Societas Ethica 2011 Proposal

Enhancement for All?: A Feminist Ethical Analysis of the Discourses and Practices of Democratic Transhumanism

In the past few years, democratic transhumanism has emerged as the primary voice working toward mainstreaming the transhumanist movement in popular discourse. Through the work of groups like the World Transhumanist Association (recently rebranded Humanity Plus) and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, democratic transhumanism has worked to blend transhumanist ideals with progressive democratic values. They have begun to distance themselves from libertarian and other transhumanists, claiming the mantle of “technoprogressivism.” Technoprogressives are seeking to position themselves as a “middle way” (http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/biopolitics) between technoutopianisms (including libertarian transhumanism, extropianism, and other technopositive movements) and technoconservatisms (including both left and right bioconservatism and neo-Luddism). The posing of this middle way frames the discussion as a movement standing between uncritical acceptance and uncritical rejection of emerging technologies. Technoprogressives claim the ground between uncritical stances, though they advocate strongly for the development and use of human enhancement technologies, provided there is universal and uncoerced access to those technologies.

Democratic transhumanists emphasize the importance of the development and availability of technologies to expand human capabilities and related transformations. They support both public and private funding of technology development, as well as individual rights to access and utilize those technologies. They acknowledge that there are both potential positive and negative impacts of emerging technologies and seek to develop the former while mitigating against the impacts of the latter. The technoprogressive movement emphasizes the narrative of scientific progress and many of the values of secular progressive politics generally, including democratic government, ethical and religious pluralism, and political and ethical pragmatism. They tend to also focus on the constructive possibilities of a free market system to enact these progressive ideals. Democratic transhumanists value the “well-being of all sentience” (http://humanityplus.org/learn/transhumanist-declaration/), and in the pursuit of this goal urge massive investment of funds into technology development.

While many of the progressive values held by democratic transhumanists would be shared by feminists, some of the underlying assumptions held by transhumanists would be subject to criticism by feminists: the nature of human beings and the goals of enhancement technology, the effects of an unregulated free market system, the possibilities of technology to alleviate human problems and issues of political will to effect that alleviation, and some practical issues of race, class, gender, and colonialism. This paper will analyze some of the key points of both agreement and distinction between feminist reflection and transhumanist discourse. Some constructive possibilities for a “feminist technorealism” will be proposed that may avoid some of the ethically problematic aspects of contemporary transhumanist discourse and advocacy while upholding the shared progressive and democratic values of the two movements.