Evaluating the Posthuman Future – Some Philosophical Problems

Søren Holm

European Review, 2017, vol. 25, issue 1, 131-139

Abstract: Imagining a future scenario where human beings have evolved in ways so that they are no longer human but post- or transhuman has been a recurrent trope in science fiction literature since the very inception of the genre. More recently, the possibility of a future including posthumans has received significant philosophical attention due to the emergence of activist ‘transhumanism’. This paper will analyse some of the philosophical problems in evaluating whether a posthuman future is a good future that we ought to pursue. It will first briefly describe the transhumanist conception of the posthuman, and the different routes envisaged from the current human condition to the future posthuman condition. The second part will then present and analyse some fundamental philosophical problems we encounter when we try to assess whether and to what extent the posthuman future is good and/or desirable; and it will be concluded that assessing the ethical desirability of the posthuman future is close to impossible.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:eurrev:v:25:y:2017:i:01:p:131-139_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().