The Personal Identity Dilemma for Transhumanism

Scientific and technological advances have questioned predominant doctrines concerning the human condition. Transhumanism and posthumanism are among the most recent and prominent manifestations of this phenomenon. Debates on trans- and posthumanism have not only gained a considerable amount of academic and popular attention recently, but have also created a widespread conceptual confusion. This is no surprise, considering their recent dates of origin, their conceptual similarities, and their engagements with similar questions, topics, and motifs. Furthermore, trans- as well as posthumanism frequently question their relationship to humanism and reconsider what it means to be human. In this regard both movements are streaming beyond humanism. What this means, however, is far from clear and shall be subject of discussion in this volume.

Philosophical Disquisitions

This is the text of a keynote lecture I delivered to the 'Transcending Humanity' conference at Tubingen University on the 13th July 2017. It discusses the alleged tension between the transhumanist ideal of biological freedom and the glorification of technological means to that freedom. In the talk, I argue that the tension is superficial because the concept of freedom is multidimensional.

2020

Most articles in contemporary Western philosophy are about research into other people’s ideas, it seems to me. However, I offer a first-person critical reflection on my own philosophical understanding and development of my individual identity in light of a posthuman context. Posthumanism is a philosophical movement within Western philosophy, but it is not, as yet, a philosophical movement as such. That is, unlike humanism, it lacks its own established history and tradition of thinking. A meaningful posthuman identity provides a fulfilling life for the believer as well as the non-believer through a perpetual process of acceptance and rejection of ideas and notions that arise within experience. When an individual is conscious of his or her changeable identity, which is the product of a philosophical autobiography, one can be at ease in an ever-changing world and at peace with oneself, I maintain. After World War I, a new Western world was born, as it were. However, as J. Middleton Mur...

This research depicts the themes of consciousness and identity in Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon through a transhumanist point of view. This research examines the novel which set in a future where human memory and consciousness can be transferred digitally and stored between bodies, or in "sleeves,". The novel challenges and puts forth the traditional concept of selfhood, personal continuity and embodiment. Through this philosophical theory of identity, this study investigates the personal identity which remains stable while being detached from a biological and singular form. The paper shows the notion of the self which is no longer bound in one physical body. This research analysis showcases this transferring self through novel's protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs. His frequent transferring and resleeving shows the tension between embodied experience and psychological continuity. By highlighting Kovacs' identity shifts from one body to another, this paper interrogates the idea of selfhood which extends beyond materiality. This embodiment becomes a crucial determinant and source of human experience. Moreover, the research places Altered Carbon within broader and wide transhumanist discourse. It is addressing the digital immortality, portrayal of human enhancement, body commodification and the ethical implications. The novel's presentation of a society where the wealthy control access to use technology for their own use also becomes a critique of techno-utopian ideals. This paper further exposes the social and economic inequalities that emerge when technology starts using identity as a tradable asset. Ultimately, this paper investigates that Altered Carbon acts as both a reflection on the implications of scientific advancements and an exposition of transhumanist possibilities. The intersections of selfhood, technology and embodiment, this study contributes to the debates on the future of identity in an era of technological evolution.

Journal of Evolution and Technology (JET), 2015

As post- and transhumanism have become ever-hotter topics over the past decade or so, their boundaries have become muddled by misappropriations and misunderstandings of what defines them, and especially what distinguishes them from each other. This edition of essays by various experts, edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner, goes a long way to resolve these issues. The introductory essay by the two editors – both of whom are philosophers – is alone worth the book’s purchase price. They give a very straightforward and understandable synopsis of what defines posthumanism, transhumanism, and the posthuman; and they also give thumbnail sketches of the major differences between them. Basically, transhumanists believe in improving the human species by using any and every form of emerging technology. Technology is meant in the broad sense here: it includes everything from pharmaceuticals to digital technology, genetic modification to nanotechnology. The posthuman is the state that transhumans aspire to: a state in which our species is both morally and physically improved, and maybe immortal – a species improved to the point where we perhaps become a different (and thus “posthuman”) species altogether.

Humana.Mente, 2014

The expression "human enhancement" could be placed in the ontological, cognitive, and symbolic dimension in which we conceive and experience the faculty, that is constitutive of human beings, of giving name and thus consistence to things, relations and phenomena in general. It is necessary to point out that this symbolic dimension of emerging technologies has been obstinately and jealously anthropocentric, at least in the modern Western world. In this contribution, I aim to develop a philosophical account of posthuman enhancement that allows us to conceive a future society of humanoids-humans, hybrids, artificial beings-who are free and equal. This expression-"post-human enhancement"-is to be understood as referring to symbols and phenomena different from those associated with "trans-human". Posthuman is to be interpreted here as material, not anthropocentric but rather interspeciesist, osmotic and relational, horizon of effective sharing of experiences, dangers and challenges. In contrast, trans-human is meant to refer to the transcending of humans into the pure ether of an 'ideal', immaterial network made up only of software, and lacking of relations with any material beings in the ecosystem or cosmos. On my account, reframing the debate about human enhancement means to guarantee widest possible conditions of non-hegemonic or expansive conscious contextuality of legislative and decisional systems. I focus rather on the social circumstance whereby we see ourselves as subjects that already co-inhabit multiform social identities, in changeable and hybrid bodies and identitary images, in potential or latent conditions of moral and political asymmetry. These conditions, I hold, are therefore to be preventively identified and neutralized.

1989

This thesis is concerned with what it is to be a person, and with what is involved in being the same person over time. I begin by making a survey of the major theories of personal identity, and mark some important divisions and distinctions between them, primarily between Reductionism and Non-Reductionism and, within this former category, between the Physical and Psychological Criteria, and argue that none of these ha5 proved to be satisfactory. I stress the importance of the work of Derek Parfit, and in particular his shifting of the agenda away from the relation of identity to that of 'Relation R', and his claim that it is the holding of this latter relation - namely psychological continuity by any means - that contains 'all that matters' to us regarding the future, and not necessarily whether I survive. I show how this theory avoids the pitfalls that defeated the other theories, and propose various developments of it. A critical eye is then cast over the methodolo...

I initiated a regimen of directed reading about human nature and the notion of "self" (and selves) after being inspired by P.M.S. Hacker's consecutive chapters on "the self and the body" and "the person" in Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007), as well as several books by Raymond Tallis. I thought I'd share a list of titles I've thus far found quite helpful in thinking about questions of human nature and personal identity. It is a comparatively short compilation, and I cannot claim it well represents the philosophical literature on these topics, although at least several of the titles, it turns out, have been well received among professional philosophers. A few of the works might justly be said to approach our subject matter indirectly or by implication. And some of the titles concern "human dignity," a concept embodying important claims and assumptions about human nature or philosophical anthropology. This compilation is therefore unabashedly idiosyncratic, yet I'm convinced it should prove useful to anyone leisurely or perhaps even systematically exploring fundamental questions indissolubly bound up with our attempts to make sense of or understand human nature and personal identity.

The Humanist and the transhumanist propose different methods for cultivating human capacities. The transhumanist claims that traditional techniques favoured by the humanist run up against the limits of our biology. She believes that prospective technologies could further the humanist cause by improving our nature. However, the transhumanist faces a difficulty. Her policies could produce posthumans. Evaluating posthuman lives might be impossible for us. But discounting them is not an option because she will share responsibility for their creation. I argue that one way through this impasse is for the transhumanist to produce posthumans or to become posthuman.