Abstract
With its cybernetic and optimistic vision of the future of mankind, characterised by the birth of a human-machine hybrid no longer subject to pain or chronic illness, the post-human theoretical perspective is flawed in both scientific and philosophical terms. To deny suffering is to deny human life itself, and yet, though the human dream of defeating pain and death has so far been systematically thwarted, it has not faded. The post-human approach proposes to go beyond human biological boundaries with the help of science and technology, reprogramming nature to resemble a human-robot hybrid. However, the artificial supports that this approach relies on (such as microchips) still cannot negate death and pain, which are constituent parts of biological life. The negation of pain would mean the negation of the human being in the philosophical sense. An alternative approach, which we shall refer to as Neo-Vitruvian or neo-humanist, emphasises the scientific and technical skills of human beings, who can improve human lives and defeat disease and pain by using their knowledge of the secrets of nature. Armed with this knowledge, today post-modern human beings are able to control nature with the same rules by which nature creates the world. In this way, today’s human beings, like Leonardo Da Vinci in the Renaissance, use science to assume the role of the Universal Creator, without however manipulating nature as proposed by the post-humanists.
Highlights
The entry for British philosopher David Pearce on the website of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies states that the objective of post-humanism is to eliminate the suffering of human beings
The philosopher Nick Bostrom, one of the key theoretical proponents of trans-humanism and president of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), affirms that trans-humanism and post-humanism represent a new paradigm for the future of human beings, bringing together scientists and researchers from diverse scientific fields along with philosophers and humanists, all with the same objective: to alter and improve human biology and prolong human existence
To sum up, according to the advocates of post-humanism, while remaining within the bounds of biological evolution, the equilibrium between cultural and biological components in human beings is to be modified rapidly and radically, and this will require a reassessment of the role so far played by human biology, which has hitherto marked the limit of human cultural evolution
Summary
Trans-humanists uphold the moral right to use new technologies to expand our physical and intellectual capabilities and increase the level of control over our lives and bodies They aspire to personal intellectual growth that far exceeds the biological limitations of human beings. To sum up, according to the advocates of post-humanism, while remaining within the bounds of biological evolution, the equilibrium between cultural and biological components in human beings is to be modified rapidly and radically, and this will require a reassessment of the role so far played by human biology, which has hitherto marked the limit of human cultural evolution This vision of the post-human condition has a number of flaws on the philosophical level and entails biological distortions that are unacceptable in ethical terms.
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