Human Enhancement and Values

Abstract:     
Human enhancement and its moral and ethical implications have emerged in recent years as a rapidly developing topic. For centuries humans wanted to be as good as possible and tried to achieve it through various means. With the development of advanced technology we invented new ways to improve and perfect our skills and talents. Nowadays, some forms of enhancement became an inseparable part of our life. Most of us begin each day with a cup of coffee, because we are aware that caffeine stimulates our brain, we wear contact lenses to see better and take multivitamin products to supplement our diet. A new vision of health is being created, in which there is no end point but only a possibility of constant improvement. Human enhancement is not only an issue about our bodies and brains but also about how our morality and ethics will look like in the future. Human enhancement technologies already started to affect our values and the moral and practical order of things, to which we got used to, may be soon changed. In this paper I identify values such as the concept of God and Nature, the art of living, the spirit of sport, own culture and imperfection and prove that human enhancements will be a serious threat to them. In my opinion, there is a borderline we should not cross when dealing with human enhancement technologies, as the triumph of scientific humanism may bring with it the obsolescence of man.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 29

Keywords: Transhumanism, Bioconservatism, Biotechnology, Enhancement, Gene, Innovation, Mechanical Enhancement, Robots, Cyborgs, God, Human Enhancement, Genetic Enhancement, Genetic Engineering, Open Source Biology, Human Values, Values, Morality, Ethics, Law, Philosophy

working papers series