Transgressing the Intellectual Status Quo: How Transhumanism Seeks to Overcome More than Biological Limitations

Transgressing the Intellectual Status Quo: How Transhumanism Seeks to Overcome More than Biological Limitations Alex Hogue Transhumanists claim that their belief in building upon the humanistic values and scientific methodology of the Enlightenment mixes the core values of Humanism with views rooted in Materialism, Physicalism, and Functionalism (hereafter collectively referred to as techno-scientific Materialism) 1 in order to take control of human evolution and direct it toward becoming posthuman (More 7, Bostrom 2-3). However, the philosophical methods claimed by Transhumanists reflect a limited perspective on the philosophical influences contributing to Transhumanism, and in doing so also limit the ways in which Transhumanism attempts to go beyond the current conditions of human existence. By analyzing arguments in favor of two technological possibilities central to Transhumanism, namely mind uploading and cryonics, the techno-scientific Materialist elements of the arguments in favor of these future possibilities will fall away, exposing Transhumanism’s roots in Phenomenology and German Idealism. Transhumanism thus emerges as a movement that is indeed seeking to over- come the physical and cognitive limitations of human life as it claims, but also as one that draws upon, and attempts to overcome, a two-hundred-year-long philosophical debate regarding the nature of human existence—a debate that has existed as a part of the Humanist philosophical tradition since the Enlightenment. This analysis of Transhumanism’s arguments and goals reveals a more fundamental influence from the noetic metaphysics of German Idealism and Phenomenology, which reveal themselves as the true grounds for Transhumanism’s ontic techno- scientific Materialist claims. These two schools of thought are often understood as philosophical opposites, but in the case of Transhumanism they are synthesized, demonstrating an attempt to overcome this long-standing philosophical dichotomy of the Humanist tradition. 1. The Transhumanist Transition to a Future Posthumanity Broadly speaking, the Transhumanist movement focuses on achieving, through incremental steps, the transcendence of the problems inherent in human existence, namely disease, aging, death, and so forth. Once these limitations on the quality and length of human life have been overcome, humans will exist as posthumans, beings who have willfully transcended the constraints of their biol- ogy through self-directed evolution. While Transhumanists ultimately desire for humans to transition into posthumans in the future, the term ‘Posthumanism’ is currently in use to refer to a number of concepts related to this Transhumanist goal. Posthumanism imagines and explores self-directed evolution, non-human person- hood, artificial intelligence, artificial humans, cyborgs, and other such creations of © 2016 Alex Hogue. All Rights Reserved.