These letters are in response to Nicholas Agar’s article on H+ in the last issue of the Hastings Center Report:

HCR September-October 2007

(From J. Hughes)

To the Editor: In “Whereto Transhumanism?  The Literature Reaches a Critical Mass” (May-June 2007), Nicholas Agar correctly notes that Simon Young’s effort to ground transhumanism in a drive to evolve is a nonstarter.

Transhumanism, like all other human aspirations, is shaped by our evolved brains, yet at the same time, it is an effort to escape from evolved constraints.

Transhumanism has much in common with spiritual aspirations to transcend animal nature for deathlessness, superhuman abilities, and superior insight, though transhumanists pursue these goals through technology rather than (or at least not solely) through spiritual exercises. In this sense transhumanism has ancient roots in the capacity our animal natures have endowed us with to desire better lives and a better world, even if it is not an evolutionary drive itself.

Agar is also correct to point out that procreative liberty needs boundaries just like other liberties do, and that threats to liberal democracy from genetic enhancement would be one reason for setting limits. Most transhumanists disagree not with the need for limits, but with the bioconservative calculus that argues that all enhancements should be forbidden as unsafe. We believe cognitive liberty, bodily autonomy, and reproductive rights require a higher standard of proof of harm, and that there are alternative means to address those harms. Yes, some genetic tweaks may be unsafe or harmful, but we can regulate those without forbidding life-extending and ability-enhancing therapies. Yes, if only the wealthy can cognitively enhance themselves and their children this might exacerbate inequality. But, as with literacy and laptops, the preferred method to address these gaps should be to expand access to enhancement. Differences in biology and ability challenge social solidarity, but the Enlightenment argues for solidarity among equal citizens irrespective of biological differences.

On this last point Agar agrees with the transhumanists when he says “moral status . . . cannot be denied to posthumans.” He then attempts, however, to point out a supposed lacuna in our ethics, in which we remain “local” for valuing human accomplishments. He notes that respecting the moral status of another person is a universal and compulsory value, while valuing humanness is a voluntary local choice that gives life meaning. Again, I think we agree. As an extrapolation of liberalism, transhumanism asks that we respect one another’s choice to value our humanness or not, calling on the “universal” value of liberty or autonomy not to allow local valuings for mortality and human limitations to trump aspirations to greater life, health, ability, and happiness. Most transhumanists would be satisfied if we are each able to find our own set of local values, human or not.

Perhaps Agar is inadvertently pointing to two more subtle problems with transhumanist ethics, however—problems many of us grapple with. The first is the problem of balancing beneficent solidarism with strict noninterventionist liberalism. When, for instance, is someone’s choice to modify his brain equivalent to selling himself into slavery?

Transhumanists need to articulate “the good life,” inevitably shaped by local values, to ensure that we are in fact enhancing and not simply changing.

Second and related, transhumanists must be clear about the cognitive capacities we consider important for the posthuman polity. Would it be acceptable for some posthumans to expunge all fellow-feeling for mere humans, or for any other persons? Whether local or universal values, ensuring that our descendants retain capacities for solidarity and egalitarianism will limit transhumanist liberalism and the space of posthuman possibilities.

James Hughes Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and Trinity College

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(From Bostrom)

To the Editor: I have argued that posthuman modes of being and having the opportunity to become posthuman may be human values. That is to say, many of us human beings may have reasons, available from our present human evaluative standpoint, to develop posthuman capacities. Having the opportunity to become posthuman can be good for us in much the same way that it is good for an infant to have the opportunity to mature into an adult.

In one of my papers cited by Nicholas Agar in his essay, I noted that even those who think that values are defined in terms of our current dispositions could accept that there are values we are unaware of that we might not be able to grasp with our present capacities.

This would be possible given, for instance, David Lewis’s dispositional theory of value. Lewis offers that X is a value to you (roughly) if and only if you would desire to desire X if you were perfectly acquainted with X and you were thinking and deliberating as clearly as possible about X. There are well-known challenges to this theory, but it does account for many widely held beliefs about the nature of value. It illustrates how a theory can anchor value in human dispositions and yet allow that there could be values for us that can only be realized if we attain a posthu- Human vs. Posthuman man state, and that we may not even be able fully to fathom until we become posthuman.

Agar objects: “If we are permitted to resist the argument that the olfactory superiority of dogs means we should accept some of their values as our own, then there seems no reason we should have to admit the kind of values that the superior intellects or senses of posthumans permit them to entertain.” Agar is right that there is no general reason for us to admit that X is valuable just because some possible posthumans would value X. Posthumans may be mistaken about values, just as we may be. One might argue on “best judge” grounds that it would be rational for us to defer to a posthuman’s judgments. But even if we are objectivists about values, such a best-judge argument would require additional premises. For example, there may be no reason to defer to a posthuman judge who, while in possession of superior intelligence and keen senses, is morally corrupt or lacks some specifically axiological sensibility. If we are subjectivists about values, there is even less prima facie reason to defer to posthuman opinion because the posthuman’s values might not be our values.

The idea, however, is not that we should defer on matters of value to any arbitrary posthuman’s (or dog’s) opinions.

Rather, the idea is that if we examine our own values carefully, we will find that they include values whose full realization would require that we possess posthuman capacities. (There is an interesting but separate question of whether we ought—on instrumental grounds—to try to build some specific kind of posthuman entity, such as a friendly superintelligence grounded in human values, that might be able to advise us on ethical and other issues.) Some of these human values in posthumanity are rather obvious. Many of us greatly value remaining in excellent health over getting sick, demented, and dying; yet our present human bodies unfortunately make the full realization of this value impossible. I find noteworthy that towards the end of his article, Agar argues for the existence of “universal values” and gives as an example of such a value “the elimination of horrible diseases.” This sounds encouraging.

He continues: “There doesn’t seem to be anything spookily posthuman about someone who makes it through to a ripe old age without having succumbed to cancer.” To Agar’s point, the transhumanist merely adds that avoiding cancer and other horrible diseases does not cease to be desirable after some predetermined time interval has elapsed, such as seventy years from birth. If lethal diseases were eliminated (and other causes of death remained constant), our life expectancy would climb to approximately one thousand years. This is a distinctly posthuman duration and perhaps seems “spooky” to beings conditioned to expect much less.

But if we are honest about our very human values, I think we must admit that they cry out for such “posthuman” health, life, and flourishing.

Nick Bostrom,  Oxford University