In Defense of Transhuman Ignorance
by Jessica Phillips
Transhumanism—"the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by using technology to eliminate aging and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities."—Nick Bostrum

In Nick Bostrom’s article “In Defense of PostHuman Dignity,” he makes the following statement about the benefits of genetically altered traits in posthumans, hereafter referred to as transhumans: “Being healthy, smarter, having a wide range of talents, or possessing greater powers of self-control are blessings that tend to open more life paths than they block” (Bostrom, 212). I begin this essay with Bostrom’s words because I think he attempts to offer a positive ethical view of a transhuman future, yet these “blessings,” like any idealized trait, have one fundamental weakness—they are only ideal in comparison to their less desirable counterparts. Healthy vs. unhealthy, smarter vs. less smart, a wide range of talents vs. few… without a relational opposite, these traits would be meaningless. With this in mind, and assuming as Bostrom does that these would be popular genetic traits in a transhuman future, after a few generations we will have genetically eradicated those traits’ opposites from the human/transhuman race. Transhumans, though altered to have greater intelligence, still might not be able to transcend one of our basic intellectual tools as humans: the ability to learn by opposition, by stop vs. go, black vs. white. Without a relational opposite to ground the meaning of their “ideal” traits, eventually they will be ignorant of the reasoning from generations past behind choosing these traits. This could lead to transhumans rejecting the genetic ideals given them and experimenting with other, less desirable or even life-ending traits, throwing the ethical merits of transhumanism into question.

The main anticipated counter-argument to my claim is that transhumans’ greater intelligence would enable them to understand why the traits given them are most beneficial even without a relational opposite to consider. Proponents of this argument might say that assuming transhumans will ultimately abandon their established ideal traits is an unnecessarily bleak outlook on the future, while the perceived benefits of transhumanism are great. In a similar fashion, Bostrom argues against bioconservativists who worry about the genetic creation of a destructive super-human race by calling it a “science fiction scenario” that “must be clearly distinguished from our present situation and our more immediate concern with taking effective steps towards incrementally improving human capacities and health-span” (Bostrom, 208).

However, the fact that these arguments exist in the human brain serves only to strengthen my point. If this is how some humans view the transhuman future, with a focus on only the potential positive outcomes, how much more likely is it that some transhumans will eventually apply these same types of arguments to those skeptical of genetic alteration? Both humans and transhumans—unless transhumans are somehow able to program psychic abilities into their own brains—must ultimately theorize about the future, an imprecise science based on conjecture and an ignorance of what the future truly holds. It would take only a few well-meaning transhumans, with their genetically programmed social awareness, to come up with what they think is a good reason to go against the established genetic norm.

One possibility comes from transhumans’ perceived superiority. Knowing that they are programmed to be more intelligent, these transhumans also might question their ancestors’ reasoning in choosing the “best” genetic programming, leading to genetic experimentation. Going back to their lack of relational opposites, transhumans are in perhaps an even more dangerous position than un-altered humans to make judgments regarding what genetic traits are best. For instance, if transhumans were able to eradicate disease and become immortal, the mystery of death might become appealing to them, just like the mystery of an afterlife is appealing to many humans because our intellectual knowledge of it is non-existent to minimal. There have been many sad cases of people choosing suicide as a means to an afterlife. Similarly, in their ultimate thirst of knowledge of the unknown—death—some of these transhumans might opt for suicide. Alternatively, they might choose random candidates—or volunteers—to participate in different types of death experiments. They could also introduce genetic disease into quarantined individuals for observation in the quest for more knowledge.

If this seems like an outlandish scenario, consider that with most or all transhumans possessing the same “ideal” traits, they will not have much diversity in their population to speak of. In his article “Brain and Machine: Minding the Transhumanist Future,” Michael Spezio talks about how the imago dei principle should allow us to see our own humanity in humans and transhumans different from us (Spezio, 379). However, the current diversity of the human population is more than just a stumbling block to tolerance. Having faith in another person as a worthy human creates a respect for their individuality, and in turn, respect for individual life. Individuality, I would say, is the true thing that we mourn at a person’s death—the loss of a unique person. In a world of perfectly same transhumans, however, there would exist a dangerous combination: a lack of uniqueness coupled with an inherent immortality that makes death a curiosity rather than something to avoid. These factors combined could easily cause them to lose respect for the value of human/transhuman life.

In conclusion, we should consider more deeply the ethical implications of using genetic alteration to reach a more “perfect” state of transhumanism. No matter their genetic strengths, transhumans will still be ethically limited by the very state of their homogenous perfection. Given these possibilities—loss of relational opposites to intellectually ground ideal traits, loss of individuality, and the ultimate loss of respect for human/transhuman life—the theoretical development of a destructive super-human race that Bostrom scoffs at doesn’t seem so bizarre.

Works Cited
Bostrom, Nick. “In Defense of PostHuman Dignity.” Bioethics. Vol. 19.3. (2005)
Spezio, Michael. “Brain and Machine: Minding the Transhuman Future.” Dialog: A Journal of Theology. Vol. 44.4. (2005)