In his article, “What is the Difference between Posthumanism and Transhumanism?”, Kevin LaGrandeur sets out to clarify the meaning of the terms “posthuman”, “transhuman” and “posthumanism”. (http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/lagrandeur20141226) He notes that the relative newness of the terminology is a source of confusion among many who employ these terms.

Carey Wolfe made the same observation in his study of 2010, What is Posthumanism?, noting that “the term has begun to emerge with different and sometimes competing meanings.” (p. xii) I would like to carry out a sort of philosophical experiment to disambiguate the meanings of the term “posthuman” in an attempt to dispel some of the confusion surrounding the use of this term.

LaGrandeur posits that the term “posthuman” has the sense of “that condition in which humans and intelligent technology are becoming increasingly intertwined.” He then refines its meaning as follows, “the posthuman is a projected state of humanity in which unlocking of the information patterns that those who believe in the posthuman say make us what we are—will shift the focus of humanness from our outward appearance to those information patterns.” Identifying the human will then depend upon the functioning of a being rather than its outward form. “humanness will be defined by how a species operates—in other words, whether it processes information like a human, is sentient, empathic, intelligent, and such—rather than how it looks.”  (http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/lagrandeur20141226) This reference to the species functioning of human beings strikes me as having the sense of the term “human^B” that I have used in my work Posthuman Personhood. There I attempted to disambiguate the meaning of the term “human” by differentiating the biological humanity of a member of the human species and the moral humanity of a member of the moral community, designated by the term “human^M. This latter term indicates that a being may be a member of the moral community whether or not it is biologically human.

In Posthuman Personhood I see myself as having attempted to evaluate our technological self-transformation with regard to the possibility of maintaining personal existence, again whether human^B or not. This is what David Roden has simply called a “Principle of Accounting”. “But surely humans and transhumans have a duty to evaluate the outcomes of their technical activities of these differences with a view to maximizing the chances of good posthuman outcomes or minimizing the chances of bad ones (Principle of Accounting)

From the human/transhuman of view some posthuman worlds might be transcendently good. But others could lead to a very rapid extinction of all humans, or something even more hellish.” (http://enemyindustry.net/blog/?p=3348)

It is clear, then, that the term “posthuman” can have a positive or negative moral connotation. Having distinguished the different senses of the term “human,” I would like to suggest that the positive or negative connotations associated with this term can be found in an ambiguity in the meaning of the term “post”. For some, like Francis Fukuyama, our posthuman^B future is one that holds the possibility of a loss of personal existence through the genetic manipulation of human^B beings. Nick Bostrom has also explored the myriad paths through which a superintelligence could “lead to a very rapid extinction of all humans, or something even more hellish.” (Roden/http://enemyindustry.net/blog/?p=3348). These scenarios depict a hypo-posthuman^B condition. It represents a decline in human existence that could result from the increase in speed and power associated with various technological developments. I believe we could designate this sense of a posthuman^B condition by the term “post_Ohuman^B ” or “p_Oh^B .” And since there is a decline in the possibility of a moral dimension associated with this condition, there is also a damaging of the human^M condition. The post_Ohuman^B may thus be correlated with a post_Ohuman^M- (p_Oh^M-) order.

The enhancements that are often associated with transhumanism may also be conceived as a hyper-posthuman^B condition. Here, human^B beings are seen as being enhanced by various technological developments. Human^B beings may be altered pharmacologically or through cyber technologies (implants, prostheses) or genetic engineering to produce a more rational, empathetic, and thus morally advanced human^M being. It is also possible that computers or robots may be produced that are not human^B but morally superior in some ways to human^B beings. This hyper-posthuman^B condition may be designated by the term “post^Rhuman^B”. Because such a hyper-posthuman^B condition represents an improvement in the ability of posthuman^B beings to carry out a personal existence, it would be designated “post^Rhuman^M+ ” or “p^Rh^M+ .” The term “posthuman” has such a positive connotation for Rosi Braidotti. “[T]o be posthuman does not mean to be indifferent to the humans, or to be de-humanized. On the contrary, it rather implies a new way of combining ethical values with the well-being of an enlarged sense of community, which includes one’s territorial or environmental inter-connections. (The Posthuman, p. 190)

​However, a hyper-posthuman^B condition may also produce a posthuman^B being that possesses increased intelligence, etc., but lacks a moral sense. This is the concern Wendel Wallach and others have explored with respect to the possibility of creating moral machines. So, a hyper-posthuman^B condition may have a positive or negative moral valuation. As such, I propose to designate a hyper-posthuman^B condition that could “lead to a very rapid extinction of all humans, or something even more hellish.” (Roden/http://enemyindustry.net/blog/?p=3348); as “post^Rhuman^M- ” or “p^Rh^M- .” And so, we can see that a post^Rhuman^B condition may represent a moral advance or decline, whereas a post_Ohuman^B condition must necessarily represent a moral decline.

The strategy of creating these linguistic conventions is one that is inspired by the work of Rudolf Carnap. Carnap held that our received folk language is so shot through with ambiguity that it must be altered to render it amenable for philosophical work. He promoted a principle of tolerance that allows for each of us to create our own language in order to clearly express our thought. What he considered imperative is that every person specify just what the language is s/he uses. Consider Carnap’s treatment of the concept of space. Alan W. Richardson has substituted the English term “space” for the German term “raum” in his work, Carnap’s Construction of the World: The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism. Rischardson explains that Carnap recognized a distinction between formal space, designated by the letter S, intuitive space, designated by the letter S′, and physical space, designated by the term S′′. He further recognized a distinction between topological, projective, and metrical space, designated by the letters t, p, and m, respectively. Each of these could have a dimensional variant designated by numbers or the letter n. “Thus, for example, S′_4t designates four-dimensional topological intuitive space, and S_np designates projective formal space of arbitrarily many dimensions.” (Richardson, p. 141). Part of the argument Carnap made was that philosophical disputes over the concept of space could generally be resolved by distinguishing these different terms.

My sense is that it is hopeless for multiple persons to use the term “posthuman” with divergent meanings so that readers seeing the term have widely divergent ideas of what is being discussed. John Locke made the same observation in his work of 1689, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk III, Chpt. IX, “The chief End of Language in Communication being to be understood, Words serve not well for that end, neither in civil, nor in philosophical Discourse, when any Word does not excite in the Hearer, the same Idea which it stands for in the Mind of the Speaker.” (emphasis in the original) My hope is that my terminological conventions might clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the use of this term.

Carey Wolfe encountered this issue in Stanley Cavell’s treatment of Emerson, “What Kant confronted as ‘merely’ a problem of thought, Emerson grappled with under the additional rigors of writing and language—of philosophy as a writing practice—so that the ‘stipulations or terms under which we can say anything at all to one another’ will themselves be subjected to endless, and endlessly unfinalized, scrutiny."

As Cavell puts it, in Emerson,

"I find the Critique of Pure Reason turned upon itself: notions of limitation and of condition are as determining in the essay ‘Fate’ as they are in Kant, but it is as if these terms are themselves subjected to transcendental deduction, as if not just twelve categories but any and every word in our language stands under the necessity of deduction, or say derivation."

References:

(Carey Wolfe, What is Posthumanism, p. 245-246, quoting Stanley Cavell, “Finding as Founding,” in Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes, p. 113).

Cavell continued, “our antagonism to fate, to which we are fated, and in which our freedom resides, is as a struggle with the language we emit, of our character with itself.” (Carey Wolfe, What is Posthumanism, p. 246, quoting Stanley Cavell, “Emerson, Coleridge, Kant,”, in Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes p. 72).