Transhumanism and Society: The Social Debate Over Human Enhancement by Stephen Lilley
Author:Stephen Lilley [Lilley, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Social Aspects, Philosophy, General, Science, Life Sciences, Genetics & Genomics
ISBN: 9789400749818
Google: ukoKH9xOiWkC
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2012-07-31T14:24:31+00:00
collapse of Western civilization. They claimed that a growing dependence on
technologies was replacing worship of God and eroding a Christian culture based
on faith, community, and simplicity of life. Anticipating a crisis in technological
society as a prelude to God’s intervention, a Y2K disaster was imagined as an
appropriate ‘‘punishment from a jealous God.’’ (495).
We find this preoccupation with culture war and the expectation of an epic
struggle between religion and the ‘‘techno-secular’’ world in this excerpt from
Alan Padgett’s article, ‘‘God Versus Technology? Science, Secularity, and the
Theology of Technology’’:
Whether in energy riots or anti-robot revolution, biotechnic warfare or worldwide pol-
lution, or some terrible disaster we cannot now envisage, a totally techno-secular world
will eventually destroy itself. Yet, even in this pessimistic scenario, religious faith could
provide a small counterculture with an alternative vision that could provide humanity with
hope for a future beyond the self-extinction of homo technicus (2005).
William Bainbridge (2006:25) envisions a clash between those pursuing ‘‘cyber
immortality’’ and religious fundamentalists as a ‘‘crucial battle in the long-
standing conflict between science and religion.’’
Convergenists advocate aggressive research in cognitive science, including computational
neuroscience, to understand how the human brain actually creates the mind, and thus how
to emulate it…The Convergenists’ agenda is aimed at improving human performance
without limit, and many of the anticipated technological spin-offs would be useful for
recording, preserving, and reanimating human personalities—ultimately creating cyber
immortality. Meanwhile, the broad range of valuable new technologies promised by
convergence will make the unification of science extremely salient for the ordinary person,
thus aggravating the conflict between science and religion. So religion may feel a need to
destroy science in order to save itself (28).
Risk Narratives
45
Whereas Padgett portrays transhumanity risks in terms of technological disas-
ters, Bainbridge warns that technological success will precipitate civil war. Nev-
ertheless, they both primarily characterize transhumanity risk in terms of social
conflict.
Market Exploitation Narrative
Secular conservationists portray transtechnologies within an exploitation narrative
that vilifies capitalism and technoscience. Following Martin Heidegger and Jac-
ques Ellu, Leon Kass (2002:35) defines technology as ‘‘the disposition to rational
mastery.’’ He asserts that commercial interests drive research and development
and ‘‘soft dehumanization’’ will occur ‘‘unless we redeem ourselves by nontech-
nological ideas and practices, today both increasingly beleaguered.’’ (22).
Critics of global capitalism, such as Jeremy Rifkin, see transtechnologies
extending corporate influence:
In less than ten years, the global life science companies will hold patents on many of the
30,000 or so genes that make up the human race as well as patents on the cell lines, tissues,
and organs of our species, giving them unprecedented power to dictate the terms by which
we and future generations live our lives. The concentration of power in the global phar-
maceutical industry has already reached staggering proportions. The implications of a new
market-driven eugenics are enormous and far reaching. Indeed, commercial eugenics
could become the defining social dynamic of the new century (2005:44).
He predicts many negative consequences of a market-driven eugenics including
social pressure on families to relent to genetic intervention, a narrowing of the
human gene pool, intolerance of those individuals with disabilities, and a de-
emphasis on environmental remediation. Mervyn Bendle criticizes Kurzweil’s
brand of transhumanism:
Indeed, it is possible to see Kurzweil’s futurism as a parable—or indeed
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