Transhumanism: what is this intellectual movement about?

What is the next step in human evolution? There is a group of people who are very clear about it, and they defend a current known as transhumanism.

In this article we will discover what are the foundations of this movement, what are the goals of its advocates and what are the possible paths they can take to achieve their goals and take the next step as species.

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What is transhumanism and what beliefs is it based on?

Transhumanism is a school of thought based on the belief and desire that the human species must evolve, using all possible technological means, both those that are within our reach today and others to be developed.

The objective would be to enhance and improve all the capacities that a human has, be it in a matter of intelligence and others. cognitive abilities such as power and physical resistance, reaching the point of prolonging life indefinitely, even outwitting death.

The concept of transhumanism is not something new, since the search for eternal life is something almost inherent to the human being, and this remains Patent in countless literary works, some as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian writing dating from the year 2500 BC. C, approx. Since then and until today there have been countless works that talk about immortality and ways to find eternal youth.

But It is in the 20th century when all this current takes a more defined form and transhumanism emerges as a shared movement. One might consider John B.S. Haldane as the father of these ideas, thanks to an essay called Daedalus and Icarus: Science and the Future. In this avant-garde writing, the geneticist Haldane raises key concepts for the development of transhumanism, such as eugenics, ectogenesis, and the use of technology as a means to enhance the capacities human.

History of transhumanism

Credit for coining the term transhumanism goes to Julian Huxley, biologist and staunch defender of the eugenics. In the year 1957, he published an article in which he explained the proposed paradigm shift between a miserable, painful and short life, as he says has been until now the that man has experienced, and a means for humanity to transcend as a species, which is what Huxley proposes, moving to a new evolutionary stage of being human.

Starting in the 80s of the 20th century, the first meetings between intellectuals were established. transhumanists, with the aim of sharing their ideas and looking for means to achieve their objectives in a future. In 1998 the World Transhumanist Association, or Humanity Plus, was founded. (since it is common to use the formula H+ or h+ to refer to transhumanism in an abbreviated way). David Pearce and Nick Bostrom, two European philosophers, are in charge of raising this foundation.

Only one year later, the Transhumanist Declaration was launched, the manifesto that compiles the ideals of transhumanism, establishes the definition of the concept and lays the foundations on the attitude that we must take towards new technologies to achieve the human improvement that this movement seeks, avoiding all the possible associated risks that this methodology can suppose. In this sense, they defend that technology should improve the lives of all people in society, not just a few.

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Technology

Transhumanism seeks to achieve its ends through technical advances in different areas. Of all the technologies in development today, transhumanists pay special attention to the following.

1. nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is one of the technical developments in which more effort has been made in recent decades. Its foundation is the manipulation of matter at microscopic scales, in the order of nanometers.

Focused on transhumanism, would be a means to achieve medical improvements thanks to the invention of molecular machines or nanomachines, which would move through the body to repair tissues, attack certain pathogens, destroy tumor cells, etc.

Although the technique is in its earliest stages, the researchers are very ambitious about the future possibilities of the nanotechnology, so it is convenient to be aware of the next advances, as they can mark a before and after in fields such as Medicine.

2. genetic engineering

Another of the techniques that are most attractive to transhumanism is that of genetic engineering. It is based on the manipulation of the DNA of the zygote., so that it is possible to modify certain genes that imply, for example, some risk of congenital disease, changing them for others that increase the chances of enjoying good health.

It is a highly controversial science, as it carries some very important ethical implications. Where is the limit of the modifiable? Is it correct that some people have access to these improvements and others not, depending on their economic capacity? Would this be favoring a new social stratification, creating new lower classes and high, depending on whether you were born free of "defective" genes or instead have a genetic code free of taras?

We already saw previously that transhumanism defends the application of improvements through technology for the entire population, not only for those individuals who can afford it financially, so the question of the use of genetic engineering generates a lot of debate in this regard. This whole issue is explored in the film Gattaca (1997).

3. Cybernetics

Although the pure concept of cybernetics refers to a branch of mathematical studies, it has become popular another definition thanks to different works of science fiction in which they refer to cybernetics as the fusion of the organic and the synthetic, of the human and the machine, through prostheses, chips connected to the brain and other types of devices.

It may seem like a very futuristic concept, but in reality the first steps are already being taken in this discipline. There are, for example, artificial limbs for people who have suffered an amputation and that allow a certain mobility through of electrodes connected to the brain, and even exoskeletons thanks to which individuals suffering from paraplegia.

The hypothetical future of cybernetics involves creating cyborgs, human beings who have technological implants in their bodies, such as synthetic organs or computers that interact with their own brain. Obviously, these advances have a lot of fiction, but it is also true that today we live surrounded by technology that would be unthinkable just a few decades ago, so you never know where we'll end up in the future next.

4. Artificial intelligence

The jewel in the crown of technological advances is artificial intelligence, a machine with such advanced capabilities that it would be self-aware. There is a heated debate about it and it is not even known if it is possible to create such an artifact, but what is certain is that the implications that it would have would be tremendously important on many levels.

Creating an artificial intelligence that exceeds in many aspects the capabilities of the human being would be another way to help us make an evolutionary leap and achieve many of the objectives proposed by transhumanism, so this is another of the techniques on which many of their hopes are placed for the future.

5. Fusion mind and machine

Combining part of the artificial intelligence and part of the cybernetics that we saw before, an avenue that has been explored in many works of fiction as a means to transcend humanity itself would be to achieve a total fusion between the mind and the machine, abandoning the organic support of our body to use a mechanical and digital one, such as that of a computer.

Both the film Transcendence (2014) and the video game Soma (2015) delve into the implications of this concept and are very interesting for all the philosophical approaches it raises. If we copy a person's mind into a computer, is it still that person? Would both versions of the mind be? If we unplugged the computer, would he be dying? If we make two copies, would they be separate people?

This is the most futuristic technology of all and, for the moment, the furthest from reality, since there is nothing that makes us think that it would be possible to carry it out in the future. In addition, we must not forget that we, each individual, are a human being through our own organism. That is to say: body and mind cannot be separated. Therefore, the idea of ​​transferring our consciousness to a machine, separated from all the organic components of our body is, to say the least, improbableand surely impossible.

In short, we must take all these future technological advances with a grain of salt, knowing that many of them are mere fiction, but that others, surely, will arrive, and they will change our lives, perhaps even fulfilling some of the objectives of the transhumanism.

Bibliographic references:

• Bostrom, N. (2011). A history of transhumanist thought. Arguments of technical reason.
• Dieguez, A. (2017). Transhumanism: The technological search for human enhancement. Barcelona. Herder.
• Fernandez, H.V. (2009). Transhumanism, freedom and human identity. Thémata. Philosophy Magazine.
• Hottois, G. (2013). Humanism; Transhumanism; Posthumanism. Colombian Journal of Bioethics.