Citizen Cyborg: Agar on Democratic Transhumanism (Part Two)

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This is the second of two posts looking at chapter 8 of Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End . The chapter challenges the sociologist James Hughes’s optimistic views about the fate of the ordinary human being in a posthuman society. At the heart of the chapter is the concern that in a society with radically enhanced beings, ordinary humans are likely to be oppressed, ignored, compelled to undergo enhancement or conscripted into a kind of servitude.

James Hughes thinks that this need not be the case provided there is a shift in the moral framework adopted in a posthuman society. The particular shift which he envisions is one involving the substitution of a human rights based ethic for a personhood based rights ethic. “Personhood” being a broader normative concept which could grant to rights, privileges and responsibilities to humans, posthumans and, indeed, great apes.

Agar is sceptical. He thinks it unlikely that Hughes’s proposed shift will have the desired effect. He does so because the lessons of human history suggest that the dominant moral framework within a society - i.e. that one that actually shapes people’s behaviour - is usually disconnected from the ideals proposed by moral and political philosophers. And it is this dominant moral framework, not the ideal one, with which we are concerned: if this does not change in a posthuman society, then precautionary measures may be warranted.

As noted at the end of the last post, there is some reason to think that the lessons of human history would not apply to a posthuman society. In addition to their increased longevity and cognitive power, radically enhanced humans should also undergo moral enhancement. This could make them less prone to human errors in moral reasoning.

But there’s still cause for scepticism. Agar supports this point by looking at two leading contemporary ethical theories - contractualism and consequentialism - and seeing how they could be applied in a posthuman society. Let’s see what he has to say about each of these.

Citizen Cyborg: Agar on Democratic Transhumanism (Part One)

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After a brief interlude in which we discussed some key arguments from the philosophy of mind, I can now return to my odyssey through Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End. I left off having reached the end of chapter 6. Up to now, the book has been an interesting, if not always coherent, collection of arguments.

In this post, I turn my attention to chapter 8. In it Agar discusses the views of the sociologist James Hughes. Hughes’s work attempts to address head-on the concerns some have about the social implications of radical human enhancement.

But hang on a minute, amn’t I forgetting something? What, I hear you ask, happened to chapter 7? Well, faithful reader, I regret to inform you that chapter 7 was somewhat of a disappointment. It discussed the views of the philosopher Nick Bostrom but said relatively little of interest. Nevertheless, in the spirit of completeness, I will begin by offering an exceptionally brief summary of its contents.