Transhumanism I: Philosophy

The Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest English-language encyclopaedia, defines the social and philosophical movement of Transhumanism as:

A philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.

To help us grasp the ideas and ethics of Transhumanist ideology, I'll use an example from David DeGrazia, a Bioethicist and Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University. Professor DeGrazia imagines a woman called Marina, who has insecurities and anxieties and is generally unhappy with herself. Marina wants to take Prozac (Fluoxetine) because she's heard that it can make people more confident. Marina, essentially, wants to use a drug (biotechnology) to go beyond her limitations. DeGrazia asks if this is okay, if she's still the same person, is this acceptable, but what he's really trying to ask is what defines Marina? Marina has decided that these anxieties and insecurities are not a core part of herself, that they're a disorder, and that they're not a part of who she is: something to be fixed. One could say that these are feelings that Marina doesn't identify with, and that she wants to use technology to remove them. DeGrazia says that this means that the human condition, then, is not perfect and that the human identity is something that we construct, rather than something we're born with. What a revolutionary and totally hypothetical scenario!

The term Transhumanism was popularised by British evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist (uh oh) Julian Huxley in the 1950s, who saw that so many people are forced to live worse lives than they could, and that so many people - if not all - fail to reach their full potential. Huxley believed that with the correct combination of science and logic, huge modernist issues like poverty and world hunger could be solved. In his 1957 book ‘Transhumanism,’ Huxley says:

It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution —appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can’t refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.

Huxley’s work is rooted in a real and genuine desire to make the world a better place, it’s hopeful. Published in 1957, how couldn’t it be? The economy still existed, queer people hadn’t been invented, and Ike was in the White House, all was gay – and that still meant happy. But Huxley was a eugenicist. Unsurprisingly, even after WW2, there were a lot of people who condemned Nazi eugenics, but argued it could’ve worked if only it wasn’t for all the evil bits. I have to say, there’s an inspiring idealism and optimism to Huxley’s (and much of early Transhumanist) work, but there’s also something naïve and sinister about the language – comparing evolution (and therefore life) to a business, something you can be fired from if you don’t contribute.

A big question that persists in the minds of Transhumanist thought and their detractors is: who decides what is an enhancement, and what is a limitation? The Transhumanist answer is normally that it’s a personal choice, that if Marina decides her anxieties limit her, she can enhance herself. But when it comes to society, when it comes to technology and advancement, things can seem like a choice, but in reality, be compulsory. For example, one doesn’t need to have an internet connection, but good luck applying for a job without one. One doesn’t need health insurance, but good luck staying alive. One doesn’t need a permanent address, but good luck doing, well, anything. I think the reason people are scared of Transhumanism, the reason people are scared, then, of technology – is because people, in reality, are scared of change.

So, let’s take a dive into the technology that changes humanity. We in academia like to think of technology as essentially neutral at its core. Sure, technology can have positive and negative effects, and it might be really important who controls that technology – but at its core, technology is just a tool for human use, for better or for worse. Guns don’t kill people, people do. But some philosophers have argued that technology can have built-in values that we don’t realise. Langdon Winner, Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and political theorist, argues that architect Robert Moses’ designs for overpasses in New York. Allegedly, Moses intentionally built the overpasses too low for buses to get under, and since buses were often used by low-income people of colour at the time, the overpasses were a mechanism to keep certain parts of the city segregated. Whilst that story may be inaccurate, it certainly proposes an interesting idea. Don Idhe, formerly a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and winner of the 2013 Golden Eurydice Award for outstanding contributions to biophilosophy, says that technology can open or close possibilities, it’s not about its function or who controls it, but that technology can provide a ‘framework for action.’ Assuming the overpass allegory is true, we could say that the overpass shaped the society around it according to the values of its designer, Robert Moses. Alternatively, we could pose that the overpass created a framework for inaction in segregation, and a framework for segregation to thrive. We could even take this idea one step further, and suggest that technology creates a framework for certain subjects (people) to exist in society.

Consider modern contraception, a form of biotechnology, which enables a class of people to make a choice. Suddenly, the old way of doing things – where women are forced to give birth and bring life into the world uncontrollably – becomes one choice. The modern feminist subject, who takes control of her body by making choices then, is enabled by technology.

For example, Robert E. Smith is an expert in A.I., technologist and Senior Research Fellow in Computer Science at University College London – he argues in his (very good) book, Rage Inside the Machine, that social media is constructed in a way that causes its users to appear in a more negative view to drive engagement and make more money from advertising. In other words, social media creates a framework for negativity to prevail in online spaces, in order to drive profits. For another example, Heather Widdows, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, where she specialises in feminist philosophy, bioethics, and global ethics. She argues in her book, Perfect Me, that plastic surgery (medical technology) and beauty technology creates societal pressure to become a woman that wouldn’t have been possible a few decades ago. In other words, beauty technology creates a framework for women to become a more conventionally attractive version of themselves, but this also creates a society which expects this new beauty standard for women – just because that possibility has come to exist in the cultural consciousness. I’d like to add that as surgical, endocrine, and psychological options open up for transgender folk, there develops another standard for trans people to become a version of themselves that would’ve been impossible to conceive in the 2000s. Some would say that a technology like testosterone blockers, which has only just become a widely available technology for trans women and non-binary folk, enhances the user – making them happier, smarter, kinder. So, I’ll hazard to guess that we’ve grasped some of the ways that technology can open and close doors, and sometimes make some parts of society more or less accessible – but how exactly does it do that?

Now, let’s talk about Martin Heidegger. Some of the more learned members of this audience may know him. Heidegger was a German philosopher renowned for his contributions to phenomenology, existentialism, and [REDACTED]. Sorry, I meant his [REDACTED]. Well, I’m sure some of you know what I mean, but if not it’s going to be even more exciting for you when you find out the third and primary thing about Heidegger, in the next part. Anyways, as I mentioned, Heidegger was known for his work in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, which was especially notable in his works on the philosophy of science and technology. Phenomenology might look like a tricky word, but it’s defined by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as:

The study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, it's being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

That’s a great definition, Stanford, but a little highbrow. Essentially, phenomenology is about focusing on the first-person experience of a person, what you actually experience rather than what theory says you should. I think the best way of explaining it is to imagine a cleanroom. In this cleanroom is a square pillar, in the centre, and another object – say a book – on one side of the pillar. As you take a walk around the pillar, there are times when you can see the book, and times when you can’t. The only constant here is that you’re never able to see the book in its entirety from all angles, without moving. There is no single moment when the book is visible from more than one angle. However, you experience the book as one complete object that is continually present – even when you can’t see the other sides of the book, you know that they’re there. In addition, you experience the object that is the book – not just a lump of paper, card, and ink but an object with a prescribed function. Maybe you also perceive qualities of the book: cheap, ugly, expensive, pretty, useless, useful. Here, we’ve learned something interesting – we don’t experience this world as a stream of inputs but rather a collage of objects with values and functions and reasons for existing. Our brains merely collect the inputs and mash them together to create a coherent experience, one full of assumptions and hypotheses. In his (very boring) book Ideas, Edmund Husserl – German philosopher, mathematician, and perpetual Girlboss – puts it like this:

This world is not there for me as a mere world of facts and affairs, but, with the same immediacy, as a world of values, a world of goods, a practical world. Without further effort on my part, I find the things before me furnished not only with the qualities that benefit their positive nature, but with the value-characters such as beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, pleasant and unpleasant, and so forth. Things in their immediacy stand there as objects to be used. The ‘table’ with its ‘books,’ the ‘glass to drink from,’ the ‘vase,’ the ‘piano,’ and so forth.

He continues:

The same considerations apply of course just as well to the men and beasts in my surroundings as to ‘mere things.’ They are my ‘friends’ or my ‘foes,’ my ‘servants’ or ‘superiors,’ ‘strangers’ and ‘relatives’ and so forth.

Heidegger, who was a student of Husserl, (who was a Jew – which is definitely unrelated and won't come back) wrote about the ways we experience the world when we use a piece of technology. His most famous example was a hammer. He wrote that when one uses a hammer, you don’t even think about the hammer, but the nail. The hammer almost disappears, and one focuses on the task at hand, the nail. The hammer, therefore, is merely a tool that one uses to accomplish a task. Another especially applicable example would be a keyboard – as you get proficient at typing the keyboard disappears and you focus on the words appearing on the screen – you focus on the task of typing rather than the tool of the keyboard. Then, it is only when the tool – keyboard – breaks, and the task – typing – is no longer available to be accomplished, that the taskmaster notices the tool – when it becomes visible as a piece of technology rather than just a medium by which we experience the world. Heidegger talks about technology withdrawing from our attention, whilst others say that technology becomes transparent – we experience not it, but we experience the world though it. He says that technology comes with its ‘own way of seeing.’

The French philosopher, Husserl fanboy, and magazine Editor Maurice Merleau-Ponty took this idea further. He imagines a woman who wears a long and delicate feather in her hat, and after walking around for a while she no longer needs to consider doorways when walking through – she incorporates the feather into her personal hitbox, her sense if who she is. The object acts as an extension of the woman. Some say that this experience is similar to driving a car, and that once one is reasonably proficient in driving, your sense of self shifts to incorporate the car when you’re driving, you just feel like the car is an extension of your human form. That’s the transparency of technology in action. Part of fun of technology is how this bodily extension changes our embodiment.

Now, I get it, philosophy is dumb, and all of this is ridiculous and theoretical anyways, but today I have a special treat for you all today: scientific evidence! Yes – you heard that right – real, cold, hard evidence from science to support my claims. Yes, genuine application! Wow!

Angelo Marativa, Professor of Psychobiology at the University of Milan-Bicocca; and Atushi Iriki, Professor and Chair of Cognitive Neurobiology at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, found that if you give a monkey a rake that it has to use to reach a piece of food, then the neurons in its brain that fire when there’s a visual stimulus near its hard start firing when there’s a stimulus near the end of the rake, too. To summarise, the monkey sees the rake as an extension of itself, not as a tool to use but as a part of itself. The monkey’s brain extends its self-perception from the monkey’s body to the tool. The (very cool, amazing, brilliant) French philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist Bruno Latour (who very sadly died in October of last year) said that when this happens, when the technology becomes transparent enough to be incorporated into our sense of self and our experience of the world is changed, a new compound entity is created. Then, the man with the hammer, the keyboard, is a new subject, with different thoughts and feelings and capabilities – that’s how constructions create structures for behaviour.

Rake plus Monkey, then, isn’t a Monkey with a rake, but a RakeMonkey! Makeup plus Girl, then, isn’t a Girl wearing makeup, but a MakeupGirl, and MakeupGirl experiences the world differently than a Girl, due to the assimilation of the technology – the makeup – into her identity. You think guns don’t kill people; people do. Well, you’re wrong, because gun plus Man isn’t Man with a gun, but instead GunMan, an entity with new ideas, possibilities, and opportunities.

So, if technology has the power to create new people, it makes sense to ask ethical questions. 

Ask: what kind of entities will this technology create? 

07/12/2022

by Frankie E.J. Robinson