Transhumanism is an emergent school of speculative philosophy analysing or favouring the use of certain technologies to improve the human condition beyond the constraints of biologicalevolution.
The term was coined by Julian Huxley in 1957, though the concept designated by him differs substantially from the one transhumanists have been using since the 1980s. Transhumanism was given its modern definition and characterization by philosopher Dr. Max More: "Transhumanism is a class of philosophies that seek to guide us towards a posthuman condition. Transhumanism shares many elements of humanism, including a respect for reason and science, a commitment to progress, and a valuing of human (or transhuman) existence in this life ... Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies[…]" [1]
Other definitions of "transhumanism" have been written over the years, such as "Transhumanism is the philosophy that we can and should develop to higher levels, physically, mentally and socially using rational methods." (Dr. Anders Sandberg), and "Transhumanism is the idea that new technologies are likely to change the world so much in the next century or two that our descendants will in many ways no longer be 'human'" (Dr. Robin Hanson). Summarising the Transhumanist FAQ (2.1), one of the most authoritative transhumanist documents, transhumanism is as follows:
Advocacy of improvement to the human condition through life-enhancing technology, such as eliminating aging and enhancing human intellectual, physical or physiological capacities.
The study of benefits, dangers and ethics of implementation of these technologies.
The pace of technological development is steadily increasing, leading many forward-thinkers to speculate that the next 50 years will yield remarkable and radical technological advancements. Consequently, a new paradigm for thinking about humanity's future has begun to take shape. The 'human condition', it holds, is not the constant it appeared to be, and future innovations will allow humans to shape their physical, emotional and cognitive characteristics as they see fit.
Transhumanism maintains that this is good and that humans can and should become more than human through the application of such technological innovations as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, neuropharmaceuticals, prosthetic enhancements and mind-machine interfaces.
"Transhumanism is more than just an abstract belief that we are about to transcend our biological limitations by means of technology; it is also an attempt to reevaluate the entire human predicament as traditionally conceived," says transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom. "And it is a bid to take a farsighted and constructive approach to our new situation."
Following in the tradition of Enlightenment-influenced 19th century political, moral and philosophical thought, transhumanism seeks to build upon the global knowledge base for the betterment of all humankind.
Derived in part from the philosophical traditions of secular humanism, transhumanism asserts that humans should be viewed as the "center" of the moral universe, and that there are no 'supernatural' forces that guide humanity. While largely a grassroots and broadly based movement, transhumanism does tend toward rational arguments and empirical observations of natural phenomena; in many respects, transhumanists partake in a culture of science and reason, and are guided by life-promoting principles and values.
Specifically, transhumanism seeks to apply reason, science and technology for the purposes of reducing poverty, disease, disability, malnutrition and oppressive governments around the globe. Many transhumanists actively assess the potential for future technologies and innovative social systems to improve quality of all life, while seeking to make the material reality of the human condition fulfill the promise of legal and political equality by eliminating congenital mental and physical barriers.
Herein, in many respects transhumanism seeks to actualize the goals and hopes traditionally espoused by religions. Many transhumanists describe themselves as being very spiritual. Further, a significant number of transhumanists follow Eastern philosophical traditions.
As the revelant parts of the human brain are located through research in neurotheology, some transhumanists hope that in a couple of decades we will gain control of all altered states of consciousness, which are the basis for many religious beliefs and behaviors, and therefore be able to turn on and off so-called spiritual experiences in the pursuit of self-knowledge.
Rather than trusting in the existence of a transcendent soul, materialist transhumanists believe in the computational compatibility of biological minds with future machine minds—with the theoretical implication that human consciousness can someday be uploaded into alternative mediums. Consequently, most transhumanists subscribe to personhood bioethics.
Rather than believing that immortality can be achieved after death, transhumanists strive for immortality by not dying; through the development of radically advanced health technologies and anti-aging medical practices, transhumanists hope to establish an open-ended lifespan, to make death a purely voluntary decision.
And rather than hoping for eternal bliss in heaven, many transhumanists strive for a technological singularity, techno-utopia or, at the very least, a future world filled with much less suffering and strife than today's.
"Transhumans", the early transhumanists, were formally meeting in the early 1980s at the University of California, Los Angeles, which became the central watering hole for transhumanists. It was here that FM-2030 (formerly FM Esfandiary) lectured on the futurist ideology of "Upwingers". John Spencer at Space Tourism Society organized many transhuman space-related events. Natasha Vita-More (formerly Nancie Clark) exhibited "Breaking Away" at EZTV Media, a venue for transhumanists and other futurists to meet. FM, John and Natasha met and soon they began holding gatherings for transhumans in Los Angeles, which included students from FM-2030 transhuman courses and audiences from Natasha artistic transhuman productions and the space and astrophysics community.
Across the planet in Australia, Damien Broderick, science fiction author, wrote The Judas Mandala. In 1982, Natasha authored the Transhumanist Arts Manifesto, and later produced the cable TV show "TransCentury UPdate" on transhumanity. This boutique talking head show reached over 100,000 viewers.
In 1986, Dr. Eric Drexler's famed book on nanotechnology, Engines of Creation, was published in hardcover by Anchor Books. Alcor Foundation’s Southern California location became a nexus for futurist thinkers and Northern California’s tech-heads were carrying copies of Engines of Creation. Yet, not all activists who were interested in improving the human condition were involved in "transhumanism." Some didn’t know of the word "transhuman," although they were certainly pioneering in what is now transhumanism.
In 1987, Max More moved to Los Angeles from Oxford University in England, where he established the first European cryonics organization, known as Mizar Limited (later Alcor-UK), to work on his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Southern California. More met Tom Bell at the USC, and together they pursued ideas about the future. Tom coined the term "Extropy" to reflect these ideas and Max authored the philosophy of Extropy as "An evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition."
In 1988, "Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought" was published, which formally brought together a group of thinkers to write about artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, life extension, uploading, Idea Futures, robotics, space exploration, politics and economics of transhumanism. Soon alternative media began reviewing the magazine and the magazine attracted interest from likeminded thinkers. Later, More and Bell co-founded Extropy Institute, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 educational organization. "'ExI" was formed as a networking and information center to use current scientific understanding along with critical and creative thinking to define a small set of principles or values that could help make sense of the confusing but potentially liberating and existentially enriching capabilities opening up to humanity."
Extropy Institute’s email list was launched in 1991 and in 1992 the Institute began producing the first conferences on transhumanism, and affiliate members throughout the world who began organizing their own transhumanist groups. Extro Conferences, meetings, parties, on-line debates, and documentaries have continued to get the idea of the transhuman to the public. But the cyberculture across the Internet became the most fertile breeding ground for people interested in exploring new tools with websites such as Extropy Institute, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Foresight Institute, Transhumanist Arts & Culture, and BetterHumans.
In the mid-1990s, transhumanity continued to spread on the Internet through the networking of Extropy Institute’s conferences. If LA was the spawning place of transhumanity, the Internet became the womb. From a few hundred people to many thousands of people, transhumanist ideas are spreading with the help of media awareness and continued hard work of all involved. Today there are other organizations that have joined Extropy Institute to further transhumanist ideas such as Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Foresight Institute, Transhumanist Arts & Culture, Aleph in Sweden, TransVision in Europe, and World Transhumanist Association, The Singularity Institute, and numerous other organizations currently being developed.
In 1997, Nick Bostrom and David Pearce co-founded the World Transhumanist Association, with a slightly different flavour from the Extropians. "It was to be an autonomous and more broadly based grouping that would share the technological liberatory concerns of the Extropians, but allow for more political and ideological diversity than tolerated by the Extropians," noted Dr. James Hughes, who became the WTA's executive director. The WTA's brand of transhumanism has been dubbed LiberalDemocratic Transhumanism.
The WTA quickly established the Journal of Transhumanism and began working toward the recognition of transhumanism as an academic discipline. More recently, it elected a board of directors, renamed its journal the Journal of Evolution and Technology and launched a webzine called Transhumanity.
Acting as an umbrella organization, the WTA has spawned a host of chapters around the world, including active chapters in New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal. In total there are nearly two-dozen formed or forming local groups—one on virtually every continent. A dozen transhumanist groups in the US, Europe, South America and Asia have also formally affiliated with the WTA, including the Extropy Institute.
In 1990 more concretized and formal code for transhumanists is in the form of the transhumanist Principles of Extropy. They are in brief:
Perpetual Progress: seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an open-ended lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to continuing development. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities as individuals, as organizations, and as a species. Growing in healthy directions without bound.
Self-Transformation: affirming continual ethical, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through critical and creative thinking, perpetual learning, personal responsibility, proactivity, and experimentation. Using technology—in the widest sense to seek physiological and neurological augmentation along with emotional and psychological refinement.
Practical Optimism: fueling action with positive expectations—individuals and organizations being tirelessly proactive. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism or "proaction", in place of both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.
Intelligent Technology: designing and managing technologies not as ends in themselves but as effective means for improving life. Applying science and technology creatively and courageously to transcend "natural" but harmful, confining qualities derived from our biological heritage, culture, and environment.
Open Society: supporting social orders that foster freedom of communication, freedom of action, experimentation, innovation, questioning, and learning. Opposing authoritarian social control and unnecessary hierarchy and favoring the rule of law and decentralization of power and responsibility. Preferring bargaining over battling, exchange over extortion, and communication over compulsion. Openness to improvement rather than a static utopia. Extropia ("ever-receding stretch goals for society") over utopia ("no place").
Self-Direction: valuing independent thinking, individual freedom, personal responsibility, self-direction, self-respect, and a parallel respect for others.
Rational Thinking: favoring reason over blind faith and questioning over dogma. It means understanding, experimenting, learning, challenging, and innovating rather than clinging to beliefs.
In 1999, the WTA compiled the Transhumanist Declaration. It declares the following:
Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth.
Systematic research should be put into understanding these coming developments and their long-term consequences.
Transhumanists think that by being generally open and embracing of new technology we have a better chance of turning it to our advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it.
Transhumanists advocate the moral right for those who so wish to use technology to extend their mental and physical capacities and to improve their control over their own lives. We seek personal growth beyond our current biological limitations.
In planning for the future, it is mandatory to take into account the prospect of dramatic technological progress. It would be tragic if the potential benefits failed to materialize because of ill-motivated technophobia and unnecessary prohibitions. On the other hand, it would also be tragic if intelligent life went extinct because of some disaster or war involving advanced technologies.
We need to create forums where people can rationally debate what needs to be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.
Transhumanism advocates the well-being of all sentience (whether in artificial intellects, humans, nonhuman animals, or possible extraterrestrial species) and encompasses many principles of modern secular humanism. Transhumanism does not support any particular party, politician or political platform.
Transhumanism has no rigid doctrines, but the Transhumanist Declaration is a good summary of its core ideas.
The following persons contributed to the original crafting of this Declaration: Doug Bailey, Anders Sandberg, Gustavo Alves, Max More, Holger Wagner, Natasha Vita More, Eugene Leitl, Berrie Staring, David Pearce, Bill Fantegrossi, Doug Baily Jr., den Otter, Ralf Fletcher, Kathryn Aegis, Tom Morrow, Alexander Chislenko, Lee Daniel Crocker, Darren Reynolds, Keith Elis, Thom Quinn, Mikhail Sverdlov, Arjen Kamphuis, Shane Spaulding, Nick Bostrom
Transhumanist Arts represent the aesthetic and creative culture of transhumanity. Transhumanist Artists are developing new and varied modes of art. Our aesthetics and expressions are merging with science and technology in designing increased sensory experiences.
Transhumans want to improve and extend life. We are designing the technologies to improve and extend life. Emotions are integral to our senses and understanding. We are designing the technologies to enhance our senses and understanding.
The transhumanist ecology and freedom exercises self-awareness and self-responsibility. If our art represents who we are, then let us choose to be transhumanist not only in our bodies, but also in our values. Transhumanist Artists embrace the creative innovations of transhumanity. We are ardent activists in pursuing infinite transformation, overcoming death and exploring the universe.
Transhumans want to improve and extend life. We are designing the technologies to improve and extend life. Emotions are integral to our senses and understanding. We are designing the technologies to enhance our senses and understanding.
As Transhumanist Arts come into focus
As more artists join our efforts
As more designs are produced
As more music is composed
As more stories are written
As the tools and ideas of our art continue to evolve,
