Rationally Speaking #17 - Transhumanism
Rationally Speaking Podcast
New York City Skeptics
4.6 • 787 Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2010
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What's so great about being human, anyway? The transhumanist movement -- epitomized by organizations like Humanity+ and blogs like Accelerating Future -- advocate the pursuit of technologies to fundamentally change the human condition, tinkering with our brain, bodies and genomes to make ourselves smarter, stronger, happier, and longer-lived.
But many people worry that tampering with human nature could have dire consequences for individuals and society alike. In Our Posthuman Future, political theorist Francis Fukuyama sums up the position of the bioconservatives when he warns that new technologies may "in some way cause us to lose our humanity -- that is, some essential quality that has always underpinned our sense of who we are and where we are going," he writes. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia ask, first, are the goals of transhumanism realistic, and second, are they desirable?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education. |
| 0:22.6 | For more information, please visit us at NYCCEptics.org. |
| 0:30.9 | Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and |
| 0:39.4 | nonsense. I am your host, Massimo Pilluci. And with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Galev. |
| 0:45.5 | Julia, what are we going to talk about today? Massimo, today we're going to discuss the philosophy |
| 0:49.7 | of transhumanism, which is the idea that we should be pursuing science and technology to improve |
| 0:56.5 | the human condition, modifying our bodies and our minds to make us smarter, healthier, |
| 1:02.7 | and potentially longer lived. So there's a couple separate but intertwined issues here, |
| 1:09.8 | the first of which being how feasible are the technologies that we would need in order to accomplish the transhumanist goals. |
| 1:16.6 | And the second being, even if we could accomplish those goals, is it a good idea? |
| 1:20.2 | Are these goals that we should have? |
| 1:22.1 | But before we get to the actual issues, so are you saying that transhumanism, therefore, is more than just the idea that we |
| 1:29.1 | should be using technologies to improve the human condition? Because that seems a pretty |
| 1:33.2 | uncontroversial point. I mean, everybody who takes medicines or goes to the doctor or flies in |
| 1:39.9 | the air with an airplane or anything like that wouldn't object to the idea that, yes, |
| 1:43.9 | technologies should be used to improve the human condition, right? |
| 1:47.7 | Well, that's actually the argument that I and many other, at least somewhat pro-transhumanist |
| 1:53.0 | people would use to defend transhumanism, that it's really just an extension of what we've |
| 1:58.5 | always done. But what makes it feel different from the sort of thing you're describing is that it's |
| 2:03.8 | transforming us in a way that to the extent that we no longer feel like we are actually human, |
| 2:09.3 | recognizably human. |
| 2:10.1 | Right. |
... |
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