Transhumanism: What Does This Intellectual Movement Consist Of?

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

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

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 currently within our reach and others to be developed.

The objective would be to enhance and improve all the capabilities that a human has, whether in terms of intelligence and other cognitive abilities as well as power and physical resistance, prolonging life indefinitely, even cheating 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 is evident in countless literary works, some as old as the Poem of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian writing that dates back to the year 2500 BC, approximately. 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 this whole current takes a more defined form and transhumanism emerges as a shared movement. John BS Haldane could be considered the father of these ideas, thanks to an essay called Daedalus and Icarus: Science and the Future. In this avant-garde writing, geneticist Haldane raises key concepts for the development of transhumanism, such as eugenics, ectogenesis, and the use of technology as a means to enhance human capabilities.

History of transhumanism

The credit for coining the term transhumanism falls to Julian Huxley , biologist and strong defender of eugenics. In the year 57 he published an article in which he explained the proposed paradigm shift between a miserable, painful and short life, as he says has been what man has experienced until now, and a means for humanity to transcend as a species. which is what Huxley proposes, moving to a new evolutionary stage of the human being.

Starting in the 80s of the 20th century, the first meetings between transhumanist intellectuals were established, with the aim of sharing their ideas and seeking means to achieve their objectives in the 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 responsible for setting up 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 for 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 may entail. In this sense, they defend that technology should improve the lives of all people in society, not just a few.

Technology

Transhumanism seeks to achieve its goals 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 the most effort has been put in recent decades. Its foundation is the manipulation of matter at microscopic scales, on the order of nanometers.

Focused on transhumanism, It 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, researchers are very ambitious with the future possibilities of nanotechnology, so it is advisable 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 is most attractive for transhumanism is genetic engineering. It is based on the manipulation of the DNA of the zygote so that certain genes that imply, for example, some risk of congenital disease can be modified, changing them for others that increase the chances of enjoying good health.

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

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 about it. This whole question is explored in the film Gattaca (1997).

3. Cybernetics

Although the pure concept of cybernetics refers to a branch of mathematical studies, another definition has become popular thanks to different works of science fiction in which cybernetics is referred to 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 in this discipline are already being taken. There are, for example, artificial limbs for people who have suffered an amputation and that allow a certain mobility through electrodes connected to the brain, and even exoskeletons thanks to which individuals who suffer from paraplegia can stand up.

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 will go in the near future.

4. Artificial intelligence

The jewel in the crown of technological advances is artificial intelligence, a machine with capabilities so advanced 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 it would have would be tremendously important on many levels.

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

5. Fusion of mind and machine

Combining part of the artificial intelligence and part of the cybernetics that we saw before, a path 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 due to all the philosophical approaches it raises. If we copy a person’s mind into a computer, is that person still that person? Would both versions of the mind be? If we unplug the computer, would he be dying? If we make two copies, would they be independent people?

This is the most futuristic technology of all and, at 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. Furthermore, 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, unlikely and surely impossible.

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