Remaking Humans: The New Utopians Versus a Truly Human Future

The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity ^ | August 29, 2003 | C. Ben Mitchell and John F. Kilner

[First Amendment]

It's like they haven't read "Brave New World".

Proof that if someone WANTS to be in illusion/darkness, nothing can help them. Bright spotlights, millions of books and facts, civilization crashing around them, nothing can make them see the truth if they don't want to see it.

And what causes the lack of desire to see the truth? The fear that God might exist, after all.

[hocndoc]

You'd think these guys would have read Heinlein, Spider Robison, Bujold, and the hundreds of good science fiction writers who have explored the interface of humans, eugenics, and machine.

I'm confused that the vision of these men looks more like William Gibson.

[First Amendment]

I don't read sci fi any more. Who is Gibson and what is his viewpoint?

[hocndoc]

I've been reading up more on the transhumanists, and I realize that most of my views about the movement is colored by those who write *about* them and my readings from science fiction than what the transhumanists actually say, themselves. I haven't read enough of their works, unless Neil Stephensen counts, to be sure I understand them. I think I'm right about the obvious endpoints of the interventions they propose, but I'm willing to consider that I may have a skewed viewpoint (prejudice).

William Gibson wrote "Idoru" and "Virtual Light." The world is a meld of reality -cheap human life and over crowding - and the 'net life - more spacious, but (like the real life of the characters) hazardous with political and criminal elements that can kill. There's also a strong undercurrent of drug abuse and addiction.

I like Lois McMaster Bujold and her Miles series, Alan Foster Dean and Flix and Flinx and , most of Heinlein so much better. There's always David Weber and Honor Harrington or the more grown-up version of Honor in Kristine Smith's heroine in "Code of Conduct" and that series. One good thing about all of these series is that each book is independent, not dependent on reading the whole series, in sequence.)If you have a week or two, I recommend Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. The writing's excellent, but the content is like 2 or 3 of Clancy's books - there's a lot of words to read.


Spider Robison wrote a great - but very unsettling - short story or novelette that's available online (try a Google search) called "God is an Iron." His heroine is addicted to direct stimulation of the pleasure center of the brain by electricity and a surgical implant.

Ok, enough editorializing ;)

[pianomikey]

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

[pianomikey]

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

[edsheppa]

Gattaca is a great movie about a possible consequence to genegeneering.

I think you missed the point of the movie.

[edsheppa]

It's a shame to see "pro-life" people opposed to making people better off.

[gore3000]

It's a shame to see "pro-life" people opposed to making people better off.

It's a shame to see some want to turn people into guinea pigs.

[betty boop]

A man can choose to live other than as a man, that is the nature of volition; but a man cannot live contrary to his nature and be successful, and will fail to achieve the purpose of his life, which is his enjoyment of it.

I can basically agree with your analysis, Hank, up to the point where you seem to suggest that success and enjoyment are the measures of right living. You say the autonomist "discovers" moral truths. I can even agree with that, up to a point. But you do not say anything about the source or nature of the moral truths being discovered.

This is a good discussion. I hope you'll reprise something like your take here on the "What Is Man?" thread when it goes up (hopefully tonight).

Thanks so much for writing!

[MHGinTN]

If and when the thread, 'What Is Man', is posted at FR, please ping me

[OWK]

I can basically agree with your analysis, Hank, up to the point where you seem to suggest that success and enjoyment are the measures of right living.

You need to be a little careful here BB, and not put words in his mouth.

He said only that enjoyment of life is the purpose of it. Not that success and enjoyment are the measures of right living.

And he's right about that.

To extend his remarks, each and every human being's premeditated actions are driven by his desire to please himself as he sees fit (i.e., act in advancement of his values, however good or corrupt they may be). Even actions to which we traditionally ascribe greater purpose (altruistic ones for example) are really subject to the same rules when analyzed honestly.

Men seek to please their gods, or care for the sick, or love their families, or smoke a rock of crack, or engage in promiscuity, or contribute to charity, or even be debaucherous drunken stumblebums... because it pleases them to do so moreso than the other alternatives they weighed in the process of choosing the path they did.

It is man's purpose.

And each wishes to act pursuant to purpose (however good or corrupt the values that determine what pleases him may be).

And the only way that ALL may act pursuant to purpose, is for each abstain from initiated force or fraud.

Man may claim the ability to act by force, subjugating others to his own pursuit of happiness if he wishes.

But he may not do so rightfully.

His ability to claim the moral authority to act by right, is contingent upon recognizing the equal claim in others.

Failure to recognize the equal claim in others, voids any claim one might make to the moral authority to act pursuant to purpose one's self.

[PatrickHenry]

From this site: The Philosophy of Aristotle:

Ethics, for Aristotle, has the purpose of establishing what is the end that man, according to his nature, must attain, and also from what source his happiness comes.

The end of man, as for every being, according to the doctrine established in metaphysics, is the realization of the form, the attainment of the perfection due to his nature.

Now man is a rational animal, and hence his end will be the attainment of wisdom. The actions which bring one to the realization of this perfection of living according to reason are called virtues. Virtue, for Aristotle, is not the end, but the means to attain perfection, and consists in a conscious action fulfilled according to reason.

In purely secular terms it's difficult to top that.

[tpaine]

Man may claim the ability to act by force, subjugating others to his own pursuit of happiness if he wishes.
But he may not do so rightfully.
-owk-

If you get any comments on this concept, [big if] - from this crowd, they will be on the order of:

-- God can subjugate us, rightfully, and Gods will be done.

[Hank Kerchief]

In your post 50, you imply that certain political distinctions which apply to adult humans should not apply to the "newly born."

Have you changed your former belief that humans become persons at birth?

You are trying to make something where there is nothing. Do you think new-borns should be allowed to vote? Here is a more practical one (because it is actually happening). Do you think children should be allowed to "sue" their parents for spanking them, or that the state should be allowed to prosecute parents who use corporeal punishment as abusers? Certainly if an adult did to another adult what parents do to their children it would be considered a crime. Unborn, newly born, and all children must be treated differently than adults.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

In your definitions, when is the human life to be considered a human being?

By whom and in what context?

Hank

[OWK]

Unborn, newly born, and all children must be treated differently than adults.

Of course.

While still human (and therefore rights-bearing entities) they do not have the faculties necessary to comprehend the administration of their own rights.

Their rights must therefore be advocated for them by a steward (traditionally a parent or guardian) until such time (if ever) as they develop the capacity to advocate those rights themselves.

[MHGinTN]

Yes, PH, "Now man is a rational animal, and hence his end will be the attainment of wisdom." We might ask 'what makes man (the animal) a rational animal. Is it an awareness not achieved by the other animals? I would hope that is but the start of a wise definition.

The parameters of wisdom are what we're discussing here, in one form or another. Is it wisdom to denegrate (read dehumanize) some classes of individual human beings in order to 'adjust' the physical and mental status of another chosen class or classes? It is not unwise to research the mechanics of the mechanism, to achieve greater understanding of how the mechanism functions. Even to improve on the functioning is not unwise. The measure of wisdom in these fields under discussion ought be calculated according to the means by which this knowledge is accomplished, in additrion to calculating according to the desired results. If we achieve greater knowledge by cannibalizing the lesser/younger, have we taken a wise path based on our 'rational' status, our greater awareness? I think not.

[MHGinTN]

Since you choose to dodge rather than be forthright, I shall leave you to your hollow prattle.

[MHGinTN]

"His ability to claim the moral authority to act by right, is contingent upon recognizing the equal claim in others." Well said, OWK! It is also the road to wisdom in that others offer their recognition and acceptance willingly rather than under duress. Duress is below the level of rational and wise, if not needed as a survival behavior.