Transhumanist Resources
Texts- Places for Transhumanists to Pursue Graduate Studies in Bioethics
Occasionally transhumanist students ask us what professors, departments or programs are interested in or conducive to research on transhumanism.
Since transhumanism is quite interdisciplinary, the answer is that many people in academe are interested in or sympathetic to one aspect or another of the transhumanist agenda, if not to “transhumanism.”
For instance, departments of computer science are very tolerant of investigations of artificial intelligence and neuroprosthetics, while many departments of biological sciences would be congenial for research on aging mechanisms or cognitive function. Although scientists are often anxious not to be perceived as “kooky” or as advocating pseudoscience, there is probably much less resistance or hostility to someone having transhumanist views in the natural sciences than in the social sciences and humanities.
Even the transhumanist pursuing a graduate degree in engineering or the information or biological sciences, however, will eventually want to engage with their school’s bioethicists, philosophers and health policy scholars. There, the reception to “transhumanism,” or even discussion of “human enhancement,” can often be dismissive.
Here are some of our initial thoughts about where to find scholars and programs in bioethics and philosophy that are supportive of transhumanist enquiries, even if they aren’t explicitly transhumanist. Of course, transhumanists can also learn a lot in programs that are hostile to transhumanism, so long as the scholars are talking about the issues and willing to support student work in the topic. There is no school or department I know of in which transhumanists are the majority. You might as well find the rare scholar(s) with some sympathies for transhumanism to work with since you will be able to find bioconservative critics without much effort.
- James J. Hughes Ph.D., Secretary, WTA
- Legacy Systems and Functional Cyborgization of Humans
© 1995 Alexander Chislenko
This is my short essay suggesting parallels between technological enhancements of humans and current work on “legacy” information systems. The essay is aimed at a [relatively] wide audience. When I have more time, I will turn it into a more serious work on general evolution of functional structures, exosomatic personality architectures and other such things.
- Principia Cybernetica: Super- and/or Meta-being(s)
[Node to be completed]
The integration of human beings will proceed in another dimension than that of human culture, a dimension of depth. We conceive of a realization of cybernetic immortality by means of very advanced human-machine systems, where the border between the organic (brain) and the artificially organic or electronic media (computer) becomes irrelevant. Such hybrid organisms would survive not so much through the biological material of their bodies, but through their cybernetic organization, which may be embodied in a combination of organic tissues, electronic networks, or other media. With communication through the direct connection of nervous systems to machines and to each other, the death of any particular biological component of the system would no longer imply the death of the whole system. Such metasystems will be evolutionary selective, in that they will have advantages for survival in an evolving environment. This is a cybernetic way for an individual human person to achieve immortality.
- Principia Cybernetica: Cybernetic Immortality
The successes of science make it possible for us to raise the banner of cybernetic immortality. The idea is that the human being is, in the last analysis, a certain form of organization of matter. This is a very sophisticated organization, which includes a high multilevel hierarchy of control. What we call our soul, or our consciousness, is associated with the highest level of this control hierarchy. This organization can survive a partial --- perhaps, even a complete --- change of the material from which it is built.
- The Transhumanist FAQ v2.1 (2003)
Frequently Asked Questions about Transhumanism, by Nick Bostrom
- 2005 Haldane Award Winner: Brian Fritz for “Genes, Memes, and Gender”
Genes, Memes, and Gender: Transhumanist Anthropology and Cultural Evolution
by Brian L. Fritz
ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades the study of gender in human culture has become a requisite topic within the field of anthropology. Gender is of fundamental importance to understanding cultural and biological evolution in humans. However, theoretical perspectives within anthropology, and the social sciences in general, have diverged from the physical sciences in regard to the importance of culture verses genetics in human evolution. New anthropological theories of cultural and biological co-evolution provide some promise of bridging this divide. Recognition of the dual inheritance of culture and genetics is essential to understanding gender. Our understanding of the evolution of gender and gender identities may provide the best analogue for exploring the cultural implications of possible human biological divergence within a Transhumanist future.
- Transhumanist Values - Nick Bostrom
- Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(1) April 2005
- Erich Fromm’s “Credo” (1962)
Erich Fromm. “Credo” in Beyond the Chains of Illusions. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1962, pp. 174-182.
- Extropian Principles 3.0
The Extropy Institute has been codifying its Extropian Principles since the early 1990s. A full set of versions 1.0-3.0 are available here.
- Syllabus: The Ethics and Policy of New Technologies
Fall, 2002 - Yale University
Taught by: Dr. Bonnie Kaplan (Yale School of Medicine’s Center for Medical Informatics, Department of Anesthesiology)
Dr. Nick Bostrom (Department of Philosophy)BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Using readings, films, and discussions, this course provides an
interdisciplinary examination of the ethical and policy questions
surrounding new or anticipated future technologies, including
nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, cyborg
technologies, surveillance, robotics, and psychopharmacology.< - “Transhumanism” by Julian Huxley (1957)
In New Bottles for New Wine, London: Chatto & Windus, 1957, pp. 13-17
Reprinted with permission of PFD, the rights-holder.
- 2004 Haldane Award Paper: The Posthuman Condition by Kip Werking
The Posthuman Condition
Kip Werking
The University Of Texas At Austin
Homepage: http://www.ece.utexas.com/~werking
“There is no evil I have to accept because ‘there’s nothing I can do about it’. There is no abused child, no oppressed peasant, no starving beggar, no crack-addicted infant, no cancer patient, literally no one that I cannot look squarely in the eye. I’m working to save everybody, heal the planet, solve all the problems of the world.”
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Singularitarian Principles 1.0
“How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as if through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?”
— Nietzsche, Thus Spoke ZarathustraI. INTRODUCTION
This article is my effort to identify the next two anthropocentric beliefs to die. One would not expect Copernicus’s defeat of geocentricism and Darwin’s defeat of special Creation to be the last comforting illusions that science will expose. There is an important difference, however, between the third and fourth anthropocentric conceits that I describe. Whereas the transhumanist community has largely abandoned, to their advantage, the third conceit, I will argue that even transhumanists have ignored the fourth.My attempt at exposing the fourth conceit shows what transhumanism cannot do. In particular, I will show that while future technologies may remedy part of the human condition, they cannot remedy a remaining part, which I will call the posthuman condition. My article is, in this respect, similar to the critiques by Dreyfus, Searle, and Penrose, which claim to demonstrate what artificial intelligence cannot, even in principle, do. My critique of transhumanism is relevantly different from those, however, because my arguments attempt to undermine, rather than erect, distinctions between human beings and the world.
While preparing this article I considered other possible anthropocentric conceits. One notable possibility, which the transhumanist community has perhaps not abandoned, is the threat that future technologies pose to personal identity. For example, James Hughes considers this possibility in a recent column at the “Betterhumans” webzine. Hughes described the threats that future technologies pose to our sense of personhood. He came to believe, as Hume and Buddha did, that there is no self.
- “The New Biology” by Winston L. Duke. August 1972. REASON magazine. (pp. 4-11)
Winston L. Duke received his M.B.A. from Harvard University, and also has a B.S. in Physics and an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1972 he was employed by Commonwealth Edison Company, Chicago.
This essay anticipates many of the arguments of transhumanism: “A clear definition of humanity in terms of mental acuity, rather than physical appearance, should be encouraged....Countless practical benefits will accrue to mankind if genetic engineering is allowed to proliferate, but none so dramatic and meaningful as the promise of perpetual life...Fortunately for us neither dictatorship nor death is inevitable. While it is true that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been the scourge of days gone by, that conquest, famine, war and death rode rampant then and have stubbornly reappeared in recent years, they must not be considered perpetual parts of man’s destiny. Rationality, when allowed to flourish, can stymie these equestrians.”