Posted on 04/30/2009 12:15:27 PM PDT by steve-b
Reason Online's science correspondant Ronald Bailey has published a paper he presented at the Arizona State University's Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict Workshop on Transhumanism and the Future of Democracy last week.
The workshop addressed such questions like, how does the enhancement of human beings through biotechnology, information technology, and applied cognitive sciences affect our understandings of autonomy, personhood, responsibility and free will? And how much and what type of societal control should be exercised over the use of enhancement technologies?
In his paper, Bailey argues that a number of democratic transhumanists, including James Hughes, have "fetishized" democratic decision-making over the protection of minority rights. Instead, argues Bailey, transhumanism should be accepted as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine that should be tolerated in liberal societies by those who disagree with its goals.
Bailey, who is one of the movement's most vociferous advocates (although I doubt he'd refer to it as a "movement"), is largely arguing on behalf of the libertarian perspective. What he describes as 'democracy' in this context is any kind of collective or institutional interference against what he considers to be our civil liberties. In other words, Bailey feels that morphological, cognitive and reproductive liberties need to be protected against the reactionary masses and bureaucratic interference. "Technologies dealing with birth, death, and the meaning of life need protection from meddlingeven democratic meddlingby those who want to control them as a way to force their visions of right and wrong on the rest of us," writes Bailey, "One's fellow citizens shouldn't get to vote on with whom you have sex, what recreational drugs you ingest, what you read and watch on TV and so forth."
In addition, Bailey illustrates the problems of democratic authoritarianism by detailing some of the history of legal interference with reproductive rights. He also analyzes the various arguments used by opponents of human enhancement which they hope will sway a majority into essentially outlawing the transhumanist enterprise.
“The new version of Pascal’s Wager: Make friends with as many transhumanists as possible, in case one turns out be G-d.”
—Greg Egan
(I’m sticking to the old way BTW.)
I might agree with Bailey...and I might not. The problem is that it’s really hard to translate this article from Academic Pseudo-intellectual Gibberish, which I did not become conversant in while in school. I heard many profs and grad students who were fluent, but all I learned was how to say that the discussion topic showed “how man’s inhumanity to man transcends the class struggle.” It was enough to get by, similar to “uno cerveza por favor.”
And here I was thinking that Diogenes armed with a flashlight the size of the Bat-Signal couldn't find someone who believed that Shatner actually authored the TekWar novels....
I think that would be “una” ;-) If Bailey represents current thinking at Reason, th emagazine has been taken over by pod people.
Enlighten me with the source of your incredulity, please.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.