Page - 161 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

Cyberneuroethics • 161 philosopher William Lighthall (1857–1954).253 In this article, Julian Huxley described the aims of transhumanism as follows: Up till now human life has generally been, as Hobbes described it, ‘nasty, brut- ish and short’; the great majority of human beings (if they have not already died young) have been afflicted with misery . . . we can justifiably hold the belief that . . . the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our exis- tence could be in large measure surmounted . . . The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself – not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity.254 Julian Huxley explored developments in ecology, genetics, palaeontology, geographical distribution, embryology, systematics and comparative anatomy, which he outlined in 1942 in Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.255 However, the ideas behind transhumanism and the enhancement of humanity can be traced back to the Enlightenment ideology of promoting technological changes as the engines of human progress. This included writers such as the French encyclopaedist Denis Diderot (1713–84), who was a leading member of the Enlightenment. In more specific terms, transhumanism can be characterised as a multidis- ciplinary cultural phenomenon consisting of beliefs, norms, literature and social practices addressing not only scientific and technological changes but also deeper human existential concerns. In fact, it can be considered as an ideology of ultimate progress aiming at delivering humanity from the limita- tions of human nature, including the biological, mortal body. In other words, it welcomes technology as the main driving force of cultural change.256 It offers a vision of the right moral ordering of self and society in relation to a technology-driven global transformation. This means that transhumanism signals a shift from the human to the transhuman existence, as well as actions and beliefs that will promote and influence the optimal transhuman future.257 It follows that transhumanism is different from the concept of enhance- ment in that it seeks to create beings who have never previously existed in the history of humankind. But these beings would retain some human char- acteristics, such as with human-nonhuman interspecies beings or cyborgs that combine the human with the robot. For instance, the Cybermen of the BBC fictional television series Doctor Who used a process called cyber- conversion that involved replacing the human flesh of a person with cyber- netic upgrades in order to increase their numbers rather than using biological reproduction.258 Similarly, the 1952 science-fiction novel Limbo, written by the American Bernard Wolfe (1915–85), depicts a challenging future where human body parts are replaced with cybernetic limbs, while examining what happens when the limits of the body and what is natural are overcome.259 This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.