#10: Problems of Transhumanism — Introduction
J. Hughes
2010-12-22 00:00:00



#10According to IEET readers, what were the most stimulating stories of 2010? This month we're answering that question by posting a countdown of the top 31 articles published this year on our blog (out of more than 600 in all), based on how many total hits each one received.

The following piece was first published here on January 6, 2010, and is the #10 most viewed of the year.



This article is part of a continuing series. See also:


Problems of Transhumanism: The Unsustainable Autonomy of Reason

Problems of Transhumanism: Atheism vs. Naturalist Theologies

Problems of Transhumanism: Liberal Democracy vs. Technocratic Absolutism

Problems of Transhumanism: Moral Universalism vs. Relativism

Problems of Transhumanism: Belief in Progress vs. Rational Uncertainty



Now that Mike Treder and I have both decided to step back after eight years of serving on the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association (presently known as Humanity+), we want to take some time this Spring to reflect on the current state of transhumanist thought and determine what questions the transhumanist movement needs to answer to move forward.


I will be structuring my reflections around two general questions. The first is an attempt to parse out which unresolved problems transhumanism has inherited from the Enlightenment. By Enlightenment, I refer to a wide variety of thinkers and movements beginning in the seventeenth century and continuing through the early nineteenth century. The Enlightenment was centered in Britain, France, and Germany, but as recent scholarship has increasingly documented, it had a global dimension with significant contributions from thinkers and movements across Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. These thinkers and movements broadly emphasized the capacity of individuals to achieve social and technological progress through the use of critical reason to investigate nature, establish new forms of governance, and transcend superstition and authoritarianism.


However, this framework of ideas was only understood as the core of the Enlightenment in hindsight. Specific thinkers and movements shared only part of what are now thought of as Enlightenment values and clashed over radically different interpretations of these core ideas on questions of faith, the state, epistemology, and ethics. 


My position here is that transhumanism—the belief that technology can transcend the limitations of the human body and brain—and techno-utopianism—the idea that humans can create a progressively better future through the rational mastery of nature—are part of the family of Enlightenment philosophies. Transhumanism and techno-utopianism can be traced back to the original Enlightenment thinkers 300 years ago, and transhumanists need to understand how the ideological conflicts within transhumanism today are the product of these 300 year-old conflicts within the Enlightenment. 


This exercise is also an attempt to make clear which criticisms of transhumanism are internal contradictions, and which start from external, non-Enlightenment predicates. In other words, saying that transhumanism is bad because it threatens the human soul is a criticism from a non-Enlightenment position. Arguing that transhumanists are being anthropocentric or “human-racist” when they preference particular kinds of intelligence and feeling as the basis for moral standing is an intra-Enlightenment argument.


A few of those problems and conflicts are addressed by technoprogressivism, that is by adding egalitarianism and democracy to the transhumanist meme-set and articulating a clearer picture of the good society. But other questions, such as the problematic nature of “Reason” within Enlightenment thought, are not answered by the technoprogressive project and perhaps shouldn’t be. Some of these conflicts are simply matters of philosophical taste, inevitable disagreements of interpretation which can be accepted as part of the welcome diversity within a shared framework of values. Other conflicts, such as between liberalism and totalitarianism, are fundamental. 


The second question I want to address in these essays is how transhumanist technological utopianism has both inspired and retarded scientific and political progress over the last 300 years. I want to challenge the prevailing anti-utopian sentiment and highlight the way that dynamic optimism about transcendent possibilities motivated scientific innovation and democratic reform through the work of people like the Marquis de Condorcet, Joseph Priestley, and J.B.S. Haldane. 


At the same time I want to seriously examine how, at different points in history, scientific innovators and political reformers have been threatened by the radicalism of the techno-utopians, and how the failure of techno-utopian hype has sometimes produced an anti-scientific backlash. I want to take seriously the idea that “superlative technocentricity” performs an anti-democratic ideological function, that promising techno-fixes for social problems can be used to distract from immediate social needs and injustices. More darkly yet, I want to discuss how the techno-utopians’ association with eugenics and totalitarianism set back both democratic and scientific progress in the 20th century. 


Starting with the “contradictions of the Enlightenment” I will be presenting seven arguments over the next several weeks:



I’m looking forward to working through all these heady ideas with you.