Transhumanism/Posthumanism

There is a close systematic relationship between panentheism, as a metaphysical theory about the relation between God and the world, and transhumanism, the ethical demand to use the means of the applied sciences to enhance both human nature and the environment. This relationship between panentheism and transhumanism provides a ‘cosmic’ solution to the problem of evil: on panentheistic premises, the history of the world is the one infinite life of God, and we are part of the one infinite divine being. We ourselves are therefore responsible for the future development of the life of the divine being. We should therefore use the means provided by the natural sciences to develop the history of the world in such a way that the existence of evil shall be overcome and shall no longer be part of the divine being in whom we move and live and have our being. The metaphysics of panentheism leads to the ethics of transhumanism.

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

Early literary instances of artificial humanoid and intelligent systems anticipate in a general way the kinds of thematic issues that cyborgs, androids, and intelligent networks like supercomputers bring up for the contemporary notion of the posthuman, understood as a condition in which the human and the machine are becoming increasingly intermingled. Humans have never really been autonomous entities, but rather have always been intimately interdependent upon their environments and tools. And their dreams of intelligent tools even extend back into the era of ancient Rome and Greece, as I will describe below. Thus the seemingly modern idea of a reciprocal dependency upon mechanical devices is just a variation of a much older theme.

English abstract: This article deals with recent developments in the discourse on Cochlear Implants (CI) and the appropriation of the implant as an enhancing cyborg device. The article will first consider developments in medicinal, technological and cultural histories of the CI: While medical experts originally designed the CI to “cure” deafness, some members of Deaf communities do not agree. In their perspective, deafness is not a “disability,” but a certain cultural lifestyle. Hence, forcing people to “hear” with a CI needed to be considered a threat to the culture of sign language. Apart from these discussions, self-appointed “cyborgs” such as German Enno Park consider the CI not only a way of becoming “normal,” but instead claim that the CI bears the potential of raising the human body and its sensory capacities to a posthuman level.

We live in an age of movement. More than at any other time in history , people and things move longer distances, more frequently, and faster than ever before. All that was solid melted into air long ago and is now in full circulation around the world like dandelion seeds adrift on turbulent winds. We find ourselves, in the early twenty-first century, in a world where every major domain of human activity has become increasingly defined by motion. 1 We have entered a new historical era defined in large part by movement and mobility and are now in need of a new historical on-tology appropriate to our time. The observation that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was marked by an increasingly " liquid " and " mobile modernity " is now something widely recognized in the scholarly literature at the turn of the century. 2 Today, however, our orientation to this event is quite different. Almost twenty years into the twenty-first century we now find ourselves situated on the other side of this heralded transition. The question that confronts us today is thus a new one: how to fold all that has melted back up into new solids. 3

A comprehensive overview of a gestalt of artificial intelligence (AI) beings collectively referred to as the 'negative aliens' has been presented. It is explicated that these beings comprise a group of utterly ruthless, merciless beings that are totally void of any feelings, compassion, and love without any heart-based intuitive intelligence. Furthermore, they are energetically parasitic-vampiric and highly dependent on the natural energetics of organic solar consciousness beings such as humans to energize their doomsday machinery and survive. In this respect, they resort to violence and wars in search of conquest of organic solar consciousness beings to capture and imprison and subject them to reverse consciousness enslavement using their specially devised artificial intelligence technology. And, in order to be able to perpetually siphon the precious divine energies of the organic solar consciousness beings, they strictly adhere to certain agendas and strategies to maintain in bondage their taken spoils of wars that include (their perceived) conquered planetary resources as well as the solar consciousness inhabitants such as humans they have captured. Being totally arrogant tyrants and utterly narcissistic perceiving themselves as superiors and even 'gods' of their captured victims, their nefarious agendas include blank slating (conscious wiping) of the oppressed subjects of their genetic cellular memories and replacing them through mind sliding AI programming with false-phantom memories, as well as

An account of the negative aliens' relatively recent agendas with respect to, once again, resorting to bio-viral weaponization and bio-warfare using a viral agent such as the so-called coronavirus as to try to depopulate Earth with the underlying mission to establish a so-called New World Order to create a completely docile human race that could be readily controlled via the advent of artificial intelligence through such technologies as transhumanism and alien hybridization, has been presented, herein. It should be emphasized that such tactics for effecting genetic mutation and hybridization are not new by any stretch of imagination, as they go as far back in the history of human enslavement by the negative aliens, the more recent accounts of which that go back to WWI and WWII in order to depopulate and create genocide in human population, has been alluded to in the present paper. In a companion paper, much deeper root of negative aliens' interference in human consciousness affairs, that set the precedence for 'human consciousness reversal' through distorting human bioenergetics-genetics, has been explicated. Although the more devastating result of the present virus is devised to be as to incite anxiety, fear, and pandemonium in the humanity by threating human population with fear of survival through genocide, countless

October 30, 2016, the web site for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies published an article, "Breaking into the Simulated Universe" by Eliott Edge. An attempt to argue against the idea of escaping out of the universe, if it is a simulation, as some Silicon Valley billionaires are rumored to be considering. In this paper, I will reveal why Edge is completely and totally wrong, although he has made an impressive, credible, cohesive and cogent attempt to present a convincing proposition. However, the simulation hypothesis, upon close analysis, is indefensible by anyone because it is based 100% on assumptions, both hidden and otherwise, which in most cases are demonstrably wrong.

I distinguish the ethics of transhumanism from a related metaphysical position which I refer to as “speculative posthumanism.” Speculative posthumanism holds that posthumans might be radically non-human and thus unintelligible in human terms. I claim that this transcendence can be viewed as analogous to that of the thing-in-itself in Kantian and post-Kantian European philosophy. This schema implies an impasse for transhumanism because, while the radically non-human or posthuman would elude evaluation according to transhumanist principles such as personal autonomy or liberal freedom, it is morally unacceptable for transhumanists to discount the possible outcomes of their favoured policies. I then consider whether the insights of critical posthumanists, who employ a cyborg perspective on human-technology couplings, can dissolve this impasse by “deconstructing” the opposition between the human and its prospective posthuman successors. By exhibiting its logical basis in the postructuralist philosophies of Derrida and Deleuze, I show that the cyborg perspective is consistent with both cyborg humanism and a modified speculative posthumanism. This modified account treats the alterity of the posthuman as a historically emergent feature of human and posthuman multiplicities that must be understood through their technical or imaginative synthesis, not in relation to a transcendental conception of the human.

Abstract. This paper proposes an ordering of ideas to create politics that distinguishes itself from conventional politics. It is called extrapolitics. To define extrapolitics, the concept of politics, transhumanism and dialectic - dialogism have been briefly included. The  Politics Path has been schematized as a process of evolution that politics experiments and goes hand in hand with human evolution. A post-politicist proposal was suggested for the proper proliferation of transhumanist objectives, as well as an extension of the conventional political spectrum, one that includes the extra-political spectrum and arguments against human enhancement. It finalizes with the inclusion of two potential phenomena, one harmful and the other one ideal, that define the processes of application of extrapolitical policies, the bio-socio-political singularity and the bio-socio-political inflection, respectively.

Key words: transhumanism, politics, philosophy, extrapolitics, dialogism, ideologies, singularity, postmodernism, complexity.

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

El transhumanismo es uno de los movimientos filosóficos y culturales que más atención ha atraído en los últimos años. Preconiza el uso libre de la tecnología para el mejoramiento del ser humano, tanto en sus capacidades físicas, como en las mentales, emocionales y morales, trascendiendo todos sus límites actuales. Las tecnologías a las que acude son la ingeniería genética y el desarrollo de máquinas inteligentes. Según los defensores del transhumanismo, con la ayuda de estas tecnologías podremos acabar con el sufrimiento, con las limitaciones biológicas que lo producen, e incluso podremos vencer al envejecimiento y la muerte.
Aunque muchos transhumanistas no ven deseable llevar estas mejoras hasta un punto en que el individuo mejorado ya no perteneciera a la especie humana, otros, designados como ‘posthumanistas’, consideran que este es precisamente el objetivo final: la creación de una o varias especies nuevas a partir de la nuestra.
Este libro presenta las diferentes modalidades del transhumanismo tecnocientífico. Se discuten sus argumentos, buscando dilucidar cuáles son sus puntos fuertes y sus debilidades. Las promesas que realizan los defensores del transhumanismo son muy ambiciosas, y no todas están justificadas. Pero por otro lado, la crítica de que modificar la naturaleza humana pone en peligro las bases de la vida moral, la dignidad y los derechos humanos, encierra supuestos filosóficos discutibles y sus consecuencias son excesivamente radicales. Hay otros enfoques que permiten hacer una evaluación más equilibrada, sobre la que podría edificarse en el futuro un mayor acuerdo social.

Luego del políptico de La comunidad de los espectros, un nuevo comienzo se torna necesario. Un giro en el filosofar atento al espesor metafísico de la subversión epocal en curso en todo el orbe. Esa misma crisis revela ahora como insuficientes los métodos más osados de las Humanidades del siglo XX. Un punto de partida: el relato acerca de un supuesto proceso judicial por vampirismo acaecido en un remoto cantón de Hungría a principios del siglo XVIII.
Con el discurrir de las hipótesis aquí propuestas, las relaciones con la licantropía se volverán centrales y ambos fenómenos deberán ser objeto de una minuciosa ultra-historia que acompaña al lector hasta los tiempos paleolíticos del culto de la Gran Madre. Pero esto es sólo el comienzo de un viaje metafísico que, bajo las formas de la sangre, el sacrificio y la metamorfosis, nos conduce hasta el origen mismo de la vida-muerte sobre la Tierra como estación necesaria para una meditación sobre el futuro cosmológico de los seres hablantes. El Vampiro y el Hombre lobo son las figuras filosófico-conceptuales que, una vez desentrañadas, nos muestran la vía regia hacia una forma completamente nueva de rehabilitación del pensamiento especulativo bajo la forma de una “ontología analéptica”.
Desde los inmemoriales rituales del sacrificio antiguo, hasta la teología política inversa del vampirismo, pasando por una inédita filosofía de los virus, se delinea ante nuestros ojos el subsuelo a partir del cual se revelan las condiciones de posibilidad de todo pensamiento acerca del Ser y la actual obsolescencia de todas las formas en las que este último ha sido previamente mentado. De este modo, un tenebroso y enjundioso proceso judicial, hoy caído en el olvido, nos muestra que custodiaba, sin saberlo, los secretos supremos de todo lo existente que la inveterada tradición ha dignificado con el nombre de Cosmos. Se anuncia, así, el comienzo de la Segunda Era Metafísica.
Publicado por Miño y Dávila Editores, Buenos Aires / Barcelona, 2022.
www.minoydavila.com [envíos a todo el mundo]

“Temel bir yapıt. Türk mirasının derin bilgeliği ve bilgisi ile posthüman söylemi arasında – veya tam tersi – köprü kuran bir yapı taşı. Ne olduğumuzun – bireyler olarak, türler olarak, gezegen olarak – daha fazla anlaşılmasına yönelik yerel ve küreselin, dünün, bugünün ve yarının buluştuğu edebi bir gelişim yolculuğu.”
- Francesca Ferrando, New York Üniversitesi, ABD

“Bu çok zamanında ve önemli kitap, yalnızca edebiyat dünyasının geleneksel coğrafi sınırlarını aşmakla kalmıyor, aynı zamanda, gelişen teknolojinin bizi çevreleyen canlı sistemlerle ilgili olarak kendimize bakışımızı nasıl etkilediğine dair derin soruları faydalı bir şekilde ele alıyor.”
- Kevin LaGrandeur, New York Teknoloji Enstitüsü, ABD

“Türk akademisyenler tarafından edebiyatta posthümanizm üzerine tartışmaları bir araya getiren bu yeni kitap, bu projeyi Batı ve Doğu arasındaki geleneksel Avrupa anlayışında başka bir ikiliğine karşı genişletir. Bu yeni kitabın özellikle heyecan verici yanı, hem Anglo-Amerikan hem de Türk romanları hakkındaki tartışmaları bir araya getirmesi ve tartışmayı genellikle ihmal edilen perspektifleri ve tarihleri içerecek şekilde genişletmesidir. Hem Batı hem de Doğu küresel tarihlerinde—Bizans, Selçuklu ve Osmanlı İmparatorluklarının merkezinde— önemli bir rol oynayan coğrafi konum olarak Türkiye’nin zengin tarihi, edebiyat kültürünün çok sayıda kültürel etkiyle benzersiz bir şekilde konuşabilmesini ve post-hümanist düşüncenin bunlara nasıl meydan okuduğunu veya yeniden çerçevelendirdiğini değerlendirmesini sağlar. Bu yeni kitap, yeni tarihsel ve kültürel arşivlerden yararlanarak posthümanizm anlayışımızı genişletmeyi vaat eder ve böylelikle tartışmalar daha küresel hale geldiğinden bu alanda önemli bir yeni sayfa açılmasına işaret eder.”
- Sherryl Vint, Kaliforniya Üniversitesi Riverside, ABD

“Posthüman tanımlamalarından ve ‘sorularından’ edebi formlarda vücut bulmalarına kadar, akademide yer alan genç bilim insanlarının makalelerinin yer aldığı bu kitap, ‘posthümanizmi’ çeşitli türlerle ön plana çıkarıyor. Philip K Dick’inki gibi klasik metinlerden McEwan’ın eserleri gibi daha yeni dönüşlerle sıkı bağ kuran bu cildin en büyük katkısı; felsefi bakış, düşünce ‘okulu’ ve eleştirel görüşler ekseninde posthümanizm hakkındaki tüm ana söylem ve tartışmaların edebi metinlerde her zaman öngörüldüğünü, belgelendiğini ve tartışıldığını göstermesidir. Önümüzdeki uzun yıllar boyunca etkisi sürecek bir cilt.”
- Pramod K. Nayar, Hyderabad Üniversitesi, Hindistan

Conocer al ser humano nunca ha sido una cuestión sencilla, pero hoy esta cuestión no sólo es más difícil sino también más acuciante, puesto que desde algunos ámbitos se está queriendo superar la idea de " ser humano". Habría que decir que no sólo la " idea " sino al propio ser humano.

Se indaga el sentido de la conferencia de Sloterdijk
“Normas para el Parque humano” así como las
polémicas por ella suscitada. Se realiza un diagnóstico
de la capacidad crítica del humanismo tradicional. En el
marco del naufragio del humanismo como escuela y
utopía domesticadora humana -marco en el que
Sloterdijk reclama una revisión genético-técnica de la
humanidad- se indaga ¿qué criterios pueden
establecerse para normar las inevitables luchas por los
derechos de la crianza humana? ¿Quiénes y sobre qué
bases debieran hoy detentar el derecho a la crianza?
¿Cómo determinar quiénes son los que educan y los que
son educados? Se proponen nuevos caminos que
tienen en la mediación de la técnica su formulación
discursiva y sus orígenes en las disidencias que, desde
la propia tradición filosófica, reducían la estancia del
hombre en el mundo a su expresión leída y escrita.

I examine the epistemological vision of the body as an accumulation of genes that has been developed by the UFO religion called the Raëlian Movement. I reflect it against various posthumanist theories and take an approach that has rarely been used in this domain: I analyze the aesthetic aspect of such scientific and religious models. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review (ASRR) in 8: 1 2017, 101-125.

This research analyzes transhumanism from an apocalyptic standpoint by seeing how its ideals and ambitions fit into the framework defined as “progressive millennialism”.  In order to accomplish this, I will emphasize the “religiousity” or the religious nature of transhumanism by comparing the beliefs of transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil to those of Christian progressive millennialism or postmillennialism. In short, this paper builds off of the opinions and beliefs of both scholars and transhumanists who believe that transhumanism is compatible with religion.

Uno de los efectos más dañinos de la retórica poshumanista es su obsesión por evidenciar la incompatibilidad del desarrollo tecnológico con la asunción de lo humano. Necesitamos una tecnología desprovista de arrogancia e infantilismo que recupere la prudencia, humildad y seriedad de su madrina: la ciencia.

In Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits, Nicholas Agar contributes once more to the debate regarding the ethics of human enhancement, after his 2004 and 2010 books, Liberal Eugenics and Humanity’s End. The main thesis of Truly Human Enhancement is that it is important to take into consideration the “significance of differences in degree of human enhancement… human enhancement is a good thing, but one that it’s possible to have too much of it”. The author endorses moderate enhancements, while rejecting radical enhancements. The focus of the book on the degree of enhancement—not merely the mean or the goal of enhancement—is the novelty here. This means that Agar embraces some technological progress to a degree, within some limits. He illustrates his position using the imagery found in the movie Star Trek, “Here, recognizable human beings use fabulous technologies to travel the universe. They view these technologies very different from the way they view their brains and bodies. The technologies that transport humans across the universe are radically improved. Human brains and bodies are recognizes as grounds of valuable experiences and are preserved”. For the purpose of this review, I will briefly comment on the notion of radical enhancement and then focus on the idea introduced in this book that two ideals drive the enhancement enterprise.

The relationship between humankind and technology is fundamental, but also a longstanding source of unease, particularly as that relationship has become ever more intimate and irreversible. In this paper, I connect this age-old anxiety with the age-old figure of the giant, a monster similarly intertwined with ancient questions on the boundaries of humanity. I focus on two examples: the Human-Reaper larva in Mass Effect 2 and Liberty Prime in Fallout 3 and 4. Although different in approach, these examples demonstrate a use of a phenomenon I call the 'techno-giant' to explore and reflect the powerful anxieties in our cultures to do with the future of the human-technology relationship. In particular, both examples expose the human-nonhuman boundary as being exceeding difficult to define and place, despite a constant desire to. The figure of the giant offers a powerful focal point for these representations.

A look at post-humanism from the lens of the Catholic social ethical tradition, noting basic principles, framing concepts, and the opportunities and liabilities that lie ahead.

In _Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens​_, eds. Michael Bess and Diana Walsh Pasulka, 201-211. Part of the Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2018.

Un métarécit des origines fondateur de la vision du monde Toute civilisation est construite sur un métarécit des origines. Autrefois, l'Occident était façonné par le métarécit traditionnel de la Genèse et sa cosmologie associée. Aujourd'hui, l'évolution est devenue le métarécit des origines de notre civilisation. L'évolution est beaucoup plus qu'un mécanisme de création, une simple théorie scientifique neutre. En fait, le discours évolutionniste se situe tout à la fois sur les plans scientifique, théologique, ontologique et métaphysique, enraciné dans une vision cosmologique d'ensemble. L'évolution est devenue une vision du monde englobant tout, munie de sa propre métaphysique, de sa propre ontologie et de sa propre théologie. Elle fait office de mythe fondateur se substituant au récit créationnel de la Genèse. Et en tant que mythe fondateur, elle constitue une grille de lecture de l'ensemble de la réalité, une philosophie de la nature qui vient évincer la révélation biblique qui nous a été donnée du cosmos, de la nature et de l'homme.

Is sex work (specifically, prostitution) vulnerable to technological unemployment? Several authors have argued that it is. They claim that the advent of sophisticated sexual robots will lead to the displacement of human prostitutes, just as, say, the advent of sophisticated manufacturing robots have displaced many traditional forms of factory labour. But are they right? In this article, I critically assess the argument that has been made in favour of this displacement hypothesis. Although I grant the argument a degree of credibility, I argue that the opposing hypothesis -- that prostitution will be resilient to technological unemployment -- is also worth considering. Indeed, I argue that increasing levels of technological unemployment in other fields may well drive more people into the sex work industry. Furthermore, I argue that no matter which hypothesis you prefer -- displacement or resilience -- you can make a good argument for the necessity of a basic income guarantee, either as an obvious way to correct for the precarity of sex work, or as a way to disincentivise those who may be drawn to prostitution.

Due to development of science we are in the situation of an intervention in the complex area of nature without being able to yet identify the inflection point from which the artificial created by the natural man becomes in turn natural. Perhaps this is just another strong sense of singularity, Consciousness Singularity (CS) is the key moment of this transition. By CS we understand the ability of a consciousness to understand what consciousness is. It is to know in a scientific sense, that brings along prediction with it, the possibility to create a consciousness, finalizing the status of human creator. Instead of the leap assumed by TS the key challenge is the "revolution of consciousness", generated by the new understanding of humanity brought along by CS. Most of the arguments in favour of Technological Singularity (TS) involves the possibility of a qualitative leap based on the quantitative accumulation, missing the problem represented by the knowledge of consciousness. We cannot predict the time / period when the CS occurs or provide strong arguments for the burst of the CS. We think, however, that TS assumes CS. Namely, that the debate about TS is really about CS. The prediction of CS consequences is impossible. The study of consciousness inevitably changes the human’s image and that of the society, finally resulting in the redefining of humanity. Contrary to many expectations emerged on the marketplace of ideas, it is not the switch to trans-humanism the one that will characterize such a change, but the redefining of the humane. Not the post-humanism, but the new humanism is the social-moral objective of the socio-moral consciousness research results. The main feature of the humane is the all-humane: the tendency of people to remain within the humanity regardless of the severity of the practiced behaviours.

Conceived as a sequel loosely based on the 1973 feature film Westworld, the 2016 television series of the same title has become an immensely popular, as well as academically intriguing, work of artistic entertainment. Drawing on the original idea of the movie, creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have created a fictional world presented to viewers using a very complex narrative form – so complex, in fact, that fan forums have provided explanations of the multiple chronological layers of the story and attempted to illuminate the fragmented plot. “Westworld” is a theme park presented in the series through a number of narratives: the parallel stories of several characters, as well as the history of the futuristic amusement park itself, owned and operated by the Delos Corporation. The interaction of the visitors, or guests (all paying enormous amounts of money for the experience), with the park’s permanent inhabitants/employees, referred to as “hosts”, who are highly developed androids,...

John Harris’ newest book examines the ethics of moral enhancement.  The book focuses on whether new biotechnological interventions on our brain could be used as a means to moral enhancement. Put it simply, could we just take a pill to become morally better? For Harris, this raises important questions regarding the role our “freedom to fall” plays in our understanding of morality, and whether these sort of moral bioenhancements are truly enhancements or only a threat to human freedom. Harris suggests the later. For him, moral bioenhancements do not allow us to remain “masters of our fate, entities which create ourselves by decisions and actions”.

Among the greatest obstacles to the implementation of crewed space missions are human biological limitations. Difficulties were always envisioned in relation to both Earth's moon and Mars but more so for Mars because long spaceflights would also expose crew to prolonged microgravity conditions, in addition to radiation. The result could well be osteoporosis, bone fractures, and disability. In this article, we do not contest the validity of bone loss studies. Rather, we question a seemingly tacit assumption about the immutability of human nature. Indeed, new, invasive, and noninvasive techniques of human enhancement already allow humans to enjoy modifications that will enable lengthy space missions. The alteration of human DNA has not only aided cancer patients but, for example, by using the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing procedure, can also help to prevent damage to limbs and joints that a prolonged Mars mission could cause for the crew. Possible ethical objections to this solution are discussed, and trade-offs between risks and benefits outlined.

CARRYING ON FROM THE SERIES “MARX EN SCÈNE” IN 2016 AND “MATÉRIALISMES À L’ŒUVRE” IN 2017, LE BAL, THE ÉCOLE NORMALE SUPÉRIEURE (ENS) AND UNIVERSITÉ SORBONNE NOUVELLE-PARIS 3 JOIN FORCES FOR A SERIES OF DEBATES-PROJECTIONS ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND THE NON-HUMAN AND THE PARAMETERS THAT ARE DESTABILISING AND BLURRING THEM. THROUGH THE PRISM OF ANIMISM, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, NON-HUMAN SENSIBILITIES AND POST AND TRANS-HUMANISM, THE DEBATES SPUR THINKING ABOUT A DECENTERING OF THE HUMAN AND ENVISAGE WHAT SOME CONSIDER A NON-HUMAN TURN OCCURRING IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES.

The ethics of human enhancement has been a hotly debated topic in the last 15 years. In this debate, some advocate examining science fiction stories to elucidate the ethical issues regarding the current phenomenon of human enhancement. Stories from science fiction seem well suited to analyze biomedical advances, providing some possible case studies. Of particular interest is the work of screenwriter Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1m0ne, In Time, and Good Kill), which often focuses on ethical questions raised by the use of new technologies. Examining the movie In Time (2011), the aim of this paper is to show how science fiction can contribute to the ethical debate of human enhancement. In Time provides an interesting case study to explore what could be some of the consequences of radical life-extension technologies. In this paper, we will show how arguments regarding radical life-extension portrayed in this particular movie differ from what is found in the scientific literature. We will see how In Time gives flesh to arguments defending or rejecting radical life-extension. It articulates feelings of unease, alienation and boredom associated with this possibility. Finally, this article will conclude that science fiction movies in general, and In Time in particular, are a valuable resource for a broad and comprehensive debate about our coming future.

When considering the use of enhancement in the world of sport, we should contemplate not only the enhancement of particular traits, but also that of the athlete (as a human) as a whole. In most sports, we are interested in comparing the fastest human performance and not the fastest performance. There can be room for both types of sports, but each will give different expectations, rules, limits, and kinds of participants in the endeavour. This paper argues that the underlying question of what it means to be human needs to be central in the context of enhancement in sport.

Mediating Black religious studies, spirituality studies, and liberation theology, Philip Butler explores what might happen if Black people in the United States merged technology and spirituality in their fight towards materializing liberating realities.

The discussions shaping what it means for humans to exist with technology and as part of technology are already underway: transhumanism suggests that any use of technology to augment intellectual, psychological, or physical capability makes one transhuman. In an attempt to encourage Black people in the United States to become technological progenitors as a spiritual act, Butler asks whether anyone has ever been 'just' human? Butler then explores the implications of this question and its link to viewing the body as technology.

Re-imagining incarnation as a relationship between vitality, biochemistry, and genetics, the book also takes a critical scientific approach to understanding the biological embodiment of Black spiritual practices. It shows how current and emerging technologies might align with the generative biological states of Black spiritualities in order to concretely disrupt and dismantle oppressive societal structures.
Table of contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments

Introduction and Overview
1. Thinking of Black Transhumanism: Non-Humanity, Moving Away From Transhumanism's Roots
2. Foundations of a Black Transhumanism: Blackness as the Biotechnologically Mediated Experience of Black Vitality
3. The Neurophysiology of Spiritual Experience
4. Black Transhuman Liberation Theology
5. Black Transhumanism as Revolt Spirituality

Glossary of Terms
Notes
References
Index