Twisting transhumanism: some scope and limits of Sorgner’s Philosophy Nicolás Antonio Rojas Cortés ANNALS of the University of Bucharest Philosophy Series Vol. LXXI, no. 1, 2022 pp. 141 – 158. TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS1 Abstract Acknowledging an ontology of permanent becoming has ethical and epistemological consequences for the presentation of a thought system. Ontological presuppositions have consequences for our understanding and our ways of inhabiting the world. These statements are particularly true when we think of transhumanism. The problem is that when these assumptions are not recognized, the proposals of transhumanism are understood as contradictory. In this sense, we analyze Stefan Lorenz Sorgner’s proposal to “twist” transhumanism in order to understand the difference between classical transhumanism and weak Nietzschean transhumanism or metahumanism. We will show that classical transhumanism, based on enlightened presuppositions, has ethical consequences that are too culturally specific to be shared beyond the global north. We will then point out how the ontology of permanent becoming, through ethical and alethic nihilism, makes it possible to distance oneself from classical transhumanism and open oneself to further dialogue. However, we will conclude by pointing out that Sorgner’s concept of negative freedom is not sufficient to sustain a democratic transhumanism beyond Europe. It will be necessary to expand on positive freedom, for the question remains: what can a cyborg, who does not have the minimum material conditions for self-enhancement, do about it? Keywords: Transhumanism, Metahumanism, Negative Freedom, Twisting, War for the Values, Cyborg PhD Candidate in Philosophy at Universidad de Chile. Member of INTEMPESTIVA, Chilean Network of Nietzsche Studies & ALECT, Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios Críticos sobre Transhumanismo. Research Associate of the Centro de Estudios de Ética Aplicada (CEDEA). Email: <nicolas.rojas.c@ug.uchile.cl>. 1 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS 142 1. Introduction Stefan L. Sorgner’s original work will be, undeniably – if it is not already–, a minimum and fundamental reference point for the historiographical study concerning transhumanist philosophy. We say “transhumanist philosophy” for a reason that should be emphasized: not every transhumanist expression is versed in philosophy, even if its exponents have a background in the discipline2. In this sense, Sorgner’s works may abandon certain discussions of first-generation transhumanism that make the movement seem like a utopian illusion exclusive to the first world. Or at least, we consider that as one of the aims of the metahuman3 philosopher’s work, namely, expressing the proposals of transhumanism in a philosophically coherent way. In a previous article I have argued that in the Spanish-speaking world the discussion of Sorgner’s thought has been relegated to the dispute over whether Nietzsche is actually a precursor of transhumanism (Rojas 2022b). Apart from the fact that Sils-Maria’s philosophical influence may be or not effective in transhumanism, it is certain he is an influence on the metahuman’s thinking development. I consider that this discussion does not contend with the metahuman thought development and overlooks the fact that the author’s original proposals, while influenced by Nietzsche, discuss quite interesting contemporary 2 In a previous article I have sketched a preliminary difference between different types of transhumanism. This difference consists mainly in the ability to respond to criticisms in a philosophically coherent way or to articulate ideas in a philosophically coherent way. In both cases, thinkers like Kurzweil, Bostrom, More or others – who can be easily refuted – do not meet these requirements, so we call them first-generation transhumanists. Thinkers such as James Hughes or Stefan L. Sorgner explain their thinking in a much more argumentative and philosophically developed way than the previous ones. We call these second-generation transhumanists (Rojas 2022a). One basis for this difference lies in the exposition of contents presented in the Posthuman Reader edited by Jan Santiesko and Evi D. Sampanikou. In my review of this text, I insist on the radical difference between transhumanist thought that is not versed in philosophy and that which can coherently argue its proposals (Rojas 2021). 3 For his effort to establish metahumanism as a serious line of academic discussion, I will refer to Sorgner as metahuman so as not to repeat his name as often. TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 143 topics, such as, the democratic use of collected data, the paternalism of bio-enhancement, among others. This is a significant opportunity to discuss one of the topics that, in our opinion, is one of the most interesting in Sorgner’s thinking development: the idea of twisting transhumanism and its consequences for the exposition of this thought. Although the proposal to “twist transhumanism” is original to Philosophy of Posthuman Art (2022b), I believe that both On Transhumanism (2021b) and We have always been Cyborgs (2022c) already contain outlines for understanding this idea. In this sense, we can affirm that Sorgner’s metahumanism4, in its effort to represent a weakened trans- and post-humanism, is also one of the possible consequences of this “twisting”. However, it is this strategy that also enables him to position himself beyond naïve transhumanism and to have reasons to distance himself from it. However, despite their originality, we can identify a limit to Sorgner’s original proposals: particular social and historical contexts. In this case, this refers to the possible application of his proposals in Latin America. In particular, the idea of negative freedom as a more valuable achievement than privacy is a proposition that can be questioned. The key point of this critique lies in the radical economic and social differences that exist in Latin America. 2. War for The Values: Against Transhumanism as Humanism On Transhumanism begins by stating that the “Transhumanists simply share one basic view, which they continually adapt to the latest state of philosophical insight, scientific research, and technological capacity” (2021b 1). However, it is highly complex to determine what is meant by “latest state of philosophical insight, scientific research, and technological capacity” here. Also, and I am not sure that all transhumanists share this statement. In what follows we will use metahumanism and weak Nietzschean transhumanism as synonyms. 4 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS 144 To illustrate my statement, it seems relevant to mention some examples of classical transhumanism. First of all, we can recall the first principle offered by the founder of the Extropy Institute, Max More, in his The Principles of Extropy, namely “Perpetual Progress”: “Extropy means 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.” (More, 2003) While in the unfolded version, it reads: “Continual improvement will involve economic growth. We can continue to find resources to enable growth, and we can combine mindful growth with environmental quality. This means affirming a rational, non-coercive environmentalism aimed at sustaining and enhancing the conditions for flourishing. Individuals enjoying vastly extended life spans and greater wealth will be better positioned to intelligently manage resources and environment. An effective economic system encourages conservation, substitution, and innovation, preventing any need for a brake on growth and progress. Migration into space will immensely enlarge the energy and resources accessible to civilization. Extended life spans may foster wisdom and foresight, while restraining recklessness and profligacy. We can pursue continued individual and social improvement carefully and intelligently.” (More, 2003) Likewise, in article Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up (2008), the famous Nick Bostrom tries to explain by means of an analogy why it could be very good for us to become posthuman: “A life might be good or bad because of its causal consequences for other people, or for the contribution it makes to the overall value of a society or a world. But here I shall focus on the value that a life has for the person whose life it is: how good (or bad) it is for the subject to have this life. The term ‘well-being’ is often used in this sense. When I speak of the value of a life here, I do not refer to the moral status of the person whose life it is. It is a separate question what the moral status would be of human and posthuman beings. We can assume for present purposes that human and posthuman persons would have the same moral status. The value of a life refers, rather, to how well a life goes for its subject. Different human lives go differently well, and in this sense their lives have different values. The life of a person who dies from a painful illness at age 15 after having lived in extreme poverty and social isolation is typically worse and has less value than that of TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 145 a person who has an 80-yearlong life full of joy, creativity, worthwhile achievements, friendships, and love.” (Bostrom 2008, 10). These statements, rather than representing the latest state of some form of knowledge – philosophical, scientific, technological – are statements worthy of utopian futurists poorly versed in rational argumentation (we suppose that is why they want to improve their reason). Sorgner would not be against our statement as he is the one positioning himself beyond what Bostrom naively put forward in his Letter from Utopia (2008a) and defends himself against Hauskeller’s (2012) criticisms in his article Transhumanism and ‘The Land of Cockaygne (2018; 2022c). If we admit with the metahumanist a naturalist worldview then removing political, biological, cultural and psychological boundaries in order to achieve a good life, as More and Bostrom propose, cannot be realized in a literal sense. Unlimited health (not to mention immortality) is not a realistic option where we understand ourselves from a naturalistic perspective. It is not only the end of our existence but also the end of the universe that should be taken into consideration when declaring such an affirmation; since, how could it be possible to have unlimited health once the universe has collapsed? (Sorgner 2022c, 164). In this sense, the proposal to overcome limits by assuming economic growth based on rational conditions for the flourishing of individuals still seems to be a terribly humanist practice, hence both hypercolonialist and extractivist (del Val, 2021). Bostrom’s comparison between a poor individual dead by the age of 15 and another one that lives “happily” until the age of 80 does not seem rational. There is no doubt that this is a very Northwest comparison and worse than that, it reduces “the value of life” to hedonistic happiness. It is necessary to point out that the problem is not, of course, hedonism itself, but rather the desire to justify an existence beyond human existence as a privilege granted only to a certain type of human being. If so, then it is not about having political and cultural limits overcome, but rather progressively maintaining ideas that have allowed the first world to sustain its living standard. This is not surprising for a proposal that presupposes that the market is free and aspires to go beyond ideology (More 2003). James Hughes has explained precisely what the matrix underlies proposals such as those mentioned above, namely the enlightened and 146 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS too humanist roots of transhumanism (2010). In this sense, it is key to consider Bostrom’s gesture in his article A History of Transhumanist Thought (2005) of dismissing Nietzsche as a precursor of transhumanism. The conjunction between confidence in reason and confidence in scientific progress is the reason why projects such as those of Ray Kurzweil (2005) or Elon Musk are considered transhumanist. But in a humanist sense, i.e., as a paternalistic (Sorgner 2021b, 22) way of imposing conceptions of subjectivity (Sloterdijk 1999; Coeckelbergh 2013). It would not be problematic to identify these projects alongside those from a first-generation transhumanism (Rojas 2022a), a movement from the global North that does not consider the specific cultural differences of other localities. Moreover, the enlightened roots generate a profound contradiction when it comes to promoting human enhancement, since this enhancement would be possible only for the few, as Bostrom rightly says, for those who manage to live a healthy and joyful 80-year life, but not for the many whose bodies-territories5 suffer from capitalist extractivism. That is because the material for technological progress is not exclusively available in North America or Europe. In this sense, what is at stake is a War for Values. We can define this notion as the dispute regarding the different axiological consequences of the intellectual presuppositions from cultural or philosophical movements. It is known that the metahuman has an academic war with New Realism and the Frankfurt School, as well as with Humanism in general (Sorgner 2017; 2022b). However, if values are the ones in dispute, then it is also possible to argue that Sorgner’s proposal outlined in We have always been Cyborg (2022c) represents an effort to move away from this all too humanistic transhumanism. If someone wants to be a posthuman when he or she grows up, and his or her reasons are confidence in reason and technological progress that will allow him or her to live a happily hedonistic life, then we are talking with a very American perspective. Thus, the argument of beneficence (Bostrom 2008) is not democratically conceivable6. Finally, To learn more about this concept, its relation to the academic feminism developed in Latin America, technology and indigenous spiritualities, see Balcarce 2021, 446–458; Torrano & Fischetti 2018, 267-279. 6 See the arguments developed by Vaccari 2019, 192–219. 5 TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 147 this ideology remains paternalistic in relation to other cultures. Unfortunately, from the global south, we know that “we” are not considered among the “we” who can voluntarily accede to a posthuman existence. So, the question is: how do you fight against the overly humanistic transhumanist assessments? The answer we get from Sorgner’s efforts is the following: with other presuppositions. 3. Twisting Transhumanism: Coining a New Concept If the presuppositions are different, so are the consequences. Having this in mind, Sorgner’s strategy is relatively straightforward: it is to offer a philosophical description of transhumanism. While Bostrom dismissed Nietzsche’s influence on transhumanism (2005), the metahumanist began a long discussion about the positive influence of the philosopher from Sils-Maria on this movement. I am not interested in discussing here whether this influence is effective or not, as much ink has been spilled on this topic already (Tuncel 2017). What is certain is that Sorgner’s most original thought has indeed been influenced by Nietzsche’s philosophy (Rojas 2022b), and in this case, Nietzsche’s influence cannot be denied for the weak Nietzschean transhumanismus (schwachen Nietzscheanischen Transhumanismus), or metahumanism, proposed by Sorgner. Thus, admitting Nietzsche’s influence on transhumanism implies embracing Heraclitus and abandoning — at least in principle — the Enlightened rationalism that structures the transhumanism we described in the previous section. Here we encounter an ontological view that understands the world as “continual becoming” (Sorgner 2022c, 12; 138). The immediate consequence of this, following in our view an updated reading of Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne (1873), is alethic nihilism and ethical nihilism (Sorgner 2022c, 17 and following). Regarding the former it is affirmed that “Nothing positive can be said which corresponds with the world with certainty” (2022c, 18), while for the latter it is stated: “that no non-formal judgement of the good is plausible for all people” (2022c, 19). From our perspective, these consequences can also be understood as useful strategies for positioning another kind of transhumanism. 148 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS The question “why would it be a good idea to be a posthuman?” could not be answered by addressing Bostrom’s comparison between the Third Worldist short life and the First Worldist long life, because such a perspective is violent towards the multiple conceptions of good that other people may have. A short, intense and healthy but tragic life might be even more valuable to someone than a long and comfortable one. In this sense, More’s fantasy of removing the political limits of our condition would constitute a nonsense. If nothing can be established as a single, universal truth, politics is not exempt from that either. A first-world transhumanist utopia, is just one possible perspective in the war for values. Furthermore, Sorgner’s naturalistic perspective would not allow him to blindly trust proposals such as mind uploading or cryogenics based on faith in perpetual scientific progress7. In fact, if we admit that “A naturalist account of the word implies that all entities can in principle be accessed empirically. This does not mean that all entities can already by [sic] investigated empirically, but it implies at least that in principle an empirical analysis of all entities is possible” (2022b, 50-51) Then, the relationship between transhumanism and the goal of extending life should change in order to follow a coherent argument. It would not be acceptable to keep faith with enhancement projects that aim to spend material resources and productive efforts on achieving the singularity in its mind-machine fusion version or the cryogenisation of the richest. That is not because we believe it impossible to achieve, but because its success depends on a series of empirical investigations that have not yet occurred. Rather than contributing to a state of cryogenic “half-life” suspension as the one accessed by Glen Runciter in Ubik (1969), it would be more coherent to focus efforts on pressing contemporary problems — why freeze people when we can save glaciers? From an empirical analysis it is possible to explain the death of human entities. However, the desire for the overcoming of the limits of the human condition does not seem explicable. Such a goal is only a possible perspective on the question of what is good. Sorgner should accept, alongside the ontology of permanent becoming, Nietzsche’s critique in the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morality. See Nietzsche 2007, 109-110. 7 TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 149 It is also important to note that the question of why it might be a good idea to be a posthuman loses meaning from an ontology of permanent becoming. Because We have always been cyborgs (2022c). This statement is important insofar as it represents a break from rationalist and enlightened transhumanist assumptions. Ultimately, what underlies this corresponds to posthumanist premises from which we can understand ourselves, “Cyborgs are therefore controlled organism. Control already happens with us becoming human. In philosophy, human beings were usually defined by their ability to speak. Learning language is our first upgrade, which our parents provide us with. Our cyborgization continues with the acquisition of new skills, such as learning mathematics, history, and so on. However, a new dynamic is currently emerging. […]. With the integration of digital technologies intro our humanity, new possibilities as well as serious challenges arise.” (Sorgner 2022c, 32). Sorgner’s definition is consistent with the denial of an essential, fixed and immutable identity justified by the appeal to a conception of human nature (Fukuyama 2002; Sandel 2009; Habermas 2003) and also aware that the understandings we offer of ourselves depend on discourses of power that steer the human herd, to use Sloterdijk’s expression in his Regeln für den Menschenpark (1999). Transhumanism, then, is also inserted in the disputes over the definition of the entity that we are. However, Sorgner’s gesture prevents this dispute from continuing in essentialist terms. If there is no natural essence, neither is it possible to predicate a difference between technology and nature. Undergoing enhancement to abandon the human condition makes no sense if we have never been human. To exist as cyborgs implies an existence beyond the human if we admit that technology plays a crucial role in our self-understanding. This is why Sorgner speaks of “cyborization”, as the entity that we are must be subject to changes that also include the agency of technology. In this sense, despite technology not being new to our self-understanding, we do find ourselves in an age where technological agency has global and cellular impact — the possibilities for political manipulation or medical research through the production of digital data have never been more real. 150 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS More specific consequences of embracing an ontology of permanent becoming could be discussed, but in our view the most important is the weakening of transhumanism (indebolimento) (2021b, 53; 2022c, 138). Briefly, this weakening is referred to the fundamental premises of trans- and post-humanism, admitting a degree of confidence in technology like the transhumanists and discarding the claim of a special existence for the human with the posthumanists. The outcome of this operation would result in the original metahumanism of Sorgner and del Val (2021). However, we consider that this operation responds to a philosophical strategy on Sorgner’s part, since a transhumanism such as we discussed in the previous section can be easily refuted8. The strategy, as mentioned in the introduction, is the “twist”, “The concept of the twist corresponds to the German notion of Verwindung. Verwindung (twist) differs from Überwindung (overcoming) in so far as it is not a leaving behind of something. Overcoming leaves behind and separates itself categorically from the past, whereas a twist develops the past further in an inclusive manner” (Sorgner 2022b, 120-121). The strategy is particularly interesting and, in fact, could be reformulated in the following statement: transhumanism needs a coherent philosophical foundation, and this means re-interpreting their presuppositions. An example of this “twisting” is what happens with the notions of soul and body, “The immaterial mind and the material body get woven into a psychophysiological unity. What used to be the divine spark in us gets interpreted as a technological steering of an organism. We turn into cyborgs, i.e., cybernetic organism.” (Sorgner 2022c, 21). This strategy is particularly useful, for example, when they are criticized as dualists9 and hegemonic hyperhumanists (del Val 2021). In Sorgner’s words, the problem is that classical transhumanism, philosophically misinformed, represents a form of violent and morally problematic paternalism (Sorgner 2022c, 139). However, the solution See, for example, the arguments developed by Gabriel 2015. Also, Rojas 2022, a5-27. In particular the pages 9–14. 9 However, it is necessary to note that the description of “psychophysiological unity” does not make the examination of who we are any simpler either. Rather, it moves it into a realm of Nietzschean or psychoanalytic analysis that must also be discussed. 8 TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 151 could not be the eradication of human beings from existence to solve the problems we have created for the earth and the other beings that inhabit it. That is why even posthumanist influence must be weakened (2022c, 185) to respect and safeguard the concept of negative freedom that was achieved with modernity. In this sense, neo-Luddism would be as paternalistic an alternative as extreme technophilia. Consequently, we speak of conceiving new concepts since “twisting” is a methodological strategy that serves to explain the difference between metahumanism or weak Nietzschean transhumanism and classical transhumanism. Therefore, “twisting” functions as a strategy or methodology that attempts to base on coherent presuppositions the ideas that are worth rescuing from a movement such as the transhumanist one and discarding them in order to respect both ethical nihilism and the achievement of negative freedom. However, we could say that even by twisting transhumanism and generating a weak version of it, there are still clear limits to its general acceptance. 4. A Limit of Sorgner’s Transhumanism: Beyond the Global North One of the most controversial theses in We have always been Cyborgs is the distinction between freedom and privacy. This distinction takes place in the context of the argument for a democratic use of data (Sorgner 2022c, 30-60). Elsewhere I have called this distinction “Sorgner’s thesis”10 and my understanding of it is based on the following statement: “We have no reason to regret giving up on privacy. We do not cherish privacy, but we cherish freedom. We can have health and freedom, but not health and privacy. Why do we think that we need privacy?” (Sorgner 2022c, 54) Sorgner’s thesis conjugates at least two premises: (a) privacy and freedom are not equivalent and (b) they do not need each other, i.e., we can be free without privacy. We agree with the first premise, since I have developed part of this argument in an article called “Could Cyborgs’ Freedom Enhance Philosophically Transhumanism? A response to Sorgner’s We Have Always Been Cyborgs” which is expected to be published in the coming months. 10 152 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS freedom is said in many ways and, of course, depending on the meaning, we can affirm non-equivalence. Obviously, this depends on the ontological presuppositions at stake. From a mechanistic ontology we could not speak of freedom, whereas from an existentialist perspective freedom would be the foundation of our actions. In the case of Sorgner’s metahumanism one could — and we do so explicitly — ask the philosopher to clarify what he means by freedom and in what sense. At least if we trace this idea back to On Transhumanism (2021b) and We have always been Cyborgs (2022c) we only find freedom understood as the negative freedom of democratic and liberal systems. In this sense, the most precise definition we found is: “Freedom includes that one must not limit the freedom of others and that one must not harm other people” (2021b, 46). The definition is further expanded to include “that people have the right to morphological freedom, including the right to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be modified by genetic engineering measures (2021b, 67). Finally, the reason for affirming this kind of freedom is that this “enables each of us to conceive our own lives according to our own ideas of the good” (Sorgner 2021b, 83). The problem with this understanding of freedom is that, in our view, it remains culturally specific and presupposes living in a society where, at least, democracy functions, political structures allow for morphological freedom and, above all, minimum conditions for sustaining and maintaining a healthy life. Are we not talking here about an almost utopian society? It is true that Sorgner refers to the data usage that Europe should employ (Sorgner 2022c, 30-46). However, the minimum conditions do not exist everywhere in the world to reduce freedom only to its negative form. Sorgner’s proposal for Europe seems interesting. A democratic use of data in terms of sustaining a health system with data is an idea that could be realized. In the global south, however, not even the minimum conditions of access to basic resources exist for negative freedom to be a sufficient condition for a democratic existence. It is widely known that access to safe drinking water is not for everyone. In fact, in 2019 there was also insufficient data to measure drinking water coverage in schools in either Latin America and the Caribbean or Eastern and South-Eastern Asia. It seems to us that access TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 153 to water is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to start talking about the possibility of health insurance paid for with our data. Furthermore, working with data in a democratic way implies access to quality education. From Chile it can be stated that we do not have equitable11 access to education (World Bank Group 2021, 4-5). How would it be possible to develop systems to manage this data? Possibly the option would be to buy it from companies in the global north or to rely on private production. It is important to note that at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, education depended on internet access. However, internet access is not for everyone in Latin America either. Even worse, according to UNICEF: “2.2 billion – or 2 in 3 children and young people aged 25 years or less – do not have internet access at home” (2020). While one could argue with Sorgner that human rights are a case of a useful fictional ethic that reduces violence (2022c, 169), unfortunately we cannot claim that human rights are secured in Latin America either. The effects of the dictatorships promoted by the US on this continent are still being felt. Worse still, deniers of human rights violations in the dictatorships such as José Antonio Kast or Jair Bolsonaro have managed to gain significant political visibility and have even tried — and succeeded in the case of the latter — to gain high political positions. Authoritarianism, xenophobia, machismo, denial of the climate crisis and, in general, conservative extreme right-wing ideas are elements that constitute the discourses of these characters. If we add to this their good relations with extractivist businessmen — as was the case of former president Sebastián Piñera, remembered for his government’s disastrous organisation of COP25 — then this part of the world seems more like a victim of neoliberal colonialism than a place where people can live freely. With such decadent social and political structures, one might ask: what place could transhumanist ideas have in this part of the world? A year in the PhD programme in Philosophy at the University of Chile, currently ranked 401-500 in the Shanghai Ranking, currently costs about 4 million Chilean pesos (about 4,000 USD). The minimum salary in 2022 is 365,000 Chilean pesos (less than 400 dollars approximately). It is reasonable that a large part of society is dissatisfied with access to education. Scholarships are not enough to live on. 11 NICOLÁS ANTONIO ROJAS CORTÉS 154 We see two options: The first is simple and involves sticking to classical transhumanism, namely that transhumanist enhancement projects would only be accessible to the few, privately and at the expense of the many. Extractivists, corrupt politicians, drug traffickers and heirs of dictatorships could benefit from this. The rest would continue to beg for the minimum. The second option is more complex and involves thinking about freedom in its positive version: how could we improve our lives through technological means if there are value, economic, social, and political structures that prevent it? Our answer, for now only an intuition to be developed, is: through social revolution. The problem with discussing only negative freedom in this context is simple: we are still slaves. It doesn’t matter if we are ontologically understood as cyborgs, because we don’t have the minimum conditions to subsist or to have access to improvements such as the universal health system paid for by our data. We are a place of matter extraction. But if we have affirmed an ontology of permanent becoming, this should be able to change, shouldn’t it? The question is: What can I do with my freedom understood as autonomy and as self-rule? (Coeckelbergh 2021, 59). In other words, what can I do with my positive freedom? We offer a preliminary intuition for the development of the answer to the question. There are at least three desires at stake in this sketch of an answer: (1) if we want morphological freedom, (2) if we want to live according to our own convictions of the good, and (3) if we want to overcome humanism, then we must be agents of change. Cyborgs that can destroy extractivist colonialism, neoliberal structures and the moral conservatism that still plagues us. But this will not be possible without violence and social revolution. Because nobody wants to lose their privileges. 5. Conclusion There is no doubt that one of Sorgner’s most original contributions to transhumanism is to twist it. Twisting it involves examining its presuppositions, redirecting, and modifying some of them. The achievement of modern negative freedom is a basic element for TWISTING TRANSHUMANISM: SOME SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SORGNER’S PHILOSOPHY 155 sustaining transhumanism beyond the global north, but it is not a sufficient condition for transhumanism to be globally accepted. It is true that Sorgner is already working on the impact of transhumanism in Africa (2022a).12 However, as we have already pointed out, in the Spanish academic discussion, we are still very reluctant to reflect on how to effectively implement the proposals of transhumanism in our social and historical context. In our view, the reason is quite simple: material conditions here are not equivalent to those in the global north. If we follow Sorgner and still claim that “one’s own freedom ends where the freedom of others begins” (2022c, 18), then the question remains the same: What can a cyborg, who does not have the minimum material conditions for self-enhancement, do about it? Our intuition is that Sorgner’s transhumanism needs to think about positive freedom. I would rephrase the statement that a large majority wants a healthy life. We would propose that a large majority wants the possibility of access to the minimum material conditions that make it possible to conceive a healthy life. We keep on twisting transhumanism. Acknowledgement: Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo / Subdirección de Capital Humano / Beca de Doctorado Nacional 21210804. 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