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The Trouble with “Transhumanism”: Part Two
Posted: Dec 22, 2004
To make real progress in discussions of radical technology, the first thing we need is new language By Dale Carrico As I discussed in the first part of this series, I think that some supporters of radical technological outcomes overapply the term "transhumanist" to their strategic allies in ways that might needlessly alienate them, render them more vulnerable to rhetorical attack and, in so doing, frustrate the achievement of shared strategic ends.
In a similar way, I worry about the overeager derisive
application of the term "luddite" to denote opponents of
particular technological outcomes. For one thing, this
disparaging usage disrespects the historical Luddites, most
of whom happened to be
right to fear
the devastating technological disruption of their personal
lives, whatever the long-term benefits we can discern in the
aftermath. But also, too often the term is simply distortive
and gratuitously insulting. Many of the people who oppose
particular technologies that I support nevertheless affirm
the value of others. Almost all of them rely on technology
and medicine themselves and are well aware of and grateful
for this fact. And quite a few, though definitely not all,
fully grant the general premise that sophisticated
technocultures are preferable in important respects to any
fantasized idealized state of nature.
The politics of technological development are shifting
and complex, and conjuring up an imaginary scene that pits
"transhumanists" against "luddites" easily deranges our
sense of the relevant players and terrain, implying a
greater coherence and clarity both in and among individuals
in their attitudes toward particular technological
developments than actually obtains in reality.
To be told that a person is "transhumanist" or
"anti-transhumanist" in their attitudes towards
preimplantation genetic diagnosis, reproductive cloning or
engineered negligible
senescence does not put you in a position to
confidently assess that person's attitudes towards
molecular manufacturing,
space elevators,
massive automation,
the
strong program
of artificial intelligence or even, necessarily, the
appropriate prescription of
neuroceuticals.
There has to be a broader, more dynamic, more permeable
set of categories available to think through these complex
attitudes and shifting affiliations, at least in their more
general aspects. Most will consider being labeled either
"luddite" or "transhumanist" an ad hominem attack more than
an application of illuminating analytical categories. These
terms are too monolithic, they have fraught historical
associations we cannot just wish away and they are far too
susceptible to deployment as straw-men and scapegoats that
become substitutes for real deliberation about
positions in a cartoonish conservative media environment.
Two sensibilities
Lately, I've been using a broader distinction of
"bioconservative" and "tech-progressive" sensibilities to
name such shifting general tendencies, but I would be
pleased to see a lot more language available to get at these
differences and connections. Here are some provisional
definitions:
Bioconservatism: A stance of hesitancy about
technological development in general and strong opposition
to the genetic, prosthetic or cognitive modification of
human beings in particular. Whether arising from a
conventionally right-leaning politics of religious/cultural
conservatism or from a conventionally left-leaning politics
of environmentalism, bioconservative positions oppose
medical and other technological interventions into what are
broadly perceived as current human and cultural limits in
the name of a defense of "the natural" deployed as a moral
category.
Tech-progressivism: A stance of active support for
technological development in general and for human practices
of genetic, prosthetic and cognitive modification in
particular. Tech-progressives believe that technological
developments can be profoundly empowering and emancipatory
when they are regulated by legitimate democratic and
accountable authorities to ensure that their costs, risks
and benefits are all fairly shared by the actual
stakeholders to those developments.
It is important to note that both bioconservatism
and tech-progressivism, in their more reasonable
expressions, share an opposition to unsafe, unfair,
undemocratic, undeliberative forms of technological
development, and both recognize that such
developmental modes can facilitate unacceptable recklessness
and exploitation, exacerbate injustice and incubate
dangerous social discontent.
I would also emphasize that it is not right to imagine
that these sensibilities cleave off into two perfectly
separate tribes, squaring off as if on a vast historical
playing field for some cosmic-scaled battle. Many
individuals will support both bioconservative and
tech-progressive positions on particular issues in the
politics of technological development. And most people will
sense the tug of reasonableness in particular formulations
arising from either broader sensibility from time to time,
according to the vicissitudes in their own personal
experiences. These two sensibilities, often deeply at odds
in particular campaigns of advocacy, activism, policymaking,
meaning-making and education, will nevertheless usually
share at least enough common ground for productive dialogue
to be possible among their adherents.
After nature
I think it is also important to recognize that both
bioconservative and tech-progressive sensibilities,
positions and politics have arisen and exert their force
uniquely in consequence of what I describe as the ongoing
denaturalization of human life in this historical
moment.
This denaturalization is a broad social and cultural
tendency, roughly analogous to and even structurally related
to other broad tendencies such as, say, secularization and
industrialization.
It consists essentially of two trends: First, it names a
growing suspicion (one that can provoke either fear or
hopefulness, sometimes in hyperbolic forms) of the normative
and ideological force of claims made in the name of "nature"
and especially "human nature," inspired by a recognition of
the destabilizing impact of technological developments on
given capacities and social norms. Second, it consists of an
awareness of the extent to which the terms and pace of
technological development, and the distribution of its
costs, risks and benefits, is emerging ever more
conspicuously as the primary space of social struggle
around the globe.
It is a truism that the technical means to eliminate
poverty and illiteracy for every human being on Earth have
existed since the 18th century, but that social forms and
political will have consistently frustrated these ends. The
focus for most tech-progressives remains to use emerging
technologies to transform the administration of social
needs, to provide shelter, nutrition, health care and
education for all, as well as to remedy the damaging and
destabilizing impact of technology itself on complex,
imperfectly understood environmental and social orders on
which we depend for survival. To these ends, a deepening and
widening of democratic
participation in
development and
accountability of
governance through emerging networked information
and communication technologies is also crucial. Beyond this,
many tech-progressives also champion the idea of
morphological freedom,
or consensual practices of genetic, prosthetic and cognitive
modification considered as personal practices of
self-creation rather than as the technological imposition of
social conformity figured questionably as "health."
After humanism
It is difficult from my own perspective to see how
bioconservative defenses of "human nature" could finally
help us much in these worthy democratizing projects. I do
not mean to be dismissive of humanism, but it seems to me
that historically speaking the so-called universal
accomplishments celebrated under the banner of humanism from
the Renaissance to the present day have rarely been
available to more than a privileged group of males, and
occasionally a few females, within strictly limited
socioeconomic strata. Even at its most capacious, any
anthropocentric human-racist grounding of ethics will stand
perplexed in the face of the demand of Great Apes, dolphins
and other nonhuman animals for standing and respect.
Further, the category of "humanity" seems rarely to have
provided much protective cover for even fully sane, mature,
"exemplary" human beings caught up in the genocidal
technoconstituted dislocations of the modern era.
A number of post-humanist discourses have emerged to
register these dissatisfactions with the limitations of the
traditional humanist project. Post-humanist thinkers such as
Donna Haraway,
Katherine Hayles
and
Bruno Latour
like to point out that we have never been human in
the first place, in the sense of any humanism that would
render us luminously rational, angelic beings apart from the
beasts and the "beastly" humans we disdain and oppress as
our inferiors. And so, it is important to recognize that the
"post-human" does not have to conjure up the possibly
frightening or tragic spectacle of a
posthumous
humanity, an end to the best aspirations of human
civilization, or even an outright repudiation of humanism
itself, so much as a new effort emerging out of
humanism, a moving on from humanism as a point of departure,
a demanding of something new from it, perhaps the demand
that humanism live up to its universalizing self-image for
once.
Bioconservatives often express a general fear that new
technologies will "rob" us of our humanity. But for me the
essence of our humanity, if there could be such a thing, is
simply our capacity to explore together what it means to be
human. No sect, no tribe, no system of belief owns what it
means to be human. I believe prosthetic practices are
contributions to the conversation we are having about what
humanity is capable of, and those who want to freeze that
conversation in
the
image
of
their
pet
platitudes
risk violating that "humanity" just as surely as any
reckless experimentalism.
I neither fear nor hope for the arrival of technologies
that would somehow make some of us "more than human." When I
contemplate the prospect of even superlative technologies
such as rejuvenation medicine or molecular manufacturing, I
imagine a world that would offer up more ways to be human,
none of them more nor less human than any other.
I happen to believe most of us
have grown altogether too queer and too prostheticized
already to be much seduced by the language of innocent
"nature," or sweet bioconservative odes to the so-called
"human dignity" and "deeper meaning" to be found in pain and
suffering from potentially treatable diseases.
Tech-progressives believe that we can demand fairness,
sustainability, responsibility and freedom from the forces
of technological development in which we are all immersed
and in which we are all collaborating, and that this demand
is the contribution of this living generation to the ongoing
conversation of humankind.
Dale Carrico Ph.D. is a fellow of the IEET and a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Carrico blogs at Amor Mundi.
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