Moving Forward with the Posthumism Debate

摘要

Although cyborgs, genetically altered human beings, and the like have been a staple of science fiction for a long time, recent scientific and technological advances offer powerful and efficient means to transform human mental and physical abilities and make at least some of such modifications plausible. These new human enhancement technologies come from a variety of fields, from pharmacology and molecular biology, to reproductive medicine, to neuro-engineering, to military research to name just a few. They also link a wide range of technologies and scientific disciplines that are quite diverse. Moreover, as one can see by Sharon's extensive bibliography, the debate over the possibilities of enhancing human beings through biotechnological interventions has reached not just scholarly publications too numerous to cite here but national and international reports (President's Council on Bioethics 2003; Nordmann 2004; Roco and Bainbridge 2003), bioethics think tanks, such as the Hastings Center, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, or the World Transhumanist Association, and popular magazines such as the Atlantic, Scientific American, and Time (Bostrom 2005; Sandel 2004; Harrell 2009).