Journal of Evolution and Technology - Vol. 21 Issue 2 – November 2010 - pgs 23-31
http://jetpress.org/agar.htm



Abstract



This paper summarizes a couple of the main arguments from my new book, Humanity’s End. In the book I argue against radical enhancement – the adjustment of human attributes and abilities to levels that greatly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. I’m curious to see what reaction this elicits in a journal whose readership includes some of radical enhancement’s most imaginative and committed advocates.



Humanity’s End is motivated by the conviction that the debate about human enhancement must move beyond the binary “yes, I love it; no, it’s evil” dialectic that has tended to dominate philosophical discussion up till now. When we focus on the multiple means – cybernetic, genetic, nanotechnological, and so on – by which humans are likely to be enhanced, we find significant moral differences. Some human enhancements should be endorsed; many should be rejected.



An additional motivation for Humanity’s End is a sense that the technologies of human enhancement are on the verge of something really big. If Ray Kurzweil is right, then improvements of the information technologies that may be used to enhance human attributes track an exponential path (Kurzweil 2005). A feature of these ever-increasing patterns of improvement is that they deliver dramatic improvements quickly. Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns is controversial. Perhaps new means of enhancement won’t arrive according to its schedule. But I know from my own nostalgia for rotary dial telephones and incredulity about computers that wirelessly access the Internet that human adaptation to technology lags behind the pace of technological change. We mustn’t just assume a gradualist scenario in which new human enhancements arrive in small increments with plenty of time for us to adjust between each instalment.



Rapid advances in the technologies of enhancement raise the possibility of radical enhancement which I define as the improvement of human attributes and abilities to levels that greatly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. Humanity’s End presents an argument for rejecting this degree of enhancement.



Rejecting radical enhancement does not entail rejecting all the ways in which humans might enhance themselves. I defend a moderate stance on human enhancement. Some advocates of enhancement hear calls for moderation in much the same way that frat party attendees respond to calls for moderate consumption of beer. Indeed, there are many moral debates in which moderation is hard to achieve. For example, you either think that the state should be empowered to put condemned criminals to death or you think it shouldn’t. It’s difficult to work out what might count as a moderate position on this issue (arguing for the semi-execution of the nastiest criminals?). By contrast, a proper understanding of enhancement technologies reveals plenty of ground for moderation. I argue that our shared humanity imposes moral and prudential limits on enhancement. Many of the enhancements people most want are fully compatible with their humanity. They’re valued by human beings precisely because of their promotion of enduring and significant human values. In matters of human enhancement, however, more is not always better. Proper scrutiny reveals radical enhancement to be incompatible with our humanity, and worth avoiding because of that fact. Slippery slope arguments to the effect that endorsing moderate enhancement entails endorsing radical enhancement warrant the same respect as proposals by party hosts that accepting offers of spritzers commits you to draining entire liquor cabinets.



So what would make our humanity incompatible with the machinations (literal and metaphorical) of advocates of radical enhancement? In Humanity’s End, I identify humanity with the biological species Homo sapiens. According to Ernst Mayr’s influential definition, biological species are “groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups” (Mayr 1963, 30). Racism may occasionally erect barriers between Malawians, Finns, Koreans, and Samoans. But these are only ever temporary and disappear together with the bigotry that generates them. The reproductive barrier between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes is, in contrast, no mere cultural artefact. Humans could mate with chimpanzees only under the most thoroughly artificial circumstances


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