Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity
Title | Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity PDF eBook |
Author | Bert Gordijn |
Publisher | Springer Science & Business Media |
Total Pages | 237 |
Release | 2008-10-20 |
Genre | Medical |
ISBN | 1402088523 |
As we are increasingly using new technologies to change ourselves beyond therapy and in accordance with our own desires, understanding the challenges of human enhancement has become one of the most urgent topics of the current age. This volume contributes to such an understanding by critically examining the pros and cons of our growing ability to shape human nature through technological advancements. The authors undertake careful analyses of decisive questions that will confront society as enhancement interventions using bio-, info-, neuro- and nanotechnologies become widespread in the years to come. They provide the reader with the conceptual tools necessary to address such questions fruitfully. What makes the book especially attractive is the combination of conceptual, historical and ethical approaches, rendering it highly original. In addition, the well-balanced structure allows both favourable and critical views to be voiced. Moreover, the work has a crystal clear structure. As a consequence, the book is accessible to a broad academic audience. The issues raised are of interest to a wide reflective public concerned about science and ethics, as well as to students, academics and professionals in areas such as philosophy, applied ethics, bioethics, medicine and health management.
Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity (2009).
Title | Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity (2009). PDF eBook |
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Posthuman Life
Title | Posthuman Life PDF eBook |
Author | David Roden |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 220 |
Release | 2014-10-10 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 1317592328 |
We imagine posthumans as humans made superhumanly intelligent or resilient by future advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. Many argue that these enhanced people might live better lives; others fear that tinkering with our nature will undermine our sense of our own humanity. Whoever is right, it is assumed that our technological successor will be an upgraded or degraded version of us: Human 2.0. Posthuman Life argues that the enhancement debate projects a human face onto an empty screen. We do not know what will happen and, not being posthuman, cannot anticipate how posthumans will assess the world. If a posthuman future will not necessarily be informed by our kind of subjectivity or morality the limits of our current knowledge must inform any ethical or political assessment of that future. Posthuman Life develops a critical metaphysics of posthuman succession and argues that only a truly speculative posthumanism can support an ethics that meets the challenge of the transformative potential of technology.
Posthumanism and Public Health
Title | Posthumanism and Public Health PDF eBook |
Author | Simon Cohn |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 306 |
Release | 2018-12-07 |
Genre | Medical |
ISBN | 1351591290 |
The intellectual and moral imperatives that underscore public health have sustained the idea that its fundamental scope is the study of human health, illness and suffering, and that these are self-evidently attributable to individuals and groups of people. This edited collection explores to what extent a shift towards more posthuman perspectives – where the status of the human as the obvious focus for our attention is de-stabilised – might catalyse complimentary or alternative accounts of common topics in public health. The collection argues that through this posthuman approach, standard categories such as health, illness and even the body might be re-conceived as interactions between different entities – between people, other living things, material objects and the environment – rather than as inherently human properties. By taking into greater account non-humans and relationships between humans and non-humans, this approach offers a re-casting of traditional topics in public health and opens new opportunities for examining these. In so doing, the book raises key questions about researching ‘health’; about considering the extent to which it may be productive to think about health as it interests not only human lives; and what happens to our moral and ethical commitments if we no longer put humans first. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Public Health.
Our Posthuman Future
Title | Our Posthuman Future PDF eBook |
Author | Francis Fukuyama |
Publisher | Profile Books |
Total Pages | |
Release | 2017-06-15 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 1847653707 |
Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.
Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology
Title | Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology PDF eBook |
Author | Tamar Sharon |
Publisher | Springer Science & Business Media |
Total Pages | 249 |
Release | 2013-10-11 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 9400775547 |
New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human – or posthuman – to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects. The volume offers a comprehensive mapping of posthumanist discourse divided into four broad approaches—two humanist-based approaches: dystopic and liberal posthumanism, and two non-humanist approaches: radical and methodological posthumanism. The author compares and contrasts these models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, to new configurations of biopower, questioning what role technology plays in defining the boundaries of the human, the subject and nature for each. Building on the contributions and limitations of radical and methodological posthumanism, the author develops a novel perspective, mediated posthumanism, that brings together insights in the philosophy of technology, the sociology of biomedicine, and Michel Foucault’s work on ethical subject constitution. In this framework, technology is neither a neutral tool nor a force that alienates humanity from itself, but something that is always already part of the experience of being human, and subjectivity is viewed as an emergent property that is constantly being shaped and transformed by its engagements with biotechnologies. Mediated posthumanism becomes a tool for identifying novel ethical modes of human experience that are richer and more multifaceted than current posthumanist perspectives allow for. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars working on ethics and technology, philosophy of technology, poststructuralism, technology and the body, and medical ethics.
Beyond Humanity?
Title | Beyond Humanity? PDF eBook |
Author | Allen E. Buchanan |
Publisher | OUP Oxford |
Total Pages | 299 |
Release | 2013-01-17 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0191651621 |
Biotechnologies already on the horizon will enable us to be smarter, have better memories, be stronger and quicker, have more stamina, live longer, be more resistant to diseases, and enjoy richer emotional lives. To some of us, these prospects are heartening; to others, they are dreadful. In Beyond Humanity a leading philosopher offers a powerful and controversial exploration of urgent ethical issues concerning human enhancement. These raise enduring questions about what it is to be human, about individuality, about our relationship to nature, and about what sort of society we should strive to have. Allen E. Buchanan urges that the debate about enhancement needs to be informed by a proper understanding of evolutionary biology, which has discredited the simplistic conceptions of human nature used by many opponents of enhancement. He argues that there are powerful reasons for us to embark on the enhancement enterprise, and no objections to enhancement that are sufficient to outweigh them.