Abstract
The question of what it means to be human surfaces time and again in periods of important technological change. As if, once detached from the labor of their creation, technologies then take on the capacity of philosophical anthropologists: signaling to us, undeterred by their own non-humanness, that the fact of their existence solicits a clear definition of human nature. In our current technologized culture, where the life sciences themselves are increasingly merging with technology in the form of reproductive, genetic and neuro-technology, the question of what it means to be human has taken on a new urgency.
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.
Some exceptions are Cary Wolfe’s (2010) very good albeit brief mapping, developed as an introduction to the “Posthumanities” book series (see http://www.carywolfe.com/post_about.html); James Hughes’ (2002) comprehensive “The Politics of Transhumanism” that can be found online at http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm; and Dale Carrico’s (2006) “Technoprogressivism: Beyond Technophilia and Technophobia”, a post that can be found on the “Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies” site, http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/carrico20060812/.
- 2.
References
Agar, N. (2004). Liberal eugenics: In defence of human enhancement. Oxford: Blackwell.
Annas, G. (2005). American bioethics: Crossing human rights and health boundaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Badmington, N. (Ed.). (2000). Posthumanism. New York: Palgrave.
Balsamo, A. (1996). Technologies of the gendered body: Reading cyborg women. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., & Pinch, T. (Eds.). (1987). The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bostrom, N. (2002). Existential risks: Analyzing human extinction scenarios and related hazards. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 9(1). http://jetpress.org/volume8/symbionics.html. Accessed 20 August 2013.
Bostrom, N. (2003). The transhumanist FAQ, Version 2.1. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf. Accessed 6 June 2013.
Bostrom, N. (2005). In defense of posthuman dignity. Bioethics, 19(3), 202–214.
Braidotti, R. (2006). Transpositions: On nomadic ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Buchanan, A. (2011a). Better than human: The promise and perils of enhancing ourselves. New York: Oxford University Press.
Buchanan, A. (2011b). Beyond humanity? The ethics of biomedical enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Callon, M., & Latour, B. (1992). Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath school! A reply to Collins and Yearley. In A. Pickering (Ed.), Science as practice and culture (pp. 343–368). Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Callon, M., & Law, J. (1997). After the individual in society: Lessons on collectivity from science, technology and society. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 22(2), 165–182.
Carrico, D. (2006). Technoprogressivism: Beyond technophilia and technophobia. http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/carrico20060812/. Accessed 14 Jun 2013.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (trans: Seem, M., Lane, H.R., & Hurley, R). New York: Viking Press. Original edition, 1972.
Feenberg, A. (1991). Critical theory of technology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Foucault, M. (2005). The hermeneutics of the subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982 (trans: Burchell, G.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our posthuman future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Gane, N. (2006). “When we have never been human, what is to be done” interview with Donna Haraway. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(7–8), 135–158.
Gordijn, B., & Chadwick, R. (Eds.). (2008). Medical enhancement and posthumanity. New York: Springer.
Graham, E. L. (2002). Representations of the post/human: Monsters, aliens and others in popular culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Gray, C. H. (Ed.). (1995). The Cyborg handbook. New York: Routledge.
Habermas, J. (2003). The future of human nature. Cambridge: Polity.
Halberstam, J., & Livingstone, I. (Eds.). (1995). Posthuman bodies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Halliwell, M., & Mousley, A. (2003). Critical humanisms: Humanist/anti-humanist dialogues. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149–181). New York: Routledge.
Haraway, D. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan©_Meets_Oncomouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harris, J. (2007). Enhancing evolution: the ethical case for making better people. Princeton: Princeton University.
Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hovenden, F., Janes, L., Kirkup, G., & Woodward, K. (Eds.). (2000). The gendered cyborg: A reader. New York: Routledge.
Hughes, J. J. (2002). The politics of transhumanism. http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm. Accessed 6 June 2013.
Hughes, J. J. (2004). Citizen cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future. Boulder/Colorado: Westview Press.
Hughes, J. J. (2009). Social pressures for technological mood management. Free Inquiry, 29(5), 28–32.
Ihde, D. (1993). Postphenomenology: Essays in the postmodern context. Evanston: Norhtwestern University Press.
Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and technoscience. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Kass, L. (1997). The wisdom of repugnance. The New Republic, 216(22), 17–26.
Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Viking.
Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses? Sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnological change (pp. 225–259). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1994). On technical mediation: Philosophy, sociology, genealogy. Common Knowledge, 3, 29–64.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (Eds.). (1985). The social shaping of technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
McKibben, B. (2003). Enough: Staying human in an engineered age. New York: Times Books.
Moravec, H. (1990). Mind children: The future of robot and human intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pickering, A. (1995). The mangle of practice: Time, agency and science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pickering, A. (2005). Asian eels and global warming: A posthuman perspective on society and the environment. Ethics & The Environment, 10(2), 29–43.
Rose, N. (2007). The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sandel, M. (2007). The case against perfection: Ethics in the age of genetic engineering. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Savulescu, J. (2001). Procreative beneficience: Why we should select the best children. Bioethics, 15(5), 413–426.
Savulescu, J. (2007). In defence of procreative beneficence. Journal of Medical Ethics, 33(5), 284–288.
Savulescu, J., & Bostrom, N. (Eds.). (2009). Human enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Soper, K. (1986). Humanism and anti-humanism. London: Hutchinson.
Stone, A. R. (1995). The war of desire and technology at the close of the mechanical age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency and design. University Park: Penn State University Press.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2008). Obstetric ultrasound and the technological mediation of morality: a postphenomenological analysis. Human Studies, 31(1), 11–26.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2011). Moralizing technology: Understanding and designing the morality of things. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus, 109, 121–136.
Wolfe, C. (2009). What is posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Wolfe, C. (2010). Posthumanities. http://www.carywolfe.com/post_about.html. Accessed 7 Mar 2011.
Zylinska, J. (Ed.). (2002). The cyborg experiments: The extensions of the body in the media age. London/New York: Continuum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sharon, T. (2014). Introduction. In: Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7554-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7554-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7553-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7554-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)