Beyond the Human? A Critique of Transhumanism

Abstract

According to transhumanists, the human being in its current shape is fundamentally imperfect. Consequently, they propagate possibilities of enhancing and reshaping one’s body, culminating in the idea of virtual immortality, i.e., transferring one’s mind as software onto more durable substrates (“mind uploading”). Such ideas are based on a blatant mind-body dualism: the body is regarded as a material vehicle, which is at our free disposal; the mind is considered to be a substrate-independent information structure. In contrast, the chapter argues that humans are neither natural machines nor pure minds but living beings in the first place. The idea of mind uploading is thus based on an untenable neuro-reductionism, which wrongly assumes the brain to be the only substrate of the mind. Similarly, the ideas of optimizing the body overlook the necessary balance of functions that has evolved in human evolution.