We occupy a relatively confined place on or near the surface
of the planet Earth--which is one of the lesser planets of
our local solar system and is separated from the other
planets by much greater distances than any we can encounter
on the Earth's surface. Our solar system, in turn, occupies
a tiny place in a universe that contains uncountable
galaxies, each with many millions of stars. Yet, as physical
entities on our planet, we are special in one way: we are
extraordinarily complex beings. Our brains and nervous
systems contain billions of neurons, with a seemingly
unmappable intricacy of interconnections. They are also
intimately connected with the other parts of our bodies, and
all aspects of their functioning. Nothing else that we have
encountered to date matches our extreme organisational and
functional complexity, not even the most closely related
apes, whose big brains cannot compete with the highly
developed human cerebral cortex.
Most important, we are social and fully moral beings. Our
current knowledge of human evolution suggests that our
immediate precursors were already social animals. As Peter
Singer puts it, 'We were social before we were human.' (1)
From this, Singer argues that our evolutionary ancestors
must have restrained their behaviour towards each other to
the extent required for their societies to function; they
showed the beginnings of morality. But it is not that we
merely happen to exercise some restraint towards each other
as we pursue our goals; we also believe that this is the
rightway to act and to live. We perceive each other as
having moral worth, as being worthy of moral respect.
Taken at its broadest, to respect X is to perceive X as
providing a constraint on our individual self-interest or
spontaneity. We must take X into account before we act
unthinkingly, or as we think best for ourselves. And there
are some things that we feel it is just not morally right to
do to certain kinds of entities, or beings.
It is not only our fellow humans who command from us a
degree of moral respect. We share with our simian relatives,
and with many other animals, a vulnerability to physical
suffering--and this gives us all a certain moral status.
Even if it is justifiable to kill non-human animals, it is
not so justifiable to treat them cruelly. Of course, it is
frequently claimed that human beings have a special moral
worth beyond that of all other animals. But what makes us so
special? In answering this, many thinkers--most recently
Francis Fukuyama in his book Our Posthuman Future:
Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002)--have
attempted to identify important characteristics we possess
but that are not possessed by other animals (or are
possessed by them in some lesser degree).
While other animals possess a capacity for conscious
experience, we believe that few of them (perhaps just a few
mammalian species) are conscious of themselves as
individuals in anything like the way we are. None possesses
our deep, sometimes troubled, sometimes joyous, inner lives.
In addition, we have capacities for reason, choice, life
planning, caring, emotions, language, and the many practices
of cooperation, technology, tradition and art that comprise
our cultures--all to an extent that makes the equivalent
capacities of other animals, even chimpanzees and bonobos,
seem rudimentary.
By our DNA, then, we are identifiable as biologically
human. But it is the vulnerabilities and capacities that I
have tried to sketch out--I'll call them our morally
significant characteristics--that make us moral beings.
Non-human animals possess some morally significant
characteristics, but not the full range possessed by humans,
which entitle us to a distinctive level of moral respect,
kindness and consideration.
In addition, some of our morally significant
characteristics, such as our superior capacities for thought
and feeling, enable us to understand that moral constraints
apply to us. Our nature as moral beings consists in both our
special entitlement to moral respect and our capacity to
understand and assume moral burdens.
Problems arise, however, when we notice that there is an
incomplete congruity between our species membership and our
moral status. To begin with, our species membership alone is
not sufficient for us to have all of the morally significant
characteristics that I have identified. Not all biologically
or genetically human entities possess the capacities for
reason, choice and life planning, or an inner life of any
depth. All these things develop after conception. Indeed, a
human zygote or an early embryo does not even have a nervous
system; it cannot suffer physically or emotionally, as can a
chimpanzee or a kitten. Perhaps we owe a zygote or an embryo
some moral respect, but this is not obvious. Indeed, it is
notoriously controversial. Different intuitions about such
questions lead people to different beliefs about abortion,
the withdrawal of medical life support to those in
persistent vegetative states, and the fate of severely
disabled newborn babies--among other heated issues of social
policy.
Furthermore, biological humanity is not always necessary
for moral worth, and it need not be a prerequisite for moral
responsibility. In theory, at least, there could be fully
moral beings that are not human. I have already noted that
many non-human animals are capable of physical suffering,
and this alone entitles them to some moral respect. Indeed,
as every pet owner knows, at least some non-human animals
seem capable of emotions and emotional suffering. What's
more, their suffering cannot simply be ignored; it imposes
moral constraints on how we can treat them. Admittedly, no
non-human animals that we have encountered on Earth are
fully moral beings, but some great apes may come fairly
close. Even though they do not possess the full range of
relevant characteristics and cannot be taught moral
concepts, we must treat them with considerable moral
respect. Peter Singer has argued that we should extend the
most basic ethical and legal principles, such as a right to
life, a right not to be tortured, and a right not to be
imprisoned without due process, to all of the great apes.
Ultimately, we should try to close the perceived moral gap
between ourselves and all non-human animals. (2)
But what about intelligent entities that we may create in
future--or that we or our descendants may even become:
individuals with altered biology ('mutants'), or with bodies
that are partly organic, partly an assemblage of mechanical
and cybernetic devices ('cyborgs'), or with fully
non-biological 'brains' (so-called 'AIs'--'artificial
intelligences'--or, if they more or less resemble us in
gross morphology, 'androids')? I contend that all of these
might be fully moral beings, irrespective of whether they
are, in other ways, human.
To some extent, we are already mutants and cyborgs.
Through vaccination, we have used technology to enhance our
natural immunity to certain diseases. The contraceptive pill
alters the functioning of the female reproductive system by
artificial means. Moreover, we have blurred the boundaries
between our bodies and the inorganic world with contact
lenses, tooth fillings, implanted teeth, pacemakers,
prostheses and numerous surgical devices. I expect we will
go much further in transforming our biology--probably by
tweaking our genetic code--and in merging our bodies with
non-biological artefacts.
As we continue to do this, are we losing anything
valuable? That question will confront us increasingly as
technologies that can transform or invade our bodies become
more powerful and more pervasive. Similar issues have long
been dramatised and debated in science fiction novels, short
stories and movies--with their vivid representations of
mutants, cyborgs, AIs and androids, not to mention creatures
from other planets--but the debate is now spilling over into
the mainstream intellectual culture. It is finding its way
into books and articles by philosophers, bioethicists,
lawyers, cultural critics, and thinkers in many other
fields.
Some, though I think a minority, are strongly inclined to
embrace radical changes that will accelerate the processes
of biological mutation and 'cyborgisation'. There is now a
social and philosophical movement, transhumanism, which
specifically advocates the enhancement of human beings
through technological means, with goals that include all of
the following: an increased maximum lifespan; enhanced
levels of health; and improved physical and cognitive
abilities--all beyond the upper level of what, historically,
has been the spectrum of normal human functioning. Other
thinkers are hostile to such developments or more sceptical
about them.
In August 2003 I was privileged to attend a forum
entitled 'Debating the Future', organised in Toronto by a
local transhumanist group with the perhaps slightly
frightening name 'Betterhumans: I don't find the name all
that frightening, but it does have unwanted connotations of
the twentieth-century eugenics movement. Indeed, it is
difficult to discuss transhumanism at all without evoking
the spectre of discredited eugenic theories, though the two
have almost nothing in common. In particular, most
transhumanists are strongly opposed to state intervention in
reproductive decisions and family formation, and their
technological ambitions have nothing to do with racial
theorising about 'higher' and 'lower' categories of
humanity.
The event in Toronto was a debate between an eminent
Australian-Canadian bioethicist, Margaret Somerville, and an
equally eminent American bioethicist, James Hughes,
secretary of the World Transhumanist Association. They
argued about the ethical implications of human cloning,
radical life extension, nanotechnological engineering (the
fabrication of products by manipulation of individual
molecules or atoms) and the genetic engineering of human
beings. Events such as 'Debating the Future' will doubtless
become increasingly common. It's time to begin them in
Australia.
This forum was accompanied by two lengthy op-ed pieces,
written by Somerville and Hughes and published on the same
day in the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail. (3)
Somerville's piece displays a conservative approach to
technological innovation. Its main contention is that 'we
must have a profound respect for the natural--especially for
human nature itself'. Somerville fears that we are somehow
risking our humanity by going down a path of mutating
ourselves biologically, cybernetically and otherwise. In her
presentation in Toronto, she appeared to condemn cloning as
a method of reproduction partly on the basis that we must
show moral respect not only to 'the natural' but also, more
specifically, to the natural method of reproduction. If that
is the argument, it seems to presuppose that this method
could have some interest or value of its own that could be
harmed if we chose to reproduce in other ways, but that
assumption cannot be taken seriously.
Our status as fully moral beings is not in danger. In
principle, we might alter our biology so much that we are no
longer genetically Homo sapiens. Alternatively, or perhaps
in addition, we might enhance every part of our bodies with
nonbiological devices, from contact lenses that give us
better-than-normal eyesight to tiny robots in our
bloodstreams to assist in cell repair and combating
infection. Yet, however much we change, nobody is talking
about transforming us into mutants or cyborgs that are less
capable of reason, choice, plans, emotions and culture. That
would be 'dehumanising' in an easily understandable sense,
but no sane person would propose such a thing. If there is
any danger of that kind of dehumanisation happening
unintentionally, which I rather doubt, it is more likely to
come from the advertising industry than from the
transhumanist movement.
No matter how much we might be enhanced--and might be
able to avoid some sources of pain and disease--we would
still be capable of suffering. We might be able to live
longer, but we would eventually die, and death would still
be a misfortune as long as we remained attached to life by
our relationships, personal projects and individual
fascinations. However much we become mutants or cyborgs in
future decades, we will remain fully moral beings and should
treat each other just as we should treat fellow human beings
right now: with kindness and consideration--with humanity.
That does not mean that there are no dangers at all in
continuing to mutate and 'cyborgise' ourselves. Somerville
and others have raised one legitimate concern that must be
confronted in any discussion of technologies that have the
potential to enhance human abilities: the issue of social
justice. The fear is that the benefits of enhancement would
be distributed very unevenly, increasing the abilities, and
furthering the interests, only of those who are already
wealthy, powerful and well educated. This could increase
divisions within societies and between rich and poor
societies.
The issue of social justice must be thought through
before we go too far in changing ourselves, or in
establishing the rules by which it happens. Nonetheless, I
am reasonably comfortable with the prospect of human
enhancement, and with incremental changes to our bodies and
minds. We can deal with the problems, and nothing of deep
significance will be lost.
AIs and androids might be another matter. Is it possible,
even in principle, to create them in the sense that I have
defined: as entities that would be conscious and self-aware,
but with inorganic 'brains'? Could AIs and androids ever
have the status of fully moral beings? Philosophers of mind
continue to argue about whether our consciousness and
related mental characteristics could be computational
phenomena, or whether consciousness depends upon something
else in our chemistry and about the stuff of which we are
composed. (4) Though the issue is very far from settled, it
is arguable that our mental characteristics do not arise
from our chemical composition, but from our extremely
complex organisation and functioning. In principle, these
could be replicated by the functioning of sufficiently
powerful computer hardware.
Simulation, of course, is not the same as replication.
After all, a computer model of a tornado, however accurate
and detailed, does not possess the twister's ability to
uproot trees or toss around motor cars. However, David J.
Chalmers, a leading philosopher of mind, argues persuasively
that simulation is replication in the case of consciousness.
(5) He proposes that some properties, including mental
characteristics, are 'organisationally invariant' across
underlying systems, whether physical or computational. I am
attracted to this argument, since there seems to be no
reason for a mind to 'need' one underlying system rather
than another. It is not like the tornado, which needs air to
cause damage in the real world.
If this is all so, it has the dramatic implication that
we might be able to devise artificial, non-biological
intelligences that possess consciousness--and other
characteristics that, taken together, imply moral worth and
a capacity for moral understanding. In short, AIs and
androids would be non-biological entities--certainly not
biologically human--but they might be fully moral beings,
like ourselves. If they existed, we would owe them moral
respect, and demand that it be reciprocated.
No deep moral law is broken if we create such beings.
Indeed, they might enrich our lives and our culture. Yet a
cautionary note seems in order. There is more than a grain
of wisdom in the admittedly lurid Hollywood movies that deal
with futuristic, non-human intelligences. Blade Runner
(1982), for example, depicts conflict between humans and the
android beings known as 'replicants'. Interestingly, the
line between humans and replicants often seems to be
blurred. The anti-hero, Deckard, seems replicant-like in
some of his attitudes and actions (many fans of the movie
will argue at length that he must be a replicant);
conversely, the main replicant characters, Batty, Rachel and
Pris, seem almost human. In Blade Runner, what matters most
is not biological humanity but the complex of
characteristics that give us our moral status, including the
ability to suffer and to yearn, as Batty and the other
replicants certainly do.
Nonetheless, humans and replicants stand opposed in the
near-future world of Blade Runner. In the real world,
creating conscious, purposive beings that are radically
different from and discontinuous with ourselves would seem a
risky step. These beings might have ambitions diametrically
opposed to our own, leading to a situation in which they
became our competitors and enemies. Hollywood moviemakers
are not merely being melodramatic when they show this in the
Terminator series (1984 and after) or The Matrix (1999) and
its inevitable sequels (and the related Animatrix set of
short movies). These depict desolate future worlds in which
posthuman machine intelligences have rebelled against their
human creators.
If machine intelligences--such as AIs and androids--did
not become our enemies, they might, instead, end up as our
suffering slaves, as in the poignant (if tonally uneven)
Kubrick-Spielberg movie, AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001).
Neither option--the creation of enemies or of slaves--is
acceptable. If those are the likely outcomes, we would be
unwise to create AIs and androids. Better to stick with
enhancing our own abilities, and becoming more completely
mutants and cyborgs. Still, whether it is wise or unwise to
bring them into existence, all of these kinds of transhuman
or posthuman entities could, in principle, be fully moral
beings. They could have characteristics that demand our
moral respect; they could, themselves, be capable of acting
morally.
Whether or not any of them were still biologically Homo
sapiens, or whether they were biological entities at all,
our best way of treating mutants and cyborgs, AIs and
androids would be to integrate them, as far as possible,
into our own societies. They might become citizens alongside
us, albeit unusual ones with impressive abilities. For
practical purposes, we would do best to treat them all as
human.
NOTES
(1.) Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics and
Sociobiology (New York, 1991), pp. 3-4.
(2.) Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life (London, 2001),
pp. 81-5.
(3.) Somerville, 'How perfect do we want to be?' and
Hughes, 'The human condition hurts: We'd be fools not to
better it', Globe and Mail, 29 August 2003.
(4.) John Searle is the best-known opponent of
computationalist theories of consciousness. See, for
example, his 'Minds, Brains, and Programs', Behavioral and
Brain Sciences 3 (1980), pp. 417-24.
(5.) Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a
Fundamental Theory (Oxford, 1996), pp. 327-8.