So here's my plan. Such as it is.
I start out by saying that the human enhancement (HE) debate, at its outposts, seems to recruit emotions of awe and wonder and that I feel it might be useful to look at the argument through the lens of the limited philosophical and somewhat more extensive psychological literature addressing these emotional responses.
Then I say that HE seems to suggest the enhancement of some kind of human essence, which one party sees as sacred, while the other regards transcending such limitations as the cause for wonder - and here they might have a little more in common that they think.
So, I define awe and wonder - using the philosophical and psychological papers. Then I say that there seems to be a cross over and grey area, so although they are somewhat distinct, in the short time I have I cannot fully disambiguate them in the discussion.
I say how the conservatives talk of the unbidden and the giftedness of life - which is after all a mystery. Their awe response is a reaction to vastness, but it seems not to move into accommodation and instead, as is explored in the literature, acts to solidify existing boundaries.
They describe the transhumanists (TH) as showing HUBRIS when they talk of transcending human nature, while the appropriate response is humility. I will address briefly humility as not humbleness but realism and say that the TH have based their vision on science and reason. Nonetheless, their idea of human nature is of something always seeking to be better, as something that is evolving rather than fixed.
A brief account of Nietzsche and the superman idea which Max More advocates.
Then I say this is not Nick Bostrom's view. Yet his vision is the most poetically expressed in various places and, whatever his feelings about TH, his writing is likely to inspire awe in others - awe at the idea of transcendence and at the future he imagines.
I will talk of the dark side of awe - charismatic leaders, millenarian utopias - and the fact that on a utilitarian calculus, almost infinite capacity for pleasure for almost eternity would, in any equation, even with a possibility of only one in a trillion, make any suffering now worthwhile for awe-struck proponents. Given that conservatives would struggle to argue against the math or the logic, they recruit their conception of awe for human essence as a 'brake' and this is understandable - it's also, in the Kantian tradition, why we don't kill one person to get their five organs for the five people who will live if that one person dies.
but then I will say that Bostrom does not advocate any kind of suffering now - indeed his vision for the future entails much improvement now in order to secure the continuing existence of humanity for long enough to attain a TH state. In addition, he actually accepts that he shares much ground with the conservatives.
I will conclude by saying that a little more awe on their part for the possibilities open for humanity because of the giftedness of life and a little more wonder on the TH part for the giftedness of life that opens up these possibilities, and both sides might be able to work together the enhance humanity.
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