Human Enhancement Technologies and Democratic Citizenship

2014 ◽  
pp. 176-190
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Apathy ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

This chapter articulates that scholars write about Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) in two ways. This is not a reflection of a reality in the literature but rather a heuristic designed to contextualize democratic citizenship within contemporary HET discussions. The first way is to write about HET as possible realities far off into the future. The second way is to write about HET that can be realised seemingly as soon as tomorrow. For democratic citizenship, writing in the first case is either utopian or dystopian. It is either the projection of democracy's total triumph or its utter collapse caused by the type of rots that lead to democide. But writing in the second case is stimulating and vibrant. There are, for example, numerous calls for HET-led reforms in the literature. These reforms are needed to help answer the crisis of the citizen's august discontent (the growing and increasingly legitimized political apathy and political abstention observed in, and performed by, the citizenry). The purpose of this chapter is to focus on this second case—this more developed body of literature—and to theorise the interface between democratic citizenship and HET.

Human Enhancement Technologies and Democratic Citizenship

2015 ◽  
pp. 572-586
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Apathy ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

This chapter articulates that scholars write about Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) in two ways. This is not a reflection of a reality in the literature but rather a heuristic designed to contextualize democratic citizenship within contemporary HET discussions. The first way is to write about HET as possible realities far off into the future. The second way is to write about HET that can be realised seemingly as soon as tomorrow. For democratic citizenship, writing in the first case is either utopian or dystopian. It is either the projection of democracy's total triumph or its utter collapse caused by the type of rots that lead to democide. But writing in the second case is stimulating and vibrant. There are, for example, numerous calls for HET-led reforms in the literature. These reforms are needed to help answer the crisis of the citizen's august discontent (the growing and increasingly legitimized political apathy and political abstention observed in, and performed by, the citizenry). The purpose of this chapter is to focus on this second case—this more developed body of literature—and to theorise the interface between democratic citizenship and HET.

Imagining Future People in Biomedical Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britta van Beers
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Gene Editing ◽  
Emerging Technologies ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Future People ◽  
The Future ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
Human Genetic Engineering ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

Human genetic engineering and other human enhancement technologies bring about uncertainties and risks on both the physical and the conceptual and intangible levels. Much of the controversy surrounding these emerging technologies is due to the fact that categorical distinctions, such as between person and thing, and chance and choice, are blurred in radical ways. As a consequence, the emergence of biomedical technologies also entails, what could be called, metaphysical risks and symbolic uncertainties. This chapter explores the ways in which imaginings of the future of mankind and mankind itself have found their way into international legal regulation of biomedical technologies through an analysis of recent debates on the international ban on human germline genetic engineering. This prohibition, which is at the heart of international biolaw, is currently being questioned as recent scientific breakthroughs in the field of gene-editing are about to turn human genetic engineering into a reality.

From Boundless Expansion to Existential Threat

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 332-348
Author(s):  
Apolline Taillandier
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Political Imagination ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Existential Risk ◽  
Political Narratives ◽  
The Future ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

This essay examines visions of the future of human life in transhumanist imaginaries of the posthuman, ranging from utopian figurations to catastrophist warnings. Focusing on libertarian, liberal, and conservative posthuman imaginaries, it argues that the posthuman condition is defined by changing scientific, moral, and political narratives, including ideas of revolutionary change, progressive evolution through the ethical use of human enhancement technologies, and the mitigation of existential risk for the preservation of intelligence and civilization in the long term. Changing posthuman imaginaries, it shows, reshape spaces of present and future political imagination.

Redefining the Boundaries of Humanity and the Human Body

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Galván ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Technical Ability ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

What are the boundaries of humanity and the human body within our evolving technological society? Within the field of technoethics, inquiry into the origins of the species is both a biological and ethical question as scholars attempt to grapple with conflicting views of what it means to be human and what attributes are core to human beings within the era of human enhancement technologies. Based on a historical and conceptual analysis, this chapter uses a technoethical lens to discuss defining characteristics of the human species as homo technicus. Under this framework, both symbolic capacity and technical ability are assumed to be grounded within the free and ethical nature of human beings. Ideas derived from Modernity and Postmodernity are drawn upon to provide a more encompassing view of humans that accommodates both its technical and ethical dimensions as homo technicus.

Technic Self-Determination

2014 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Franco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and a threat to human dignity and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. Contrarily, HET can be shown to constitute the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, this chapter elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination (i.e., control over the determining circumstances and conditions of our own selves and lives), which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, arguably, the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular as it is today and has been in the past. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity and characteristic that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

scholarly journals The Ethics of Genetic Cognitive Enhancement: Gene Editing or Embryo Selection?

Philosophies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Marcelo de Araujo
Keyword(s):  
Gene Editing ◽  
Cognitive Enhancement ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Embryo Selection ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Human Genomics ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

Recent research with human embryos, in different parts of the world, has sparked a new debate on the ethics of genetic human enhancement. This debate, however, has mainly focused on gene-editing technologies, especially CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). Less attention has been given to the prospect of pursuing genetic human enhancement by means of IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) in conjunction with in vitro gametogenesis, genome-wide association studies, and embryo selection. This article examines the different ethical implications of the quest for cognitive enhancement by means of gene-editing on the one hand, and embryo selection on the other. The article focuses on the ethics of cognitive enhancement by means of embryo selection, as this technology is more likely to become commercially available before cognitive enhancement by means of gene-editing. This article argues that the philosophical debate on the ethics of enhancement should take into consideration public attitudes to research on human genomics and human enhancement technologies. The article discusses, then, some of the recent findings of the SIENNA Project, which in 2019 conducted a survey on public attitudes to human genomics and human enhancement technologies in 11 countries (France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, and United States).

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