decent chance to live a life of engagement with the components of human flourishing ( i.e. , our cognitive, affective, sensory, social, and physical capacities). The second was whether deliberately bringing a deaf child to life constituted a violation of her identity and autonomy and threatened her right to an open future. At first glance, deafness is a clear instance of a drastic reduction of an agent’s developmental power, posing challenges to his present and future ability to flourish as a creative agent. Nonetheless, the mothers offered a range of compelling arguments in support of their position, with these arguments centring on issues of identity, culture, autonomy, inclusivity, and the normalisation of deafness. Moreover, on what ethical grounds should we address the restriction of the reproductive freedom of two autonomous agents? Procreative perfectionism understood as the view that “we should aim to have children who will have the best chance of a good human life” (Glover, 2006) automatically appears as counterintuitive and overly burdensome on parental procreative autonomy. On the other hand, I was rather suspicious of liberal versions of procreative perfectionism, like Savulescu’s well-known
9 Principle of Procreative Beneficence. On this account, “couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available information” (Savulescu, 2001, 415). But who will guide parents in interpreting this principle? It involves not just the evident subjectivity surrounding the notion of “the best life”, but, in some cases, also a comprehensive understanding of the challenging implications involved in planning the edition of the genome of a future human being. Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough, the deaf lesbian couple mentioned above, appeared to have a clear understanding of the motivations behind their choice. But still, did they really? And even if they didn’t, would this be reason enough to limit their reproductive freedom? Indeed, if that’s the case, one could anticipate the objection that circumstances like poverty or severe disability might also offer plausible ethical grounds for limiting the reproductive freedom of prospective parents under these conditions. This restriction could be due to their potential to offer only a relatively disadvantaged upbringing and the risk of passing on genetic conditions. Under these conditions, the developmental power of the child wouldn’t expectedly be sufficient so she could have any real prospects of living a flourishing life. This was the line of thinking behind many of the eugenic programs of the past. These objections are particularly important at the light of He Jiankui’s case. This serves as a paradigmatic example of ill-medical practice on many levels, but particularly concerning the violation of the ethical procedures to secure informed consent from the participants in his research (cf. Krimsky, 2019). Securing informed consent for a study as challenging as one that involves gene editing and embryo implantation, will inevitably present considerable difficulties. Informed consent requires a thorough explanation of the scientific procedures, a comprehensive assessment of potential risks and benefits, the exploration of possible alternative options, and the assurance that participants possess a complete understanding of all the procedures involved. Moreover, participants should be accompanied by qualified professionals throughout the entire process so we can guarantee their confidence, safety, and always ensure their full understanding. Considering the variety of consent types and the many approaches to obtaining it, I came to recognise that human enhancement requires an enhanced form of consent. Developmental counselling represents the best attempt at obtaining this enhanced consent. In addition to He Jiankui’s case, the other case that brought me to consider developmental counselling and enhanced consent was that of limb-lengthening surgery. During the Covid pandemics, this surgical procedure became popular in Canada, and particularly among young men (cf. Jiang, 2022). It was a common procedure since the 1950s to treat people with congenital illnesses or injuries, being regularly performed in children born with one leg shorter than the other. However, young adults began
10 undergoing this procedure solely for cosmetic reasons, hoping to attain a few additional centimetres in height. These people were happy to go through a major surgery which involved some personal risk and financial costs so they could feel better about their height, to belong to the right height group, and avoid being shorter than the average. Again, in this case, we are dealing with the problem of positional goods. Beyond treating minor disabilities, the reasons people presented for the surgery involved personal fulfilment, boosting confidence, and becoming happier persons living better lives. There are well-known correlations between height and higher scores on well-being indicators, such as attractiveness to the opposite sex and success in forming long-term partnerships (cf. Nettle, 2002). In the specific case of men, being taller often means more career opportunities and higher income (cf. Deaton & Arora, 2009; cf. Johnson, 2019; cf. Jiang, 2022). But should this fact of life suffice to justify one’s decision to use the surgery? Would it justify parents to select height as a non-instrumentally valuable trait to pass on to their children? What’s relevant about this case is that healthcare providers required interested patients to attend counselling sessions with psychologists and surgeons to determine whether they needed the surgery (cf. Novikov et al. , 2014). More importantly, the statements made by some of the young men willing to undergo the procedure seemed to indicate that they were influenced by misconceptions about what constitutes their good. This is particularly so from the point of view of human nature developmentalism. Height is not one of the components of flourishing; being taller is not a fundamental human capacity indispensable to one’s flourishing. This doesn’t mean that one’s flourishing is independent of one’s personal perception on how his life goes relative to his height. For example, this implies that a Dutch man, with an average height of 183.8 cm, and a Timorese man, with an average height of 160.1 cm, can both flourish as creative purposive agents regardless of their stature. However, it is plausible that a Timorese who moves to the Netherlands may encounter missed opportunities due to his height in comparison to his Dutch peers. In any case, such disparities would likely stem from an unjust social setting rather than a personal inability to engage with the components of flourishing. The shorter stature of the Timorese does not, in any manner, provide him with a morally relevant claim to grant him access to biomedical interventions. Put differently, being shorter doesn’t necessarily equate to a decrease in developmental power. If the Timorese were to submit to a counselling session, he would probably come to realise either that he was being led astray by a false idea of the good, or that the Dutch society is unfair in that regard. He could also realise that ongoing and unjust social circumstances are more likely to foster unfair prejudices, thereby giving rise to mistaken notions of what constitutes the good, and that somatic as well as germline interventions are not the proper strategy to address these challenges. For example,
11 racism stands out as a prime and definitive case of why it should be morally impermissible to use gene editing to select or change skin colour. I mentioned that counselling is not a new approach in the field of medical ethics, and indeed, it is not. Emma Gordon’s recently published book, Human Enhancement and Well-Being , proves this, offering a profoundly relevant and intellectually captivating contribution to the debate on the role counselling can play in a positive proposal of human enhancement. I owe much to this book. In it, Gordon clearly illustrates what the role of an enhancement counsellor might be and presents the many possible strategies to facilitate voluntary enhancement. This work played a crucial role in shaping my own approach to counselling. Because of my developmental approach, the counselling model I propose differs in some relevant respects from Gordon’s. Once a person initiates the process of undergoing an intervention herself or expresses a desire for their descendants’ genome to be edited, she will be required to undergo a thorough monitoring process. Instead of talking of an enhancement counsellor, I prefer to talk about counselling teams comprised of professionals from diverse fields of expertise who can guide patients throughout multiple different stages of observation, before and after the intervention takes place. These teams will include professionals such as ethicists, bioethicists, philosophers, religious representatives, psychologists, social workers, human rights activists, and possibly people who were previous patients. It is expected that teams such as these are constituted to consider particular cases and to contribute to a comprehensive discussion on the relevant aspects that one ought to have in mind concerning enhancement. As expected, it’s likely and desirable that team members will hold diverse and contrasting viewpoints. The rational deliberation this process entails is intended to guide patients beyond what might be their initial desires ( e.g. , regarding the type of child they desire to bring into the world, or the degree to which an intervention can help enhance one’s social skills), as well as in identifying their possible biases and misconceived assumptions. It is meant to help parents exploring the potential impacts of their choices on their future children, on themselves, and on society as a whole. Where does this leave us? We are faced with the difficulty I mentioned above: it becomes challenging to reconcile the need for a universal ethical principle governing the permissibility of interventions with the practical reality of counselling, which requires counselling teams to conduct individualised assessments for each person’s case. This casuistry will likely result in numerous potential exceptions to any general ethical principle devised precisely to avoid such an outcome. How can we prevent this? The combination of the developmental general ethical framework, the casuistic approach counselling entails, and a robust ethical oversight can assist us in addressing the tension between
12 universal principles and the need for case-specific analysis. This approach aims to sustain the fundamental ethical values of human nature developmentalism while allowing enough elasticity to accommodate the particular circumstances of potential patients. We must take into account that this model should be adaptable for implementation in different societies, each with its own unique cultural values, and different and diverging perspectives on what is good for individuals. Hence, the constitution of the teams will also be subject to different criteria and will vary significantly across cultures. Clearly, it should allow the ongoing examination and potential revision of the developmental ethical principles themselves, admitting that they cannot remain rigidly fixed and unalterable in the face of the radical transformations that may result from human enhancement and its application throughout different cultural backgrounds. Moreover, it is expected that the counselling process is as transparent as possible, ensuring that decisions are made openly and are subject to the scrutiny of every member of the counselling teams, and potentially subject to examination by external, independent, and competent authorities. Regularly updating the general guidelines of the counselling process will also improve its transparency and accountability. Finally, ongoing ethical reflection between the professionals forming the teams, policymakers, and the wider public can contribute to better address emerging ethical challenges, allow for necessary adjustments to principles, and find new possible solutions. I acknowledge that such a conclusion for this study might be uninspiring. Nonetheless, any potential lack of originality in this approach is counterbalanced, I hope, by the fact that developmental counselling affords us plenty opportunity to progress towards the initial goal I envisioned. This goal always involved offering support to those who wish to undergo interventions within a clearly defined framework of moral and ethical principles in tune with a distinctive developmental understanding of the types of beings we are, what is non-instrumentally good for us, and how we can live flourishing lives. The strategy I am presenting here is the best response I came up with to address a significant threat to which I first devoted my attention to in 2018 and still consider a pressing concern today. This concerns the transhumanist belief that we are without doubt destined to merge with machines and radically alter our fundamental nature. An expression used by Michael Hauskeller quite clearly captures this idea: what is going on is a “transhumanisation of culture” (cf. 2015). This expression conveys well the belief shared by the transhumanist Nick Bostrom who stated that “[t]ranshumanism is entering the mainstream culture today” (2003, 5). The infusion of transhumanist ideas and values into our cultural narratives, artistic expressions, ethical and political discussions, societal structures, and human experience frequently sidesteps an exhaustive critical examination of the merits of those ideas and values.
13 My main concern was and still is that the transhumanisation of culture doesn’t go hand in hand with a continuous discussion regarding the reasons behind the potential goodness of interventions in relation to the types of beings we are. Since we cannot return to a time prior to the transhumanisation of culture and set reasonable ethical boundaries to guide it, this is a debate that will have to take place as the process of the transhumanisation of culture unfolds. The approach I formulate in this work seeks to make a valuable contribution to this ongoing discussion. § This thesis is structured around the idea that germline genetic interventions are morally permissible if and only if they increment our developmental power or otherwise contribute to our flourishing as creative purposive agents. What I wrote before in this introduction was regarded as the necessary theoretical development to arrive at this general principle. To wrap things up, the developmental conception of human nature, which is the normative basis to ground the moral permissibility of interventions, generates the two following comprehensive requirements: a. It is our purposeful creative agency that makes us humans, giving us our nature as persons or agents, and generates reasons to pursue its development, rendering developmentalism normative. Our individual well-being is a function of the type of beings we are and what is objectively and non-instrumentally good for us is to exercise, develop, and enjoy our capacities by making a conscious and controlled use of our faculties during the transformative and self-creative process of labour; b. Given that being human is to act as a purposeful creative agent, the requirements of morality dictate that so long as another agent’s end is their development, each one of us ought to make the development of others our end as well. Hence, because morality is about flourishing as a purposeful creative agent, we have prudential and moral reasons to promote flourishing and prevent unflourishing. This principle applies to all creative agents without exception, both to current as well as to future generations. Taking reproductive autonomy as an example of intergenerational ethics, this boils down to the following two principles: i) what we owe to our children is a decent chance to live a life of engagement with the components of human flourishing in ways that respect their identity and
14 autonomy; and ii) to safeguard children’s right to an open future and to facilitate the incrementation of her developmental power whenever feasible, provided its safe and efficient. Only thus can we treat other present and future agents in ways that reflect concern for their well-being, whose source is their creative agency. The central problems explored in the five chapters of this thesis converge to establish this core set of ideas. I start chapter 1 with a general cartography of the problems to be addressed throughout the entire work. My aim is to provide a general theoretical framework of the problems I’ll be dealing with. One aspect I make clear is this: when we do political philosophy, the construction of a philosophical edifice, however humble, is not immune – cannot be immune! - to ontological and normative judgements about the type of beings we are, what is good for us, and what type of socioeconomic institutions we should aim for to promote a good life to people. It is easy to see why the first chapter of this thesis is titled “transformation”. New emerging, converging, and disruptive technologies hold the potential to fundamentally transform the human being, human life, and the surrounding environment. This chapter can be viewed as an investigation into the philosophy of transhumanism, comprising three sections, each focusing on three distinct existential challenges of transhumanism encapsulated in the word “trans/form/action”. These challenges, however, are not exclusive to transhumanism, as they permeate the entire discussion on the ethics of human enhancement. In chapter 2, I’ll examine how different accounts provide distinctive descriptive and normative approaches to human enhancement. I’ll focus on the three main accounts in the literature: i) the augmentative account; ii) the “not-medicine” account; and iii) the welfarist account. My argument is that the welfarist account is superior to its rivals and adequately addresses relevant objections levelled against it, thus providing more reasonable answers to why interventions are valuable. But still, the welfarist account has problems of its own. It fails in providing a compelling explanatory and justificatory explanation for the project of human enhancement for two reasons: 1) it remains overly centred on individual perspectives and relies heavily on subjective notions of well-being, particularly hedonism and desirefulfilment. As a result, this approach makes the concept of enhancement too broad, undetermined, and subjective, thereby failing in accommodating the dispersed ideas on what it means to be human that pervade the debate on transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement; and 2) it fails in accounting for the problems resulting from the tension between the personal and the collective outcomes
21 dreams of the most utopian philosophers” (1973, [unpaged; Part 3]). Again, we see the desire to strive to elevate humanity to higher levels of capacity and potential through the use of science and technology. It involves the pursuit of enhanced capacities, ultimately aiming for a posthuman condition 5 that transcends our current biological and organic limitations. Upwing embodies the idea of upward progression and the belief that humanity can and should constantly strive to reach higher levels of development. Therefore, this first meaning of movement entails this future-oriented outlook that is deeply connected with the feelings of shame for our current (transitional) human condition, mainly our fragile organic and biological constitution. For example, an evident manifestation of this can be observed in the commonly used metaphor of our infancy. Its underlying claim is this: we are not yet the type of beings we have the potential to be, or the beings that we really are. Instead, there is an unexploited potential for human beings to become more than what we currently are, and the movement that really matters is that of transcending that quasi animal condition and boost our journey towards post humanity. Unfortunately, transhumanists will claim, we are still in the earlier stages of our infancy. Nick Bostrom makes use of this metaphor in his Letter from Utopia (cf. 2008) to depict the current state of humanity in relation to its potential blissful future state. We are not simply told that the posthuman condition of our future Utopian selves is one in which we’ll endlessly enjoy an ecstatic mixture of all the pleasures we can dream of and much more, but invited to become what we were always destined to be. As human beings, we were born destined to become posthumans, and are explicitly invited to take action ; “[w]e are all dependent on you to make us real” (2008, 1), suggestively remind us our future Utopian descendants. Transformation involves action. After all, our biological, organic, human embodied existence is only a stage, but we are permanently evolving and transforming ourselves. Still related to our infancy is the idea that we are like a child growing up. In his personal introduction on his website, Bostrom, who has elsewhere expressed his desire to become a posthuman when he grows up (cf. Bostrom, 2014a), writes that 5 The “transhumanist posthuman” is fundamentally different from the “posthumanist posthuman”. A useful and schematic distinction between these and Transhumanism and Posthumanism can be found in a 2014 collection of texts on “Postand Transhumanism”, anthologised by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. While transhumanism of the kind presented in this thesis is a rather coherent set of techno-optimistic views with its roots in classical humanism and deeply committed to the Enlightenment project, posthumanism remains a highly ambiguous notion that serves as an “umbrella term for a variety of positions that reject basic humanist concepts and values” (Ranisch & Sorgner, 2014, 8). Transhumanism emerges as a contemporary renewal of the project of Enlightenment and embraces the values of reason, humanism, individualism, and the belief in progress and human perfectibility. Analytical philosophy, the liberal and utilitarian traditions, and the biosciences are the main academic areas in which we can see the burgeoning development of transhumanism. Posthumanism, on the other hand, is mainly affiliated in postmodern and the broadly conceived field of Continental philosophy, critical theory, feminism, and cultural and literary studies and criticism, among other related areas. It breaks with humanism and questions “persistent concepts and dualities in Western culture, such as nature/culture, man/woman, subject/object, or body/mind” (Ranisch & Sorgner, 2014, 8).
22 [w]e're set on a journey that can ultimately take us into whole new realms of wonderful ways of being, thinking, feeling, and relating to each other. Some of our finest dreams can come true. In order for that to happen, we must grow up, and that may entail shedding some of our current biological limitations. I hope that as many as possible of us who are currently alive will get the opportunity to truly grow up and experience life as it should have been all along (Bostrom, n.d.). Using the same metaphor, Gregory Stock, in a paper written for a BBC debate on designer babies, sates that “[t]he human species is moving out of its childhood” (2014), and that our scientific and technological powers over nature are growing rapidly. Stock concludes that “we have begun to play god in so many intimate realms of life that we could not turn back if we tried” (2014). Similarly, the philosopher and futurist Max More states that “[h]umanity must not stagnate to go backwards to a primitive life, or to halt our burgeoning move forward, upward, outward, [which] would be a betrayal of the dynamic inherent in life and consciousness. We must progress on to transhumanity and beyond into a posthuman stage” (1996). This analogy of infancy in transhumanism can be related to Immanuel Kant’s well-known definition of Enlightenment: Enlightenment is human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority . Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere Aude ! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of the enlightenment (1999, 17). Transhumanists see the current state of humanity as one of immaturity and, as Kant urges individuals to take responsibility for their own understanding and reasoning, so too transhumanists urge us to seize control of our evolutionary future. Of course, this is no surprise, since transhumanists are happy to declare themselves heirs to a long tradition of thought that reaches its pinnacle with the Enlightenment project and the belief in the progress and perfectibility of humanity (cf. Bostrom, 2005). 6 6 In this context, the concept of perfectibility naturally directs our attention to the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A closer examination of this concept will be conducted in chapter 3.
23 As an ideology streaming beyond humanism — in fact intensifying it —, its supporters are also acute to lay emphasis on their commitment to secular rational humanism and often quote the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio on the Dignity of Man as a seminal work of reference to underpin their narrative. His proclamations regarding the role God ascribed to humans are instructive and worth quoting at length. Addressing Adam, God says: We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no form of thy very own, no gift peculiarly thine, that thou mayest feel as thine own, have as thine own, possess as thine own the seat, the form, the gifts which thou thyself shalt desire. A limited nature in other creatures is confined within the laws written down by Us. In conformity with thy free judgment, in whose hands I have placed thee, thou art confined by no bounds; and thou wilt fix limits of nature for thyself. I have placed thee at the center of the world, that from there thou mayest more conveniently look around and see whatsoever is in the world. Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have We made thee. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honorable, art the molder and maker of thyself; thou mayest sculpt thyself into whatever shape thou dost prefer. Thou canst grow downward into the lower natures which are brutes. Thou canst again grow upward from thy soul’s reason into the higher natures which are divine (1965, 4-5). The idea that we have an intrinsic desire to transform ourselves and that we are free to do so according to our rational judgment runs deep in the transhumanist worldview. It is, naturally, essential to the notion of movement I’m discussing here. At its deepest, the essence of this movement comes down to a conflict between the determinacy that Nature imposes on us and the will for indeterminacy that is at the core of our being. The necessary movement, or transition, entails departing from Nature’s determinacy and progressing towards complete indeterminacy. Figuratively, if not Gods, our endeavour should be to transform ourselves into the godlike creatures whose blueprint we already possess. In other words, not only humans are “confined by no bounds”, as they are also responsible for fixing the limits of nature. To enhance ourselves is, like stealing the fire from the Gods, to act according to our nature. We cannot forgo the opportunities emerging, converging, and disruptive technologies provide us with to enhance ourselves. That would not be a “characteristically human” mode of action (Stock, 2003, 2). Accepting the determinacy of Nature manifested in in our biological limitations and the confinement to our frail physical bodies, goes against what is inherently human.
24 As for this first understanding of movement, we are left with a dynamic (extropian) and futureoriented notion that compels us to take action to transform ourselves. Metaphors like those of moving forward, moving/growing up, seize control of our evolutionary future, stealing the fire from the gods, and the like indicate the teleological, eschatological, and religious nature of transhumanism. In this context, the notion of movement is primarily linked to the modern concept of progress. ii. Transition; If transhumanism is all about movement, it is also all about transition. It is the notion of transition that better defines the essence of transhumanism. Etymologically, the prefix trans is derived from the Latin word “trans”, meaning “across”, “beyond”, or “over” (Hoad, 1996, 501). Transitional beings are on the move, as the various metaphors above indicate. Our current state is transitory. The most common idea here is that we stand between animality and a posthuman stage, and that a gradual and voluntary process should be undertaken to radically transform the body. As Max More argued, as long as we are transitional beings, we will stand “between our animal heritage and our posthuman future” (1998). Note that, according to the conceptions of human nature mentioned above, this is a profoundly individualist understanding that regards the agent as a free, autonomous being whose essence is displayed in his act of choosing to be better (cf. Hurlbut & Tirosh-Samuelson, 2016, 8). In his novel The Transhumanist Wager , Zoltan Istvan 7 makes this very clear: human life is all about an essential “choice between pursuing personal godhood or dust” (2013, [unpaged; ch. 10]). Qualities that only gods possess, such as immortality, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence are the qualities that humans are destined to share as well once full mergence with ultraintelligent machines is possible. He further claims that the search for immortality and omnipotence, which characterise the transition to more advanced forms of human existence, will inevitably happen (cf. 2013, [unpaged; ch. 17]). Humans don’t really get to choose their destiny, they have only to accept that Singularity is the destiny reserved for them. Singularity translates the idea that a technological transcendence is necessary to achieve the final stage of human liberation from nature’s determinacy. It is negatively defined with relative accuracy as the stage in which silicon replaces flesh as a carbon vessel for the mind, and the sufferings derived from pain, diseases, ageing, emotional dispositions, and death are no longer present. However, a positive definition seems harder to provide, as we see from Bostrom’s rhetorical images of his techno-Utopia. We know what posthumanity is not supposed to be, but despite being told how this “technowonderland” 7 Zoltan Istvan founded the U.S. Transhumanist Party in 2014.
25 (Linell, 2012) will probably look like, it will in all probability be different. 8 This is especially true considering the threats posed by manmade existential risks and, more realistically, our lack of control over the type of technologies transhumanists devise as necessary to achieve posthumanity. The only certainty is that our biological condition needs to be transcended. Singularity will thus be “heaven on earth” (Cady, 2012, 88). It was Ray Kurzweil who defined technological Singularity as the “future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed” (2005, 24). An intelligence explosion (cf. Good, 1965) will be responsible for triggering the exponential growth of technological developments that will end in the creation of a superintelligence superior to human intelligence. The transformation of human life will be so radical that “there will be no distinction […] between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality” (Kurzweil, 2005, 25), as these will have merged completely. The uploading of the human mind to a human-made machine is the most representative stage of posthumanity. According to Kurzweil, this is an inevitable outcome with a profound spiritual significance: “evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking” (2005, 284). The boundaries between the human and the divine are thus removed by the merging of humans and intelligent machines. Once more, the eschatological nature of transhumanism is plainly visible here. But it has problems of its own. It is questionable that humans and human identity can be reduced to simple patterns of information, and subsequently digitalised and transferred to silicon-based devices. This would imply that our essence as individuals comes not from a consciousness rooted in the physicality and commonality of our bodies, but from a digital existence that renders us as patterns of pure quantifiable data ready to be uploaded into a machine with the goal of making us immortal beings. Hermínio Martins condensed this in the notion of the ens virtualissimum when addressing issues related to disembodiment and digital immortality (cf. 2011, 371). Moreover, cybernetic, or digital immortality is still entirely dependent on human made hardware or artefacts. In this sense, “the transcendence depicted by transhumanists is no more than prolongation of a materially based human product” (Tirosh-Samuelson, 2011, 44). This reveals a self-contradiction 8 There is an important epistemic constraint at work in this case. As Hermínio Martins explains, it is impossible to know what life will be like when Singularity is achieved. The level of intelligence present in a posthuman and post-biological state will be unintelligible to currently living humans. Singluarity is also the end of “intelligible times” (cf. 2011, 340-341). This also explains why our Utopian descendants admit that we cannot have but a glimpse of what their lives are like (cf. Bostrom, 2008).
26 operating at the heart of the transhumanist desire to overcome nature’s determinacy: instead of reducing and completely supress nature, it is nature that expands itself and continues to determine human existence. Simultaneously, the notions of immortality and spirituality, which are central to traditional religions, are perceived in a fundamentally different manner within the context of digital immortality. 9 Humans are asked to usurp the role of God; Yuval Harari captured this insight quite clearly when stating that “new technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods” (2016, 314). Thus, transition entails another distinctive type of movement: trans cendency, trans ference, trans figuration, and trans ubstantiation. These four terms capture well the religious underpinnings of transhumanism, especially the advocated change of our flesh-based substance into a new, silica-based substance. They all convey the idea that before the inevitable “final hypervirtualisation”, we will be cyborgs ( i.e. , cyborgisised 10 beings progressively merging with machines) and only after the gradual suppression of our “meatware” or “fleshware” (cf. Martins, 2011, 119; 164) will we become “ entia virtualissima ” (cf. 2011, 370-371). Martins identifies here “three stages of universal progress” that evolve from the “ in vivo ” to the “ in vitro ” and, finally, the “ in silica ” (371). Michael Hauskeller says something similar. He names four different stages: 1) Illusionism; 2) Fortification; 3) Replacement; and 4) Displacement (cf. 2016, 65-71). The first two still deal with the organic as our main substance, while stages 3) and 4) aim at supressing it. 11 From now, we seem to have an answer to the question “from what to what are we transitioning”. The why is also partially answered: not only do we suffer from the evils imposed on us by the “enemies of the flesh”, but there is an absolute rejection of the idea that all we are is biological beings confined 9 Ted Peters concludes that cybernetic immortality as it is envisaged by transhumanists is utterly different and even incompatible with the type of immortality advocated in the Bible. In fact, the eternal life of the New Testament is not an extended life, and it requires physical death as a purgatorial cleansing to which resurrection follows. In this way, genetic enhancement to increase human longevity would still miss that part of the process to the renewal of the human being (cf. 2011, 173). 10 In his work Redesigning Humans , Gregory Stock argues for a distinction between cyborgs and fyborgs. The distinction is one of boundaries. Cyborgisation involves physically incorporating machine components into our bodies, while fyborgisation achieves functional fusion with machines. Some instances of cyborgisation already exist, such as dental fillings or prosthetic limbs, but the physical boundary between our internal and external worlds remains relatively unchanged. On the other hand, the functional boundary between these domains has significantly blurred and shifted. Objects like hearing aids, eyeglasses, clothing, and telephones, though physically external to us, functionally become part of us, showcasing our growing fyborgisation. This transformation competes with cyborgisation and primarily relegates it to body repairs. In everyday life, we are already fyborgs. We rely on various technological enhancements ( e.g. , phones, cars, and bank deposits) and we would feel diminished without these conveniences. Fyborgisation allows us to maintain our biological nature while embracing the benefits technology offers, and it is already a present reality, not just a concept for the future (cf. Stock, 2003, 25). But what transhumanists really seek is more than cyborgisation, as their goal is the total dematerialisation of our existence until the point that the categories of flesh and machine are no longer ontological realities. 11 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson has developed an important work about transhumanism and religion (cf. 2014). This is not the place to look at this at length, but it's crucial to acknowledge this connection. It is particularly significant because prominent critics of human enhancement, such as Michael Sandel, Francis Fukuyama, and Jürgen Habermas, frequently draw on theological arguments to support their criticisms.
27 and limited by our physical bodies. The transhumanist belief is that we have the potential to transcend our current state and become much more than what we are today. Once determinacy is exposed as our summum malum , the logical and necessary move of the argument is to recognise that indeterminacy is only achievable with the radical suppression of all determinacy and that only a post-biological existence can deliver it to us. The argument is teleological in its essence. Determined materiality necessarily gives place to fully undetermined immateriality. In the next section, I’ll look more closely at the relationship between determinacy and indeterminacy, as this is probably the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the transhumanist conception of our human nature. For now, to close this point on transition as one of the most significant meanings of transhumanism, I’d like to highlight an additional potential outcome of this transitional movement. This is potentially the point at which the transhumanist ideology’s perspective on the human body is most readily apparent. It is the idea that the body itself is a project. The term “project” itself holds considerable significance: etymologically, it indicates the ideas of “something thrown forth”, as well as something that is an object of planning, drafting, or designing (cf. Hoad, 1996, 372). This is a topic that requires detailed discussion developed in the “form” and “action” sections below, as the transhumanist project concerning the body is, in essence, the most all-encompassing programmatic endeavour transhumanists put forth. However, it is crucial to highlight several significant features that directly relate to the concept of transition as a progressive and upward movement. At the current moment, transition is one of the major imperatives of our age. 12 For transhumanism, the body is the prime object of transitioning, and transition needs to be accelerated (cf. Walker, 2011, 97). 13 Hence, the body is at the centre of a political discourse that makes it the object upon which we must act. The ones rejecting this thesis are, nonetheless, making the argument the other way around, consecrating the object body only to different political ends. The body, thus, appears as an object of certain relations of power, from which it constantly emerges as a 12 The word “transition” (whether applied to climate, finance, digitality, or energy) has become significantly relevant in our days because of its connection to critical shifts and changes advocated by many social and political actors, especially of affluent societies. These shifts underscore the worldwide necessity to confront urgent matters like climate change, economic sustainability, technological progress, and energy effectiveness. Changes in these areas are viewed as vital for establishing a future that is more robust, just, and ecologically viable, thereby rendering the notion of transition exceptionally pertinent and pressing in the present global landscape. It also emphasises the idea that human beings should participate in collective projects transformative enough to ensure the future of our species. One of these areas of collective intervention is the transhumanist project focused on the body. 13 Acceleration is another of the transhumanist imperatives. Max More defines the transhumanist mission as follows: “[t]ranshumanists seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values” (2011, 137). This rapid movement towards Singularity is, on More’s account, a key element of extropia.
28 transformed subproduct. The body is a construction of power. 14 The “transhumanisation of culture” 15 also denotes that the construction of the body is part of a particular cultural project that interacts with other possible meanings of construction. What I’m drawing attention to is simply the idea of construction. Especially, to the moral and ethical imperative that ought to guide that construction. Among others, the political construction of a transitioning body has deep impacts on identity, on how we think ourselves and others. But here, the term construction is key: I’m referring to it, at least, in its most basic sense, which is that of giving the body a form, shape, or appearance. Transhumanists, however, aim at eliminating that visible aspect of the body; it is a deconstruction of the body, really. Form, shape, and appearance are suppressed as categories that reveal the weaknesses of the body. Hence, the transhumanist construction of the body is, in fact, its total deconstruction or suppression. Think of the internet of bodies, which is an interconnected network of wearable devices, medical implants, and other technological devices that are designed to collect, transmit, and analyse various types of bodily data (cf. Matwyshyn, 2019). Computer code and the human body merge and blend, making the body what Matwyshyn calls a “new technology platform” (2019, 81). The body becomes a receptacle on which technology acts upon. But, more definitively, it is a data pattern, or a bundle of living data from which information is collected. The body is monitored, placed under constant and permanent surveillance, its vital signals are transmitted, recorded, watched, analysed, measured, compared, regulated, adjusted. The body becomes the object that is constructed at a distance, it is a co-creation in which multiple human and artificial agents take a role. Although its monitoring and management is highly personalised, its construction will predictably follow a standard, either functionalist, hedonistic, aesthetic, or other. Bodies, in this sense, will acquire different value. To readapt Judith Butler’s title, we will have bodies that matter differently depending on their construction. Thus, the transhumanist deconstruction of the body is a construction. The existing body must be deconstructed at the same time that the desired, new body is constructed. What is at stake is a redesigning of the body and the human existence into a new form. The (de)construction is a deconstruction 14 This is more evident, for example, in the emerging field of the internet of bodies. 15 It was Michael Hauskeller who used this expression in a suggestive 2015 article intitled A Cure for Humanity: the Transhumanisation of Culture . In this article, Hauskeller was enquiring the “tendency to unquestioningly accept the enhancement-therapy identity thesis” (137). To this he called transhumanisation of culture. This idea accurately refers to the integration of transhumanist ideas and values into various aspects of society and human experience. Our cultural narratives, artistic expressions, ethical and political discussions, and societal structures all incorporate many of the key conceptual notions that were exclusive or limited to the transhumanist debate. This reflects the growing impact of transhumanist thought on how society views our human potential, and the role technology plays in shaping our lives. As these ideas become more ingrained in cultural dialogues, they shape the way people perceive themselves, their relationship with technology, and the very essence of our humanity.
29 of our physicality to render us non-physical beings. This idea of designing or re-designing the body is significant and it refers to the transhumanist project of radical control over nature. Vilém Flusser has argued that the intention (design) at the basis of all culture is “to deceive nature by means of technology, to replace what is natural with what is artificial and build a machine out of which there comes a god who is ourselves” (1999, 19). The notion of transforming humans, along with their inherent animal vulnerabilities, into God-like beings through cunning and skilful methods aptly characterises the entirety of the transhumanist project. iii. Transgression; The ideas of design, cunning, and artifice indicate that the human is a project to be constructed against Nature. Nature is deceived, challenged, controlled, and instrumentalised in an attempt for us to become totally independent from it. It is in this context that I refer to a third potential interpretation of movement to characterise transhumanism: movement, in this sense, is necessarily trans gression. Those opposing transhumanism clearly identify transgression as one of its constitutive features. Bioconservatives view the transhumanist agenda as a form of transgression primarily against nature, human nature, and almost all established ethical boundaries. For example, the manipulation or edition of the human genome can disrupt the natural order of things, lead to unintended outcomes, or undermine the fundamental values and meaning of human existence if it endangers or destroys the core elements that make us human. According to these authors, what makes us human diverges significantly from the viewpoint asserted by transhumanists. For instance, Jürgen Habermas argues that among the possible unintended consequences of manipulating our human nature, one is that “we may no longer see ourselves as ethically free and morally equal beings guided by norms and reasons” (2003, 40-41). Altering our inherent “natural” state or reshaping us into edited beings would result in a loss of our humanity. The idea that de-humanisation necessarily ensues from the “genetic programming of human beings” and leads to a “future bondage of the living to the dead” (2003, 47-48) is something I will return to later. For now, it suffices to say that, at many levels, it is doubtful that this is so. From vaccination to cochlear implants or bionic prosthetics, these interventions can be understood as promoting individuals’ flourishing more than their dehumanisation. Additionally, it seems hard to justify that the lack of consent from future people is reason enough to forbade genetic interventions, and it is even harder to see how these interventions will exclude “the future person as a member of the universe of moral beings” (Habermas, 2003, 79). If gene editing can be used to enhance cellular immune responses in the context of treating cancer, what reasons would
30 we possibly have not to count this person among our moral equals, as having the same ethical freedom and equality as ourselves? Michael Sandel shares many of Habermas concerns. His worry is centred on the idea that the act of “designing” children might push us towards the edge of seeking children who embody the concept of perfection. To Sandel, human enhancement represents “a kind of hyperagency, a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires” (2004, 26-27). Transgression becomes evident in the “drive to mastery” that will make us miss and even destroy the “appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements” (27). In these terms, human enhancement is dehumanising in a double sense: first, it is a hubristic attitude towards the giftedness of life by means of which enhanced people would have the grounds of their human dignity and nature undermined ( i.e. , they wouldn’t be fully human because the naturalness in them was tampered with); and second, it possesses the potential to bring about an ethical division causing certain individuals to fail in acknowledging others as complete moral equals ( i.e. , enhanced and unenhanced would not participate fully in human nature). To Francis Fukuyama, there is an undefined and unquantifiable factor, “Factor X”, that contributes to human flourishing and the richness of human life. To change human nature, or “factor X”, ultimately endangers our human dignity and equality, and undermines the very foundations of liberal democratic societies (cf. 2002, 149-150). While technology and science can enhance human capabilities, there’s an intrinsic value in the unpredictability and unquantifiable aspects of human existence that should be preserved. To pursue extreme technological enhancements could risk diminishing these elements that make human life meaningful and valuable beyond mere utility. This is why Fukuyama claims that transhumanism is the world’s most dangerous idea: it proposes to strip us of our humanity and, consequently, of the normative foundation of our human rights and intrinsically valuable goods like freedom and equality (cf. 2004, 42-43). Hence, transhumanist goals and aspirations breach fundamental boundaries that define the human condition. On bioconservative terms, seeking to enhance human capacities to an extent that surpasses the natural limits of biology and evolution is a form of transgression against the intrinsic attributes of human nature. This viewpoint is rooted in a concern for the potential consequences of manipulating human biology and the belief that such manipulation disrupts the inherent order of life. So, if the Promethean mythological narrative of defiance and the pursuit of knowledge carries deep resonance with the key elements of the transhumanist philosophy, bioconservatives find themselves at the opposite end of this outlook on life. “Prometheus sought adventure, faced danger, and crossed boundaries, which
37 involving the alteration of the natural order, the rejection of the giftedness of life, and the openness to the unbidden, would not be justifiable, regardless of the moral righteousness of the desired outcome. The challenge posed by transhumanists (as well as by personhood theory and animal rights advocates) aims at broadening the moral circle in order to recognise non-human persons as agents enjoying partial or full moral status that necessarily ought to be accorded different treatment and consideration vis-à-vis their current standing. This broadening of the moral circle is grounded on a nonanthropocentric personhood ethics. According to transhumanists, it represents a continuation of the humanist and Enlightenment ideals that, in Western societies, progressively granted full moral status to non-white peoples, women, or homosexuals (cf. Bostrom, 2005a, 210). George Dvorsky summarised this in affirming that “the expansion of rights continues to be a work in progress” (2017). In fact, the number of non-human animals ( e.g. , higher primates, cetaceans, advanced artificial intelligence systems) that exhibit traits like self-awareness and intentionality, the ability to suffer, and the capacities to develop symbolic communication, to create, and to plan (cf. Hughes, 2004, 82-84), and that ask for inclusion in a broader sphere of moral rights corroborates Dvorsky’s claim. Nevertheless, it is not clear what kind of moral treatment should be accorded to non-human persons like uplifted animals, human-animal chimeras, or AI. Whether they should be treated as humans, as animals, or something in between is an open question (cf. Hauskeller, 2016, 42). 19 A similar concern arises as to whether machines that possess a set of capacities resembling those of humans and non-human animals should be accorded moral status. If self-aware, sentient, conscious, and morally capable machines come to exist, the challenge they pose is that of ascertaining what kind of social and political rights they will have, given that they shouldn’t be treated as property. The essential of the quarrel between transhumanists and bioconservatives concerning the concept of human revolves around whether the moral circle should be enlarged to include non-human persons of the various sorts. When it comes to humans, and particularly human nature, the essentialist claims put forward by transhumanists are of paramount significance. Transhumanists assert that our humanity lies in our capacity to employ reason for the purpose of utilising applied science and technology to mould ourselves in alignment with our envisioned normative ideals of what human beings should become. 19 Hauskeller mentions (cf. 2016, 52, n. 2) the 2003 article by Jason Robert and Françoise Baylis, in which they argue that the engineering of creatures that are partly human and non-human necessarily produces an “inexorable moral confusion” in the relations between humans and non-human animals. Despite voicing this concern, Hauskeller doesn’t voice the transhumanist conceivable answer to this challenge: the persistent moral confusion can potentially be resolved through the creation of more inclusive legislation, aiming to accommodate the legitimate moral claims of engineered creatures. This approach would grant them full moral status, thereby establishing the foundation for their claims to equal citizenship. The answer to this problem is the purpose of Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (2004).
38 Despite its broadness, this definition synthesises the positions of Bostrom, Stock, and Savulescu and colleagues. Underlying it is the idea that we act to overcome our own natural limitations and to realise the possibilities we think we have as humans. In this sense, it is both a positive and a negative account since it depicts us as beings in possession of the necessary faculties to realise our possibilities, but also beings with biologically limited faculties. The only way of realising our possibilities is by permanently “stealing the fire from the gods” and assuming our role as neither mortal nor immortal, but the architects responsible for shaping us into divine creatures, as Mirandola foresaw (cf. 1965, 4-5). The conflict between these two accounts arises from the naturalistic and dualistic ontology on which transhumanism is grounded and that considers humans primarily as animals capable of transforming themselves. Timothy Taylor and Anders Sandberg convey this idea by conceptualising humans as “artificial apes” (cf. Taylor, 2010) and “technological animals” (cf. Sanders, 2013). 20 Thomas Philbeck explores this problem and points to the fact that “transhumanism piggybacks humanism’s dualist ontology” (2014, 179) consisting of a material and an immaterial dimension that transhumanists conceive of as being in a constant and necessary interrelation. External characteristics of the being, namely senses, technological artefacts, and the natural world are the constitutive features of the material dimension, while the immaterial one comprises characteristics such as agency, thinking, and one’s notion of self as a subject (cf. Philbeck, 2014, 179). Posthumanists of the continental tradition typically criticise this binary structure that opposes body and mind, animal/human, male/female, or nature/culture (cf. Ranisch & Sorgner, 2014, 15-16). Katherine Hayles, for example, expresses sympathy for the idea of deconstructing the subject of the humanist and liberal tradition along with its dualities, but rejects the transhumanist desire to abandon flesh in favour of silicon, which is part of the latter’s post-biological project. Hayles’ nightmare, as she admits, “is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being” (1999, 5). 21 This idea of the separation of the mind from the body (something the posthumanist cannot accept) pervades the transhumanist worldview; it is its highest aspiration. 20 Working in the hermeneutics and phenomenology traditions, Bernard Stiegler has also elaborated on the idea that human evolution and the development of technical artefacts, or “technics”, are intricately intertwined. Stiegler’s argument is that the evolution of human consciousness and culture is closely connected to the evolution of technical objects and their externalisation in the world, resulting in a process of invention of the human through technics (cf. 1998, 134). 21 On the other hand, her dream, as that of most posthumanists, is one in which individuals embrace the potential and opportunities that NBIC technologies necessarily bring about but are able to dispense with the “fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality” (1999, 5). Individuals need to recognise and accept their human biological condition, celebrate their finitude, and acknowledge and appreciate the fact of having their life embedded in the complexity of the material world from which our survival depends (5). Such a view starkly contrasts with that of transhumanists and their project not only of abandoning flesh, but of radically controlling nature in order to overcome it.
39 The transhumanist aspiration to profoundly prolong life and transform intangible aspects of existence is perhaps where the problem of form better comes to view. Although transhumanists enthusiastically advocate for physical enhancement, they view the amplification of physical abilities as a transitional stage only, the true aim being full displacement and the full eradication of our organic form; post-biology is the true goal. Again, we come across the project of deconstructing the physical being. What is distinctively ironic about transhumanism on this reagard is that this project can only be achieved “via material means such as DNA augmentation and bionic enhancement” (Philbeck, 2014, 179). The “naturally-baked” part of our human nature that is here described as immaterial is the part that transhumanists wish to act upon in order to finish the baking, to use Bostrom’s allegory. Philbeck’s conclusion exemplifies the transhumanist challenging absence of a coherent ontological foundation: [t]hey hope to extend the ontological categories that are part of the immaterial constitution of the internal moral agent, and at the same time they demonstrate that they realize that this immaterial realm is dependent upon, and not separate from, the external material world (2014, 179). The most visible consequence of this dualistic ontological framework is the conflict between a positive and a negative account of human nature according to which what it means to be human entails two distinct meanings. On the negative account, to be human means to be at odds with nature, especially by virtue of the determination it imposes on humans, which is most palpable in the limits it sets on our possibilities as embodied beings. The organic body and the enemies of the flesh are the key concerns of transhumanists precisely because they hamper our possibilities of (progressively) becoming undetermined beings, and that is the reason why nature is a prime enemy. For example, Allen Buchanan considers nature as a poor engineer, and makes his case for human enhancement based on the premise that our natural, organic fragility represents an existential risk. If we don’t enhance ourselves, it is the continuance of the species that is at risk (cf. 2011, 160). 22 But nature, perceived as an adversary, manifests itself in a number of ways and is happy to lay bare human vulnerability. It hampers our freedom, security, and well-being every time we get sick and are not allowed to go to work and enjoy our lives, or in the loss of faculties that comes with old age and that ultimately results in death, or in the lack of control we have over our emotions, as well as the perceived lack of 22 In the 4th version of the Transhumanist Manifesto published on her webpage, Natasha Vita-More asserts something similar: “augmentation and enhancement to the human body and brain are essential for survival” (2020).
40 intelligence and moral judgement we often experience (cf. Hauskeller, 2016, 57). Corporality, as the most palpable limiting condition to our freedom, is thus the primary target of transhumanists, at least because, given the current developmental stage of the technological means, it is also the simpler way to tackle the challenges posed by nature. To dispense with the body and favour a silicon-based organism that renders us undetermined at last is not yet feasible. Consequently, on this negative account and for transhumanists in general, biology cannot be the essence of humanity. If anything, biology is partly responsible for a “halfbaked beginning” that we urgently need to change in order to achieve greater autonomy and our true essence. Biology is that material stuff with which our true form is filled. As Hauskeller rightly notes, transhumanists resent the gap there is “between what we want to do, or wish we could do, and what we actually can do due to the limitations of our bodies” (2016, 62). The only way to close the gap is by enhancing ourselves, by turning our bodies into machines that we can control so we can master (human) nature completely. Part of this project of control stems not only from the limitations our corporality imposes on us, but from what transhumanists perceive as a lack of purpose inherent to human biology. Atop of its in-built fragility, the human body as the carbon-based vessel of the mind seems to play no other function than that of keeping us alive. 23 Even this apparently simple task is barely achieved, as Buchanan and other enhancement advocates suggest (cf. Harris, 2007; cf. Savulescu et al ., 2004). In the face of manifold competing existential risks, transhumanists recognise this as well (cf. Bostrom, 2003a; 2014a; cf. Hughes, 2004). The fyborgisation and cyborgisation of the body is an expression of the project of control over (human) nature that is determinant on the negative account. This process of control and transformation that occurs in various stages, from the more ordinary change of appearance ( e.g. , the use of cosmetics or even cosmetic surgery) to the final stage of mind uploading, is part of the teleological essence of transhumanism. Nevertheless, we see that only the matter that fulfils form is changed: organic flesh gives way to synthetic silicon. On the positive account of human nature, however, to be human means to acknowledge our Promethean nature, as Stock claims. The essential capacity to shape ourselves into better beings that nature posited in us in the first place is nature’s basic manifestation indicating that we were always meant to go beyond our given limitations. On this account, the only determinacy posited in human beings, and which is human beings’ true essence, is the need to change one’s nature and form. We are determined 23 This perspective overlooks crucial aspects and functionalities of the human body, arguably the most significant being its ability to provide physical pleasure. Pleasure plays an important role in transhumanist thought, as one of its pillars, along with freedom. But as part of their project of control, transhumanists seem to be committed to the idea that to depend on others to feel pleasure is dangerous for one’s autonomy and freedom. As long as other people are autonomous agents with feelings of their own, they may stop having feelings for us and decide not to give us pleasure anymore. Dependency on others represents a danger to our autonomy and freedom, which opens the way to the idea of replacing human relationships by human-robot relationships.
41 to change ourselves and this seems to be the only kind of determinacy transhumanists can accept, as they are willing to put it as the human essence. Our essential determinacy is observable in us fulfilling ourselves by pursuing the exclusively human possibilities of becoming undetermined. Even though it seems paradoxical, transhumanists seem to understand essential determinacy as a means to achieve indeterminacy. The human essence appears as instrumentally valuable in the face of what has real non-instrumental value, which is indeterminacy: it is the being-undetermined “that is regarded as intrinsically valuable and as being the normative core of human nature” (Hauskeller, 2016, 78). Currently, humans are still determined beings, but the prospect that emerging, converging, and disruptive technologies offers is that we will achieve greater indeterminacy as we transform ourselves. In fact, the humans currently living are less determined than those living five centuries ago or any others that lived in any past Golden Age. On this account, enhancements are instrumentally valuable because they enable us to reduce determinacy and increase indeterminacy. But because of their disruptive transformative potential, it could be argued that enhancements are noninstrumentally valuable as well and should be pursued in virtue of their own value, i.e. , beyond their practical outcomes or utility. Deciding which of these views holds greater accuracy is not my aim here and I’ll return to it later. So far, we see that two conceptions of (human) nature coexist within the transhumanist worldview, and that both are diametrically opposed. Hauskeller has thoroughly analysed this aspect of the debate and came to the following conclusion: [t]his opposition reveals a dualistic, very un-Nietzschean and almost Manichean idea of the human, according to which the body is to be understood as our “evil” nature, which we must seek to overcome, and the mind (and hence the will, which is informed by the mind) as our true, “good” nature, which we need to protect and nourish (2016, 83). 24 While this conclusion provides a fair picture of what the transhumanist thinks, it seems possible to delve deeper into the consequences it bears on the consistency of the ontological foundation of the being and beyond it. At some point, Hauskeller refers to Spinoza and to the omnis determinatio est negatio formula to say that “all determination is a limitation” (2016, 71). Hauskeller’s point is that not everything is possible 24 A significant portion of the ideas that Hauskeller presents with significant length in his work Mythologies of Transhumanism concerning this matter were previously addressed by him in a 2013 article titled Human Nature from a Transhumanist Perspective .
42 to human beings because our abilities are also limitations to our action: any ability that “enables us to do one thing might prevent us from doing other things” (71). Consequently, the transhumanist desire for omnipotence, or complete indeterminacy, in the sense of having no limits, “is an unwholesome fantasy”, Hauskeller remarks (71). Nonetheless, the above formula attributed to Spinoza is in fact Hegel’s own adaptation with a slight modification of Spinoza’s original formula: et determinatio negatio est (and determination is negation) (cf. Melamed, 2012, 176). I believe Hegel’s “every determination is negation” to be of extreme relevancy because, in introducing the categories of negation and self-negation, it enables us to go beyond the ontological dualism that didn’t cope with self-negation as a negation of negation. The determinacy of something is possible only because it stands in opposition to something else. It also prompts us to enquire further beyond the apparently infertile, Manichean dyadic structure of a positive and a negative account of (human) nature by considering the possible triadic structure that results from the opposition of the finite and the infinite. The dialectical interpretation of the conflict at the core of the transhumanist ontology implies that both the finite and the infinite mutually negate each other. Nature as the material dimension which imposes determinacy on beings is finite and appears as a limitation or negation of the non-material and infinite dimension that the transhumanist identifies as the human mind. The determinate is a negation of the indeterminate, but the indeterminate is also a negation of the determinate; it is a negation of negation. For the transhumanist, this conclusion is intolerable because it means that indeterminacy would never be attainable. This results from transhumanists’ narrow interpretation of the “every determination is negation” formula. On this narrower interpretation, only the mind, the immaterial dimension, is absolutely indeterminate, free of any limitation or negation, while the material dimension that constitutes our biology is determined and always remains as a negation of the absolutely indeterminate. Transhumanists accept that “what is merely negation or determination of the infinite is not fully real” (Melamed, 2012, 177). That explains the insistence on the idea of a human nature as “work-inprogress” and that “[c]urrent humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution” (Bostrom, 2003a, 493). Again, what humans living today are is not yet really what they essentially are . Because the transhumanist cannot accept that the infinite, the immaterial, is a negation of negation and, consequently, is itself determined, he adheres to Spinoza’s restricted reading of the formula rather than Hegel’s dialectical reading. For the transhumanist, the notion of infinite is free of any internal negativity; as Hegel claimed about Spinoza, so too transhumanists fail to realise “that the infinite is essentially a negation of negation” (Melamed, 2012, 181), not simply negation. Self-negating negation is intrinsic to the infinite because the infinite itself is infinite only because it negates what it is not.
43 Thus, the dialectical reading of the formula demonstrates that the transhumanist conception is half-finished in claiming that only the material is a negation of the immaterial. And even if by its very nature the immaterial presents itself as a negation of itself, the transhumanist is still certain that this negativity can be suppressed. What the transhumanist is not in the position to accept, though, is that the immaterial is what it is only in the presence of an opposing category that it negates. To accept this conclusion would entail that the material could never be dispensed with as the immaterial would be unable to find its essence. In other words, the claim that only the immaterial is indeterminate and real is a one-sided claim as it fails to acknowledge that both dimensions gain their existence from their necessary dialectical co-existence. 25 The transhumanist concept of human nature is one that is built to serve a specific purpose: to sanction a project of radical control and mastery over (human) nature. I will delve into this project in the upcoming section titled action . As I tried to show, however, transhumanists fail to acknowledge that full indeterminacy as unnature ( i.e. , not having a nature or a form, which is the true essence of posthumans) is unattainable because to be fully undetermined the posthuman would have to supress the category that gives indeterminacy (unnature or unformness) its substance. And of course, the transhumanist faces the additional problem of explaining in what ways his in silica ontological existence is independent of a material basis. To wrap up this section, let me briefly highlight an additional dimension of the transhumanist perspective concerning the interplay between technology and human nature that reframes this picture and opens the way to the section in which I describe the project of mastery and control that defines the transhumanist worldview. The essence of the relationship with nature that the transhumanist requires of human beings in order for them to fulfil their essence is one of a perpetual “challenging forth” of nature. If, as Heraclitus once said, “Nature loves to hide” (Kahn, 1979, 33), the transhumanist’s greater goal is to expose it by all means necessary. The transhumanist is happy with attributing phusis volition, to personalise it in order to act on it and against it. 26 There is a substantive difference between older and contemporary technology, 25 An additional challenge transhumanists face and that stems from their desire to supress the material dimension concerns whether personal identity can survive in the event of dispensing with the body. It is without surprise that we find transhumanists supporting “patternism”, a position that “permits radical changes to the body and brain so long as the sense of continuity, the memory of a flow of mental states leading to the present, is maintained” (Hughes, 2013, 230). This is also one of the challenges implicit to the discussion of cyborg citizenship and the concept of human in the posthuman society, to which I alluded to in the beginning of the present section. 26 As was compiled and edited by Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, the fragment DK22 B123 is presented as follows: φύσις [...] κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ (Phusis […] kruptesthai philei) (Diels & Kranz, 1996, 178). This infamous fragment was the object of much philosophical discussion, and many argued about
44 such that the latter’s orientation to the world is no longer the type of bringing forth into existence and revealing defined as poeisis . The mode of revealing the kind of technological apparatus transhumanists joyfully celebrate is not sympathetic with the idea of revealing that occurs in nature and according to nature’s own terms ( physis ), or the one that results from the kind of production the craftsperson and the poet take part in as active agents (cf. Heidegger, 2013, 10). These technologies set up a qualitatively different mode of revealing in that their specified purpose is to challenge nature, to understand, rationalise, quantify it, and use it as a resource to be exploited and exhausted. Heidegger described this process as an instrumental enframing of nature as a standing-reserve. The conclusion of this project is that humanity itself, in operating in this cycle, is transformed in a standing-reserve as well (26-28). These two distinct technological orientations to the world challenge the transhumanist and proenhancement positions of a technological continuity regarding human enhancement. Considering this perspective, significant moral distinctions emerge between the act of consuming modafinil or a cup of tea, as well as between the type of foot enhancement achievable through a cutting-edge pair of shoes versus that attainable through gene editing. This will be the subject of chapter 2, but it is important to mention it here because it highlights the problematic transhumanist idea that only by recurring to these contemporary technologies that challenge nature can we enjoy life to the fullest. To bring forth something into existence is no longer sufficient. We need to challenge (human) nature, to transform it in standingreserve, and to know how to use it in order to overcome our natural deficiencies. On this perspective, this is the underlying idea buttressing the arguments in favour of cognitive and moral enhancement according to which we are not prepared to cope with potential existential risks. The argument goes that if at least we were wiser and morally prepared, terrorism, famines, climate change, environmental destruction, and nuclear devastation would be successfully tackled (cf. Buchanan, 2011a, 158-161; cf. Persson & Savulescu, 2012). The transhumanist revealing and bringing forth of human nature as something that is concealed and manifests itself in the course of human activity follows this understanding of technology. Converging, emerging, and disruptive technologies are not conceived as poiesis , but as “enframing”, which is consistent with the scientific and technological project of control guiding transhumanism. As the transhumanist project is one of radical opposition to nature’s determinacy, he cannot allow it to reveal itself in its own terms but must exert control over it. The scientific understanding of nature involving observation, measurement, quantification, and experimentation is an expression of that project of control, its possible meanings ( e.g. , Plato, Hegel, Heidegger). For a discussion on whether phusis has a personalised meaning or not, cf. Graham, 2003; for a very stimulating analysis and reply to Graham’s article, cf. Tor, 2017.
45 with science’s omnicompetence as the belief that all problems can be solved and that “our continuing advancement to ever higher levels of existence and experience” (Hauskeller, 2016, 8) will be safeguarded at the heart of this project. As such, human nature cannot be allowed to reveal itself in its own terms. This would be a reminiscent of the “naturalness” in us, which needs to be suppressed because it is nature’s determinacy manifesting itself, and indeed exerting control over us. Humans, on this understanding, must be rendered standing-reserve, at least until nature is not rooted out of ourselves completely. Where Heidegger and the transhumanist agree is that “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological” (Heidegger, 2013, 4). They both recognise that the essence of technology lies in specific orientations towards the world, and transhumanism expresses one particular orientation, one that arguably constitutes itself as the uppermost expression of enframing. The project of control that conceives science and technology as instrumental to the process of transforming us into better beings is also ambiguous, as was Heidegger’s notion of enframing. His quote of Hölderlin’s poem suggests this ambiguity: “where danger is, grows the saving power also” (2013, 34). So, on the one hand, there is a danger in the challenging forth that puts nature as a resource, something that is visible in transhumanism as it intensifies the project against nature and the determinacy it imposes on human beings. On the other hand, the “saving power” inherent to enframing suggests that it is up to humans to acknowledge their responsibility for the world: “he [human being] may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the coming to presence of truth” (2013, 33). This idea that humans should watch over and preserve the world presides to the transhumanist concern with existential risks that threaten humanity’s survival but, paradoxically, in no way divert them from the desire to challenge forth nature in order to supress its determinacy. In his 2014 book, Bostrom confirms this: “what is globally significant […] the essential task of our age […] our principal moral priority [is] the reduction of existential risk and the attainment of a civilizational trajectory that leads to a compassionate and jubilant use of humanity’s cosmic endowment” (260). Julian Huxley meant it when he urged us to assume our “cosmic office” of continuing to steal the fire from the gods (cf. 1957). What is paradoxical about this is that the transhumanist seems to believe that only by supressing nature’s determinacy can we watch over the world and preserve it. Wiser, good, emotionally self-controlled, and strong ( i.e. , enhanced) humans seem to be potentially more fit to tackle contemporary challenges. It then seems that full indeterminacy is an elusive goal. We are part of nature and responsible for it: “human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it” (Heidegger, 2013, 33-34). Where the transhumanist
46 sees a necessary conflict with nature because it stands in the way of full indeterminacy, we are compelled to understand nature as an irreducible part of our essence. Thus, “form” encompasses the framing of our perception of the world through technology and our interconnectedness with nature perhaps to a larger extent than the understanding of human beings defined as physical and biological beings. Form is equally, if not predominantly, a matter of knowing how the substance ( i.e. , the biological material) will be acted upon and shaped in the milieu of public and political relations to bring about a cultural outlook that favours the creation of a new type of human being. Currently, this phenomenon is evident in the ongoing process of the transhumanisation of culture I mentioned above. d. Action; To act reports to the idea of setting something in motion. Transhumanism, too, has a comprehensive agenda whose main goal is to set in motion the radical transformation of the human being. This is not simply the transformation of individuals, but of the entire human species. In fact, as I will discuss in this section, the transhumanist worldview accords not only a very specific place to human beings in the world, but also to other living species. Animals, for example, are also subjects of the transhumanist project. Once we bestow the gift of reason to animals, these will be uplifted and finally become better than they currently are (cf. Hauskeller, 2013, 64). I now intend to centre my attention specifically on this philosophical and political agenda. For this purpose, I will divide this section in two subsections. The first deals with transhumanism as a worldview and the mythological roots that infuse its current agenda, while the second deals with its problematic project of radical control over nature. i. Worldview; As presented here so far, we see that transhumanism is both a philosophy and a worldview ( Weltanschauung ). In a strict sense, as a philosophy, it retains the commitment to rational and scientific reasoning applied to the critical study of the current condition of humanity and how emerging, converging, and disruptive technologies are transforming that condition. Philosophy, as a non-integrated or non-unitary discipline, aims at producing particular and specialised analyses of different areas of thought, mainly ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics as isolated subjects that refer to the same body of ideas but that can be tackled separately. Transhumanism contemplates the ethical implications of altering human nature, delves into the metaphysical questions surrounding the boundaries of humanity and species membership, and envisions the potential aesthetic changes that technology-driven transformations might bring about.
53 the increasing of that power stands in a correlation with the increasing of human exposition and vulnerability to that power. This is one of the consequences of the disposition towards the world adopted by the transhumanist and his approval of a continuous challenging forth and enframing of nature. The failure to assure the cooperation of the ultraintelligent machine can confirm the distress expressed by theologian David Tracy: “[w]e began as technical agents of our willful destiny. We seem to end as technicized spectators at our own execution” (1981, 352). But Lewis develops his argument further to claim that control over nature is not only expressed in the power some individuals exert over others at a specific moment, but that it equally bears intergenerational consequences. According to Lewis, “[e]ach generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors” (56). In this sense, the power exerted over nature expresses one possible way in which a generation seeks to gain control over its destiny. This leads to a clash between the past and the predetermination of the future (cf. Leiss, 1996, 196). Lewis’ idea is that the purported increase of power and control humans exert over nature doesn’t ineludibly conduct to greater liberation from nature, as the idea of progress suggests. To exemplify how a generation exerts power over the next, Lewis brings up the cases of eugenics and scientific education as tools that enable one generation to transform the next. Lewis’ impression is that “all men who live after it are the patients of that power” (57). This position, however, is problematic and difficult to support. First, it gives us no account of what a free humankind, or at least a free first human being, is and when did we become victims of any power, and in what precise ways it expressed itself. It also echoes the “dehumanisation challenge” Kronfeldner referred to as one of the dangers of using human nature talk (cf. 2018, 15-32). When Lewis claims that both those conducting genetic experiences (the Conditioners) and those that are genetically modified “are not men at all” (cf. 62; 64), that the former “sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity” (62), and that the latter are “artefacts” (64), he is arguing that, in some relevant sense, they both lost their human status. Here, an obvious similarity echoing Hegel’s dialectical analysis of the master and slave dynamic emerges. As artefacts, human beings can no longer be and act in authentic ways; authenticity has been robbed of us by those who conditioned us into being the mere products of their desire. The decision to play God and altering the meaning of “humanity” by conducting genetic experiences strips Conditioners of their humanity, while those that are genetically modified cannot be said to be proper humans because they were (partly) fabricated, just like artefacts produced by a
54 craftsperson. This is part of the argument of contemporary bioconservatives. As noted earlier, Habermas presents a similar argument, possibly reflecting his perceptive engagement with Lewis’s ideas. 31 Of course, it is hard to see why parents choosing to have children without specific genes that would otherwise result in them living with genetic disorders are less human or no human at all because of that choice. Even though there may be something valuable in the sense of belonging to the deaf community, or in living with Down’s syndrome and having a good and meaningful life 32 , there is also something “unethical” about not preventing these hampering conditions (cf. Hughes, 2004, 140; cf. Savulescu, Sandberg, & Kahane, 2011, 12). Jonathan Glover claims that it is “morally alarming” to deny full human status to someone who has had gene therapy, for example (cf. 2006, 82-83). Children whose parents have used pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select against cancer predisposition syndromes, for instance, would be artefacts rather than full human beings according to Lewis’ strict notion. The additional challenge of ascertaining whether conventional education and therapeutics are ways of transforming children into artefacts along their growing process would ensue. This is analogous to the problematic enhancement-therapy distinction. Even though Lewis’ concern seems to be directed at state sponsored comprehensive eugenic programs, his argument is unsatisfactory in explaining why Conditioners and, more significantly, those with an altered genetic make-up lose their human status. Should a liberal state endorse eugenic measures aimed at safeguarding and expanding reproductive choices, as proposed by Nicholas Agar in his Liberal Eugenics (2004), or enact a universal vaccination initiative to immunise its population against certain illnesses, it becomes challenging to argue that our humanity is under threat. It would be bizarre to claim that such actions would render doctors and those receiving vaccines any less human. These insights are particularly challenging and relevant in the context of what Erik Parens and Josephine Johnston call our “age of gene editing” (2019). The advancement from the genetic engineering of the 1970s to the gene editing technologies inaugurated by CRISPR-Cas9 made it easier, cheaper, and safer to genetically intervene so as to alter specific traits of the human being in a way that would be far31 While it’s uncertain whether Habermas directly engaged with Lewis’s work, it’s worth noting that he was acquainted with Hans Jonas’s ideas, particularly the concept of the “bondage of the living to the dead” (2003, 48), which he incorporated into his own arguments against enhancement. I’ll look at this below. 32 Michael Sandel opens his case against perfection by mentioning the case of Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough, the lesbian deaf couple who wanted to have a deaf child. The couple considered deafness as a cultural identity, not a disability in need of a cure: “[w]e feel whole as deaf people and we want to share the wonderful aspects of our deaf community — a sense of belonging and connectedness — with children. We truly feel we live rich lives as deaf people” (cf. Sandel, 2007, 1). In an article published in The Washington Post , Jennifer Doudna, co-winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier for their work on CRISPR-Cas9 as a method for genome editing, told that the mother of a child with Down’s syndrome wrote her saying she wouldn’t use gene editing technologies to change her child: “I love my child and wouldn’t change him. There’s something about him that’s so special. He’s so loving in a way that’s unique to him. I wouldn’t change it” (Achenbach, 2016).
55 fetched when compared to Lewis’ idea of eugenics. 33 These technologies allow targeting specific stretches of DNA and to delete or paste new genes, although because of the little control we currently have over these technologies, unintended consequences may result from their use, or the intended results may not yet be possible (cf. Parens & Johnston, 2019, 2-3). Even so, if our understanding and control over gene editing increases to the level of the one we already possess over reprogenetics and the genetic makeup of children, for example, it is easier to see why Lewis considers that the next generations are patients or victims of the power exerted by their predecessors. Germline genetic interventions that pass DNA modifications to the next generations 34 quite clearly exemplify how morally contentious the extent of that intergenerational challenge is. As anticipated, advocates of human enhancement and transhumanists diverge from Lewis and bioconservatives in general as to the moral and ethical implications of germline genetic interventions. Fritz Allhoff, for example, argues that certain types of germline interventions are morally permissible “if and only if they augment Rawlsian primary goods, either directly or by facilitating their acquisition” (2005, 39). Harris, on the other hand, and adopting a quasi-libertarian approach, argues that “the overwhelming moral imperative for both therapy and enhancement is to prevent harm and confer benefit” (2007, 58). These problems will be addressed in the future chapters of this thesis. In both these instances, enhancement is a “positive action”, one that we have a moral obligation of choosing. This choice serves to avoid potential harm from befalling our progeny and future generations, while also enabling them to partake in valuable goods and activities. A “negative action” would entail that we should refrain from adopting germline genetic interventions and genetic manipulation of designer children and thus leave things as they are (cf. Harris, 2007, 79). According to Lewis, and contrary to the transhumanist intuition, to choose for positive actions will not make future generations stronger, but weaker: “though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them” (Lewis, 2009, 57). Negative actions, on Lewis’ account, would thus mean to prevent the “omnicompetent state” and its employment of irresistible scientific techniques to shape humanity (60). If we do otherwise, “[w]e shall have ‘taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be” (59). This seems to be the final stage of the process of conquering nature, which Lewis fears is not far from happening. As he claims, 33 Lewis was writing in the early 1940s, before the idea of eugenics came to be too closely associated with the Nazi experiences. Before that, during the earlier part of the twentieth century and as an intellectual inheritance of the Enlightenment, the promotion of eugenic goals was commonly accepted as a sensible way of allying scientific knowledge and social policy making. For a brief but thorough history of eugenics and its relationship with human enhancement, cf. Michael Selgelid’s 2014 article Moderate eugenics and human enhancement . 34 As opposed to somatic cell interventions that affect the cells that are not germ cells and that cannot be passed to next generations.
56 [t]he final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won (59). The reader might be curious about the direction this seeming diversion is leading us. However, this deviation serves a purpose in illuminating the paradoxical nature of the project to control nature, in exploring the transhumanist discourse regarding power relations, and in delving into the agenda for transforming both human beings and their environment. The idea that nature is everything which lies beyond our range of control, and which is not yet controllable reveals the paradox with which this section started. The reason why we reduce things to nature, Lewis argues, is to justify our desire to conquer them: nature is the name we give to things we have conquered, and we treat them accordingly, as things that were conquered and are now under our control (cf. 71). Therefore, the project to control human nature is one that reduces humans to nature because it reduces us to something controllable (cf. Hauskeller, 2016, 88). It reduces humans to standing-reserve. The more control we exert over ourselves, the more we recognise ourselves as nature, as natural objects, and raw material to be manipulated for the sake of exerting more power over nature, while at the same time enlarging the empire of nature. Lewis’ conclusion is once again that our power over nature is both elusive and impossible, but more decisively, it is a power that is part of a project of some people who have the tools and knowledge to exert it. On this account, if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners (72-73). This passage calls to mind the anxiety expressed by I. J. Good concerning the control the ultraintelligent machine can come to exert over humans and the fear that our desire to control nature can render us spectators as we become the object of control. In the present time, more so than during Good’s days, artificial intelligence presents this same danger. But for Lewis, just like for critical theorists, the domination of nature is nonsensical because only human beings can be objects of domination (cf. Leiss, 1972, 122). Some have argued that we should “wake up from the transhumanist dream” (Pedace et al ., 2020, 112), even though their intention was primarily to convey that transhumanism is more akin to a
57 nightmare. Pedace and colleagues’ article doesn’t introduce any novel insights, but it summarises well the idea behind the transhumanist project of control and why we should be aware of it. Their argument is that “we are not our mere biology” and that the transhumanist conception of human nature is “unacceptable” (2020, 129). As many posthumanists have demonstrated, we cannot be reduced to a bundle of categories that are chosen from a pre-established pool where each category stands in opposition to the next. Instead of the dichotomous nature transhumanists assign to us, we have it that we are “human animals, embodied minds, biological organisms coupled to objects created by us, biological organisms situated in cultural niches and involved in normative practices” (Pedace et al ., 2020, 129). Hauskeller offers an intriguing example of the inclination to exert control over others by first exerting control over ourselves through enhancement. He refers to the enhancement of social competences facilitated by oxytocin. Vero Labs, who commercialises oxytocin, advertises it as “trust in a bottle” 35 : a product which is an “extremely efficient means to manipulate other people and get them to do what you want them to” (cf. Hauskeller, 2016, 89). The idea conveyed by the slogan “trust is power” is that once one sprays himself with the product, it will be easier to persuade others to do what we wish them to do. Of course, one must also assume that others can be using the same method of persuasion and manipulating us whenever it suits their purposes. Lewis would have sympathetically agreed with Hauskeller’s conclusion: “[t]he more extensive is the control we have over the world, the more extensive is the control the world has over us” (2016, 90). The consequences of the widespread use of this and other enhancing technologies are numerous, but they seemingly serve the same purpose of extending a control over the world that ends up being a control that is also exerted over us. At all times and places, we can be the victims of the power we use to control nature. Hauskeller’s example is meant to give a picture of the ultimate and most extravagant consequences of pushing the idea of control over nature to its limits. We saw that similar consequences resulted from the duality determinacy/indeterminacy: if taken to its limits, no determinacy is permissible. But we cannot fail to acknowledge that human enhancement advocates usually argue for enhancements that fulfil a different purpose than the one depicted in the example above. In the case just 35 At the present moment, Vero Labs’ website advertisement policy remains equally suggestive, describing oxytocin as the “miraculous molecule”. One ad goes “More Social. More Connected. More You.”, and another emphasises the guaranteed effects of the product: “Enhance Relationships. Strengthen Bonds. Improve Confidence” (cf. Vero Labs, 2020). Perhaps more suggestive is the fact that “Pet Bonding Oxytocin” is also available for sale, promising to help our pets feeling “more secure and confident in stressful situations”, helping them “making new friends and keeping a stable and relaxed behavior before other animals and humans” (cf. Vero Labs, 2020a). Such uptlifting of our pets is illustrative of the human desire to supress nature’s determinacy from animals as a way of enabling them to enjoy the type of goods we humans value and cherish, like friendship, trust, and self-confidence. Furthermore, the discussion consistently revolves around concepts of heightened capacities, improved future prospects, and increased authenticity vis-à-vis our current lack of all of these features in our unenhanced human (still too human) lives.
58 mentioned, enhancement using oxytocin appears as a way of improving one’s position in comparison to his fellows; it is a way of gaining a competitive advantage using a positional good. Bostrom and Savulescu define these as goods “whose goodness for those who have them depends on other subjects not possessing them” (2009, 11). Similarly, Buchanan and colleagues (cf. 2000) argue that the enhancing of a positional good such as height would be “either self-defeating or unfair”: first, if universally available, there would be no advantage to be gained as everyone would increase their height; second, if available only to the wealthiest, it would be unfair to allow them to be the only ones to have such an advantage. However, if height enhancement is used to treat extreme shortness induced by disease, these two objections wouldn’t apply (cf. 2000, 155). This is also Harris’ position: “I favor and defend enhancements as absolute rather than as positional goods. I defend them because they are good for people not because they confer advantages on some but not on others” (2007, 29; my italics). What these positions share is the belief that the moral justification for enhancements lies in their making the lives of all individuals go better in some relevant way. This, however, is not without difficulties, as it raises questions concerning economic efficiency, safety, well-being, and justice. It also poses an additional challenge: it seems possible to enhance goods that confer positional advantage but that have non-instrumental value as well, and there seems to exist a prima facie difficulty in establishing a clear dividing line between positional and noninstrumental value. 36 These are challenges that need not concern us here and I will be developing this in the forthcoming chapters. Lewis’ anxiety concerning the power that a class of individuals can exert over others by virtue of the structure of power and property relations in place can equally be mitigated by adopting democratic procedures of the kind James Hughes proposes for his democratic transhumanism (cf. 2004). Public regulatory agencies and social policies, namely those addressing concerns regarding how enhancements can exacerbate social inequality or posing health and safety related risks, can ensure that biotechnology as a way of controlling nature is used to increase human well-being. Human enhancement advocates aim to respond to Lewis’ concern that the conquest of nature can be a means for certain individuals to exert power over others in this manner. They target the structure of power and property relations by advocating democratic regulation to guarantee fair access, safety, and funding (cf. Lin & Allhoff, 2008). On the other 36 Peter Singer’s example is illustrative of this: Suppose, for example, that we can find genes that correlate with doing well on IQ tests and scholastic aptitude tests used as part of the admission process by elite universities. Doing well on university admission tests is obviously a positional good. If everyone does better, the scores needed to get in will rise. If the tests are well designed, however, a good score presumably indicates an ability to learn, or to solve problems, or to write clearly and well. That sounds more like an intrinsic good, and an important one (2009, 287).
59 hand, they stress that what is of the utmost importance is not that humans become a controllable resource in the process of controlling nature, but that harmful and impairing conditions are diminished by the applied use of science and technology to promote non-instrumentally valuable goods. On their account, not all exertions of power result in Faustian bargains. This is the opposite of what Lewis claims. An example of a non-instrumentally valuable good that human enhancement proponents are particularly eager to advocate is autonomy. The question of whether human enhancement endangers or fosters autonomy lies at the heart of the debate. For transhumanists, autonomy reveals itself as a problematic value with very distinctive features. The project of radical control over nature’s determinacy entails that complete autonomy can only be achieved if human needs have been successfully supressed. One strategy to extend human autonomy is replacing full human relationships by human-machine relationships. One of the implications of this project is not only that human needs are to be suppressed, but that the human element itself as the source of those needs is to be overcome. Illustratively, in his 2007 work Love and Sex with Robots , David Levy, a prominent expert in artificial intelligence, contends that the advancement of sexual technologies will result in the normalisation of intimate connections between humans and robots. He expects this becoming a widespread practice by 2050. More recently, and in the advent of the market release of the first sexbots (cf. Mozes, 2018), Levy reassessed his book and considered further aspects of our possible relationships with robots beyond sex, including to love and being loved by them, and even to marry and treat them as life partners (cf. 2017). Levy’s conclusions are illustrative and fit the transhumanist ambitions of total control: [b]y the time there are no laws to prevent human-robot marriages, robots will be patient, kind, protective, loving, trusting, truthful, persevering, respectful, uncomplaining, complimentary, pleasant to talk to, and sharing your sense of humour. And the robots of the future will not be jealous, boastful, arrogant, rude, self-seeking or easily angered, unless of course you want them to be (2017, 12). Robots such as these are more than the mere sexbots that in 2012 Levy defined as serving the purpose of assisting “the user in achieving orgasm, without the necessity of having another human being present” (227). They are social robots fulfilling particular functions like personal care and companionship,
60 promising to establish meaningful relationships of an intimate and emotional nature with humans in the future (cf. Lin, 2012, 5-6). 37 A bleeding-heart transhumanist like Hank Pellissier, who was managing director of the important Institute for Ethics in Emerging Technology (IEET), shares many of Levy’s ideas about sexbots. But on his account, the emotional and relational aspects involved are weakened when compared to Levy’s description above. According to Pellissier, these robots function more as tools rather than as companions with whom individuals seek to cultivate emotional bonds. Sexbots, and predictably all other social robots, are meant to serve us, not to replace other humans. The following statement by Pellissier is illuminating: [s]exbots will never have headaches, fatigue, impotence, premature ejaculation, pubic lice, disinterest, menstrual blood, jock strap itch, yeast infections, genital warts, AIDS/HIV, herpes, silly expectations, or inhibiting phobias. Sexbots will never stalk us, rape us, diss us on their blog, weep when we dump them, or tell their friends we were boring in bed. Sexbots will always climax when we climax if we press that little button on their butt (2009). Pellissier’s statement seamlessly aligns with the central theme of radical control that lies at the core of transhumanist philosophy. If one can command the robot’s emotions, the power and control one exerts is extended. The robot is not autonomous. As such, emotions still have a role to play as long as we are able to control them. Human enhancement advocates, for example, propose emotional enhancement as a way of controlling one’s emotions with pharmacological products like Prozac and others. Transhumanists display a different, more comprehensive, ambition. They wish to replace human relationships by relationships with artificial beings that have the possibility of being as enjoyable as and even more satisfactory than human ones (cf. Hauskeller, 2016, 181-183). 38 37 Matthias Scheutz discusses how social robots are becoming an integral part of contemporary societies and already and increasingly fulfilling important roles in them. Scheutz is particularly concerned with “the potential for humans’ emotional dependence on social robots” (2012, 205), which differs substantively from our current dependence from other technologies because of the emotional and relational dimension they have. The cases of robo-pets, robo-nurses, robo-therapists, and robo-companions that Scheutz lists as some of the most significant cases in which meaningful emotional relationships can be established between humans and robots (cf. 2012, 227) are also those that present the greater personal, social, and emotional challenges due to their deep personal and societal penetration. Scheutz concludes that the best way for robots not to manipulate and hurt us is “to endow future robots with human-like emotions and feelings” (cf. 2012, 218). But this conclusion, at least from a transhumanist point of view, is unacceptable because it fails to give us total control over the machines we create in order to serve and love us unconditionally. If they behave, feel, and think like humans, they are human, or at least they present the same problems humans present: they reduce our autonomy and freedom. 38 Discussions on whether artificial persons are real persons in the sense of them being self-aware and self-concerned, and regarding the quality of the humanrobot relationships and how these can be as good as or better than fully human relationships are abundant in the literature (cf. Lin et al ., 2012; cf. Cheok et al ., 2017; cf. Zhou & Fischer, 2019). Hauskeller discusses these questions at length with regards to the posthuman condition (cf. 2014; cf. 2016, 181-198).
61 More importantly, the true aim is the possibility of controlling other person’s (or robot’s) emotional dispositions according to our own biddings. The emotions of others are merely perceived as reflections of our own desires. Two main ideas guide this project: first, the idea that an emotional necessity such as love, for example, is part of the disease of being human and that our freedom and autonomy are curtailed because of our emotional dependence on others since they are autonomous beings whose feelings belong to them and may change at any time; and, second, the idea that as long as another free and autonomous being is present, we lack full control over ourselves and, because of that, our autonomy and determinacy are never absolute. The main problem for the transhumanist is that “[t]o have another human present is currently still a necessity ” (Hauskeller, 2016, 196). Necessities infringe upon our freedom and the soughtafter God-like self-sufficiency that transhumanists advocate for. Moreover, the existence of a significant relational dimension in our lives, which entails dependence on other autonomous human beings, further undermines both the desired self-sufficiency and our autonomy. This exposes a paradox concerning the significance of autonomy. As was the case before with the radical control over nature, here, too, the transhumanist position is radical in its essence. The needs and desires of those with whom we establish emotional relationships limit our autonomy because the other autonomous person may decide not to satisfy our needs and desires anymore. The challenge confronting the transhumanist is twofold: either he finds ways to decrease the autonomy of others in order to increase his own, or he fashions a way that enables him to exert control over those with whom he relates. Social robots are a promising way of achieving total control, at least if there is no regulation in place prohibiting robot slavery or allowing robots to openly manifest their emotional states. So, how can one achieve full autonomy? As previously observed, complete digitalisation is perceived as a method to attain complete detachment from nature’s determinacy. However, it turns out to be narrow and self-contradictory, as our survival dependence merely shifts from the biological realm to technological devices. An equally narrow and self-contradictory aspect of the transhumanist project of radical control concerns the enhancement of the cognitive capacities of non-human animals. Animal uplifting is a project that aims at giving animals the privilege of becoming autonomous beings. It’s true that for the world to become a better place, it’s the human that needs fixing the most. But the comprehensiveness – or benevolence? – of the transhumanist project could not left non-human animals behind. We have the moral obligation of fixing what is wrong with them (or in them). After all, animals, like humans, are disabled beings. James Hughes argues that “we have the same obligation to uplift “disabled” animal citizens that we have to disabled human citizens” (2004, 225). Uplift , we know it already, is a suggestive vertical
62 metaphor for attributing human-like qualities to animals. As the animal rights advocate George Dvorsky explains, “animal uplifting […] is the theoretical prospect of endowing nonhumans with greater capacities, including and especially increased intelligence” (2008, 130). As a matter of fact, on Hughes’ account, it seems that animals’ lives are comparable to the Hobbesian account of life in the state of nature. Just like humans, animals can also be more than animals; they can be “transanimals”, perhaps even “postanimals”, free of nature’s determinacy. Nature in animals, just like in humans, reflects the “immaturity and dependence” that condemns them and us to live in a state of “permanent childhood” and, worse, of mental disability. Consequently, we have the moral obligation of outstripping them of their animality; it is the animal qua animal that needs to disappear (cf. Hauskeller, 2016, 103). Our moral obligation to protect their well-being is what justifies the uplift imperative. In fact, Francis Bacon’s account of the experiments conducted in Salomon’s House already anticipated this uplifting that conduced to the creation of perfect creatures (cf. 1999, 179). In the end, the transhumanist position concerning anthropocentrism remains highly ambiguous. In the Transhumanist Declaration it is stated that transhumanists “advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise” (Humanity+, 2013). Both Hughes (cf. 2004, 221-227) and Dvorsky (cf. 2008, 129) are clear that with the possibility of biologically enhancing non-human animals, we need to grant them full moral status and personhood and integrate them in the post-biological society of the future. On the other hand, it becomes clear that to be human is still better than to be animal, mainly because we are less dependent on nature; we are already transitioning our human condition, meaning that we are less subject to the determinacy of Nature than animals. As Robert Ranisch claims, “[e]ven though there might be no reason to preserve the human condition in its current form, most transhumanists are eager that posthumanity emerges out of humanity” (2014, 156). So, posthumanity as the state in which we will no longer be humans is a desirable end because it will free us, and it must also be desirable to non-human animals (even if they don’t know it yet) because, as post-animals, they will surely enjoy the complex goods we humans already (partially) enjoy and those that are unknown to us yet. Overall, though, we find ourselves facing a profound leap of faith regarding the well-being of non-human animals, given our uncertainty about whether a state of postanimality genuinely serves their ultimate well-being. In any case, it seems that one of the consequences of seeking to control nature’s determinacy by supressing the natural from animals is the enlarging of the space of autonomy. Again, the project of “Man’s conquest of Nature” proves to be self-defeating, more so if the chief purpose of uplifting is, in
69 which Habermas claims is an irreversible intervention on the genetic makeup of the unborn child that necessarily conditions his right to open life prospects by genetically determining him in what capacities and dispositions he ends up born and living with (cf. 2003, 60-66). This seems particularly relevant to our debate, but Savulescu, Sandberg, and Kahane too expeditiously discard the possible contributions of the ideological account. Despite the lack of a general conceptual or descriptive framework to think about enhancement, these accounts provide an evaluative framework that focuses on relevant moral and ethical aspects of interventions and their relation to other values. The fact is that the concepts of enhancement the ideological account makes use of are those of the two functionalist accounts developed below, and also because of that, their responses to why interventions ought to be impermissible are unsatisfactory. In reality, their focus is more on a debate on what constitutes the foundations of a good life rather than a debate on enhancement per se (cf. Savulescu et al ., 2011, 8). This, however, is part of the welfarist account as well. Therefore, the three accounts presented here are the philosophically more sophisticated approaches in the literature and the ones that provide a distinctive conceptual framework for discussing human enhancement. i. The Augmentative Account; In general terms, an enhancement is defined as “an improvement on what went before” (Harris, 2007, 9), and is often connoted with augmenting some particular human function, capacity, or mood, the most commonly suggested in the literature being intelligence, hearing, vision, or bodily strength more generally. The idea of using some pharmacological, biotechnological, or other interventions to enhance oneself or others, as is the case with reprogenetic technologies aimed at enhancing our offspring, conveys the belief that these methods have the specific purpose of increasing , heightening , or amplifying particular human capacities, functions, or moods. Likewise, it suggests that to enhance is always positive, that it always adds something valuable to the baseline genetic makeup of the individual to enable him to better experience the world. Savulescu cuts to the point on this subject: “to enhance is to increase the value of a person’s life” (Savuslescu, 2006, 325). This is certainly so with the augmentative account, which reflects the augmentation as a positive procedure, as an improvement not only of one’s functions, but more generally, of the human condition. Brian Earp, Sandberg, Kahane, and Savulescu have defined this account as one in which
70 [i]nterventions are considered enhancements insofar as they improve some capacity or function (such as cognition, vision, hearing, alertness) by increasing the ability of the function to do what it normally does (2014, 2). Hence, it appears that enhancement in itself holds value. To exemplify this, consider a drug that enhances cognitive performance. On an average poet, it has the effect of enabling him to produce Homer-like poetry, while on an individual with a mild cognitive dysfunction it allows him to properly read and write whereas he couldn’t do so before. At the light of the augmentative account, the cognitive variance between the two individuals is not relevant. What is relevant is the impact of the enhancement the drug produces on the capacities and functional level of the individual taking it. 41 In contrast to competing accounts, this account does not seek to define a baseline of good health to establish a threshold distinguishing interventions as enhancements or treatments. Bostrom is one of the advocates of this functionalist approach (cf. Bostrom & Roache, 2008; cf. Bostrom, 2009). We need only recall his Letter from Utopia to get a sense of how the augmentation of human functions and capacities is automatically associated with states of enhanced perception of the world. The inability of us humans to understand our posthuman Utopian “possible future selves” stems from the fact that our cognitive, moral, and physical 42 capacities are still too limited to understand those states of being and feeling. The profound transformation discussed by Bostrom in that Letter involves the enhancement of human capacities, consistently presented with a sense of urgency and affirmation: “upgrade cognition!” and “elevate well-being!” (2008, 4) are two of Bostrom’s slogans. They both suggest the boosting of particular functions and capacities in order to enjoy music, science, food, and pleasure more authentically — even voluptuously. Thus, the value of authenticity appears to hinge on our enhanced capacities to perceive and engage with reality. The less our capacities are enhanced, the less authentic our experience of the world becomes. In a more thoughtful examination of the ethical concerns surrounding human enhancement, Bostrom and Rebecca Roache advocate for the ethical acceptability and widespread accessibility of enhancements. They argue that the distinction between therapy and enhancement poses challenges for 41 We can find plenty of examples like this in the literature. Hazem Zohny presents one that I’ll investigate more carefully (cf. 2014, 123), and I’ll look at others presented by Earp and colleagues with more detail below. Surely these examples are only useful if we take their initial premise as to the existence of such drugs to be true, which is not evident, as we’ll see. 42 At least, if physiological and biological dimensions of the human body that can still collect sensory information from the external world and thus experiencing it is to be retained. But this is not guaranteed since the posthuman is usually conceived as a digital entity, a pattern of information, as opposed to a biologically constituted entity.
71 those who oppose the idea of enhancements. Their claim is that this distinction is hard to maintain. Contemporary practices of preventive medicine, plastic surgery, and fertility treatments exemplify some of the many possible cases in which medicine is not used to treat diseases or injuries, while performance and appearance enhancers like physical exercise, meditation, coffee, and cosmetics are used independently of medicine (cf. Bostrom & Roache, 2008, 1). Vaccination is also a dubious and paradigmatic case because whether it is classified as a treatment or an enhancement is difficult to determine: it enhances the immune system but it is also a preventive therapeutic intervention (cf. 2008, 1). Additionally, there is the problem of determining what a normal healthy state is. On the one hand, a medical procedure to cure a disease or injury can restore good health and end up augmenting one’s capacities beyond those he previously had. On the other hand, due to the fact that an individual’s capacities and functions undergo substantial variation throughout his lifespan, it becomes plausible that a drug providing an 80-year-old individual with the same physical and mental functioning as he had in his twenties could be categorised as both therapy and enhancement (cf. 2008, 2). Where should we draw the distinctive line? Further problems come from the often-mentioned continuity thesis according to which new controversial enhancements are simply more scientifically and technologically developed forms of old familiar, accepted, and uncontroversial ways of enhancing human capacities. In this sense, as Bostrom and Savulescu explain, “all technology can be viewed as an enhancement of our native human capacities” (2008, 2). For instance, what differentiates Lasik surgery from the utilisation of glasses, and similarly, what distinguishes this from the application of contact lenses? The answer suggested is how “internal” an intervention is: [w]ithout some requirement that an intervention be “internal”, all technologies and tools would constitute enhancements in that they give us capacities to achieve certain outcomes more easily or effectively than we could otherwise do (Bostrom & Roache, 2008, 2). Hence, it’s only through the introduction of an “internality constraint” that we can prevent the merging of enhancement and technology. Nevertheless, the assessment of how “internal” an intervention is gives rise to a range of intricate challenges that extend beyond the scope of this chapter. Unlike other functionalist advocates, the augmentative advocate doesn’t need to justify and rely on the problematic therapy-enhancement distinction. His concern is only with the ways in which augmenting capacities contributes to improving the life of individuals, and both therapy and enhancement can
72 contribute to that end. They serve the similar purpose of protecting and expanding life, “health, cognition, emotional well-being, and other states or attributes that individuals may desire in order to improve their lives” (Bostrom & Roache, 2008, 3). The fact is that they too easily convey the idea that augmenting one’s functions and capacities is always good for an individual because it invests him with greater powers to experience the world. Once more, we gather the sense that well-being is a consequence of the augmentation itself, rather than a process where the augmentation of capacities is carefully evaluated and pursued only if it truly enhances well-being. In fact, Bostrom and Roache commit themselves to show how enhancing capacities is valuable to individuals precisely because of their augmentative nature. Mood, cognitive, and physical enhancement are the prime areas for potential interventions. Moral enhancement is also often referred to as a possible candidate, but it is subject to an extensive debate (cf. Douglas, 2008; cf. Harris, 2016). As an example, Ingmar Persson and Savulescu have argued, quite boldly, that until safe and effective moral enhancement is developed and compulsory administered, we should consider to deliberately delay scientific and technological innovations that can cause existential risks to occur (cf. 2012). To use the suggestive title of their work, unenhanced as we currently are, we are morally and ethically unfit for the future . Regarding these interventions, I think there are two sound objections to which the augmentative advocate cannot answer properly: one regarding the scientific and technical feasibility of enhancements, and the other — more robust and morally relevant — regarding their value. Let’s just take the example of cognitive enhancement. The first objection concerns the premise that cognitive enhancement is feasible and effective among those with normal cognitive capacities, like the poet mentioned above. The argument is that certain drugs specifically target and enhance cognition, distinct from other psychological functions associated with mood and motivation (cf. Zohny, 2015, 257). The same would be true for moral enhancement: i.e. , that a drug or other pharmacological or neurological intervention exists that helps people to act and behave morally so they can do the “right thing” all the time. John Harris has been a vocal critic of the project of what he calls moral bioenhancement. 43 Among his conclusions, one is that, for the foreseeable future, moral enhancement can only be pursued via cognitive enhancement (cf. 2016, 117; 176). He sees it as threatening autonomy, authenticity, and freedom; it robs us of the capacity to act autonomously and denies us the “freedom to fall”, or to behave 43 Thomas Douglas, a leading theoriser of moral enhancement, has defined it as “an enhancement that will expectably leave the enhanced person with morally better motives than she had previously” (2008, 228). Harris exhaustively explores and challenges Doulgas’ arguments in favour of moral enhancement in his book.
73 immorally if we want or need to. As an example, the administration of molecules seeking to induce prosocial attitudes and reduce aggressiveness may be freedom-subverting as well as autonomy curtailing by preventing individuals from acting aggressively towards others when justified ( e.g. , self-defence, prevent a terrorist attack) and by dulling one’s capacities to choose freely and, ultimately, to self-reflection, to think on one’s own identity, on who one truly is. The problem of the morally enhanced action is that it has become “automatic, unconscious, and therefore unintended, entirely outside the realm of moral responsibility” (Harris, 2016, 118). In some relevant sort, moral enhancement is alienating; it estranges us of the understanding, when faced with a moral dilemma, of what is good and bad. 44 And so, perhaps Harris’ most important insight regarding this matter concerns the meaning of morality itself, which makes us question why we would want to (bio)augment morality: morality necessarily involves the self-conscious examination of one’s actions and indeed one’s life. Only self-conscious reflection on conduct can deliver answers to the question as to whether what one feels is right is indeed right. It is only such an examination, and the resolve to put its conclusions into effect, that constitute a moral life and, a fortiori , a morally enhanced life (118-119). There are two considerations here. The first is that the type of moral bioenhancement required to (morally) enhance one’s life involves a deep relation with one’s prudential desire to lead a good life. Likewise, it suggests that our (moral) actions also dictate us to help others in leading good lives as well (cf. Harris, 2016, 118). The second consideration regards methods, which brings us to our objection. 44 Douglas’ definition of moral enhancement clearly fits the augmentative account. Douglas attempts first to dismiss the idea that by getting morally enhanced, we get “more virtuous, more praiseworthy, more capable of moral responsibility, or that we make ourselves act or behave more morally” (2008, 229). His aim is to shift the focus from what we can call the “more moral” thesis to the “morally better motives” thesis. In other words, if enhancing ourselves was possible, that wouldn’t make us more moral in the sense of being more virtuous but would only “cause ourselves to have morally better motives” (2008, 229). What’s important to note is how difficult and counterintuitive it is to dissociate the idea of enhancing oneself to have morally better motives to act from the idea of enhancing oneself in order to act more morally, thus making him more virtuous by comparison to his unenhanced self or his unenhanced peers. Think about a pious man who leads a deeply virtuous and altruistic life, yet he perceives himself as not reaching the level of virtue and altruism he desires. Due to his religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, he already has strong moral motives to act altruistically towards others, but not enough. He decides to take a “morality pill” so his moral capacities are augmented, and he can finally have more moral motives and behave more morally towards others (perhaps even against his own prudential interests). This example can also be extended to those with bad or suboptimally good motives. If morally enhanced, world leaders would have more morally better motives than they currently have to address important contemporary political, economic, or environmental challenges. What about moral agency? We see that moral bioenhancement can, if feasible, cause a person to behave in a way that can be positive regarding the results of his actions, but whose motivations lack a genuine moral foundation. Enhanced moral capacities give a supposedly positive contribute to the life of the enhanced individual, those around him, and society in general: it enables him to behave more morally and it can even reduce the kind of existential threats Persson and Savulescu see as coming from individuals with bad motives. Nevertheless, it also challenges freedom, autonomy, and authenticity. I’ll return to this issue once again in chapter 4, where we will explore the developmental morality.
74 This is already present in Persson and Savulescu’s acknowledgement that, to this date, we are a long way from finding safe and effective possibilities of enhancing morality via pharmacological means (cf. 2011, 498). As with the majority of bioenhancements, the discussion on moral enhancement is grounded, for the most part, on (valuable) hypothetical considerations of how beneficial or hazardous would it be to enhance morality by means of a “pill of morality”. However, the practical feasibility of these interventions still lies beyond the scope of current scientific and technological capabilities. Although the administration of certain hormones like oxytocin can increase prosocial attitudes, or the chemical manipulation of serotonin and testosterone levels helps reduce aggressiveness, or also other substances that assist in inhibit violent sexual behaviour (cf. Lavazza & Reichlin, 2019, 2), these interventions fall short of the type of moral enhancement often intended and debated in the literature. And of course, the focus of the research on these substances and techniques is not primarily oriented to ascertain what their effects on morality are but are rather conducted to different clinical purposes (cf. Lavazza & Reichlin, 2019, 2-3). An associated difficulty Andrea Lavazza and Massimo Reichlin identify is that of recognising with precision “what brain/mental functions underlie moral dispositions and moral behavior, so that there may be a truly targeted and effective intervention” (3), but this is not the purpose of the current research being done. Consequently, this suggests that moral bioenhancement could not be feasible in the foreseeable future. But even if it was, would it be desirable? There are two strong arguments to support that it wouldn’t. One concerns its value, which I’ll develop in the second objection to the augmentative approach, while the other reason is more straightforward. As Harris has previously argued, we already have an extensive moral endowment to cope with thorny moral challenges (cf. 2011, 103-104). If we wish to augment our morality in the sense of having more , or enhanced , moral motives to act, it is advisable to do it by making use of effective and safe traditional methods. Among these we find “education, parental and peer group guidance, social and personal example, and indeed reflection on what’s right, namely ethics” (Harris, 2016, 117; cf. Harris, 2011, 104). This argument is also thoroughly developed by Buchanan and Russell Powell. In the book The Evolution of Moral Progress (2018), they argue that Persson and Savulescu may be right in claiming that we are morally unfit to address the challenges and existential threats imperilling humankind. But while rejecting the viability of moral enhancement to resolve our lack of moral fitness, they admit other bioenhancements, and cognitive bioenhancement in particular, as well as traditional methods of moral progress. The bulk of their argument concerns our evolved morality, which they claim “is not inflexible enough to frustrate traditional attempts towards moral progress” (cf. Fabiano, 2020, 407).
75 As a result, can moral enhancement be pursued via cognitive enhancement, as Harris and Buchanan and Powell suggest? To be sure, they’re referring to cognitive bioenhancement, something Harris, for example, sees with much more optimism than its moral counterpart (cf. 2007; Greely et al ., 2008). Consider now a second argument in favour of the first objection, the one dealing with feasibility. Contrary to what happens with the wide acknowledgment that no effective and safe way of morally enhancing individuals is feasible, authors seem to straightforwardly embrace the thesis that cognitive bioenhancement is possible. Research, however, contradicts the thesis that to specifically target and enhance cognition among those with normal cognitive capacities is possible. There are two presumptions supporting the idea that cognitive bioenhancement is currently unattainable or, at the very least, not sufficiently advanced to deliver the outcomes advocated by its proponents. The first presumption is that the drugs currently available, which directly aim at enhancing cognitive capacities and influencing one’s performance, do not yield the intended outcomes. The second presumption is that it is impossible to differentiate between the cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions (cf. Zohny, 2015, 259-261). Cognitive enhancement drugs are meant to augment exclusively the cognitive function, and not non-cognitive functions like mood and motivation (cf. Kipke, 2013). Are cognitive enhancement drugs in this sense available? Studies suggest that drugs utilised for addressing conditions such as Alzheimer’s, ADHD, and narcolepsy, among others, grant favourable outcomes in enhancing cognitive functions among individuals without these specific disorders (cf. Greely, 2008; cf. Buchanan, 2011a; cf. Savulescu, 2011; cf. Zohny, 2015, 259). Hazem Zohny has demonstrated that the empirical support these authors present in defence of this thesis has little relation with the conclusion that the cognitive function of normal individuals is augmented by these drugs. His analysis of the conducted studies demonstrates that they are either “too small and underpowered”, or that the results remain “equivocal” and more studies [are] necessary”, or even that their scope is limited to the laboratory environment with no expression in everyday life (cf. 2015, 259-260). Again, as Lavazza and Reichlin have argued concerning moral enhancing drugs, cognitive enhancing drugs are also not created and tested specifically for their cognitive performance. Modafinil has been cited as a paramount example of a cognitive enhancer (cf. Savulescu, 2011), but recent studies have concluded that the use of the drug showed no effect among healthy participants and no effects on “attention or attentional set shifting”, thus discovering “no evidence overall for significant effects of modafinil among healthy participants” (Zohny, 2015, 259). Other studies on this
76 drug have demonstrated that not only there is no evidence that it augments cognition, but it actually decelerates reaction and hinders creative thinking (cf. Zohny, 2015, 259). Curiously, two separate studies highlight that certain drugs can indeed yield positive effects on the cognitive function of individuals with impairments (cf. Mattaya et al ., 2000; cf. British Medical Association, 2014). Yet, they equally report that this impact doesn’t affect normal or unimpaired individuals and that can even negatively affect their performance (cf. Zohny, 2015, 260). Therefore, the most plausible conclusion is that we lack solid evidence that allows us to unequivocally affirm that safe and effective cognitive enhancement drugs exist. They may act to boost performance on sleep-deprived individuals (cf. Kjærsgaard, 2015), but among normal individuals and with the purpose of augmenting their cognitive capacities to “higher than normal levels”, and thus helping them on their everyday tasks, there is no supporting evidence (cf. Zohny, 2015, 260). What about the second presumption? Is it possible to augment the cognitive dimension without affecting non-cognitive, neurological dimensions of our psychologies, like mood and motivation? Two important points should be noted with regard to this presumption. Let’s start with the first. Zohny’s analysis of the studies on the effects of drugs like Adderall and modafinil lead him to conclude that while not directly targeting and augmenting cognitive performance, these drugs induced participants who took them (as compared to when on placebo) to believe their cognitive performance was boosted (cf. 2015, 260). A study by Delia Randall and colleagues on the effects of modafinil on augmenting cognitive performance shows that “[t]here were no significant effects of modafinil on the performance of any of the cognitive tests” (2002, 168). They contend that this conclusion aligns with prior studies on the same issue, and despite “cognitive performance did not change, it is clear that treatment with modafinil was associated with significant changes during these tests in the mood of our volunteers” (169). Among these changes are the boosting of wakefulness, alertness, and anxiety among participants. Hence, and as Zohny rightly notes, this observation is in line with others who have argued that it is “the non-cognitive effects of these drugs that are actually enhancing performance” (2015, 260). The stimulant power of these drugs acts to improve mood and motivation rather than cognition per se . This can, of course, have a significant impact on cognitive performance; it will probably exceed the effects of a good night’s sleep, a cup of coffee, or the concentration one gets from the right type of environment in which to make the most of his normal cognitive capacities. Nevertheless, it is not enough to conclude that cognition itself was enhanced. Let’s now look at the second point. Can cognitive and non-cognitive be regarded as separable or separate dimensions? This, too, seems difficult to sustain if we are to believe that both are mutually
77 dependent dimensions of our psychologies. How often do we find ourselves during our workdays realising that we lack the proper motivation to continue working efficiently, prompting us to grab a snack, or take a nap to rejuvenate our mood and enhance our motivation for improved productivity? We don’t perceive these actions as strategies to enhance our cognitive capacities, but rather acknowledge them as methods to boost our performance. They enable us, as I mentioned earlier, to make the most of our normal cognitive capacities. The literature supports these seemingly obvious conclusions that we get from our everyday experiences. Raymond Dolan has argued that contrary to the view (common within philosophy) that a direct opposition between emotion and reason exists, “emotion-related processes can advantageously bias judgment and reason” (2002, 1194). The emotions an individual experiences influence his behaviours: “emotion infects rational thought processes such that people adhere, often with great conviction, to ideas and beliefs that have no basis in reason or reality” (Dolan, 2002, 1194). Similarly, an interesting article by Arne Öhman and colleagues reports that threatening events and stimuli ( e.g. , sighting wild animals, blows, blood) are likely to “automatically and reflexively […] capture attention” (2001, 466). These examples are in line with the previous arguments. Cognitive bioenhancement is unlikely to be achieved through the targeting and augmenting of cognition alone. The view that one specific brain area corresponds to one specific functional specialisation is problematic and discredited. Luiz Pessoa has convincingly demonstrated that complex cognitive–emotional behaviours have their basis in dynamic coalitions of networks of brain areas, none of which should be conceptualized as specifically affective or cognitive (2008, 148). Michael Hauskeller also suggests that the traits more often targeted to enhance do not function independently of the others, but their functioning is complex and interacts in multiple and unpredictable ways (cf. 2014). Considering these arguments, I believe the augmentative approach to enhancement faces serious difficulties. Its attempt to justify enhancement is ultimately weakened by the unfeasibility of its methods. However, because these hypotheses may one day become feasible, the current discussion on this topic holds great value. Let’s now look at a second, more robust and important objection to the augmentative approach. This objection concerns the value of enhancements by objecting that rather than assessing them solely
78 based on their augmentative effects on one’s life, they should be assessed in terms of their potential to enhance individual well-being and flourishing. As this is part of the argument grounding the welfarist approach and developmental morality, I’ll return to it in more detail in sub-section iii) and chapter 4. For now, it suffices to present our objection as one that challenges the augmentative approach by claiming that sometimes to diminish is also to enhance . According to the augmentative approach, enhancements are unequivocally defined in terms of augmentation of human functions and capacities. This procedure is valuable because it enables us to improve ourselves, our lives, and our experiences of the world (cf. Bostrom & Roache, 2008, 3). Bostrom is clear about this: “refraining from making use of an opportunity for enhancement can be Un-Dignified” and “[a] person who rejects a major opportunity to improve her capacities out of thoughtless conformity to fashion, prejudice, or lazy indifference to the benefits to self and others that would result, would thereby reduce her Dignity as a Quality” (2009, 15). I will explore this claim in greater depth as we continue. So, why would we want to diminish some function or capacity if we know that when we lose an opportunity to augment them, we also reduce our human dignity? There are compelling reasons in favour of diminishing higher-order capacities 45 : to provide soldiers drugs that “ reduce the emotional intensity of wartime memories” (Earp et al ., 2014, 3); to lessen the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (cf. Henry et al. , 2007); to reduce the emotional attachment of a battered partner towards an abuser (cf. Earp et al ., 2013); to diminish the urges of paedophiles to abuse children (cf. Earp et al. , 2014, 2; cf. Zohny, 2019, 271); and to reduce appetite through appetite suppressants to prevent diseases or get in shape (cf. Gul et al ., 2014). These interventions raise issues regarding their feasibility, as we saw in the previous objection, but also important ethical and societal concerns, namely those regarding relevant values such as autonomy and freedom, and questions concerning public health, efficiency, or productivity. Earp and colleagues argue that for a functional-augmentative framework, these are challenging cases because they shift the focus of the discussion from augmenting particular capacities or functions “to the overall normative goal of the modification itself” (2014, 4). On their account, interventions should be broadly defined as means of promoting well-being, and therefore, they may not always require the augmentation of capacities or functions. If reducing the harmful impact of distressing wartime memories, or crises of post-traumatic stress, or preventing the sexual urges of paedophiles and sex offenders positively contribute to their well-being and those around them, diminishments should, prima facie , be considered enhancements. (cf. Earp et al ., 2014, 4). 45 These concern mental and psychological levels of functioning, as opposed to lower-order capacities regarding the neurobiological level.
85 nature, Darwin identified one which is particularly relevant: habit and reasoning help and lead to the development and broadening of the instinct of sympathy for others (cf. 1871, 86). Another line of argument sustains that to change human nature may be what is morally required from us. This is the pervasive argument used by transhumanists and that has deep cultural and philosophical roots in Western tradition, from Greek mythology and philosophy to the Renaissance ( e.g. , Mirandola) and the Enlightenment ( e.g. , Rousseau, Kant, Marx). Related to this is the developmental notion of human nature: creativity is posited as our essential defining trait, and it is contingent upon the scientific and technological means of labour available at a particular time. Human nature maintains its normative value independently of the changes it suffers from the transforming of the world we inhabit, which ends up changing us through our interaction with each other and the environment (cf. Macpherson, 1973). These alterations redefine the notions of normalcy and naturalness, questioning the belief that humans should refrain from intervening in conventionally settled normal and natural aspects. As an example, the naturalness argument is used in relation to human excellence in sports, in the displaying of the “natural talents and gifts that are no doing of the athlete who possesses them” (Sandel, 2007, 28). On this account, human enhancement operates against what was given to us by nature, but this position is problematic as it faces the familiar additional difficulty of ascertaining how “internal” an intervention needs to be to cross the threshold of naturalness. A further difficulty arises when the natural is contingent on the individual. Bostrom and Roache mention the genius example as paradigmatic: an individual with an above average cognitive capacity who suffers an injury that reduces his capacities is treated so that his intelligence and his normal healthy state are restored. In contrast, an uninjured individual with cognitive capacities below average who decides to pharmacologically improve himself is enhanced , even if his capacities are still below average. In this situation, if the distinction between treatment and enhancement is to have any ethical significance, enhancement is not permissible, which seems counterintuitive regarding the results of both interventions (cf. 2008, 2). The second set of ideas, the treatment/enhancement distinction, is also a constitutive feature of the “not-medicine” account. Like Pellegrino, Theodore Benditt, claims that medicine has a restorative function and that while treating a patient is part of the healing that medicine ought to provide, to enhance him is not within its scope, even if physicians have the skills to do it (cf. 2007, 17). This surely contradicts the pro-enhancement position according to which therapy and enhancement are part of a “continuum between treating dysfunction and enhancing function” (Harris, 2007, 87). Against this idea, the advocate of the “not-medicine” account presents three arguments. First, treatment enjoys priority over
86 enhancement because preventing and curing diseases and dysfunctions helps alleviating people’s suffering and provides them the conditions to flourish and enjoy their autonomy in a way that is more decisive than enhancement. Second, treatments are usually more accurate, predictable, cheaper, and safer than enhancements. Third, distributive justice may demand that treatment ought to enjoy priority over enhancement because diseases disadvantage people in ways that the lack of enhancement don’t (cf. Malmqvist, 2014; cf. Hofmann, 2017, 4). Malmqvist’s argument is based on the premise that “health is a special good” (52) in ways that enhancement is not, but it seems to fall short of its purpose because the pursuing of health and enhancement need not be contradictory purposes. Research and development may work both ways and sometimes treatment and enhancement seem to collapse into the same end. Jonathan Glover, for example, argues quite convincingly that “some enhancements may add to flourishing as much as eliminating disabilities” (2006, 36). If what we care about is human well-being and flourishing, then it is difficult to find the moral justification to uphold a medical boundary to enhancement. Besides, individuals may not always assign priority to preventing disease and valuing longevity. Common day to day trade-offs include sacrificing those and favouring unhealthy but otherwise pleasurable activities (cf. Savulescu, 2001, 419). Moreover, Malmqvist’s justice-based objection rests on the doubtful (ethical, political, and economic) premise that enhancements ought to be denied unless and until the worst-off have been provided access to a basic threshold of resources, capabilities, or well-being. If this was so, many medical technologies, like vaccines, contraception, and antibiotics would have hardly become widely available and accessible (cf. Harris, 2007, 31). Analogous to the situation seen with numerous medical technologies, initial research and development can start as an expensive, risky, and exclusive enterprise, but they often become cheaper, safer, and widely available and accessible. Malmqvist’s objection resembles that of Savulescu and Persson concerning the halting of scientific and technological innovations because of the high risks they carry before humans are morally equipped to properly manage those risks. In this situation, there seems to be no moral case to be made in favour of limiting the access to new technologies until the moment there’s enough to go around for everyone in the planet. In the same way, from a moral point of view, the delaying of research and development of new technologies because we currently lack scientific knowledge to be able to treat existing diseases and disorders seems unjustified. Atop of this challenge, the treatment/enhancement distinction faces another: it depends on culturally, socially, and historically contingent vague concepts such as normalcy, naturalness, and health. Besides the idea that there are interventions that classify as treatments in one case and enhancements in another, further complications challenging the “not-medicine” account come from those defending that
87 both treatment and enhancement serve the same purpose of improving human flourishing and well-being (cf. Glover, 2006; cf. Savulescu et al ., 2011). Savulescu claims that “[t]reatments are enhancements. Treatments are a subclass of enhancements. Diseases are a subclass of disabilities” (2006, 325). On this definition, enhancements comprise the medical treatment of disease as well as enhancements increase one’s capacities beyond what is typical for our species. By itself, enhancement doesn’t fall outside of the scope of medicine because treatments themselves enhance health. We’ll look in more detail at the welfarist account below. But to illustrate these problems, recall the case of the 80-year-old person I mentioned in the previous section. His overall capacities are no longer those of a 20-year-old and we can say he is not as healthy as a younger person. However, an intervention aimed at restoring his failing capacities and bodily functions to a level not normal to that of an 80-year-old would put him above “the natural human functions that constitute health” (Sandel, 2007, 27) for a person of his age (cf. Roberts, 2014, 3-4). Likewise, vaccination lays bare the inadequacy of the ideas presented above. If an enhancement is any intervention that improves normal functions or features of a member of our species, as Daniels claims it is, then vaccination is clearly an enhancement and should have the same ethical implications as other less easily accepted enhancements have. Yet, it is hardly the case that we see vaccination as morally problematic as some instances of moral enhancement already discussed. One can say, however and in accordance with Sandel, that vaccines are part of medical treatment since they serve the purpose of preserving the natural functions constitutive of human health (cf. Roberts, 2014, 5). But Sandel’s attempt to render treatments permissible and enhancements impermissible is problematic and unpersuasive. He claims that treatments honour nature while implying that enhancements desecrate it (cf. 2004, 57). But then again because viruses and cancer cells are part of nature, this doesn’t mean that we ought to honour them or that they’re sacred. Natural and good are distinct conceptual categories: “the natural can fail to be good and the good can be unnatural” (Kamm, 2009, 103). For example, some medical treatments, like antibiotics, might be considered unnatural not only because they are manmade products, but also because they are synthetic substances. Yet, they serve the good purpose of saving lives by fighting infections. Genetically modified organisms are also seen as unnatural, but their development can improve agricultural yields, increase the nutritional content of foods, address food security issues, and assist in preventing hunger. Hence, it is not that clear that vaccination is unproblematic; at least, the distinction treatment/enhancement blurs the discussion. If we immunise ourselves, we are rejecting the openness to the unbidden, lacking humility before the mystery
88 of life, and not honouring nature by overriding its dictates. But these hardly qualify as plausible candidates from which to derive moral imperatives to justify medical interventions. Sandel’s argument also rests on the idea that the desire to master nature is hubristic. We saw in the previous chapter how this idea is hard to support. Medical interventions to cure or prevent illness involve a high degree of mastery and manipulation over nature. It is natural to catch a cold when we go outside during the winter, and it is difficult to argue against treating the cold based on the grounds that it represents a manifestation of our power against nature or a desecration of the natural. It seems highly doubtful that we can condemn the work of a scientist trying to find the cure for a particularly dangerous virus solely on the grounds that he is also motivated by a deeply ingrained personal desire to master nature (cf. Kamm, 2009, 95). As was mentioned, health and disease raise equally problematic issues when used as attempts to render enhancement impermissible. These concepts are also deeply related to those of naturalness and normalcy: disease is defined as a deviation from natural and normal species-typical functioning 48 , thus reflecting the naturalistic essence of this account. Christopher Boorse and Norman Daniels argued in this way. While disease “reduces species-typical normal functioning below some statistically defined level”, enhancement increases it (Savulescu et al ., 2011, 5). Again, the idea is that the treatment of diseases enjoys priority over enhancements because medicine and society’s ethical goal is to keep individuals at the statistically normal level of functioning. This naturalistic conception faces important shortcomings that are morally relevant, the first being the proper determination of the level above which we no longer tackle a disease but provide an enhancement, which Daniels calls the “normal function or feature of members of our species” (2000, 309). Savulescu and colleagues illustrate this quite clearly: an IQ below 70 is considered intellectual disability, which is treated as a disease, meaning that to raise a person’s IQ above 70 is no longer a matter of treating disease, but of enhancing her intelligence (cf. 2011, 5). Other cases illustrate how an intervention is simultaneously a treatment and an enhancement, which is clearer when applying Daniels’ definition. For example, had Milo of Croton suffered an injury when wrestling, his receiving treatment would also have seemed to be an enhancement. Normal people do not have Milo’s physical strength and to treat him seems to fall under Daniels’ definition of enhancement as “interventions 48 There are multiple and distinctive theories of disease, and consequently they provide different lines of reasoning to restrict or ruling out enhancements. Conceptions of disease include normativistic, naturalistic, and hybrid definitions (cf. Gee, 2016; cf. Hofmann, 2017, 6-7). Normativistic conceptions tend to define disease as socially and culturally specific, thus attributing biology neutral value. Naturalistic conceptions, on the other hand, tend to classify disease as the malfunctioning of some internal biological state. In what follows, I’m mainly concerned with the naturalistic conceptions because of their predominant role in the literature on the ethics of human enhancement.
89 that improve a condition that we view as a normal function or feature of members of our species” (cf. 2000, 309). Both disease and enhancement are departures from normal or species-typical functioning. While treating dysfunction is restoring normal functioning, enhancement is an interruption of it. But this line of reasoning holds only to biomedical interventions voluntarily designed to enhance function, because there are enhancements that happen unintentionally. In fact, as we also saw, to restore functioning is also to enhance the individual who’s functioning below the species-typical level. Besides, for what reason do we value specific traits? The idea that we value them because they are the normal constitutive elements of species-typical functioning seems insufficient. We value those traits because of their non-instrumental value as components of our human flourishing. Living a longer and healthier life and having greater resistance to diseases can go against normal or species-typical functioning while contributing to one’s flourishing (cf. Harris, 2007, 53). Thus, the prudential and moral value of interventions seems to lie not in the normalcy of traits with reference to normal or species-typical functioning, but in their contribution to how one is capable of developing his capacities in order to flourish, and both treatments and enhancements can contribute to this end. In addition, categories such as “pre-disease” and “patients in waiting” are increasingly blurring the meaning of being healthy and having disease, which are states conditioned on the present circumstances of a patient who can have already been diagnosed with a molecular abnormality susceptible of developing into a symptomatic disease (cf. Hofmann, 2017, 6). In these cases, standards of normalcy seem to be inadequate to define states of health and disease: “[a] “normal” red blood cell count does not make a person “normal”. It is a normalcy only within the context of specific clinical questions (cf. Barilan & Weintraub, 2001, 316; cf. Hofmann, 2017, 6). It is thus questionable the reason why there is something prudentially or morally desirable about normalcy. Furthermore, the rapidly expanding field of the Internet of Bodies (IoB) is set to further blur the notion of normalcy. As individuals embrace and merge with technologies that allow them to monitor various aspects of their bodies and health, the boundaries of what is considered “normal”, or the norm, will become difficult to determine. This could lead to a situation in which each person’s state is the norm. The Internet of Bodies will promote an extremely individualised approach to health and well-being, making it difficult to define a singular norm that applies to everyone (cf. Lee, 2020, 11). The lines between normalcy and difference will become more fluid. To further illustrate the inadequacy of health and disease (and treatment and enhancement) to provide a restrictive framework to interventions, consider the following example. A woman has all the
90 symptoms that fit the medical criteria for depression and is prescribed Prozac by her doctor. After treatment, she is cured of depression, but months later she claims not feeling like herself anymore, or not feeling as good and self-confident as she did during medication, and so she asks her doctor to prescribe her more medication. Lack of self-confidence or self-esteem has a negative impact on various dimensions of one’s life and well-being. While society values these qualities, they do not result from the impairment of any biological function; rather, they constitute psychological traits that vary in intensity and that different individuals possess to varying degrees (cf. Gee, 2016, 51). 49 The absence or low levels of self-confidence and self-esteem are not diseases requiring treatment if they fail to meet the medical criteria for depression, for example. In this context, because the woman is already in good health, choosing to take Prozac again would be considered a form of enhancement (cf. Gee, 2016, 51-52). Hence, health and disease are illustrative of the challenge regarding what values the “notmedicine” account promotes. It fails in providing a satisfying answer as to why health and disease (and naturalness/normalcy and treatment/enhancement) are suitable candidates to render enhancements undesirable and impermissible. So far, we’ve seen that all the three sets of ideas seem not to do the work properly because they fail in some relevant aspect, proving to be too vague, contingent, and unclear as to their own definition, and misplaced as to the moral justifications of their goals. Additionally, in focusing excessively in the moral and normative work these sets of concepts are expected to provide to limit enhancement, the “not-medicine” account proves morally counterintuitive in failing to acknowledge that helping people feeling better ought to be the goal of interventions, irrespectively of how each of them is classified according to the prevailing taxonomy. This is why the welfarist account seems to be superior to both this and the augmentative account. iii. The Welfarist Account; The welfarist account of enhancement changes the focus of the discussion from a functionalist approach to an ethical approach. Interventions are valuable because they contribute to promote or increment the goodness of one’s life, or personal well-being. This account was predominantly developed by Savulescu and colleagues, who define enhancement as [a]ny change in the biology or psychology of a person which increases the chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances (2011, 7). 49 Catherine Gee (cf. 2016) develops a modified account of Jerome Wakefield’s hybrid theory of disease. Her account is a clear-cut example of a not-medicine approach to enhancement.
91 In this sense, an enhanced state corresponds to one in which a person’s biology or psychology increases the chances of leading a good life in one’s specific set of personal and social circumstances, while an unenhanced state decreases those chances (cf. Savulescu et al ., 2011, 7). This account of enhancement directly derives its normative value from what is prudentially valuable to the person, i.e. , the value of wellbeing. Savulescu and Kahane further explain that “[i]f something leads to a reduction in someone’s wellbeing, then that thing is bad for that person. This means that if something is a disability in our sense, then it is also by definition a condition that makes life worse” (2011, 46). According to the welfarist definition, disability is “[a]ny state of a person’s biology or psychology which decreases the chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances” (Savulescu et al ., 2011, 12). For that reason, enhancements ought to be broadly understood as comprising virtually all interventions that increase one’s well-being. On the other hand, disabilities are equally broadly defined as encompassing diseases and disadvantageous states (cf. Savulescu et al ., 2011, 7). Reliance on supposedly normative valuable concepts such as the ones we saw in the previous sections, like health, disease, treatment, normalcy, and naturalness is outside of the scope of the advocate of this account. His aim is to conceptually reframe enhancement so it is exclusively related to the value of well-being, but at the same time being able to distinguish in what ways the value of enhancement contributes to one’s well-being when compared to other values, like justice (cf. Earp et al ., 2014, 3). 50 To use a previous example, if an average poet decides to use a performance-enhancing drug to write as brilliantly and delightfully as Homer, solely because that brings genuine happiness to his life, this would be considered an enhancement. But it is possible that another individual who takes the same performance-enhancing drug and surpasses his colleague’s poetic abilities may not find any contribution to his personal well-being from being such a brilliant poet. Instead, what contributes to his well-being is to be as good a wrestler as was Milo of Croton. In this case, taking the drug wouldn’t qualify as an enhancement since it didn’t contribute to his well-being or to his leading a good life in a relevant sense; in other words, it is not prudentially good for him. Thus, a person is enhanced or disabled relative to how his “life could possibly go given certain bodily and mental states” (Zohny, 2016, 606). 50 Concerning this relation with other values, in a recent defence of this account, a group of authors argued that “the goal of HETs [human enhancement technologies] should be to enhance quality of life and well-being, not just for individuals but also for the communities they participate in, applying principles of equity and social cohesion” (Bavelier et al ., 2019, 204). This doesn’t entail that enhancements, understood as genetic, biomedical, or pharmaceutical interventions, are always the preferable or right procedure just because they increase one’s well-being. Considerations regarding other values might suggest that, all things considered, there are other safer, more cost-effective, and socially inclusive possible alternatives. This is the reason why my developmental approach will require counselling to ensure a balanced consideration of these values.
92 There are some counterintuitive and problematic features of this account that are worth considering. As for its counterintuitive aspects, the first stems from the conceptual framework that guides the current debate on enhancement. The debate on the ethics of human enhancement is still too heavily influenced by the augmentative and “not-medicine” accounts’ conceptual frameworks, which emphasise dubious moral distinctions and fail to grasp the value of well-being and ground the morality of interventions on it. As such, the functionalist critic, using standard transhumanist arguments regarding human nature, may object that on the welfarist account, individuals are always disabled to the extent that their current human bodily and mental capacities prevent them from leading better lives. This objection, however, seems misguided. First, what the welfarist account does is to reframe the ethical debate by rejecting the moral relevance of concepts like health, disease, naturalness, normalcy, treatment, and enhancement and focusing on whether any particular genetic, biomedical, or pharmaceutical intervention contributes to leading a good life. Second, it acknowledges that disability is a ubiquitous condition of one’s life, which doesn’t mean that one isn’t leading a good life (cf. Savulescu et al ., 2011, 12). Lack of particular capacities or their age-related deterioration needs not affect one’s ability to conduct a good life in the same way that one can lead a good life without making use of all of his capacities. The goal of the welfarist account on this matter is to avoid the moralised frameworks and terminology of its rival accounts and provide us “ prima facie reasons to address conditions that are making an individual’s life worse” (Zohny, 2016, 606). In other words, it evades morally arbitrary concepts such as species-typical functioning and normalcy and focuses on personal well-being in order to evaluate the value of interventions. The second potential counterintuitive aspect of this account is that to enhance is not always equivalent of increasing or augmenting capacities. We saw this regarding the augmentative account: sometimes, to diminish one’s capacities may be, in fact, considered an enhancement because that would be an intervention contributing to the increasing of the chances one has to lead a good life. A third possible counterintuitive aspect of this account derives precisely from the use of the terms enhancement, therapy, and disability. Robert Sparrow has argued that to define “any increase in welfare as an enhancement loses contact with the ordinary language use of the term” (2013, 180). On his view, it would be more plausible to stick to concepts of normalcy and species-typical functioning to define enhancement. Christopher Coenen and colleagues assert something similar, claiming that this account ignores important qualitative conceptual differences so that it can render enhancement as a synonym for progress (cf. 2011, 523). But the problem is that those vague and morally arbitrary definitions are as counterintuitive as they are problematic since they provide no clear moral and ethical framework that relates interventions to prudential value.
93 This feature becomes problematic because it directly questions the consistency of the definition of enhancement given above. The objection here is that to define enhancement as “ any change in the biology or psychology of a person” renders it too broad, thus turning everything into possible enhancements, from drinking coffee to college education, to neural implants. For example, Bostrom and Savulescu say that if we push this thought further, even literacy and mental algorithms as the ones we use to mentally perform basic arithmetic operations “are a kind of enhancement of our mental software” (2009, 2). Coenen and colleagues reproach this lack of a conceptual and methodological distinction between science/technology-based enhancements and conventional enhancements (cf. 2011, 523-524), but as Zohny notes, they do not provide a clear distinction either (cf. 2014, 124). It is worth exploring what qualitative differences exist between conventional and non-conventional interventions with one aim in mind: the welfarist concern is that interventions focus on the ends ( i.e. , increasing well-being) rather than on the means ( i.e. , the scientific and technological tools employed). The first difference concerns the already discussed question of how internal an intervention needs to be in order to depart from conventional enhancements. Since the integration of science and technology has always been present in human affairs, the objection here seems to be that beyond a certain threshold, science/technology-based enhancements are not permissible. But it is difficult to ascertain at what level the threshold should be placed and why these enhancements are morally problematic. The most plausible answer, as we saw from the objections of Sandel, Habermas, and Fukuyama, for example, is that these enhancements put important values at risk ( e.g. , justice, autonomy, authenticity, safety) in a way that conventional enhancements don’t. But this is hard to sustain since conventional enhancements often endanger and transform these values as well. The research team of the SIENNA project 51 defines human enhancement as “a modification aimed at improving human performance and brought about by science-based and/or technology-based interventions in or on the human body” (Jensen et al ., 2018, 13). They also highlight the role of what they consider to be three relevant philosophical and conceptual distinctions framing the debate: normal/better-than-normal, treatment/enhancement, and natural/artificial. As for the welfarist account in particular, the team claims it goes beyond the scope of their work to define well-being and remain silent about it, despite referring to the value of well-being several times along their work. One of the key features of the team’s definition is its reliance on the idea of science-based and/or technology-based interventions. 51 The SIENNA project is co-ordinated by researchers of the University of Twente and the Trilateral Research (UK), and funded by the European Union Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020 (cf. Https://www.sienna-project.eu/about-sienna/). It focuses on the ethical issues raised by three new and emerging areas of technology: human genomics, human enhancement, and AI and robotics.
94 The fact is that the definition of interventions the team provides offers no conceptual clarity. For example, the claim that to distinguish “between science versus technology-based interventions will most often mean separating biomedical procedures from the integration with discrete technological items” is, as they recognise “not always clear-cut” (2018, 14). But to couple science and technology so that interventions are “science-based and/or technology-based” seems insufficient to dismiss the main difficulty this idea faces, which is to keep non-scientific and/or non-technological interventions from counting as human enhancement interventions. According to the team members, the distinction would enable them to categorise something like education as a non-scientific and/or non-technological intervention (2018, 14). This is difficult to sustain, and it does no relevant moral work either. Consider the following illustrative examples against both the bioconservative and the SIENNA team’s positions. Education, progressively more intermixed with technology, stands as a fundamental human right that brings about profound and lasting transformations in a person’s character and personality. We may say that education, but also the modest act of reading a book, may affect autonomy and authenticity significantly, and perhaps irreversibly. Moreover, the regulation of education is a matter of justice that impacts other important values, like equality and dignity (cf. Zohny, 2014, 125). Also, different scientific approaches within education sciences or education theory contest the idea that education can be rendered a non-scientific intervention. For example, the behaviourist theory of education has different methodologies, theories, and models than those of the functionalist theory, but both fit under the broad definition of a science-based and/or technology-based intervention provided above. Food production is also an example of how science and technology help develop more efficient, systematised, controlled, and sustainable agricultural production, thus contributing to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, reducing food losses and waste. Good nutrition results from these developments and it has “obvious enhancing effects on our bodies and minds” (cf. Zohny, 2014, 125), which are life-changing depending on one having or lacking access to it. Therefore, it is difficult to consider these as falling out of the category of enhancement given the non-welfarist definition provided above, since these are clear cases of science-based and/or technologybased interventions. If the idea is to restrict the concept of human enhancement, the SIENNA team would do better by abandoning the science-based and/or technology-based dichotomy because it falls short of performing the moral work intended by their authors. Instead, their definition muddles the debate because the categories of science and technology broaden the scope so that virtually any modification improving human performance can be defined as an enhancement. In addition, the reasons why the science-based and/or technology-based dichotomy is prudentially and morally relevant are not clear.
101 a deaf child, which, according to the welfarist account, is considered a disability, or, on Zohny’s version, a disadvantageous state that on specific circumstances negatively impacts one’s well-being. The paramount question here is “what do we owe to our children?” I believe its right to assume that under the welfarist account, what we owe to future children are the biological and psychological states that will increase their chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances. But this is problematic because not only future circumstances are unknown, but it can potentially perpetuate social stigma and injustice through the competitive pursuit of genetic positional goods (cf. Glover, 2006, 103). What’s more, it says nothing about what a good life is beyond what the parents think it constitutes the prospects of a good life, thus sanctioning procreative decisions like those of Duchesneau and McCullough. Consequently, germline genetic interventions and the enhancement of unborn children could benefit from the existence of a well-defined list of goods that are always and at all times non-instrumentally valuable to human beings. This could be a possible way to go, but it is absent from the scope of the subjectivist account of well-being given by the welfarist account. Although its advocates claim that some all-purpose goods ( e.g. , general intelligence, autonomy, memory, empathy) “are valuable regardless of which kind of life a person chooses to live” (Savulescu et al ., 2011, 11), these goods are presented without any reference to specific kinds of a life worth living. They’re also not integrated into a hypothetical objective list capable of providing a meaning to the dispersed ideas on what it means to be human that pervade the debate on transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement. Ultimately, a significant shortcoming lies in the absence of a coherent notion of human nature that can provide the groundings and direction for identifying and understanding the concept of a flourishing life. Despite this, the welfarist argues that some goods are more valuable than others. All-purpose goods are more valuable than positional goods. For example, “memory, self-discipline, patience, empathy, a sense of humor, optimism, and just having a sunny temperament” (Savulescu et al ., 2011, 11) are examples of all-purpose goods. Contrary to positional goods, such as increased height or larger biceps, “whose goodness for those who have them depends on other subjects not possessing them” (Bostrom & Savulescu, 2009, 11), all-purpose goods are not competitive in their essence, thus benefiting the person who possesses them while not imposing losses on people who lack them (cf. Anomaly, 2014, 185). But in the case of rendering the selection of positional goods morally impermissible, that seems to undermine the parents’ right to procreative liberty and the right to search for the best possible prospects of leading a good life under the relevant set of circumstances, which may require the pursuit of positional goods for children not to be deemed disabled or disadvantaged. In a society in which men’s height is highly valuable
102 and has a correlation to personal and professional success, parents might think it will be prudentially good for their children to be tall. But this is not to say that the pursuit of positional goods ought to be morally permissible since their general pursuit through a genetic competition in a genetic supermarket would ultimately prove selfdefeating. It merely stresses the fact that the welfarist account needs further elaboration so it can resolve the various contradictions at work within it. The account gives no clear answer as to how the balancing between extended parental rights to procreative liberty and limiting the pursuing of positional goods should be done. It appears to endorse an imbalance between procreative liberty and the interests of the child. Its reliance on subjectivism emphasises the individual promotion of the values of pleasure and satisfaction of desires, but it remains fairly silent as to what a good life is or how human beings flourish qua humans. And while welfarists recognise that different theories of well-being, including objective list theories, converge to a great extent on what goods contribute to a good life, hedonism and desire-fulfilment don’t seem to be good candidates to accommodate the discussion on the moral and ethical permissibility of human enhancement. The reason for this is that pleasure and desires, although important, are elusive goods for the purpose of defining a coherent welfarist theory to frame the permissibility of enhancements. The welfarist recognises this and introduces the clause that positional goods ought not to be enhanced. 55 Furthermore, if the welfarist were to say that we should adopt an objective account of well-being and select a specific list of non-positional, all-purpose goods, he would be faced with the further difficulty of justifying why to choose that particular list and not a different one ( i.e. , each good on the list must prove to be non-instrumentally valuable). Additionally, he would need to put forward an explanatory theory justifying why and in what ways those particular goods are prudentially good for humans. From this challenge emerges another related to paternalism and elitism; any list faces the charge of being alienating (cf. Fletcher, 2016). Perhaps these reasons suffice to justify the absence of a welfarist list of objective goods in the literature. 56 The welfarist position on how relevant social circumstances impact one’s well-being is highly problematic as well. The semantic sleight-of-hand aimed at avoiding references to the morally dubious concepts of ability and disability leads to the equally morally dubious and moralising concepts of advantageous and disadvantageous states, which maintain the counterintuitive implications of the account. 55 As we’ll see ahead, positional goods introduce additional complexities, as it might be possible that a positional good is positional but non-instrumentally valuable at the same time. 56 Jonathan Glover, however, gives credit to Martha Nussbaum’s objective list of goods as being one that “gives an account of what is recognizably a good life for us rather than for Martians” (2006, 89).
103 Therefore, well-being is presented as an excessively all-encompassing, indeterminate, and descriptive value, with no tangible contribution to ascertaining whether an enhancement is ethically permissible, and so offering little guidance for policymaking. This is clearer in the pluralistic framework adopted that puts well-being as one value among other equally important values. This is not to say that well-being is not an appropriate value to evaluate human enhancement and ground value judgments on it, only that we need a different rationale on which to ground it so that we can overcome the difficulties with which the subjectivism of the welfarist account saturates the debate. The second challenge to which the welfarist cannot provide a suitable answer concerns its failure in accounting for the problems resulting from the tension between the personal and the collective outcomes of enhancement. In specifying that enhancements ought to increase one’s chances of leading a good life in the relevant set of circumstances, but because it is simply focused on defining enhancement in individual terms, it eschews from the far-reaching examination of individuals’ socioeconomic context and the broader societal and collective repercussions of enhancement. Also, it seems to fail to acknowledge that what is good for individuals may undermine the well-being of groups of individuals or society in general; all things considered, to treat well-being as something exclusive to individuals may not make the world a better place (cf. Bjorn Hofmann, 2017, 7). For example, a society that is structured around inegalitarian social relationships and excessively values competitiveness, selfishness, and acquisitiveness may end up compelling its citizens to enhance traits compatible with these values. Again, this is not to say that the welfarist account has nothing to say about the social repercussions of enhancement. However, to achieve this effectively, it needs substantial revision to overcome the confining boundaries of its descriptive framework. In his defence of the welfarist account, Zohny, following Savulescu and colleagues, insists on the idea that issues regarding the ethical permissibility of enhancements are beyond the scope of the account because its goal is simply one of conceptual explanation. The value of well-being as the prudential good that better explains why interventions are good or bad for individuals may not be the only decisive value to consider when pondering on the permissibility of interventions (cf. 2014, 127). Values like justice, equality, and friendship are equally valuable in setting normative limits on interventions that promote one’s well-being. But how they interact with well-being is not clear. Presumably, in the case of justice, the increasing of individual well-being through the permissibility of a biomedical intervention is conditioned on whether the relevant resources are available to that end. How to measure justice will provide a clearer answer to understand how resources are to be allocated, but the welfarist provides no definitive answer to what theories of justice are the most likely to increase one’s chances of leading a good life. What is
104 clear is that the state is to be a neutral agent between different conceptions of the good life and interfere only when preventing harm is needed (cf. Savulescu et al ., 2011, 15). But the kind of resources that are most likely used in biomedical interventions aimed at incrementing well-being are limited, expensive, and require severe regulation due to the risks they carry and the complexity in administering them. Most likely, their promotion will depend on state sponsored public policies. While some of these goods are all-purpose and neutral goods that a neutral state ought to promote, others are non-neutral goods, but they still contribute to human flourishing and are in equal need of collective and public support. For example, goods such as food, housing, health care, and basic education are fairly neutral concerning human flourishing, and their provision doesn’t require individuals to develop specific personal capacities to engage with them. But relational, cultural, and political goods are non-neutral goods as their significance is highly contextual and oriented towards specific types of life in particular backgrounds. They require individuals to develop particular capacities in order to engage with very specific activities, like personal and civic relationships, and social, cultural, and political participation. These are constitutive elements only to some conceptions of the good life. A monk living a highly ascetic life in an isolated religious community will hardly find these capacities useful and will most probably assign no value to a life of political engagement or aesthetic and intellectual fruition. In this way, non-neutral goods require personal, institutional, environmental, social, cultural, and political conditions that go beyond the distributive scope of a neutral state in many relevant ways. I will return to this problem in later chapters to understand how to distribute relevant goods to human flourishing. The point here is simply to reveal how the welfarist promotion of the value of well-being as the main drive to evaluate interventions is heavily dependent on other values. This entails that considerations on individual wellbeing will often be dependent on other considerations (namely justice) and on value judgements regarding what neutral and non-neutral goods are and on what basis they are to be allocated. In this way, once more, it becomes crucial to enquire whether the welfarist understanding of well-being is sufficient or requires further enquiry. We need to enquire the broader nature of well-being and what characteristics render it a prudential good. We should ask: in what ways does well-being contribute to one’s life? This problem is connected to another. Not only does it fail to acknowledge that what is good for individuals may undermine the well-being of groups of individuals or society in general, but the welfarist account seems to fall short of taking into consideration broader societal and collective factors that contribute to determine individual well-being. In other words, all things considered, to treat well-being as something exclusive to individuals may not make the world a better place. Part of the enquiry regarding the nature of well-being as a prudential value concerns the social conditions under which some
105 interventions are constitutive of a good life. Again, the welfarist eschews this discussion shielding himself behind his primary goal, which is to define enhancements in welfarist terms. This position is clear in Zohny’s defence of welfarism (cf. 2014, 127). But well-being is context dependent. Different social and indeed cultural circumstances need to be considered as defining features of what well-being and a good life are. There are examples in the literature aiming at proving how social pressures redefine these categories and, consequently, enhancements. Above, I mentioned the cases of competitiveness, selfishness, and acquisitiveness, which are traits common to contemporary capitalist market societies. In these societies, direct and indirect pressure exist that end up defining well-being in terms of interventions that promote changes in the biology or psychology of a person which increase the chances of leading a good life in their relevant set of circumstances. Individuals who choose to not undergo such interventions or who lack the resources to pursue them privately will presumably live less good lives than their enhanced peers. Zohny sidesteps this problem by pointing out to the concurrence of other values besides well-being, which will end up limiting the ways in which interventions will result in causing harm to others (cf. 2014, 127). But this result is likely to be the case with virtually all interventions promoting important non-neutral goods such as social and political activities that are limited in their availability. While competition for these positions may require the enhancement of particular human capacities, not all individuals will have access to them and thus their well-being may be less than optimal. Moreover, in defining well-being in relation to other values operating under a broader basic structure, well-being enjoys no special priority when it comes to deciding the permissibility of enhancements because other considerations trump individual well-being. Consequently, pressures to maintain productivity, competitiveness, and selfishness might lead to a situation where enhancements are viewed as instrumentally valuable, but not connected to any prudential value, and still be permissible. Conversely, in a highly egalitarian society, interventions that promote such traits may be deemed impermissible on grounds other than well-being. For example, Zohny argues that hyper-capitalist societies can end up redefining well-being into something impoverished: “it is difficult to imagine how it can be called a vision of well-being to begin with” (2014, 128). I agree with Zohny in that some conceptions of well-being are more impoverished than others. However, this seems to subvert the non-moralised conception of well-being that the welfarist account aims at delivering. For instance, a society that greatly values patriotism, frugality, and a very strict work ethics may find it useful to promote values like individualism, competitiveness, and efficiency. Societies valuing highly spiritual and contemplative conceptions of the good life may find the latter to be an impoverished conception of wellbeing.
106 Whatever the case may be, the descriptive welfarist account, focused only in defining enhancements as interventions that increase well-being, falls short of providing further guidance concerning the moral and ethical permissibility of enhancements. While it succeeds in tying the concept of well-being to enhancement and thus avoiding the morally dubious distinctions that render its competitive accounts inadequate, its concept of well-being is still too vague and individually focused, rendering enhancement too broad and too dependent on concurrent values to have any tangible influence for purposes of policymaking. If anything, we now know that we need to enquire further about what makes goods and activities non-instrumentally valuable for human beings. This suggests that we look into human nature as the possible unifying framework of these goods, which might give us a plausible explanation for why and what enhancements are worth pursuing. This is the task for the next chapter. c. Conclusion The aim of the present chapter was to examine the three main accounts of enhancement present in the literature. The first two functionalist accounts proved to be inadequate to discuss human enhancement. The augmentative approach provides a clear framework to define enhancements, but it is unsatisfactory because it says enhancements are valuable per se , which we saw is a controversial claim. The account is too permissible and equates more and better as necessarily merging dimensions, but it doesn’t give a satisfactory answer to the question of why enhancements are prudentially valuable. The “not-medicine” account, too, fails in providing a satisfying answer as to why health and disease, naturalness and normalcy, and treatment and enhancement are suitable candidates to judge the permissibility of enhancements. These categories do little moral work and prove to be too vague, contingent, and unclear. In focusing excessively in the moral and normative work these sets of concepts are expected to provide to limit enhancement, the account proves to be morally counterintuitive and fails to acknowledge that helping people feeling better ought to be the goal of interventions, irrespectively of how each of them is classified according to the prevailing taxonomy. Finally, the welfarist account is useful because it refocuses the debate on what human enhancement should be all about: promoting individual and societal well-being and one’s chances of leading a good life. But the account is simply descriptive and offers no normative guidance regarding the permissibility of interventions. While it answers successfully to relevant objections put forward against it, namely those referring to the morally dubious categories like the ones grounding the not-medicine account, it ultimately proves sterile because it eschews the debate on the ethical permissibility of enhancements. First, I argued that the welfarist account is too individually focused and grounded upon
107 subjectivist accounts of well-being which render enhancement too broad, undetermined, and subjective, thus failing in accommodating the dispersed ideas on what it means to be human that pervade the debate on transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement. Second, I argued that it fails in accounting for the problems resulting from the tension between the personal and the collective outcomes of enhancement and gives the value of well-being no real ethical significance in defining the permissibility of enhancement and the outlining of public policies vis-à-vis other relevant values. I believe well-being to be the most relevant value to ground our discussion on human enhancement, but we need to reframe the conversation by seeking what the nature of well-being is and what makes it prudentially good. In other words, we need to understand in what ways well-being contributes to human flourishing and to a person leading a good life. In the next chapters, I’ll explore the idea that the good life or well-being of human beings is determined by human nature and its constitutive specific set of capacities whose exercise and development constitute human flourishing.
108 CHAPTER 3 The Developmental Account of Human Nature a. Introduction In the two previous chapters, I explored and discussed the philosophy of transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement. In chapter 1, I claimed that transhumanism is best understood as a comprehensive worldview built on top of all-encompassing and pervasive conceptions of what it means to be human and what a good life is. It is true that we struggle to find a comprehensive, coherent, and transversal conception of human nature that permeates — and much less one that unifies — the various transhumanist contributions to the debate on human enhancement. In effect, we are repeatedly invited to rely on the validity of certain essential human traits that, in the end, are only superficially problematised and after a systematic analysis end up lacking justified pretensions to universality and trans-historicity. Transhumanists agree, however, that human nature is an unfixed trait that is subject to our rational will to overcome the limits imposed on us both as a biological kind and as rational and moral agents. Therefore, human enhancement technologies ought to assist us in improving our material and immaterial nature (body and mind, respectively) according to our rational purposes. The debate on the ethics of human enhancement follows much of the transhumanist insights on human nature and the reasons why we should enhance ourselves. Hence, in chapter 2, I discussed the implications of three different ethical accounts of human enhancement fuelled by the same underlying assumptions on what it means to be human and what a good life is. The three accounts prove to be problematic: although the welfarist account seemed promissory as to refocus the debate on human enhancement by grounding it on the value of well-being, it offered no normative guidance regarding the permissibility of interventions. In focusing too closely on subjectivist accounts of well-being, the welfarist account rendered enhancement too broad, undetermined, and subjective, failing in accommodating the dispersed ideas on what it means to be human that pervade the debate on transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement. Ultimately, subjective well-being enjoys no real ethical significance in defining the permissibility of enhancement and the outlining of public policies vis-à-vis other relevant values like justice or fairness. Alternatively, I concluded that perhaps a different assessment of the value of wellbeing is needed in order to understand how it can contribute to the debate on the ethics of human enhancement. The present chapter is the first step in that direction. In it, I want to lay down one of the key elements necessary to put forward a developmental theory of well-being: human nature. The main
109 premise of the developmental theory of well-being I’m outlining in this and the next chapter is that human well-being consists in flourishing, which is the same as saying that what is good for a human being is that he flourishes qua a human being. To argue for such a theory and to make any statement regarding what is good for human beings, it is of paramount importance that we start enquiring about the nature of human beings ( i.e. , about our human nature). Perfectionist theories of well-being have made significant contributions to this debate and many of them, though distinctive and often contradicting each other, provide relevant insights as to what human nature might consist of. So, the ultimate goal of this chapter is the following: to formulate a conception of human nature capable of grounding an objective account of well-being that will serve as the corner stone to discuss why and in what ways can human enhancement help us flourishing qua human beings. b. Objective Well-Being and Human Nature Developmentalism One problem identified in the previous chapter was that subjective accounts of well-being do not appeal to ideas about flourishing and let alone to human nature. 57 They do not claim that a person who greatly exercises, develops, and enjoys her capacities is a flourishing human being. What these theories hold is that a particular good or activity is good for us if that is something we desire or want to pursue. One’s rational and properly informed ends and desires are what one deems good for oneself, and that’s the ultimate justificatory reason supporting why one should fulfil them. Here, “individuals are the ultimate authorities concerning their own welfare” (Sumner, 1996, 171). In this sense, well-being is entirely dependent on subjective concerns and, regarding human enhancement, it gives us no real ethical guidance nor does it provide any framework to accommodate the dispersed ideas on what it means to be human that pervade the debate on transhumanism and the ethics of human enhancement. Objective accounts follow a different strategy: they associate our good or well-being with the engagement with a set of goods and activities through which we develop our human capacities 57 Once again, it is important to note that human nature is here understood not as the nature of human beings as a biological kind, but as human nature of a normative kind that reports to human beings as persons and moral agents. Regarding the former understanding of human nature, Thomas Hurka’s perfectionism is conceivably the most relevant instance of how human nature is essentially biological: the only relevant human capacities that are essential for us qua human beings are conditioned on us being living things (cf. Hurka, 1993). On this account, it is our biological essence that justifies the perfectionist goods and the reasons we must exercise and develop them. There are other biological conceptions of human nature, as we saw, but what is problematic with these views is that, for the most part, the identified biological traits lack normative significance. Consider David Brink’s example: the instinctive psychological predisposition to discriminate against outsiders in the small homogeneous communities our ancestors lived in was an adaptive and hereditable trait that resulted from natural selection (cf. 2019, 4). The manifest link between these traits and racism and xenophobia renders it problematic to ascribe them any normative significance today solely in virtue of their biological basis. These views are too narrowly focused on a descriptive analysis of human nature as the unifying trait or set of traits of the species Homo sapiens as “units of evolution” (cf. Roughley, 2021) rather than with human beings as moral persons or rational agents.
110 independently of what our subjective desires may be. Typically, objective accounts of well-being come in the form of objective lists or human nature perfectionism. For reasons explained below, I wish to follow the latter approach to well-being based on the idea that some goods and activities are good in themselves (non-instrumentally good), and not because some individuals desire or endorse them. Among the various perfectionist theories, two of the more compelling strategies to argue for an objective account of human nature are normative perfectionism and developmentalism. Here, I use the term perfectionism as an umbrella under which we find multiple sub-sets of perfectionist strategies, all of them sharing important features. But here, perfectionism should be understood as a theory of well-being and not as a political doctrine as we often conceive it, especially after the influential writings of John Rawls, that inscribed the term in the vocabulary of contemporary moral philosophy. Perfectionist theories of well-being aim at the achievement of excellence usually through the highest possible development of the constitutive elements of our human nature. One possible formulation is the following: human nature determines what a good life for a human being is; human nature is constituted by a specific set of capacities; to exercise and develop these capacities is good for human beings (cf. Fletcher, 2016, 78). On what follows, I’m not elaborating on normative perfectionism. A recent and detailed account of this view was developed by David Brink (cf. 2003; cf. 2019). Brink’s normative perfectionism is grounded on two central ideas: the first is that rational agency is the defining feature of our human nature and that there are some things that are good for human beings independently of their desires, no matter how informed they are. The second idea derives from the first: an objective list of goods should include “the reflective pursuit and realization of agents’ reasonable projects and certain personal and social relationships” (Couto, 2014, 38). But as Alexandra Couto rightly observed, this is a parsimonious and non-contentious list which is both too sparse and too abstract and general to offer us any significant guidance regarding specific goods with which we should engage (cf. 2014, 38). Additionally, this account offers a very thin concept of human nature: rational agency alone is far from capturing the type of beings human beings are, as we will see below. What I wish to do is to elaborate on developmentalism, which I believe conveys important assumptions both about the type of beings we are and the meaning of well-being. In this chapter, I’m paving the way towards a developmental account of well-being that is grounded on a particular conception of human nature. This is a thicker conception vis-à-vis the one presented by normative perfectionism and goes beyond the goal of presenting an objective list theory of well-being. Developmentalism ties well-being to the notion of flourishing: a flourishing human being exercises, develops, and enjoys the use of a set of cognitive, affective, sensory, social, and physical capacities (cf. Kraut, 2007, 137). These are the
117 there is something better in pursuing the intellectual richness of Montaigne and Homer over a diet of soap operas and gossip magazines” (Bradford, 2017, 19). At any rate, the normative perfectionist gives part of an answer for an ethical theory that gives us reasons to shape our lives in ways that don’t damage or contravene rationality. Avigail Ferdman pushes this idea further to claim that normative perfectionism has social and spatial implications conducive to a perfectionist basic structure (cf. 2019). However, to make this argument she needs to go beyond rational agency as the core feature of our human nature and accept Kraut’s comprehensive notion of what the components of human well-being are. While not conceding it, to make her argument, Ferdman needs to go beyond the narrowness of rational agency as our nature. She needs to broaden the understanding of what human beings are like if she is to defend that our capacities are worth promoting through a perfectionist basic structure rather than simply honoured or kept at a minimal functioning threshold. Only by acknowledging this can she make a successful case in favour of well-roundedness. To live well-rounded lives, she argues, “we need to develop and exercise our physical, sensory, affective, social and cognitive capacities” (2019, 4). To recognise this wide range of capacities as the components of human flourishing requires Ferdman to go beyond the assumption that we are essentially rational agents, and therefore the social and spatial implications she identifies as necessary stem from a developmental more than a normative perfectionist conception of the human being. Ferdman’s notion of well-roundedness is important for the comprehensiveness of developmentalism. A well-rounded life is a life of flourishing in which we engage with multiple goods and activities and develop and enjoy the exercise of our plural capacities in numerous combined ways. It contrasts with the idea of narrowness and specialised lives structured around the exercise and development of a few or one single capacity (cf. Ferdman, 2019, 3). Instead, it recognises the richness and complexity that come from the interrelated exercise of our capacities and the triggering of the components of well-being. For example, a life that allows a person ( e.g. , a farmer) to develop his physical capacities and his practical rationality is, predictably, a richer life when compared to that of a person ( e.g. , a theoretical physicist) who can only develop his rational capacities (cf. Ferdman, 2019, 8). It is also when we put forward the idea of a well-rounded life as one that makes full and combined use of the extended range of our capacities that we envisage what our authoritative duties towards others might be. These stem from the notion that what we owe to each other are the opportunities for them to perfect themselves. This idea is already present in the normative perfectionist Kantian appeal to the perfection of others (cf. Brink, 2019, 12-19). Put simply, rational agents have interpersonal moral and ethical duties: there are normative reasons to promote one’s own rational nature as well as to help other
118 rational agents to promote theirs. This is compatible with Kant’s humanity formula of the categorical imperative: “[s]o act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Kant, 1998, G4:429). Provided we do not try to perfect others, which would violate their autonomy and undermine their agency, we can nevertheless help them developing their rational agency, at least so that it functions at a basic level since its promotion beyond that is problematic for the normative perfectionist. The interpersonal positive duties to help promote and develop the capacities for practical reason would involve deliberating with other agents and helping them access the opportunities and activities conducive to their exercise of rational agency and pursuit of their life plans (cf. Ferdman, 2019, 4). If each agent’s end is his own perfection and the promotion of his rational agency, for each agent to act in accordance with that imperative also entails that agents share as a common end the promotion of their mutual ends. The perfection of the other agent ought to be one’s end as well: “I should make his [the other agent’s] perfection my end” (Brink, 2019, 13). For this reason, our action towards the promotion of other agents’ perfection is thus constrained by its very nature: “[g]iven the role of one’s own agency in one’s perfection, I can’t perfect others any more than I can win competitive races for them” (Brink, 2019, 14). Of course, developmentalism needs to argue further because it goes beyond rational agency as our nature. Yet again, if a flourishing human being is one who exercises, develops, and enjoys his cognitive, affective, sensory, social, and physical capacities, we are one step closer of providing a normative justification to the need for a perfectionist basic structure. There is another dimension to the first of the two interrelated problems raised by developmentalism that has to do with our nature as human beings. While the ways in which we flourish are multiple and diversified, varying from time to place, we are flourishing beings irrespective of any sociohistorical contingencies. We naturally have potentialities, capacities, and faculties that we develop from the early stages of our existence if favourable conditions are met (cf. Kraut, 2007, 131). This means that we have the means to flourish within us, and our potentialities, capacities, and faculties, either dormant or not yet fully disclosed, are in a permanent process of becoming. In the presence of certain external material conditions, our capacities manifest themselves and come to fruition through action. This is an important feature of C. B. Macpherson’s developmental theory of human nature. According to this approach, human beings are essentially doers, creators, and enjoyers of their distinctively human capacities (cf. 1973, 4). Like Kraut’s developmental theory, Macpherson’s developmentalism also begins by enquiring into what we humans are. One of the most distinctive features of Macpherson’s thought is that we need to know what sort of beings humans are if we are to build any theory on what the political constitution of society
119 is. On his view, theorists who ignore this fall into ontological neglect: “[a]ny political theory has to have some concept of human essence” (1977a, 26). Before looking at Macpherson’s developmentalism more closely, I want to focus on the second problem raised by developmentalism and that has to do with its familiarity with what transhumanists take to be our Promethean nature. The developmental conception provides a normative framework from which to start developing a more specific picture of what is good for us. What is good for us is a life of flourishing, but while that life differs greatly from one person to another, what flourishing means also differs from time to time. We flourish differently in different times and places because the components of human flourishing change over time. Consider intellectual reflection or aesthetic creation. These are capacities we now value and want our children to develop and enjoy their exercise as much as possible. But the development of these mental capacities is still not present in all cultures and its fruition is still recent in the history of our species. However, the belief that these are capacities that we ought to use, exercise, and develop generates transformations of their own: “those who think of the imagination as a faculty to be cultivated will of course try to cultivate it — their theory about what a healthy mind is will alter their minds and those of their children” (Kraut, 2007, 141). In other words, flourishing is sociohistorically contingent, it varies in function of the socioeconomic and technological development of societies and certain capacities can only be fully developed when particular conditions are met. Consider the following two examples from Kraut. Our mathematical capacities were dormant before we could use numbers, and in a time when the use of language as we know it today was still not present, to be non-linguistic would not produce the severe diminution of well-being that it would today (cf. 2007, 140-141). Therefore, we can develop some capacities at certain times and places but not others because we might not yet have the material conditions to bring about the realisation of our potentialities, capacities, and faculties. The idea here is that we need to have as good a knowledge of our nature as possible if we are to say something substantial about our well-being. Let’s recall Marx and his argument against Bentham’s utility principle. Marx’s idea is that our human nature is not an abstract idea, nor is it solely a spatiotemporal consolidated expression of the human being, as Bentham seems to believe by assuming that the modern English shopkeeper is the model of what human nature is, was, and will always be. Instead, human nature reports to our transhistorical essence, which manifests differently throughout our historical existence. Says Marx [t]o know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human
120 acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch (1996, 605, n. 4). 62 Human nature in general comprises the invariable, fixed, or constant constitutive traits of our essence as human beings, whereas human nature as modified in each historical epoch corresponds to the provisional or sociohistorically contingent traits resulting from particular economic, social, and cultural institutions and relations of production ( e.g. , the needs produced by the existing relations of production in possessive capitalist market societies). As we’ll see in more detail the next section, this already hints at the human being as the subject of necessary change and transformation through history. Actually, in Marxian terms, he is really the product of history, continuously crafted and transformed by himself through the labour relations in which he engages with the world (cf. Marx, 1977, 72-73). Such a view is not incompatible with the idea (also held by transhumanists) that there are multiple capacities that we cannot yet use because our internal limitations are too great or because we are not yet able to enhance them. This is where the developmental theories of Kraut and Macpherson converge. Kraut clearly states that “[i]nventions, discoveries, and technology are also engines of change in our conception of what it is to flourish” (2007, 141). Macpherson upholds a similar idea: the realisation of one’s truly ontological essence ( i.e. , as a doer and creator) depends on the technological levels of productivity available at a particular historical moment (cf. 1977a, 26-35). This is perhaps one of the most interesting points of contact between developmentalism and transhumanism. The nature of the developmental process, which is grounded on the idea that flourishing is the source of human well-being, seems to sanction the idea that technological development comes about in a continuum. It closely resembles the transhumanist and techno-optimistic idea of scientific and technological development as a process of permanent and progressive gaining of control over the world and an exertion of power through multiple techniques whose purpose is, desirably, to support human well-being. Kraut’s statement about the badness of death serves as an illustration, suggesting that the ultimate harm humans can suffer is the absence of well-being. 62 Note that Macpherson’s argument in his The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism is precisely that Hobbes and Locke assumed that the “market model of man”, of individuals immersed in a structure of capitalist property relations of production and acting as self-interested, free, and rational individuals seeking to preserve their own life and property and protect their natural rights, represented the true essence of the human being. They ontologised socially and historically contingent human traits and derived the best model of society from what they thought to be our true human nature. Therefore, it appears that, like Bentham, they observed the dog’s behaviour within its specific and contingent environment and inferred that its behaviour and dispositions reflected the dog’s true, inherent, and inalterable nature.
121 At first sight, it could be more difficult to grasp any reasons to limit flourishing on Kraut’s developmental framework comparatively to Macpherson’s ontological theory. But this is only apparent. Both authors seem committed to a broad understanding of flourishing that sanctions the use of available technology to bring about the greatest possible amount of well-being. In this way, any technological means that can assist the developmental process, or increment our developmental power, ought to be used. This line of reasoning, however, needs to be fully and critically examined. For example, Macpherson’s ontological theory combined with his theory of property place important constraints on the ways in which technology is to be used. But the idea of property that is central to Macpherson ( i.e. , property as a right to live a fully human life once scarcity is overcome) is challenging as well. It is a technically and politically constructed concept of property that needs to be articulated with the normative prescriptions of what a fully human life requires. Property as a right to a kind of life has economic, social, environmental, and other costs. For example, although our lives may be longer, this doesn’t necessarily entail that we are living healthier lives, and the correlation between an ageing population and the increasing pressures on healthcare costs have been consistently demonstrated (cf. Ferguson & Belloni, 2018; cf. Li et al ., 2020). Additionally, the scientific and technological conquest of scarcity may also entail significantly high environmental costs. For example, our progressively low-carbon economy based on lithium-ion technology used on batteries for laptops, smartphones, and electric vehicles requires large amounts of energy and water to extract these raw materials 63 , and in some places child labour as well as unsafe working conditions are widespread (cf. Weidenkaff et al ., 2021). So, as we’ll see below, the technical and democratic arrangement of property involves costs and Macpherson’s broad conception of property as a right to a kind of life needs to address these problems. With these two interrelated problems raised by developmentalism, we now have a clearer understanding of what its purpose is. It essentially aims at putting forward a developmental conception of human well-being by enquiring into what it means for something to be good for human beings and what these things might be. Its answer is that what is good for human beings is that they flourish through a process of maturing, growth, and development that involves the exercise and enjoyment of specific human capacities. It is in this sense that developmentalism lies behind our common-sense and our assumptions about what goods and activities out there in the world are good or bad for us. We understand our well-being as being tied to our nature as cognitive, affective, sensory, social, and physical beings, and 63 Plausibly, because technologies often result in deep ecological footprints that have to do with energy consumption, production of waste, and potential harm to natural ecosystems, the kind of life one has a right to is conditioned on the usage of renewable energy sources and the adoption of environmental regulations and sustainability practices. This is an example of how Macpherson’s techno-optimism can still be coupled with his defence of property as a right to a kind of life.
122 it is part of our common-sense framework that we identify and avoid the goods and activities that prevent us from flourishing by making us suffer, causing us pain, impeding us from freely expressing our thoughts, emotions, and physical capacities. On the other hand, we seek to engage with the goods and activities that we expect will increase our well-being in a meaningful way. For example, jobs that somehow reduce our daily activity to mindless, dangerous, repetitive, isolating, debilitating, and emotionally stifling tasks devoid of anything that we can enjoy are bad for our flourishing and fail to contribute to one’s well-being (cf. Kraut, 2007, 142). To make an argument like this entails that socioeconomic institutions ought to be arranged in certain ways and not others. This is Ferdman’s main contribution to the present debate: authoritative reasons to perfect ourselves and to help others perfect themselves converge in the need for “a perfectionist basic structure that enables material and epistemic access to opportunities for developing and exercising our human capacities” (2019, 17). But the picture of our nature as flourishing beings is still embryonic. So far, I’ve only outlined the contours from which a developmental theory of objective well-being might emerge. What’s missing from this picture is the content of human nature in general, as Marx called it, and what our essential and defining fixed trait is. To provide a proper response to this challenge, I’ll look to Macpherson’s developmental conception of human nature. On his account, which shares many insights with Kraut’s, human beings are essentially doers, creators, and enjoyers of their distinctively human capacities (cf. 1973, 4). Equally decisive are Macpherson’s thoughts against ontological neglect. The idea is that our thoughts about what humans are, about what our needs and capacities are, cannot be ignored when we aim at discussing human wellbeing, and much less when well-being consists in human flourishing. I’ve already mentioned Bunge’s insightful comment regarding this same topic: “a philosophy without ontology is spineless” (2010, 3). In a way, this summarises part of Macpherson’s liberal democratic project, namely his effort to show that individuals have ontological priority over society, and since they are the point of reference for his theory, or its moral centre, it is only natural that particular “facts about our natures lead to inescapable conclusions about what human society should look like” (Lindsay, 1996, 50). But this reports to the normative conclusions derived from the type of beings we are. Subsequently, and according to the developmental theory of well-being I’m trying to put forward, to argue that well-being consists in flourishing, we need to know in what ways human beings flourish, and this entails an enquiry concerning what are the constitutive capacities of our human nature. As we saw, rational agency falls short of providing a comprehensive explanation on this matter, and that is why the developmentalist recommends a more comprehensive answer according to which human flourishing entails the exercise, development, and enjoyment of a range of physical, cognitive, affective, sensory, and
123 social capacities. This is also Macpherson’s approach. In a constructive way, this theory elaborates on Kraut’s formula of the components of well-being: it is presented to give us a non-exhaustive list of human capacities that provides us greater detail on how the physical, cognitive, affective, sensory, and social components of well-being are realised. The list includes the capacities for rational understanding, for moral judgment and action, for aesthetic creation and contemplation, for the emotional activities of friendship and love, for religious experience, for transforming what is given by nature (including labour), for wonder or curiosity, for laughter, for controlled physical/mental/aesthetic activity, among others (cf. Macpherson, 1973, 53-54). The exertion and development of these capacities “are seen as ends in themselves” (Macpherson, 1973, 5) and our flourishing depends on whether we can exercise, develop, and enjoy them. In due time, the most relevant problem for Macpherson is whether we have access to enough developmental power to flourish or not, which raises once more the problem of the normative and political implications of a developmental notion of human nature. Finally, as I mentioned earlier, objective accounts of well-being come in the form of objective lists or human nature perfectionism. The reason why I believe the latter is more compelling is because perfectionism improves the account presented by objective list theories. According to these, there is a plurality of goods that have intrinsic value to agents, even if they don’t desire to pursue and engage with these goods. Usually, objective lists include prudentially and morally valuable goods as knowledge, friendship, and achievements, and a good life is one that involves the agent engaging with these goods in some meaningful way. There is a variety of such lists. Martha Nussbaum’s is an example of a comprehensive objective list; it includes basic human goods like life, bodily health and integrity, senses, imagination, thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation, play, control over one’s environment, and to live in contact with the natural world (cf. 1998, 135-156). Although objective list theories of well-being are intuitively appealing to those compromised with an objective approach to well-being and to the systematisation of the goods that constitute a good life, perfectionists tend to find them disappointing and accompanied by mysteries about how we ended up with that list and not another (cf. Haybron, 2019, 33). They recognise that the engagement with the goods on the list requires the exercise of important human capacities ( e.g. , rationality, creativity, morality, physical activity), but claim that objective list theories fail in providing a unifying justification or rationale for putting those particular goods together. For this reason, Gwen Bradford contends that objective lists can hardly qualify as theories stricto sensu (cf. 2017, 2). The perfectionist take on this matter is that what justifies the presence of each particular good on the list and what they share in common is the special relationship they maintain to human nature (cf. Bradford, 2015, 1). Instead of randomly and subjectively selected, the relevant human goods and
124 activities “flow naturally from the varied dimensions of human nature” (Haybron, 2019, 33). For example, perfectionists sanction the presence of knowledge and achievement on the list because they are instances of the exercise of theoretical and practical rationality, and rationality is a paramount human capacity, one that defines our nature qua human beings and agents. The perfectionist argument, thus, is that what ultimately justifies presence on the list (or what is prudentially good for humans), are those things whose exercise constitutes the development and enjoyment of our human nature as rational, social, and emotional beings. c. Human Nature: Ontology and History I will root my conception of human nature on Kraut’s developmentalism and what Macpherson upholds as the ontological foundation of developmental democracy. Both accounts owe a great deal, among others, to Aristotle, Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx and they are chiefly focused on determining what the constitutive human needs and capacities are and how these relate to what is good and bad for human beings. Let’s start by recalling a chief transversal element to the various transhumanist conceptions of human nature, namely that human nature is plastic, rather than a fixed trait. As we saw in chapter 1, Bostrom asserts that human nature is a “work-in-progress”, a “half-baked beginning” to be shaped according to our desires (cf. 2003a, 493). Elsewhere, he also states that “[w]hat we are is not a function solely of our DNA but also of our technological and social context”, meaning that human nature is “dynamic, partially human-made, and improvable” (2005a, 213). The Promethean conception also emphasises the idea that humans are designed to overcome any boundaries and to control nature primarily by seizing “control of our evolutionary future” (Stock, 2003, 2). Equally influential and widely shared is Andy Clark’s view of humans as toolmaking and tool-user animals. On this account, what defines us as human beings is our eternal drive to create, adapt, incorporate, and utilise nonbiological tools and structures. We are different from other organisms because of our distinctive ability to leverage our deep neural plasticity and thus integrate and reliably align our tools with it. What Clark is suggesting is that our minds are naturally inclined towards collaboration and the synthesis of ideas, implying that our cognitive capabilities are optimised for the merging of knowledge, skills, and resources (cf. 2003, 6-7). Plasticity is, thus, an enduring aspect of our human nature. And new technologies, while appearing novel, essentially amplify and highlight fundamental challenges that have always existed for humanity. Clark gives some examples: prosthetics and telepresence can be seen as modern versions of aids for mobility and communication, respectively, while cyberspace is viewed as another realm or environment to inhabit
125 (cf. 2003, 8). 64 Finally, some, like Savulescu, Foddy, and Clayton, argue that human nature is all about choosing to be better (cf. 2004, 670), suggesting that there is an essential drive to human perfectibility through the enhancement of our constitutive capacities. More recently, Gregory Kaebnick, writing on the status of human nature in the context of the gene editing debate, resumed the argument that “[h]uman nature is not fixed. It always takes form , and the form it takes is a function to some extent of human creativity […] Part of human nature is to engage in such creativity” (2019, 94). In other words, this essential human creativity explains why we constantly engage in the individual and social transformation of ourselves. Individually, as self-enhancing animals, we consciously act upon our nature seeking to change and make ourselves better, which means that we choose to be better; collectively, we put in place the social institutions that better direct and shape our human nature according to our conceptions of what we are, how we ought to be, and how we flourish qua human beings. 65 Before moving on, let’s just focus on the concept of perfectibility for a moment. Indeed, when considering the choice between the terms developmentalism and perfectionism, the concept of perfectibility naturally emerges as a relevant aspect to be discussed. Rousseau uses this notion to describe our distinctively essential human capacity to improve ourselves, to progress morally, intellectually, and socially over time. He writes that the faculty of perfecting oneself distinguishes us from all other animals and enables us to develop all our other capacities in succession (cf. Rousseau, 1997, 141). There was already a distinctively human feature that singularised us from other animals, namely freedom, the “property of being a free agent” (Rousseau, 1997, 141), understood as the capacity to transcend plain appetite-driven self-governance. Rousseau’s reasoning here concerning humans and animals is familiar to us already: “Nature alone does everything in the operations of the Beast, whereas man contributes to his operations in his capacity as a free agent” (1997, 140). Animals act conditioned by their instincts, but humans can choose how to act. Here, too, nature appears as determinacy, while 64 There is much to Clark’s work that would be interesting to explore here. A particular aspect I’d like to mention is how Clark’s thesis aligns well with Timothy Taylor’s idea of human beings as artificial apes. Clark’s thesis explores the idea that human cognition and reasoning emerge through intricate interactions between our material brains, physical bodies, and the complex cultural and technological environments we create. This highlights the interdependence between humans and our external framework, emphasising that our existence as thinking beings is intricately tied to the dynamic interaction between our biological, organic makeup (primarily our flesh) and the cultural and technological tools we utilise to act upon the world. Taylor’s thesis resonates with this idea in that our cognitive capabilities are deeply intertwined with the symbiotic relationship we have with our cultural and technological surroundings. The development of tools and technologies throughout human history, Taylor argues, has played a key role in shaping our cognitive abilities, social structures, and overall evolutionary trajectory. His argument can be summarised in the idea that the tools we create end up creating us (cf. 2010, 77). 65 For example, according to Marx and Engels, this institutional framework will necessarily have to involve the abolition of private property over the means of production and the emancipation of labour through the radical transformation of the structure of property relations. These conditions are essential for the complete and meaningful development of our human capacities.
126 human beings are essentially undetermined beings. 66 But if this understanding of free will is purely metaphysical, Rousseau’s understanding of perfectibility is compatible with the materialist science of his day. And both concepts are not opposite or working separately from each other; quite the contrary. Perfectibility requires and depends upon the exercise of our free will because our capacities as perfectible beings are exercised and developed when we freely decide to interact with the external world. Lee MacLean has argued that the notion of free will is fundamental to Rousseau so he can demonstrate that the problems or shortcomings of society are not caused by nature but result from the ill or negligent uses of human freedom (cf. 2013, 58). Hence, both our free will and perfectibility work towards the development and actualisation of all our other human capacities. There are significant parallels to be made between Rousseau’s idea of the perfectibility of human beings and the current aspirations to technologically change and enhance humanity. On Rousseau’s account, human beings are perfectible, we can change our nature over time. This actualisation of our nature is independent of our desires, and it also reveals our frailty and vulnerability. For example, due to ageing or disease, the things we have gained through our efforts and perfectibility may disappear. If we have the potential for progress, we are also captives of the potential for regression that’s inherent to our human condition. Consider the following passage from Rousseau: [w]hy is man alone liable to becoming imbecile? Is it not that he thus returns to his primitive state and that, whereas the Beast, which has acquired nothing and also has nothing to lose, always keeps its instinct, man again losing through old age or other accidents all that his perfectibility had made him acquire, thus relapses lower than the Beast himself? It would be sad for us to be forced to agree that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty, is the source of all of man’s mysteries; that is the faculty which, by dint of time, draws him out of that original condition in which he would spend tranquil and innocent days; that it is the faculty which, over the centuries, causing his enlightenment and his errors, his vices and his virtues to bloom, eventually makes him his own and Nature’s tyrant (1997, 141). Once we lose all that we have acquired by means of our capacity for self-improvement ( e.g. , skills, knowledge, possessions) we fall into a state lower than that of a beast. This existential human vulnerability 66 As we saw, this is a fundamental transhumanist claim. We are in a perpetual struggle to progressively become more and more undetermined beings, and this is understood as freedom from nature. Recall Hauskeller’s words: “it is not the human as he or she is today who is undetermined, but it is the radically enhanced human who is, or will be, and it is precisely the expected decrease in determinacy that makes him an enhanced human, that is, a better human” (2016, 78).
133 life vary from time to time as well as from place to place, and our creative self-realisation is only attained if we have sufficient developmental power to engage with those particular things. This is how we understand the connection between the historical and ontological dimensions: it is labour that serves as the link between the ontological category of creativity and the social and historical particular picture of the person as a creator. This also clarifies the idea of labour as an “individuating agent”, or the agent of creation (cf. Lindsay, 1996, 68): it is through labour as a means of self-creation that the agent comes to gain a particular identity of his own when he engages with the world. Jules Townshend, one of Macpherson’s sharpest critics, argues that this is an important philosophical move on the conception of the agent. Both essence and existence display an interdependent relation according to which “[d]ialectically, how human beings exist may tell us something about their essence, and conversely, what is essential about a human being […] may tell us something about human existence” (2000, 113). So, to arrive at a second building block of a possible developmental conception of human nature, we have to accept the following premise: although we have a fixed and unchanging essential trait that defines us qua human beings ( i.e. , creativity), its realisation becomes contingent upon the particular socio-historical material relations on which it acts. Macpherson addresses this problem directly: [i]f you start from the assumption that there is a permanent unchanging nature of man, then you are forced to subsume all changes, such as increases of desires under his innate nature. If you drop that assumption, and assume instead that man changes his nature by changing his relation to other men and the material environment, the difficulty disappears (1973, 34). In commenting on how our values are historically contingent and why this fact doesn’t discredit them, Jonathan Glover concluded that the ultimate question is always about what we think is worth preserving by critically reflecting and, if needed, by changing our values (2006, 97). We can say something quite similar about Macpherson’s developmental account. The ontological assumptions at work in Macpherson’s writings, and especially his developmental ontology, are a “complex combination of fact and value” (Hansen, 2015, 120). As Hansen notes, although labour comes in the form of empirical observations about the nature of human beings, it is intrinsically linked to value concepts and the idea not that human beings behave in certain ways, but that the realisation of their potential (their essence) can only be attained by a particular behaviour. This means that ontological value postulates can be discarded and replaced by new ones as new value judgments about what is possible and desirable emerge. With these, new conceptions of what it means to be human
134 emerge as well (cf. 2015, 120). The question Macpherson is asking us from the beginning is whether the ontological value postulates of human beings as essentially desirous creatures, consumers, and appropriators of utilities is worth preserving, or whether we can find a morally preferable concept of the human being. It is a fact that Macpherson offers little support in favour of a justification for the validity of ontological postulates. His use of ontology is almost purely methodological. There is no objective verification concerning their epistemological validity nor is it claimed that they can be proven. The ultimate justification for the reliance in favour of ontology is, as Lindsay remarked, that ontology, like morality, is but a conviction that cannot be empirically or logically provable (cf. 1996, 18). Macpherson relies more on the test of time and on a sort of reflective equilibrium to defend his postulate. First, he claims that the idea of creative purposive action belongs to a philosophical and humanist tradition of thought that goes as far back as Aristotle and is championed by Millian ethical liberalism, which Macpherson espouses. The same doesn’t happen with possessive individualism, which is a modern creation. This holds little, if any, scientific significance. But there is a second justification for the validity of ontological value postulates. The value of the alternative idea of creative purposive action lies in the appeal to our own intuitions, judgement, and deliberation concerning what we understand to be acceptable and coherent principles and values that can guide our actions. It asks us to revise our conceptions at the light of this new concept. Ultimately, and because Macpherson is still limiting himself to the bounds of liberal democracy and to the two competing, self-excluding ontologies within it, his reliance on ontology is as thin as possible for the reason that he wages on what he believes to be a morally preferable concept to ground a democratic theory. On this account, Macpherson is only inviting us to accept what we already know about ourselves and what we think is worth preserving the most about our nature. This happened from Modernity on, wherein an image of human nature as infinitely acquisitive emerged alongside the ascent of possessive market society. This perception underwent alterations with the emergence of a developmental image of human nature, serving as a response to capitalism and as a precondition for liberal democracy (cf. Hansen, 2015, 119). An important dimension of labour that these considerations bring forth is its social nature, to which I’ve been referring to along with its historical nature. The technological and social contexts are structuring dimensions of what we are. In fact, to claim that labour has a social dimension is nothing more than affirming that our human capacities are inseparable of their social milieu. The exercise and development of our capacities that come in the form of a conscious exertion of our energy and skill normally require social, institutional, environmental, and cultural conditions to take place. For example, the social and
135 affective capacity for friendship and love requires, first, personal abilities for interacting and engaging with others and sustaining meaningful relationships. Second, it requires conditions such as free time, access to public and shared spaces like libraries, theatres, and cafes, to sporting facilities, or to cultural events like fairs and concerts. Ferdman calls these open-minded spaces 69 and environments (cf. 2019). Not only do they provide us with opportunities for various activities, but also encourage and stimulate us to engage with others in a shared and relational way. These spaces are central for “the creation of a social and cultural ethos that takes human flourishing and perfection to be central to human life” (Ferdman, 2019, 13). So, on this case as in others, social interaction is vital to the proper exercise and development of our capacities ( e.g. , capacities for aesthetic creation and contemplation, religious experience, labour in the strict sense of transforming what is given by nature, physical and mental activity, etc.). This is one of the fundamental arguments against those, like Virginia Held and Steven Lukes, charging Macpherson’s view of being atomist and excessively individualistic. It is quite the contrary, however. It is in the societal roots of labour that Macpherson insists the most throughout his writings on the nature of our capacities. His argument asserts that, in contrast to the negative ontological presumption of humans as mere consumers and infinite appropriators, human beings as developers of their capacities rely on a community of equals for their personal and social flourishing. It is through this community that they can actively participate in the mutually transformative process of self-development. In his The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (1977b), Macpherson clearly affirms that “the enjoyment and development of one’s capacities is to be done for the most part in conjunction with others, in some relation of community” (99), thus emphasising the social nature of labour. Later, in 1985, in The Rise and Fall of Economic Justice , he writes that it needs to be recognised “that the individual can be fully human only as a member of a community” (33). So, once labour is included within the person, we have a fairly holistic understanding of the person since 69 As opposed to single-minded spaces, which are usually designed by planners and entrepreneurs with few other prospects in mind other than their functionality and transience. These spaces are usually used by people who are in a hurry and include spaces like the “the government centre, medical centre, cultural centre, shopping centre, the department store or supermarket, the highway, the greenbelt” (Ferdman, 2019, 13). This depiction of single-minded spaces shares much with Marc Augé’s “non-places” ( non-lieu , as opposed to anthropological places, or lieu anthropologique ), which people regard as having little significance to them and where they remain anonymous agents (cf. Augé, 2009). An archaeology of place would probably show that Augé’s notion of non-places depends on several cultural and generational factors. Shopping malls, for example, are the utmost example of non-places because of their standardised architecture, consumer-oriented atmosphere, and temporary nature of social interactions within them. However, for many young people today, shopping malls have become meaningful places. Marco Lazzari has shown that, at least in Italy, “the shopping mall is a meeting place of choice” for adolescents, where they “gather not by chance, nor only in order to buy something, but also to socialize, meet friends and have fun” (2012, 13). And yet, in non-places, individuals are constrained to predefined paths, our movements, gestures, and bodily action are constantly and permanently subject to surveillance and control. Often, access is controlled, identity checks are required, there are different clearance levels, and some people are excluded from access or liable to expulsion. The very essence of these non-places perfectly aligns with the lifestyles of what some have called hypermodernity (cf. Lipovetsky & Charles, 2005), which exhibits a growing fixation on panoptic control and security, accompanied by an incessant need for haste and the hyper acceleration of life (cf. Harmansah, 2009).
136 this embedment movement contemplates the social relations that make labour possible (cf. Lindsay, 1996, 27; cf. Townshend, 2000, 136-143). To focus again on labour’s social nature, it is worth looking at how the term changes over time in Macpherson’s writings. Macpherson’s lexicon often confuses us: his vocabulary is distinctive, and a sign of what Townshend called a “Marxist by stealth” in his own time and place (cf. 2000, 12). For example, the Marxist notions of capitalist production relations, productive forces, and exploitation are rebranded as possessive market society, transfer of powers, extractive power, and so on, thus adapting them and making them more appealing to a Western, liberal audience during the Cold War period (cf. Townshend, 2000, 12). The notion of labour is equally puzzling in its definition, as is clear by now. Throughout his writings, the concept of “labour” encompasses multiple potential definitions. For example, at times it is defined as exertion of energy and skills, or simply as our human capacities, which resembles Hobbes’ materialism. But it is also defined as “the capacity for materially productive labour” (1973, 54), or the capacity for transforming what is given by nature. But Macpherson’s intention in providing such a comprehensive definition of labour is of course to claim that we are much more than what a (negative) possessive ontology claims we are. In his positive ontology, the notion of labour aims at de-commodifying the idea of labour, at showing that it is our market mentality that conceives it as something estranged from us and towards which we have some distance ( i.e. , labour is not me ). The self-reflexive understanding of labour aims at stressing that our creative existence needs to be under our rational and conscious control if we are to flourish. A fundamental prerequisite here is that we need to have control over the means of life and labour if we are to achieve any flourishing. It is from this background that I hope to derive the general principle that we ought to have access to sufficient developmental power and that human enhancement technologies can be instrumentally valuable to that end. To insist in the idea of control over our labour might tempt us to look at labour as a possession over which we exert some degree of authority and have the freedom to apportion as we see fit. The apparent distance between the subject and the object might be sympathetic to the idea of commodification. However, the idea of control points towards a different direction, as I believe Macpherson’s theory of property entails. To realise our potentialities, we need to have access to the means and opportunities to flourish as the type of beings we are. The determinant factor here, according to Macpherson, but also following Ferdman’s idea of a perfectionist basic structure (that I would rename as a developmental basic structure), is that the property relations that are in place enable us to do and create freely, consciously, and harmoniously as members of a community of equals. The idea, then, is to
137 look at control neither as a process of withdrawal from social relations (which is impossible, as we don’t exist as pre-social beings to make such a decision (cf. Lindsay, 1996, 80, n. 85)), nor to understand labour as a commodity. Instead, we need to focus on the social nature of labour, which provides the contextual framework that helps explaining how our social constitution comes to occur. The notion of control must be comprehended as control over the means through which our capacities are exercised, as labour itself is integral to our being, encompassing our energy and skill. Moreover, labour is an inherent aspect that precedes our existence, as our essence inherently presupposes it. There is a further fundamental aspect of labour’s social nature worth mentioning here. At some point, Macpherson declares that “essentially human capacities are only those which can be exercised without denying or impeding other human being’s exercise of theirs” (1973, 55). Positively, this is the same as saying not only that all labour is socially derived, but also that capacities that have a contentious nature are not to be counted among our human capacities. This is a strong claim and one of vital importance. According to Macpherson, a fundamental postulate of a fully democratic theory needs to state that “the rights and freedoms men need in order to be fully human are not mutually destructive” (1973, 55). So, morally justifiable rights on the context of an egalitarian theory can only be those that allow all other individuals to have the same bundle of rights, and those rights are enough for a person to be fully human (cf. Macpherson, 1973, 55). One of the purposes of this position is to dispense with subjectivity: the rights one has and needs to be fully human are something different from the rights one might think he needs to that same end. The talk of rights, however, is better understood if we talk of power and, again, of the ultimate conditions of our control over the means of labour. The power that a democratic society needs to increment is our developmental power, which is the one we need to secure our human needs. Our developmental power is the ability we have to use and develop the capacities whose use and development is non-contentious or non-exclusive, since these non-destructive capacities are all those we need to be fully human. As Townshend notes, Macpherson’s resolution not to include inhuman, contentious capacities among his list is only natural since “this offered the possibility of some human being flourishing at other’s expense, thereby not maximising the potentials of everyone” (2000, 142). 70 More decisively, I believe this displays the importance of what we think is worth preserving about what we know about our own nature and the type of beings we are. When confronted with the question of what our essential human capacities might be, and why one should increment his developmental 70 Below, I’ll focus more closely on why I prefer the notion of incrementing instead of that of maximising. Macpherson insists on the idea of maximising our developmental power, but I believe we should prefer the idea of small, gradual increments to our power, especially in the context of biomedical interventions that have a disruptive potential to change our capacities radically and irreversibly. Hence, it is advisable to take precautionary steps to avoid pursuing swift and hasty maximisations, opting instead for gradual and reasonable increments of our power.
138 power, it is morally preferable to choose to act upon those capacities that we recognise as important to ourselves and that don’t misrepresent what we are or the type of beings we judge we ought to be. These judgments intertwine complex factual and evaluative elements that shape our understanding of both our essence and existence. Whether it is possible to single out one single capacity is debatable, as are the motives and reasons to submit to interventions. Hence, in chapter 5, I suggest that engaging in a thorough counselling process becomes imperative to grasp the true nature of enhancements, to comprehend their personal significance, and to ascertain how they can meaningfully contribute to our overall well-being. At the core of this process lies our reflection regarding our social nature, as well as our thorough comprehension of our capacities and how they interrelate with our holistic flourishing. All this reinforces the social nature of our human capacities and the idea that we are socially constituted individuals. 71 It also stresses the nature of the relation between the moral and ethical framework under which we should consider our capacities and the role a democratic society is to play on this framework. Regarding the first, Macpherson’s starting point is the liberal democratic assumption that society should aim at the flourishing of its citizens. From here stems “a minimal ethical requirement of a democratic society” (Townshend, 2000, 142) guided by a principle of reciprocal freedom that recognises a universal and equal right of all individuals to harmoniously exercise and develop their capacities. As long as this ethical framework is in place, there are no constraints on how individuals are to use and develop their capacities. 72 Regarding the role of a democratic society and the problem of impediments to flourishing, I’ll look at it in the next section. As a result, labour appears as a broadly defined concept that is best captured when we conceive it as an integral part of the person and as being identified with the full range of our essential capacities. But we should also think of it as more than the harmonious set of human capacities whose exercise, development, and enjoyment can only be conceived in the context of egalitarian social relations. It is labour’s social nature that ultimately enables us to understand human beings as both historically and socially constituted beings whose flourishing a democratic society is responsible, as a positive agent and a kind of society, to promote. 71 This is an idea that Macpherson gladly promoted on his later writings and in the context of his debate with critics like Alasdair MacIntyre and Steven Lukes (cf. 1977b; cf. 1985). 72 Of course, such a claim is not without problems. Macpherson’s main guiding assumption here is that the market or possessive mentality is already discarded at this time. It seems overly optimistic to rule any social interference with individual autonomy if that assumption doesn’t hold (cf. Townshend, 2000, 157, n. 32).
139 d. Impediments to Flourishing So far, this picture is helpful in explaining what it might be that Bostrom is hinting at when he claims that human nature is a “work-in-progress” and a “half-baked beginning” that we can actively shape. Our creative agency acts upon the external world, and we transform ourselves as we transform the world through our labour, which explains why what we are is also a function of our technological and social context (cf. Bostrom, 2005a, 213). In this way, we are in part human-made and improvable beings and, following Kaebnick, it is our human nature that sets us in the process of permanently transforming ourselves. Should this be the case, we have to agree with Macpherson when he states that in this dynamic relation, technology assists ontology (cf. 1973, 37). It is the historically and socially contingent nature of the process of labour that explains how human nature is partly “human-baked” and open to permanent change. Labour is, truly, the ultimate creative and transformative agent. Given the picture of humans as creative agents that flourish through the exercise, development, and enjoyment of their characteristically human capacities, it is correct to point out, as Daniel Haybron does, that “[i]t would not be quite accurate to say that the person’s nature serves as a fixed point, as it may well evolve significantly over time” (2019, 33). This, however, requires some precision: our purposive creative agency is a fixed point, but our other capacities are permanently actualised as we purposefully engage with the world through labour ( i.e. , it is our labour, as exertion of energies or as capacities that is actualised). As Haybron also acknowledges regarding the particular value of authenticity, what’s vital with the use of gene editing is that whatever changes are made to human nature is that these stay true to one’s nature and don’t diminish our flourishing (cf. Haybron, 2019, 33). In other words, regarding the significance of authenticity, it is crucial to consider that when we use gene editing technologies, any alterations made must remain aligned with our true essence as purposive creative agents and should not undermine or diminish our overall ability to flourish. This implies that we should exercise utmost caution to prevent interventions from diminishing our developmental power. The emphasis is placed on ensuring that the modifications made possible through gene editing, are in harmony with our authentic nature and do not compromise our flourishing. The convergence on the non-fixity and sociohistorically contingent character of human nature is one of the few aspects uniting Macpherson with enhancement advocates. There is another important dimension in which they converge, but its scope is not as far reaching as the former. Macpherson is a techno-optimist; his work is pervaded by the idea that the human relationship towards the world is predominantly one of unceasing techno-scientific domination of nature. But when it comes to considering what factors hamper human flourishing, Macpherson focuses entirely on socially constructed and variable impediments such as the lack of access to the means of life (food, shelter, clothing, basic education, and
140 medical care, etc.) and labour (capital and material resources) and the proper social and relational conditions to exert one’s labour. Unlike enhancement advocates who argue that internal impediments like the lack of self-esteem, disabilities, diseases, ageing, and death are some of the paramount factors obstructing our flourishing, Macpherson claims that internal impediments are secondary and engendered by external impediments, so priority should be given to the removal of the latter (cf. 1973, 76). Like liberal humanists, he adheres to the idea of human progress, rational thinking, and that the human condition is improvable through the ameliorating of the socioeconomic and cultural conditions, namely through the use of the technological apparatus by means of which it is possible to overcome scarcity. On his account, this conquest of nature translates almost exclusively the idea that socially variable external impediments such as the lack of material resources are the sole hampering factors obstructing human flourishing. Unsurprisingly, such an account proves too narrow in countering the encumbering effects of internal impediments. The claim that all internal impediments were first external before being internalised is argumentatively meagre. Cognitive disabilities and inheritable disabilities, a poor memory, lack of concentration and empathy, or the emotional dispositions defining one’s behaviour challenge Macpherson’s claim. It is not clear the extent to which the lack of access to material resources motivates one’s bad impulse control, lack of empathy, or general mood. Moreover, Macpherson fails to address the question of how (qualitatively and quantitatively) material resources can account for the development of capacities such as our rational understanding and moral judgment, the emotional activities of friendship and love, and religious experience, which are the ones he himself defines as characteristic of our nature as human beings (cf. Parekh, 1982, 70). While it is reasonable to agree that a number of internal impediments have in fact been internalised ( e.g. , low self-esteem, lack of confidence, unsettled traumas, cognitive biases, deep-rooted habits, and patterns of thinking), it seems equally reasonable to maintain that a significant number of these impediments have no relation to prior external impediments. But the neglect regarding internal impediments doesn’t place constraints on Macpherson’s belief that the technological transformation of the external world is worth pursuing. In fact, it is mandatory that we do so since it is through this permanent process that our creative agency is actualised and the limits to its realisation are reduced. What Macpherson questions concerning this project is simply that it needs to be re-oriented within a developmental democratic model of a power-maximising society instead of a capitalist model guided by a power-extracting imperative that impedes universal and unconditional access to the means of life and labour (cf. 1973, 120-140). His reflections on this proceed to the complete restructuring of the right of property that we need not develop here. At this point, what’s worth questioning is whether Macpherson’s theoretical framework and conceptual tools can help us push the argument
141 further to understand whether human enhancement technologies can promote human flourishing by removing internal impediments. If a case for their use to such an end can be successfully made, at the light of the developmental requirements exposed above, it is difficult to object to their use because of the normative priority flourishing enjoys. Let’s take a step back. On Macpherson’s terms, the good society is necessarily one that is a “positive agent in the development of capacities” (1973, 57); it is, necessarily, a power-maximising society or a developmental democratic society with the role of assisting individuals maximising their developmental power or their de facto ability to enjoy and develop human capacities (cf. 1973, 41-42). Democracy as a kind of society needs to be the medium through which our human capacities are most fully exercised and developed. On Macpherson’s account, a good society is one that maximises our developmental power in the sense that, not being responsible for what our capacities are, it is responsible for creating the conditions favourable to the use, development, and enjoyment of those capacities (cf. Lindsay, 1996, 55). Here, and as I briefly mentioned above, I want to challenge the idea of maximisation and opt for the idea of incrementing our developmental power. To do so amounts to make small, incremental changes conducive to the improvement of one’s capacities in ways that, if possible, are not too disruptive towards our agency. Instead of arguing for the maximisation of one’s developmental power so that one can reach his highest level of potential, as a perfectionist account would recommend, the developmental account benefits from this gradual, moderate approach. There are two main reasons in its favour. First, to maximise one’s capacities may require a significant degree of effort, sacrifice, and risk, and could also entail that one ought to undergo a complex, costly, and disruptive programme of radical human enhancement to achieve such a goal. Predictably, “making radical changes to our bodies undoubtedly will have surprising side-effects” (Allhoff et al ., 2010, 15). Such an approach is, of course, in line with those versions of transhumanism that advocate for a radical transformation of the human condition, espousing various different forms of the proactionary principle. Among the most relevant challenges here, it can be expected that radical transformations would have a significant impact on our sense of identity and authenticity. Developmentalism departs from these approaches. Second, it is most likely that for this radical transformation of the human condition to occur, a significant distributive effort must be made to ensure that every individual is guaranteed the access to the necessary resources required to maximise his capacities. While some of the most basic enhancement technologies, like pills or minor cosmetic surgeries, might be cheap, easily performed, and widely accessible, some genetic services, like gene editing, will involve a high financial burden to the clients and the state due to their technical and scientific
142 complexity and the quantity and quality of resources required (cf. Singer, 2009, 285). Developmentalism recommends the use of highly complex and expensive interventions, but to argue for the incrementing of our developmental power does not necessarily require the same level of resource allocation and effort as maximisation. While the incremental approach will require some level of resource control and allocation to safeguard universal access to interventions, maximisation would predictably require significant distributive efforts to the greatest maximal enhancement outcomes for everyone. Take gene editing as an example. The incremental approach focuses on gradual, moderate improvements with the aim of incrementing the developmental power of the person up to a certain threshold that corresponds to the level at which a satisfactory engagement with the components of flourishing is possible. It is not about choosing the best possible genes to live the “best life” possible, but to enable the person to live a flourishing life, as we saw above. The maximisation approach would be more favourable to prioritise costly and radically transformative interventions to achieve the goal of maximum growth, whereas the incremental approach considers not only the feasibility and sustainability of resource allocation in the pursuit of interventions, but also their potential disruptive effects to our agency, and this is why I’ll focus on developmental counselling as a collaborative reflective process involving counsellors and patients in a holistic evaluation of what enhancements are and what their importance is for one’s overall life. In this way, Macpherson’s argument is that each person needs to have control over her capacities, since conscious and rational control over one’s capacities, as well as them being non-contentious, is what makes them truly human (cf. Macpherson, 1973, 56). The idea behind this rationale if, of course, to claim that socially variable impediments are the ones that should concern the social and political theorist the most because our power to develop our capacities is, above all, a social and political problem. While this is accurate, the scope of Macpherson’s argument is limited because it remains too focused on external impediments (lack of access to the means of life and labour) and doesn’t take internal impediments into account as part of the necessary means to live a flourishing life. 73 There’s little controversy around the claim that, to varying degrees, inheritable genetic disorders, illnesses, and disabilities reduce our developmental power by not allowing us to exercise, develop, and enjoy our capacities as we otherwise would. For instance, deafness and blindness impair human flourishing in this way by preventing us from navigating safely through the world and by precluding us 73 Naturally, Macpherson was still working within the political landscape of the twentieth century, which was profoundly influenced by the pre-eminence of economic matters. However, biopolitics is a fundamental new area in the political landscape of the twenty-first century (cf. Hughes, 2004, 55). In its 2003 report, The President's Council on Bioethics (cf. 2003) already acknowledged the social and political importance of this debate. Of course, the academic and scientific discussion on these topics was not new at the beginning of this century ( e.g. , cf. Glover, 1984). Speculation about the challenges raised by the pervasiveness of NBIC technologies were also always present in our cultural milieu, as in science fiction literature or cinema, for example.
245 Finally, modelling can also be effectively employed by the counselling team as an operative strategy to tailor the patient’s behaviour through emulation. Here, the counsellor himself serves as a role model, displaying certain behaviours that patients can emulate and integrate into their own lives. For instance, in observing the counsellors’ behaviours, responses, or techniques during counselling sessions and in specific situations, such as communicating complex ideas and concepts, handling and navigating difficult problems and ethical dilemmas, or managing feelings, patients can also “develop or improve their own such abilities” (Gordon, 2023, 73). In addition to observation, patients mentally retain the behaviours observed and try to recall the chief aspects of the modelled behaviour or skill, which they will reproduce and practise in their daily lives, outside of the counselling environment. By providing feedback and guidance as well as asking specific questions and making certain suggestions, counsellors encourage the practice of the modelled behaviour and reinforce continued development. Suppose that counsellors ask a patient the following question: “If you were to go through the desired intervention, how do you envision it changing you as a creative agent?”. Depending on the patient’s goals, he can answer that the intervention will enable him to establish more meaningful relationships with others, or to boost his physical, cognitive, or moral capacities so he can be healthier, more productive at work, or be a better person. Ultimately, the idea here is also that the patient can establish and explore the connections between the envisioned modifications resulting from the intervention and their potential multiple effects across his lifespan. The goal is to model the process of exploring these connections and expecting patients to reproduce these procedures to have the necessary understanding, so in the end enhanced consent is obtained. h. Conclusion Taken together, the five strategies just examined can help us better understand the role developmental counselling teams are expected to play to obtain enhanced consent from patients who voluntarily plan to submit to interventions, either for themselves or for their future children. I followed much of Gordon’s recent work on this, but there are substantial differences between her very specific positive proposal and my developmental account. Gordon makes a case in favour of enhancements starting from an analysis of six bioconservative arguments against the project of human enhancement that she claims are insufficient to justify why enhancements are morally impermissible. Even so, she acknowledges that each of these arguments gives us six different desiderata that can impose important constraints on an enhancement project. I adopt a different approach in my developmental account. The basic building block of human nature developmentalism is the ethical conception of human beings as creative purposive
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