Abstract
This chapter reviews the state of the ongoing debate between dystopic and liberal posthumanists on enhancement technologies, with a closer look at the explicit and implicit arguments advanced by each regarding some specific technologies like preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the use of psychopharmaceuticals for mood and cognitive enhancement, and genetic engineering. In broad terms, dystopic posthumanism subscribes to the moral claim that human enhancement is intrinsically wrong, and the political claim that it should be banned or restricted. Liberal posthumanism, conversely, holds that enhancement is neither intrinsically wrong nor unusually dangerous, and should generally be permitted. On both sides, the arguments that support these claims abound, and can be grouped into three categories: social, technical and methodological arguments.
Beyond these relatively commensurable terms, however, the debate between dystopic and liberal posthumanism is an ethical dispute at the core of which lie incommensurable views of human nature. While this is more obvious in the case of the dystopic posthumanist critique, which proceeds from the idea that technological intervention for enhancement purposes poses a threat to human nature, it is also the case that liberal posthumanism invokes human nature in its support of enhancement. Only, rather than extolling human nature as a fixed, stable and ‘given’ essence, it draws on a conception of the human as an evolving, dynamic and imperfect organism, who, by nature, aspires towards self-improvement.
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Notes
- 1.
In a recent Reader’s Digest article Julian Savulescu (2012), for example, provocatively declares that “it’s our duty to have designer babies”.
- 2.
This argument is not only upheld by liberal posthumanists. Franklin and Roberts argue that what PGD involves from “up close” may be very different from what it seems from afar. Accounts of couples using PDG, they claim, are far removed from fashionable brave new world and designer baby anxieties. Rather, many of the couples they spoke with arrived at PGD as a last resort, following painfully traumatic experiences of watching young children die of terminal genetic disorders or long histories of repeated miscarriages: “Far from seeking offspring with genes for blond hair, blue eyes, [and] an imposing stature” they write, “…these parents, or would-be parents, simply want a child who will survive” (2006: 17–18).
- 3.
Habermas’ The Future of Human Nature, with an original subtitle in German of “On the Way to a Liberal Eugenics?”, is a specific contribution to this argument. For obvious historical reasons, the discussion on new biotechnologies in Germany, especially prenatal “selection” and euthanasia for severely disabled newborn infants, is particularly sensitive. And Germany has taken a very conservative attitude towards biotech practices that may be associated with eugenics, such as banning PGD.
- 4.
It is of some interest that the opponents of enhancement are the ones who call for a much more thorough analytical discussion of the complex underpinnings of the concept of coercion – not its advocates, for whom it plays such a pivotal role in the moral justification of enhancement.
- 5.
The suggestion that coercion and autonomy are much more complex notions than is often allowed for in pro-enhancement theories, and that the distinction between the old and the new eugenics is far from clear, is made more convincingly in my opinion by the philosopher and bioethicist Rob Sparrow. In “A Not-so-New Eugenics: Harris and Savulescu on Human Enhancement” (2011), he explores the tension in the works of these theorists between a consequentialist approach – the claim that we should act to increase the amount of welfare in the world (using enhancements) – and their libertarian conclusions – the right of individuals to do as they please. These clash he argues, insofar as ultimately the logic of human enhancement will compel people to enhance their children, and to enhance them according to a standard defined by socially shaped ideals of health and beauty. He writes:
If parents acted on the obligation that Harris and Savulescu champion, then the result would be a world eerily similar to that dreamed of by previous generations of eugenicists. According to their accounts, in any given society parents should all aim to have the same sort of child, where the nature of this “best baby” is properly sensitive to the prevailing bigotry of the times. Harris and Savulescu’s philosophy also implies that right thinking people should engage in social campaigns to influence the reproductive decision-making of other citizens and encourage them to live up to their procreative obligations. (2011: 39).
- 6.
Katherine Hayles makes this claim in her article “Computing the Human” (2005).
- 7.
Noel Castree (2001) discusses these three types of nature at some length.
- 8.
This includes the recognition that an attempt to define what it means to rationalize correctly before even approaching the assessment of a new technology, is crucial. One of the institute’s four research programs, for example, is called “applied epistemology and rationality”. Under this description we find:
How can we become wiser? Answering this question involves looking closely at the way we judge importance and make decisions. It requires close attention to methodology and methodological innovation, particularly ways to improve probabilistic estimation. The shortcomings of extant methodologies is a chief reason why progress on understanding big picture questions for humanity has been slow … Becoming fluent in the language of uncertainty and probability is an important prerequisite for meaningful engagement with many of the problems we work on. (See http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research)
- 9.
The charge of genetic determinism is often raised here. Why would we be free to revise our socialization but not our genetic enhancement? And although Habermas is well aware of this objection, his arguments against it are not very clear, focusing on the “intention” governing the genetic intervention (124, n. 54).
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Sharon, T. (2014). The Human Enhancement Debate: For, Against and from Human Nature. In: Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7554-1_3
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