ETHICAL AND SOCIETAL IMPLICATIONS OF TRANSHUMANISM AND TECHNOLOGIES OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Abstract

This paper deals with the impact of transhumanism and the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on ethics and environment of the emerging society. Transhumanism, with its ideas of radical technological transformation of human being aiming at creating a new being – a hybrid form developed from the fusion of man and machine, with transhuman, as a transi-tional form, and posthuman, as the ultimate stage of the human-machine fusion, brings many controversies and radically affects the position and essence of the human being. The ethics of transhumanism is being manifested through the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which, based on new set of technologies, enables a radical transformation of the human being, requiring the necessity of a new approach to ethics, from the point of view of technological ethics. Technologies within the framework of 4IR bring new, hitherto unimagined challenges that require the entire global community to review current ethics and adopt new measures and tasks for the purpose of redefining, reorganizing and restructuring the relationship between humans and technologies, in the direction of preserving the stable, humanist, holistic sustainable development of human society.