We’re now in the first afternoon of the conference on the ethics of human enhancement, organized by the humanist Center for Inquiry and being held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. You can follow George’s thoughts over at Sentient Developments, and I’ll be appending him here as well.
Notes on the morning’s talks here
John Shook is presenting a paper on Philosophical Challenges for a Neuroscience of Moral Enhancement. First there are two kinds of moral enhancers, ones that guarantee that you do a moral act, or moral mood enhancers, enhancers that increase the propensity to act in compassionate, temperate or righteous ways. The test of either however is whether they increased the number or benefits of moral acts and good deeds. That presupposes coming up with a noncontroversial externalist or internalist standard of what are moral acts. The external standard is difficult since it requires some kind of consensus. In this direction research would rely on the most conventional moral standards. In other words the standard would be conformity to cultural expectations.
An internal standard would be easier, and more individualistic and liberal, however since it would merely require that the morally enhanced felt it was easier for them to live up to their own moral expectations. But if the moral enhancer changed what the enhanced felt was a moral act then we would have a problem. They might live up to a different moral standard, but not “their own.” If a moral enhancer made a meat-eater a vegetarian would it be judged a success? Would can imagine highly specific boutique moral enhancers that boost very specific moral sentiments. Do moral enhancers have to boost comprehensive character traits, or only tweak discrete behavioral tendencies. Is a drug that suppresses alcohol cravings or a desire for deviant porn a moral enhancers compared to something that make you a generally nice person.
Society will like develop both moral enhancers that make people conform to conventional standards, discretely and globally, as well as boutique heterodox internal moral enhancers that make people more moral according to their own idiosyncratic standards, again in discrete behaviors as well as in global traits.
Moral enhancers will enhance at different levels, moral cognition, moral sentiment, moral strength of will, and the efficacy of the individual conduct. In other words, enhancement might improve our ability to correctly understand what is right, to have the sentiment to want to do what is right and not what is wrong, the likelihood that we actually do what we know and feel it is right to do, and the efficacy of our moral behavior (our determination and strengths). Would it be sufficient just to give people the overwhelming desire to do the moral act without their having a conscious moral reflection on moral choices, and a sense that they could have chosen otherwise? Is it a moral act not to kill every person you meet, or only not to kill someone who you have a strong urge to kill and choose not to because it is wrong? Is not killing them a moral act if you have been a subject to the Clockwork Orange treatment and couldn’t kill them if you tried? Is it moral to make a charitable gift if you have been programmed to have to make charitable gifts or suffer depression?
All of this calls into question what a naturalistic understanding “free will” would be in universe of moral enhancement.
George’s notes on Shook’s talk here.
James Giordano is a neuroscientist and Director of the Center for Neurotechnology Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, author most recently of Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives in Neuroethics and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine. He is speaking on Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Strivings to Flourish.
Dr. Giordano thinks there is a lot of nonsense in the field of neuroscience and neuroethics, and that we know a lot less than people imagine. In particular people suffer from the “mechanistic paradox” (didn’t understand that) and the “neurotechnologic imperative,” the felt need to do everything we are capable of doing.
George’s notes on Giordano’s talk here.
IEET Affiliate Scholar Patrick Hopkins, a professor of religion and philosophy at Millsaps College, seems to be ubiquitous at these kinds of conferences, and always presents cutting edge and insightful work. Today he is speaking On the Variety of Future Human Bodies.
Patrick opens by noting that the desire for radically altered human bodies and minds are ancient aspirations. The posthuman was one of the first ideas of human culture, and there are no posthumans: we are the posthumans, the people capable of imagining ourselves as other than want we are. Our demigods have flying chariots, immunities to disease, invisibility, invulnerability, and merger with the divine. Our capacity to imagine ourselves as posthuman is a distinctive human capacity.
There are four ways that we historically and currently relate to the posthuman body.
Barbie bodies (i.e Makeover fantasies) Plastic and cosmetic surgery is one of the most popular ways to adopt a posthuman body. An example is Cindy Jackson, who has pursued hundreds of procedures in her “Barbie Project.”
Bacon Bodies (i.e. Humanistic Transhumanism) Francis Bacon championed the inductive scientific method, and saw the highest purpose of human knowledge being the modification of nature to human ends. Nature, for Bacon, is an innovator and we should follow her example. He wants us to get rid of disease and make our selves wealthier, healthier and happier. Bacon celebrated humanness and wanted to improve it.
Nietzsche Bodies (i.e. Mysanthropic Transhumanism) By contrasted Nietzsche despised the limitations and weakness of humanness and wanted to transcend it. They want a superhuman body and the power that comes with it.
Plato Bodies (i.e. Upload-oriented Transhumanism) For these folks embodiment is the problem, superhuman or not. They want to transcend embodiment by becoming pure spirit or information, completely free of mortality and the demands of flesh.
George’s notes on Giordano’s talk here.
Daniel Dillard is a doctoral student in religious history at Florida State. He is speaking on Thoreau, Embodiment, and the Nineteenth-Century Transformation of Humanity. Dillard argues that Thoreau’s naturalistic longing for a transformed human body prefigured Donna Haraway’s posthumanism. Thoreau desired a spiritual communion in and with nature; nature was intrinsically holy. He was reacting to the scientific descralization of nature and the body; he stood in awe of the body. (I didn’t really grok the argument. Thoreau seems like a paradigmatic example of the kind of romantic who would have ended up a Brave New World style bioconservative today instead of an embracer of cyborg transgression.)
Rosemarie Tong, a professor of at UNC-Charlotte, is one of the leading feminist bioethicists in the world. She is speaking on Feminist Reflections on Living Longer but Not Necessarily Better. Tong is skeptical about the possibility of doing away with frailty and death. 
She articulated a number of feminist anxieties and suspicions about how women might get lost in a transhumanist future, singling out John Harris as a leading transhumanist. (Unfortunately I was distracted by a site outage so I’ll post George’s observations instead.)
Betty Friedan’s perspective: rejects the idea that to be old is to be spent. She instead presents an integrating process, an opportunity to live properly and make peace with oneself. No longer feeling the need to outdo others, to prove onself, “what does it really matter?”
Cosmetic anti-aging is big business and demand is through the roof.
But there are also biogerontologists. (1) They’re working to prolong healthy lifespan; to extend quality of life until shortly before the moment of death, (2) They’re looking to increase human lifespan significantly.
One practice is caloric restriction, but it’s not likely to catch on. Another approach is in genetic manipulation.
A third group of biogerontologists are looking to halt the aging process altogether.
What do feminists have to say about this? But the problem of feminists is that they’re are so many varieties. But for the most part they support the notion that we should improve and extend quality of life into old age. We should also work to ensure that the marginalized have access to these interventions, namely poor people, black people and aboriginals.
Any life-extension breakthrough that is not accompanied by attempts to improve socio-economic disparities is deficient. Also risk that women’s caregiving responsibilities will only increase. Far fewer jobs for far fewer people. Perennial beauty trap.
Cosmetic surgery for women now has been so normalized that it’s expected. Women are asked, “Why don’t you want to look better?”
Tong makes the case that radical life extension may compel people to live indefinitely long lives for fear of what lies in the hereafter. [never heard that argument before]
Repudiation of the body is a repudiation of women. This especially holds true of women and childbirth. Thus, feminists are suspicious of transhumanism. They may “get lost in the translation.”
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