Abstract
A normative anthropology understood as an ethics of vulnerability interprets and evaluates vulnerability transformations. But at the end of the previous chapter, I identified the following problem: how can ethics cope with radical vulnerability changes, and therefore radical changes in our existential condition, that may happen in the future? In this section, then, I will discuss the possibility of a posthuman ethics: an ethics that guides, and is adapted to, a new, posthuman condition. First I will address the problem that our values may change when radical vulnerability transformations happen. Then I will respond to the epistemological problem of how we can know which transformations of our vulnerability and of our existential condition may take place in the future.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Note that the old mail system was not perfectly safe either.
- 2.
Of course the two questions are related—we are social beings and human good cannot exist outside the social—but a logical distinction can be made for the purpose of this analysis.
- 3.
There are still some disciplining techniques, exercises which explicitly refer to the Buddhist tradition.
- 4.
The ethical-anthropological approach to human enhancement defended in this book is in line with what some religious thinkers do. For example, recently Michael Hogue has used insights of Jonas and Borgmann to formulate a ‘biocultural theological anthropology’. He asks us to think about how technology is fundamentally transforming human moral life and reminds us of ‘our ultimately limited capacities to control the world’ (Hogue 2007, p. 92).
- 5.
A first version of this discussion has been published in the Journal of Evolution & Technology (JET).
- 6.
There are various techniques for this. Probably the best technique is thinking about your own death; this technique continues to inspire people today. But the technique does not necessarily mean that you renounce all valuing. Combined with Romanticism, the Stoic technique means that you try to find value within yourself. As Steve Jobs said when addressing students at Stanford University: ‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart’ (Jobs 2005).
- 7.
For similar reasons, the modern (roughly Kantian) view that puts emphasis on good will, rationality, and autonomy cannot be considered a solution; instead, our craving for more autonomy is itself a source of vulnerability: it creates psychological frustration and inter-human violence.
References
Anders, Günter. 1956. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (Volume I): Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution. München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1987.
Bostrom, Nick. 2002. Existential risks: analyzing human extinction scenarios and related hazards. Journal of Evolution and Technology 9(1). Available at http://www.jetpress.org/volume9/risks.html.
Briggle, Adam. 2008. Real friends: How the internet can foster friendship. Ethics and Information Technology 10(1): 71–79.
Coeckelbergh, Mark. 2007. Violent E-games, empathy, and cosmopolitanism. Ethics and Information Technology 9(3): 219–231.
Coeckelbergh, Mark. 2010. Imagining worlds: Responsible engineering under conditions of epistemic opacity. In Philosophy & engineering: An emerging agenda, ed. Ibo Van de Poel and David E. Goldberg, 175–188. Dordrecht: Springer.
Coeckelbergh, Mark. 2011. Vulnerable cyborgs: Learning to live with our dragons. Journal of Evolution and Technology 22(1): 1–9.
Floridi, Luciano. 2002. On the intrinsic value of information objects and the infosphere. Ethics and Information Technology 4(4): 287–304.
Floridi, Luciano. 2008. Artificial intelligence’s new frontier: Artificial companions and the fourth revolution. Metaphilosophy 39(4/5): 651–655.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur: Auf dem Weg zu einer Liberalen Eugenik. Trans. H. Beister and W. Rehg. The future of human nature. London: Polity Press, 2003.
Hogue, Michael S. 2007. Theological ethics and technological culture: A biocultural approach. Zygon 42(1): 77–96.
Houellebecq, Michel. 2005. La Possibilité d’une île. Paris: Fayard.
Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jobs, Steve. 2005. Commencement address delivered at Stanford University, June 12, 2005. Stanford Report, June 14, 2005. Retrieved 7 Oct 2011 from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html.
Johnson, Mark. 1993. Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Jonas, Hans. 1979. Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag. Trans. The imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Viking/Penguin.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind children: The future of robot and human intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Sloterdijk, Peter. 1999. Regeln für den Menschenpark. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Trans. P. Beers. Regels voor het mensenpark: Kroniek van een debat. Boom: Amsterdam, 2000.
Stahl, Bernd Carsten. 2002. Information technology, responsibility, and anthropology. In Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 7–10 Jan 2002, Big Island, HI.
Verbeek, Peter-Paul. 2005. What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Coeckelbergh, M. (2013). Ethics of Vulnerability (ii): Imagining the Posthuman Future. In: Human Being @ Risk. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6025-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6025-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6024-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6025-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)