If you wear glasses or had braces or use an insulin pump or take Ritalin, then, congratulations, you're a transhumanist. The rest is just a matter of degrees.
As wizzwizz4 says in a sibling comment, the post is conflating TESCREAL and transhumanism.
The appropriate question to ask is, “what unique beliefs do transhumanists hold”. And the differentiating factor is generally a sentiment that the human condition must be overcome even at the cost of humanity. A transhumanist fundamentally rejects what it is to be human in line with a belief that humanity is inevitably deprecated. Humanist: technology augments humans. Transhumanist: technology replaces humans.
I’ve tried really hard and can’t seem to find a way to rationalize a transhumanist worldview—at least until we understand life and consciousness intimately and thoroughly. But even then I’d have to reevaluate, not take as a given.
It seems like asking the question "what does the typical transhumanist actually think?" is relevant.
It’s another thing to tacitly agree with the crackpots but deceptively present a more moderate stance to keep people naïve and initiate new members using an attenuated worldview.
Let’s hear it, “what does a typical transhumanist think?”
There are tons of comments describing what typical transhumanists believe, but I think it boils down to the idea that humans can and should seek to modify themselves, and such a processes would be an improvement. In practical terms, this means they favor cybernetics and genetic modification.
Compare that with the loaded statement from the article's author talking about destiny and salvation
> transhumanists have deepened their belief in a fated future in which the human species will achieve “augmented” evolution through fusing with machines, leading to the emergence of an artificial superintelligence that will far outstrip all human knowledge and achieve God-like powers (The Singularity). This digital deity will lead us to a new era, in which all human biological limitations will be transcended; bringing about end to sickness, suffering and even death, and leading us to colonise the cosmos.
Again, an average transhumanist does not “simply believe” that they need a movement and religion achieve human augmentation. Because that is our societal resting state. Or if they do they are blissfully naïve.
So now that we’re past that, if you actually discuss the subject matter at any depth, you’ll quickly get to the fundamental question and learn what makes a transhumanist different from everyday humans that have been augmenting themselves with technology for millennia: what is a human? What is a species?
A transhumanist embraces the singularity, for example, because they are not concerned with losing our humanity. (Because if one were concerned then it would be inconsistent for one to embrace an event where humans are obsoleted.) For a transhumanist it’s okay for the human race to become extinct provided we witness the coming of a more powerful consciousness.
More practically, what makes the discussion even possible is that we don’t really know what makes us human. If we did people could either take clear sides and/or you could clearly protect the essence of human through arbitrary technological augmentation.
I believe that until we identify what makes our conscious experience uniquely possible, we must protect the system that gives rise to it: our species. Until humans have the knowledge of god, humans shall not play god. A transhumanist would use my own argument against me and say that humans _are and always have been_ the product of augmentation, so come what may.
Make sense?
From my reading of TFA the author’s statement is not radical and indeed rather accurate. I am pretty sure they have a fairly complete understanding of the landscape.
I think a more accurate phrasing is that a transhumanist would not consider change to be the same as extinction or death.
They aren't worrying about losing some unique but undefinable essence, but assume any valuable essence would be carried along. I dont think they view change in the US vs them paradigm. Instead, it is US and US with differences.
They would say god gave us the tools to make children and alter ourselves, so doing so is not playing god.
But you have to admit, and you did as much in your comment, it’s a pretty huge assumption right now that anything we do would innately carry our souls forward. I’m not willing to just assume. I want certainty and proof. I am sure there are some more extreme humanists out there who are more conservative than me, but all I’m asking is that as we apply technology we remain reverent of our souls. This seems like such a simple almost pedantic thing to be hung up on, but indeed it is exactly what distinguishes a humanist and transhumanist. The burden of proof is on you (royally, rhetorically) to prove that we’ll still have souls after uploading our consciousness to a machine.
And, logically, if you prove human continuity then it’s not trans anymore. Transhumanists don’t have a fundamental reverence for humanity, definitionally. They advocate for the application of technology without the assurance that our humanity will remain in tact. They hold an axiomatic belief that we humans are capable of transferring our species into a digital media. A belief that transferring a consciousness to a robot also retains the soul. And that replication of transhuman entities creates new souls. Etc.
I support research and exploration of these topics. But I’m not going to stake humanity on some belief that this is the future or even that it’s assumed to be possible.
PS most all cultures with the notion of god reserve god the right to bestow the essence of life into the biological human. Your final statement does not align with my understanding of any Christian religion out there in the assertion that since god gave us the tools to create humans biologically it’s appropriate for humans to create life spiritually. I don’t necessarily hold that to be ultimately true, but I do hold a reverence for life until we actually understand it. We currently have no idea what constitutes human life, whether our soul is the manifestation of our synapses quantum entangled to a substrate we have yet to identify, or entirely emergent from more simple mechanical biology. We need to answer that first before we can suppose to upload our species into some digital medium.
I don't think transhumanists believe in a supernatural spirit or soul, but that the human spirit, or at least the good part, isn't tied to biology.
For myself, I'm skeptical of the entire utilitarian hedonist project, which transhumanism rests on. I think there are human values that are higher than pleasure and happiness. Values like love, honor, duty, compassion, and sacrifice. I think the biological human condition could be favorable for these in a way that some virtual bliss-state is not.
I don't need cherry picked scare quotes to disagree with aspects of transhumanism. I would rather debate the strongest case for transhumanism, not a weak strawman.
Anyway I do agree that the human condition gives rise to favorable qualities in individuals and the larger population. I don't support utilitarian hedonism either. I will say my experience discussing transhumanism has usually been in terms of becoming posthuman and the notion of a virtual bliss-state, if mentioned, is more if an intriguing a side-quest, but we might just have different exposures there.
I mean I still think there are problems with becoming post human even if you remove the utilitarian hedonism from the mix, I guess. In the author's defense this is a difficult topic to articulate.
Note that i disagree with OP about glasses or insulin pump, as most people support use of technology to fix deficiencies of a human body or mind, but if one has a healthy, fit body/mind and still want technological improvements, that is a red line.
Thats a very blurry line that changes with culture, age, profession, hobbies etc. In 50 years that line will be elsewhere even within that boundary. Especially when this has nothing to do with religions since they were invented long before any of this became a topic (so much for universal truths but thats another topic).
That still defines it in relation to the non-improvers, which isn't the most compelling position. Why not, "we want to augment human potential to maximize quality of life through technology?"
(I worry it isn't that argument because it is still too human-centric.)
Transhumanism is not about human augmentation, it's about a misty-eyed view of human augmentation experienced through a haze of hand-me-down religiosity.
I spent some time following these people in the early 00s and they were talking about replacing nerves with Cat 5 - and other obvious nonsense. Complete lunacy.
It's a fundamentalist millenarian movement which is inherently faith-based, contemptuous of physical and psychological reality, and irrational. As the article says - it's just another in a long, long cycle of similar movements with similar dynamics.
The only thing that changes is the set dressing. The play is always the same, and always ends in horror and tragedy.
No, this time will not be different. Affirming that it will be is part of the sales pitch. But somehow - for reasons that are unsurprising to anyone who knows a little psychology - that never quite seems to happen.
Yes, for some, transhumanism is basically millenarianism with different set dressing. And yes, some of the things transhumanists say pattern-match to popular religious themes, especially if you're willing to bend or simplify some things a bit to force the analogy. But that doesn't mean that those transhumanist ideas and predictions actually are religious in nature, nor does it mean that most people agreeing with them are just operating on faith. And it especially doesn't mean that "the play is always the same, and always ends in horror and tragedy" (like what does that even mean, where does it ever apply?).
(Also, some critics have no sensitivity to jokes, or purposefully ignore humor. Replacing nerves with Cat 5, really?)
I don't deny there is a thick shell of fraudsters and pseudoscientific entertainment around this. I've seen that, and was disgusted by it, but unfortunately it happens for everything. This one is a real pattern - specific ideology is the set dressing, the underlying phenomena is just a bunch of scoundrels selling outlandish ideas to naive people. But that's not actual transhumanism, not any more than New Age bullshit about quantum this and magnetic that makes physics itself a faith-based movement.
I wish people would engage with specific ideas coming from transhumanism (and adjacent fields/communities), instead of trying to dismiss them with "your other ideas look like repainted Christianity, therefore they're wrong, you're wrong, and whatever you're saying here must be wrong too".
You could also say that wearing glasses or having an insulin pump installed makes you a transhuman, but it can't make you a transhumanist. And plenty of people are perfectly happy to be slightly ideologically inconsistent, or follow more nuanced ideologies, where, say, certain artificial enhancements are allowed and others are not. After all, even the biggest anti-drug crusaders accept coffee or at least tea as acceptable substances.
That is, wearing glasses is consistent with transhumanism, absolutely true. But one can wear glasses for other reasons, and even oppose transhumanism and still wear glasses, while still being perfectly self-consistent.
For example, believers of the Jehovah's Witnesses cult (or sect if you prefer) don't accept blood transfusions, but still wear glasses. They believe that certain modifications of your body and its abilities are acceptable, and others are not, and that this decision is not what makes our bodies work better, but based on what some god allows his followers to do. So, they are not transhumanists, even when happily wearing glasses.
"Improving" is good by definition. Otherwise it would be called something else. The questions become what you personally consider to be improvement and what scales and scopes you personally choose to consider when determining whether a change improves things.
Making value judgments and projecting them into the future is fundamental to conscious being operating in a causal world.
Beliefs like "dont murder people" show up in religion, but that is far from the only belief set that supports the recommendation.
Instead of a benign example like eyeglasses, let's say I murder someone so that I can harvest his organs and replace my failing ones with his. According to you that makes me a transhumanist.
Glasses restore a function that was supposed to be there in the first place. They are called "corrective lenses" for a reason; to correct is to presuppose a defect which must be corrected to restore what is normative. Insulin pumps also restore a function that was supposed to be there in the first place. That it is implanted into the body is totally irrelevant. As with glasses, the relationship between the person and the pump is instrumental. My heart or brain, however, are not my instruments. They are part of me.
However, the essence of transhumanism, and the ultimate source of issues, is that it turns the human being into an engineering project that seeks to transcend the human. Metaphysically, this is, as polite academic philosophers might say, problematic. To transcend presupposes an existing limit inherent to the thing by virtue of its nature. You wouldn't say that adding a new video card to your computer or building an additional floor on a building transcends the original computer or the original building. This was always possible, as these things are effectively aggregates. The mechanistic metaphysics here precludes the possibility of transcendence, because all you can ever really do is rearrange the furniture. You also wouldn't say that adulthood is the transcendence of childhood, or that adaptation is some kind of transcendence of the species. You're still operating within the scope of possibilities of the species. The nature of a thing is what circumscribes its limits. Technology is not able to transcend human nature, because technology is already within the scope of human power. You can no more cause your own transcendence than you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Transcendence is not merely the actualization of the potentials already present within a thing. It entails the intrinsic "expansion" of the powers of a thing beyond what is possible by virtue of the nature of a thing. However, any modification of a human being can only be either instrumental, the introduction of defect, or restorative. In the best case, we're talking medicine and health. In the worst case, dehumanization, objectification, and commodification of human beings.
> to correct is to presuppose a defect which must be corrected to restore what is normative
This prescribed bondage to normativity is a manifestation of ableism. Existence has no concept of supposed to be. Some people can see, and some people cannot. Some people can walk, and some people cannot. That survival in nature is easier for those who can isn't a value assessment. That society is structured to cater to some of those people more than others isn't an inherent moral good.
The tools you mention don't alter the species itself. Once we start heavily GMing our offspring (does anyone think this won't take hold culturally in the next 4 or 5 generations?) those folks will start to become transhuman.
Before we get to the point that we can do that, a disaster and/or a better alternative will mean very few people even want to do it.
The one with the tendencies to treat it as a cult? Isn't that the point of the article?
I am not really sure what point you're trying to make. It's like everytime I critique capitalism, someone appears and corrects me that what we have is actually a "crony capitalism", and the real good capitalism is somewhere in a mystical faraway place. Why insist on correcting the name then?
If you used fire to disinfect your recently caught prey, you're a transhumanist.
If you read a book ..
The only conclusion to be made from this article, is that humans have been on a transformation treadmill for a long, long time - long enough that we can no longer recognize transformation when we see it, or we are so tired of acknowledging it that we just don't any more, or such that we need to see it before we believe it is happening - i.e. next years new iPhone purchase, etc.