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.

Redefining the Boundaries of Humanity and the Human Body

2015 ◽  
pp. 2112-2121
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.

The Humanity of the Human Body

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
José M. Galván ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Technical Ability ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

The importance of the human body within traditional bioethical debates is amplified within the field of technoethics 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. A technoethical perspective of the human being is presented to highlight defining characteristics of humans within a technological society. Under this framework, symbolic capacity and technical ability are assumed to be grounded within the free and ethical nature of human beings. Ideas from Modernity and Postmodernity are used to demonstrate the need for a more encompassing view of humans which accommodates both its technical and ethical dimensions. The concepts of homotechnicus and cybersapien are introduced to help provide a more unitary vision of the human being and the priority of ethics over technics within this technological society.

scholarly journals Fit for work? Redefining ‘Normal’ and ‘Extreme’ through human enhancement technologies

Organization ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 552-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Bloomfield ◽  
Karen Dale
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Cognitive Enhancers ◽  
Employment Relationships ◽  
Smart Drugs ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
Potential Use ◽  
Advanced Capitalist

This article focuses on how the categories of ‘normal’ and ‘extreme’ in the context of work might be renegotiated through the development of human enhancement technologies which aim to enable the human body to be pushed beyond its biological limits. The ethical dimensions of human enhancement technologies have been widely considered, but there has been little debate about their role in the broader world of employment—nor, conversely, the recognition that prevailing employment relationships might shape the development and uptake of such technologies. Addressing the organisation of work within ‘advanced’ capitalist economies, this article considers the arguments for the potential use of cognitive enhancers, so-called ‘smart drugs’, in various domains of work such as surgery and transportation. We argue that the development of human enhancement technologies might foster the normalisation of ‘working extremely’—enabling longer working hours, greater effort or increased concentration—and yet at the same time promote the conditions of possibility under which workers are able to work on themselves so as to go beyond the norm, becoming ‘extreme workers’. Looking at human enhancement technologies not only enables us to see how they might facilitate ever greater possibilities for working extremely but also helps us to understand the conditions under which cultures of extreme work become the norm and how workers them/ourselves accept or even embrace such work.

scholarly journals Biological Modifications to the Human Body through Artificial Intelligence: A Religious Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ahmed Al-Boraie ◽  
Khaled Semeda ◽  
Mossad Abdul Salam ◽  
El-Tayeb Hassan El-Mahi Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The Body ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Questions ◽  
Human Augmentation

Decades ago, genetic engineering and human genome projects created a set of ethical, religious, and legal questions. Scientists have researched these issues and agreed on ethical values and regulations that must be applied to develop these research projects. Today, history is repeating itself due to the artificial intelligence techniques in human augmentation and the implantation of machines in the human body to enhance its biological capabilities and surpass human nature. The transhumanist movement promoted these technologies, designed supernatural humans, and achieved eternal immortality, so some freeze their bodies waiting for those technologies. The study focuses on the most important artificial intelligence technologies in human enhancement and capacity amplification. The study also focuses on transhumanist ideas towards these technologies and projects. In the end, the study clarifies the position of Islamic law regarding this project's ideas, the assertion that Islamic law supports therapeutic interventions that aim to restore the body to its natural state or close to it. At the same time, rejecting all interventions that aim to change the personality, the human identity, and the biological nature that God created human beings.

scholarly journals Neoliberalny panoptykon biopolityki – pomiędzy ekspansją i społeczną terapią

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 103-126
Author(s):  
Janusz Golinowski
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Quality Of Services ◽  
Private Health Care ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Welfare State

Technologie usprawniające działanie człowieka rodzą poważne pytania etyczne dotyczące praktyk zdrowotnych, które nie służą już tylko leczeniu chorób, ale proponują również „optymalizację” fizycznych, poznawczych i psychologicznych zdolności ludzi. W tym artykule dokonujemy koncepcyjnego wyjaśnienia pojęć biowładzy i biopolityki oraz argumentujemy za ich użytecznością we współczesnej analizie. Trzy dekady neoliberalnej polityki poważnie ograniczyły państwo opiekuńcze: prywatyzacje i cięcia w budżetach publicznych zmusiły agencje publiczne do ograniczenia swojej działalności, czasami tracąc uniwersalność, skuteczność i jakość usług. Pandemia dramatycznie pokazała cenę takiego neoliberalnego zwrotu. Globalizacja rynku stwarza zagrożenia dla zdrowia i nie jest w stanie reagować na sytuacje kryzysowe. Prywatna opieka zdrowotna okazuje się w dużej mierze nieistotna w walce z pandemią. Państwo opiekuńcze nie powinno być traktowane jako „koszt” dla prywatnego systemu gospodarczego. Byłoby błędem sądzić, że po ustąpieniu pandemii gospodarka mogłaby wrócić do „normalności”. Musimy ponownie przemyśleć produkcję i konsumpcję w świetle potrzeb zdrowotnych i środowiskowych. The Neoliberal Panopticon of Biopolitics – Between Expansion and Social Therapy Human enhancement technologies raise serious ethical questions about health practices no longer content simply to treat disease, but which now also propose to “optimize” human beings’ physical, cognitive and psychological abilities. In this article we undertake some conceptual clarification of the concepts of biopower and biopolitics and argue for their utility in contemporary analysis. Three decades of neoliberal policies have seriously reduced the welfare state: privatisations and cuts in public budgets have forced public agencies to downsize their activities, sometimes losing universality, effectiveness and quality of services. The pandemic has dramatically shown the price of such a neoliberal turn. Market globalisation creates health threats and is completely unable to respond to emergencies. Private health care is turning out to be largely irrelevant in facing the pandemic. The welfare state should not be considered a ‘cost’ for the private economic system. It would be a mistake to believe that, once the pandemic has passed, the economy could go back to ‘normal’. We need to rethink production and consumption considering health and environmental needs.

A Rapture of the Nerds? A Comparison between Transhumanist Eschatology and Christian Parousia

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-367
Author(s):  
Roberto Paura
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Point Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe

Transhumanism is one of the main “ideologies of the future” that has emerged in recent decades. Its program for the enhancement of the human species during this century pursues the ultimate goal of immortality, through the creation of human brain emulations. Therefore, transhumanism offers its fol- lowers an explicit eschatology, a vision of the ultimate future of our civilization that in some cases coincides with the ultimate future of the universe, as in Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory. The essay aims to analyze the points of comparison and opposition between transhumanist and Christian eschatologies, in particular considering the “incarnationist” view of Parousia. After an introduction concern- ing the problems posed by new scientific and cosmological theories to traditional Christian eschatology, causing the debate between “incarnationists” and “escha- tologists,” the article analyzes the transhumanist idea of mind-uploading through the possibility of making emulations of the human brain and perfect simulations of the reality we live in. In the last section the problems raised by these theories are analyzed from the point of Christian theology, in particular the proposal of a transhuman species through the emulation of the body and mind of human beings. The possibility of a transhumanist eschatology in line with the incarnationist view of Parousia is refused.

The commodification of personality: Human enhancement and market society

Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-45
Author(s):  
Leandro Gaitán
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The Self ◽  
Market Society ◽  
Technological Society ◽  
Technological Tools

Abstract In a future highly technological society it will be possible to modify the personality using different kinds of technological tools. Consequently, we could become buyers and consumers of personality. As such, personality, which is a core aspect of the self, could turn into a commodity. This article intends to address the following questions: 1) How can new technologies modify personality? 2) Why might personality become a commodity? 3) What is wrong with turning personality into commodity?

Of Two Lives One? Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud and the Question of Holism in Vitalist Medicine

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Organism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Nervous Systems ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Medical Perspective

ArgumentMontpellier vitalists upheld a medical perspective akin to modern “holism” in positing the functional unity of creatures imbued with life. While early vitalists focused on the human organism, Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud investigated digestion, growth, and other physiological processes that human beings shared with simpler organisms. Eschewing modern investigative methods, Grimaud promoted a medically-grounded “metaphysics.” His influential doctrine of the “two lives” broke with Montpellier holism, classifying some vital phenomena as “higher” and others as “lower” and attributing the “nobility” of the human species to the predominance of the former. In place of Montpellier teaching that attributed health to the holistic equilibration of vital activities, Grimaud embraced spiritualist dualisms of soul and body, Creator and created. Celebrating the divinely-ordained “wisdom” evident in involuntary physiological processes, he argued that such life functions were incomprehensible to human investigators. While Grimaud's work encouraged inquiry into the division between the central and “vegetative” nervous systems that became paradigmatic in nineteenth-century neuroscience, it also opened Montpellier vitalism to charges of conservatism and obscurantism that are still lodged against it to the present day.

Concept of  Mental Education: A Perspective of  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-419
Author(s):  
Makmudi Makmudi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Integrated Curriculum ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Sexual Education ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Will ◽  
Life Education ◽  
The Mind

Man consists of two elements, namely body and spirit, so that human beings are jasiman and ruhiyah at once. Hummans are also part of one element of the elements that exist in an educational process. Three element include the soul, the mind, the heart, and the human body. Humman and education, can not be separated from each other. Both are an interconnected entity, human as the perpetrator and education as a syistem in the process to achieve the goal of education itself.  Mental health education requires alignment and harmony in various stages and sectors as well as attention to the three elements that exist in the human self that is the physical element (psychomotor) which includes body building, skill (skill) and sexual education, the spiritual element (affective) which includes the formation of faith, and iradah (the will), the element of reason (cognitive) which includes the coaching of intelligence and the provision of knowledge. The purpose of writing this research is to know and analyze thoughts about the concept of life education perspective Ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah. Soul education is considered successful, if one's soul has reached the degree of nafs muthmainnah, which has three main characteristics that mutually reinforce one another, namely; (1) a faithful soul to God, (2) a patient soul, (3) a soul that is self-serving to Allah (tawakal). Through the process of mental education which includes: the foundation of theology, the purpose of mental education, integrated curriculum / manhaj at-takamul, appropriate methods and applicable according to its stages, such as: takhliyah stages, tahliyah stages, muhasabah an-nafs, dzikrullah, and tahqiq 'ubudiyah. So that from the process will give birth ihsan attitude, and will increase the piety in worship, both related to God and those related to humans and the surrounding natural environment. Because, the essence of ihsan attitude itself is upholding 'ubudiyah.

scholarly journals Neurosciences in Buddhist India

2018 ◽  
Vol 07 (03) ◽  
pp. 176-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arushi Kumar ◽  
Raj Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Preoperative Evaluation ◽  
Operative Procedure ◽  
Thought Process ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Neurologic Disorders ◽  
Mind Control ◽  
Control Of Thoughts ◽  
Case Based

AbstractNeurosciences in Buddhist era was mainly based on power of mind and thoughts. It emphasized mainly about the power of mind, control of thoughts, purification, and modifications of erroneous thought process, which should result in truthful and correct practices and subsequent actions by human beings to remain happy. Buddhism believes that most diseases of human body are secondary to mind and that these can be healed by controlling the erroneous thoughts and practices of Dhamma. Though the treatment for neurologic disorders such as headache, stress, and anxiety was primitive, it was mainly based on purification of mind and righteous pathway of Dhamma followed by medicines, modification in dietary and other living habits, etc. Enough evidence (including operated case-based commentary) shows that cranial surgery was also performed following appropriate diagnosis. The concept of diagnosis, preoperative evaluation, explanation to the patient, operative procedure, perioperative care, and follow-up was also present in that era.

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