"We may expect that a series of shocks of the type of Darwinism will be given to established opinions on all sorts of subjects. One cannot suggest in detail what these shocks will be, but since the opinions on which they will impinge are deep-seated and irrational, they will come upon us and our descendants with the same air of presumption and indecency with which the view that we are descended from monkeys came to our grandfathers. ..(Most) profound will be the effect of the practical applications of biology." JBS Haldane, "Daedalus, or Science and the Future"
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Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights
May 26-28, 2006
Stanford University Law School, Stanford, California
George Dvorsky is the Deputy-Editor of Betterhumans, co-founder and president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association, and the producer of Sentient Developments blog and podcast. Mr. Dvorsky served as conference chair for TransVision 2004, the WTA’s annual conference.
All Together Now: Developmental and ethical considerations for biologically uplifting non-human animals
As the potential for enhancement technologies migrates from the theoretical to the practical, a difficult and important decision will be imposed upon human civilization, namely the issue as to whether or not we are morally obligated to biologically enhance non-human animals and bring them along with us into advanced postbiological existence. There will be no middle road that we can take; humanity will either have to leave animals in their current state of nature or bring as many sentient creatures along into a posthuman future. A strong case can be made that life and civilizations on Earth have already been following this general tendency and that animal uplift will be a logical and reasonable developmental stage along this continuum of progress. But tendency does not imply right; more properly, given the potential expanse of legal personhood status to other sentient species, it will follow that what is good and desirable for Homo sapiens will also be good and desirable for other sapient species. If it can be shown that enhancement and postbiological existence is good and desirable for humans, and conversely that ongoing existence in a Darwinian state of nature is inherently undesirable, then we can assume that we have both the moral imperative and consent to uplift non-human animals.
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