Vita-More_ Human Enhancement, Life Expansion and the Transhumanist Perspective.pdf

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Human Enhancement, Life Expansion, and the Transhumanist Perspective
Natasha Vita-More
Life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the
matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century
and its matter is tied to biology. We might ask: what core elements of life are to be expanded and
what type of matter might we live within? Taking the core elements of life, time, and matter into
consideration, life expansion then becomes an issue of how to regenerate biological cells, extend
personal identity, and preserve the brain, whether through cryonics
i
, connectomics
ii
, and
computations
iii
. Taking its media into consideration, it then becomes an issue of the semi-
biological and non-biological substrates
iv
we might exist within (whether virtual, synthetic
and/or computational), the potential of a connective mind
v
, what we might look like and form
we might take, and how to sustain our human species as a whole.
Living
Aristotle described essence, form, and matter as components of living things (350 BC). In
De Anima,
his inquiry of
psyche
[ψυχη] proposed that “[t]he [psyche] is the cause or source of
the living … it is (a) the movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the essence of the whole living
body” (Smith 1931). Intrinsic to all living matter is this psyche—"the first principle of living
things" (Aristotle 1986:
De anima,
402a) (Goetz & Taliaferro 2011, 19).
According to Eugene Thacker in
After Life
(Thacker 2010), a particular “problem for
philosophy” is based on two concepts that are relevant to life expansion: (1) the “time and
temporality” (xii) of life and (2) the “form and finality” (xii) of life. Thacker looks at life outside
the scientific-biological-medical perspective and the mechanical-technological sphere.
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Nevertheless, his study on “after life” is significant. While it may not pertain to the issues of
brain preservation and/or future types of matter for existence, it does relate to questioning what
might be “life” after biological life—the point where “living” becomes something other than
biological. As such, “life after life” (xiv) links to the issue of being "alive" after biological cells
reach their divisional limits, as in the Hayflick Limit Theory of Aging. Interpreting it this way,
the posthuman as a computational upload could be “life after life”. However, on this point I do
not assume Thacker might agree with me.
Notably, Thacker introduces an ontology of life by identifying two aspects that parallel
life expansion. First, that life manifests in instances and, second, that those who are living denote
the manifestations of particular instances (Thacker 17). This observation is derived from
Aristotle's use of life as the concept of "life-in-itself" and the “now” that you live as "the living",
including "any and all the instances of life” (Thacker 17). For life expansion, the idea is to stay
alive. Life in and of itself is necessary, to be sure, but it is you—your personhood—the "now" of
being alive, and the continuation of the instances of "living", that denotes life. Thus, any and all
instances of life could be experienced in a posthuman virtual, synthetic and/or computational
matter.
Matter
In
What is Life?,
Lynn Margulis brings us directly into body matter as an evolutionary
conglomeration of bacterial strains (Margulis & Sagan 2000) where life is “the transmutation of
energy and matter” (215) in an autopoietic process.
vi
The theory of “symbiogenesis”
vii
suggests that we are comprised of a conglomerate of life
forms—that as animals, humans are nucleated cells (Margulis) descended not just from a
Darwinian theory of common ancestry (Darwin 1859), but from ancient bacteria, which are
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themselves comprised of different strains of bacteria (2000). The idea of a symbiogenesis is an
underlying theme of life expansion,
viii
in relation to a “biotechnogenesis”
ix
of emerging and
speculative technologies, which form the media of life expansion.
The biotechnogenesis media of life expansion for the human and transhuman include
biotechnology (genetic engineering, and methods of regenerative medicine,
i.e.,
stem cell cloning
and regenerative cells growing organs), nanotechnology (nanomedicine, nanorobotics and
molecular manufacturing) and human-computer interaction, including artificial intelligence
(artificial general intelligence), and processes for whole brain emulation. The quintessence of
being alive—that element of you, the
psyche
according to Aristotle, form the biotechnogenesis of
matter as they repeatedly collapse and expand into each other. In doing so, they form something
other than a linear time-based process (as proposed in the horizontality of Darwin), and begin to
reflect what Margulis suggests in symbiogenesis, and what this essays suggests as a process of
life expansion. Molecules, at their finest point known to date, are comprised of atoms. How
atoms form in making molecules and how molecules form in making matter is relevant to life
expansion, especially the media of molecular nanotechnology.
"Molecular
manufacturing will
eventually transform our relationship to molecules and matter as thoroughly as the computer
changed our relationship to bits and information. It will enable precise, inexpensive control of
the structure of matter" (Neil Jacobstein).
Degeneration / Regeneration
If the goal of life expansion is increasing the length of time a person is alive and
diversifying the matter or substrates in which a person exists, then the process of decomposition
is at the center of the process of regeneration. They go hand in hand, as one cannot exist without
the other. Whether or not death itself is good or bad is irrelevant. What is relevant is that prior to
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being alive there is no physically recorded recollection of existence and, likewise, after death
existence is supposed, but nevertheless unknown. Life expansion, in terms of biology, is mostly
concerned with existence now, not prior to birth or after death’s biological finality. And it is this
“now” of being alive that forms the motivation for defeating death, as passionately summed up
in the Dylan Thomas poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" and its refrain " … rage, rage
against the dying of the light" (Dylan 1951).
Dylan’s rage, however vocally expressed or silently confirmed by transhumanists, reflect,
in part, the biopolitics of human enhancement. The culture of new-agers, life extensionists,
feminists, cyberpunks, posthumanists, transhumanists, grrrls, avatars, transsexuals, bio-hackers,
geeks, and others, has displayed a vocal and/or silent rage over body and gender diversity. The
transhumanist rage against the dying of the light is largely fostered by an urgency to change
dictums of "normal" and "normalcy" that prescribe not just what a man and woman is, and their
respective gender and genitalia, but also what life and death is. Gender choice, body image,
ownership of body, and certain rights of bodily modification are impassioned by an insistence for
certain human rights. Extending life, prolonging personhood, and morphological freedom are
certain transhuman rights.
But let me clarify that the issue is not just about body enhancement and life expansion. It
concerns the larger environment in which enhancement takes place and the idea that humans
might and can append their bodies and expand their lives. If our ancestors augmented the body
for millions of years, since the Homo habilis and the Oldowan people and their tools, then the
phenotype of appending the body is an innate and/or a learned expression. This interrelationship
between the organism, the appendage, and the environment is an evidenced observation that
needs to be understood, whether accepted or not, by all sides of socio-economics and biopolitics
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of body enhancement issues.
Transmutation
In
De Divisione Naturae¸
Johannes Scotus Eriugena
x
envisioned the universe as an
"emanation" of life itself. If life is the universe, and if the whole of nature is alive, is death not
just a transmutation of matter, thereby affirming that nothing is dead or inanimate? If the
universe is infinite and eternal, that all of nature is based on interactions between atoms in
perpetual movement, then it seems all elements within nature are in motion, including life and
death. These issues are highly consequential to life expansion because the biotechnogenesis of
life expansion media will, inevitably, address the dialectics of life and death. As human-
computer interface, virtuality, bioarts, synthetic life and other means begin to link to extending
life over time and onto/into nonbiological platforms, the issue of transmutation of matter will
need to be further developed, debated and articulated, especially in theoretical and practice-based
models. One such model is "Primo Posthuman" (Figure 1). This conceptual design referred to as
a new human genre based on a scientific study of potential of emerging and speculative
technologies.
1
Figure 1.
"Primo Posthuman" by Natasha Vita-More, 1997 (revised 2011)
Dialectics of desirability and viability
The dialectics between the desire for life expansion and the viability of enhancement
technology is often approached in relation to the research climate, costs of technological
developments, the ethical issues, and legal ramifications—in other words, the environment in
which the technology is lodged. It is necessary for objectivity that the dialectics include both the
1
This project resulted through the collaborative advice of Drs. Robert Freitas, Michael Rose, Greg Fahy, Marvin
Minsky, Roy Walford, Max More, Robin Hanson, Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec and Gregory Benford.
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