Editor’s Note

Abstract

The posthuman paradigm shift is closely connected to realizing that we have always been cyborgs. We are cybernetic organisms. The ancient Greek word Κυβερνη′της means helmsman, who is responsible for steering a ship. An organism is a living being, that is, an organized unit with metabolism that can move and reproduce independently. We are steered, controlled, or upgraded organisms. By upgrading us with language, our parents turn us into cyborgs. In education, the process of cyborgization continues. We become more and more complex controlled beings, who live in a permanent process of change, as there is a constant exchange with our environment.In addition to this, however, we must pay attention not only to the exchange between body and environment, but also to what our bodies are made of. In 2016, researchers from Canada and Israel convincingly demonstrated that our bodies contain numerous nonhuman cells, as in, bacteria and unicellular microbes. They are even said to make up the majority of our body cells. Human bodies are said to consist of more nonhuman cells than human cells. According to Ron Milo and Ron Sender of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and their colleague Shai Fuchs of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, for every 30 trillion human cells, that is, cells with our own DNA, there are 39 trillion nonhuman cells. So we are hybrids. It is therefore no longer plausible to assume that human beings consist of a material body and an immaterial soul. Instead, human beings are hybrid cyborgs who are in a permanent process of change.Such a revised self-image has significant ethical, social, and political implications. According to the German constitution, only human beings are entitled to dignity. Although animals are not things, they should legally be treated like things. This assessment still suggests the self-understanding that only we humans possess the divine spark here on earth and that we therefore differ substantially from all other living beings. Human beings as hybrid cyborgs differ merely gradually from other living beings. Consequently, a new basis for the status of persons has to be realized, that is, of entities that should be given special respect and special consideration. What could this be linked to? What is morally relevant? What criterion should we apply in this respect? The capacity to suffer seems to be a plausible criterion.Here, it is getting interesting. This seems to me a central issue for conflict between trans- and critical posthumanist philosophical approaches. A philosophically informed transhumanist can claim that the capacity to suffer is not an essential and ultimate criterion, as was the case with the divine spark, but it is a widely shared assessment (Sorgner 2018, 2019). The ability to suffer is a contingent criterion for personhood. However, it is a criterion that many people find convincing. By applying this criterion to the philosophical issue of realizing a moral status, it does lead to a new dualistic categorization of life, the good against the others, the bad, the monsters (Del Val and Sorgner 2011), because there are many different degrees of capacity for suffering. Eventually, it might even be possible to determine the capacity to suffer empirically. The criterion of suffering does not imply anthropocentrism, either, since animals can also suffer, but human embryos without brains and nervous systems do not possess this ability. Does such a reclassification of moral statuses lead to a new hierarchy of entities? This is indeed the case, but a world free of hierarchies cannot even be convincingly determined in theory. Every decision implies that one prefers one action over many other options for action. The demand for a nonhierarchical society is necessarily a performative self-contradiction. Making choices and having values and preferences do not imply that priorities have to have an eternal dualistic foundation. A criterion might merely represent a contingent nodal point, which was the case if personhood was related to the capacity of suffering. This would be a fictive account of personhood.Critical posthumanism is primarily concerned with thinking and acting in a nondualistic, nonessentialist, nonanthropocentric, and nonhierarchical manner. If this is the case, does it have to be the case that critical posthumanists reject the philosophical claim in favor of personhood for nonhuman animals? If this short analysis is plausible, the argument in favor of personhood for nonhuman animals implies a nondualistic, nonessentialist, and nonanthropocentric ethics. It does not lead to a nonhierarchical ethics, but demanding a nonhierarchical society is necessarily a performative self-contradiction. Do critical posthumanists have to reject such a fictive ethics of personhood?Most critical posthumanists argue in favor of a relationalist ethics instead. There seem to be various challenges related to a relational ethics. If someone’s social role is dependent on his or her relations, then this entity could be blamed, sanctioned, and punished just for being part of a set of relations and not for acts done by him- or herself. Is this not paternalistic? If a relationalist ethics is supposed to have legal relevance, does it not have to be the case that permanent total surveillance is needed for transforming the complex set of actions and interactions into a reliable legal decision-making process? How could a relationalist ethics be formulated so that it differs from the above-suggested revised concept of personhood concerning the aspect of nonduality? I wish to stress that this analysis and these questions are not meant in a polemical way, but they are aimed at promoting further exchanges concerning appropriate structures of a posthuman ethics. This is definitely a philosophical issue that demands further reflections and exchanges.What can be said already is that if we accepted the capacity to suffer as the decisive criterion for moral relevance, it would have numerous practical implications that contradict our current moral assessments. Yet, just because our feelings reject specific implications, it does not have to be the case that the implications are inappropriate. Our emotional reactions and intuitions are usually centrally determined by the culture in which we grew up, and in our case this culture is primarily influenced by Judeo-Christian traditions. Emotions can be changed. Different cultural conditions lead to different human imprints, a different type of conditioning; people with different imprints react differently to the same phenomena. This also becomes relevant when we are confronted with the current possibilities of human self-modification techniques, especially digitalization, the realization of human–machine interfaces, and gene technologies. All of these technologies offer opportunities to continue the process of cyborgization. We are not playing God, but doing what humans have always done: We are applying self-modification techniques.This again is the main focus of transhumanists. Transhumanism affirms the use of technologies for transcending our current boundaries, as this goes along with an increased likelihood of persons living a good life. Silicon-based transhumanism aims for the coming about of a posthuman as an uploaded mind. Carbon-based transhumanism regards it as more plausible that the posthuman is a member of a new species or still belongs to the human species but has at least one trait that goes significantly beyond the traits currently living humans possess. The most promising technologies for realizing these goals are gene technologies and upgrading persons by means of chips wandering into our bodies.In addition, metahumanism needs to be mentioned. Metahumanism represents an alternative approach to trans- and critical posthumanism. It lies beyond humanism, but also in between trans- and critical posthumanism. The ancient Greek meta means both “beyond” and “in between.” Metahumanism has some guiding nodal points, but can go along with a great variety of different philosophical stances. Metahumanistic nodal points are plurality, perspectivism, relationality, and a nondualistic ontology of permanent becoming in all respects.I particularly encourage you to submit papers on posthuman ethics and the aforementioned challenges. A second issue that deserves critical reflection is the implications of the coronavirus pandemic from a posthuman perspective. What do trans- and critical posthumanists have to contribute to our current state of crisis? A related issue is that of the meaning and relevance of data collection. This challenge is particularly relevant when it comes to the question of collecting data for promoting the human health span. How important is it to collect data? Who should be responsible for doing so? Should it become legally obligatory to collect digital data? So far, the dominant political responses are the following. In the United States, data are primarily being collected by big companies. They thereby become important political players. In China, digital data are being collected by the government. Their political structures are not reconcilable with the moral achievements of the Enlightenment. In Europe the attempt is made to focus on data protection. Instead of being able to use the data, here, the focus is on protecting privacy, making a comprehensive collection of digital data difficult. Can a proper increase of the human health span be realized on the basis of such a rigid data protection act? Do we not have to use the data in some way, but not in the ways which are being done so far, as all of them seem to be in conflict with a proper democratic way of using our digital data? Please share with us your reflections on all of these challenging posthuman issues.