Trans...
Question: What are the moral issues at play in Transhumanism? What about Genetic Modification?
Answer:
Genetic modification could just as well mean the repair or restoration of damaged genetic material that is already present in nature and is therefore not qualitatively different from many other medical interventions. That said in the context of transhumanism and eugenics it becomes very important.
Much of what comes next will be applicable to things being done now. There is value in viewing the every-day from exotic (but not impossibly far away) vantage points. Looking at our own situations from such a place let’s us make many connections and see things that up close are obscured.
What do we mean when we use this word morality? Many roll their eyes and have a little laugh when someone invokes it (but only when they themselves have not been wronged in some way, note).
People have also been trained by mass media to associate the word with small-mindedness, sexual prudery, cowardice, a lack of education and critical thought. That is to say, if "morality" was synonymous with these, then who would care if there were a "moral argument" against anything? No one worth listening to would, would they.
So it is important to qualify the term at the very beginning.
Morality for the rest of this read, will not be referring to the popular and trivializing misrepresentation discussed above. Instead, it will be referring to an obligation to respect what we ourselves as persons, as well as all other persons, and the world beyond persons intrinsically mean.
"Meaning you say?” I can sense your eyeballs beginning to swivel in longing for the nearest exit, “What is this woo you’re talking Gutenberg?”
No woo, human persons have meaning, they are not meaningless. Morality is the shorthand word we use to describe right conduct that aligns with this self evident fact.
The Biosemioticians have observed for example, that Semiosis — the production and interpretation of signs — is a fundamental feature of life, existing even at the cellular level. And the poets of human language recognize this also, saying the universe is not made of atoms; it's made of tiny stories.1
Here I might be being too optimistic, but I'd say most of Quoras readership has a fair grasp of stories. Stories have characters, plots, settings, symbolism, theme, constants and changings and so on. In other words, stories are a lot like life.
"Alright alright Gutenberg", you say. "If all this is true then so what? What's any of that got to do with transhumanism?" Excellent question: transhumanist ideology is by and large driven by the idea that the universe and humanity are, in and of themselves, without meaning. That is to say that the transhumanist looks at the universe and the human beings in it and says "none of this means anything" or at least "none of this means anything important".
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." - Macbeth
Now put yourself in this pair of shoes, do they pinch? Yes, they pinch as nihilism always does.
We are all reminded continually, from the voice of many witnesses, that life is meaningful. And that many facets of it are to be respected while the defacing of its beauty is to be resisted.
If recognizing this, you take off these wretched shoes and feel the earth beneath your feet, you can't believe anymore that the world has no meaning. Without them you might even dance! Imagine!
So what kind of shoemaker would make shoes that don't fit and can't be danced in...on purpose?
It is important to recognize that in this there are at least two broad kinds of cobbler:
The first kind does see the innate meaning in the universe, and for whatever reason, hates it. Sometimes these are arrogant and vicious people, sometimes these are people who have fixed their attention on bad things for too long and become caught in a myopia that can't see the good the true or the beautiful even if the unicorn at the end of the rainbow gives them an encouraging jab (true story).
The second kind is more to be pitied then anything else. These have not seen the innate meaning of the universe inasmuch as they have been culturally acclimated to deny even the slightest hint of that possibility by generations of mind-rot they've been bathed in since birth (not to put too fine a point on it).
Both kinds have one thing in common. Regardless of their motivations, or depth of commitment, they deny that human beings have innate meaning. The logic of that proposition drives everyone who accepts it to an unavoidable destination. A place so dark that they can no longer recognize who is and isn't a human being (what is a woman for that matter?).
In other words, the moral argument against transhumanism is that it denies that the foundation of morality exist at all. Transhumanism is not the designer who builds prosthetics for the wounded, it is not the researcher trying to cure brutal disease, or the caregiver calming a severe amnesiac (humans were doing all of that long before the transhumanist ideas were formulated).
Once upon a time (but not the first or the last) the world was confronted with this Ubermenschen ideology and was told the exact same things. Transhumanism is rebranded eugenics.
“Death can mean deliverance. Death is life.” — Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitlers personal physician, executed in 1948.
Here is an example of what happens when the line between truth and lies becomes queer. This total view of life expressed by Brandt can no longer tell the difference between the two most different states-of-affairs we'll ever know, life and death. Solve et coagula.
It is good to help the sick and heal as much as we possibly can the harm that this is inflicted on people, because people are meaningful and people matter and people have value and dignity that they are born with. Value that no man, woman, government or internet mod gives them. And to the extent any authority is legitimate it will only be so in proportion to its respect of this truth.
Conversely no authority, medical or otherwise, which believes that this innate meaning does not exist, can ever hope to respect it, anymore than a people who disbelieved in the moon could have landed on it. In the past medical doctrine has been founded in light of this innate meaningfulness. The rise of the hospital was predicated on people who believed in this meaning, and strived to understand and appreciate it.
And they have over the centuries, in the face of error, stupidity, and willful ignorance still managed to achieve much life honoring good. The same cannot be said of this resurgent lie that meaning is not something we discover, but only ever merely something we invent.
To help the human being is one thing, to claim that the “human” can or should be moved beyond, without even first being able to explain what the human being intrinsically is, is to try to hit a target you can't see or or make a new primary color! No such uninformed agency can hope to improve, in an ultimate sense, on what it is acting on without understanding it.
What happens when you ask a lunatic to to perform open heart surgery? The patient dies on the table, my dear doctors. And make no mistake, the person who argues for transhumanism on the basis of human beings not being anything special has already invalidated his own opinion on the matter, or do these people think themselves more than human already? Do they think the world would be perfect if only they were the ones deciding who is and isn't a person? How else can we account for their confidence in their judgement if they include themselves in the ranks of us mere mortals that they are so eager to dismiss as they (we) are?
These parting questions are something of the bedrock of the moral argument. So whether or not they can be adequately answered, would be where any possible refutation of the above moral argument against transhumanism - defined as it has been as something qualitatively other in respect to medical science and practice as it has been known to us - would necessarily start.
Authors notes:
If you have made it this far dear reader, bless you. I added this section to the post to point out that the above was originally written and posted here.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you found something to think about. We are a puzzle, and puzzles have a point.
I have seen this quote variously attributed to Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Muriel Rukeyser. It is too good not to share, and no misattribution is intended.