Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being.
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the capacity of actions or objects to produce benefits, such as pleasure, happiness, and good, or to prevent harm, such as pain and unhappiness, to those affected.
This index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.
James J. Hughes is an American sociologist, bioethicist and futurist. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and is the Associate Provost for institutional research, assessment, and planning at University of Massachusetts Boston. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future and is currently writing a book on secular Buddhism and moral bioenhancement tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha: Using Neurotechnology to Become Better People.
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) is a technoprogressive think tank that seeks to "promote ideas about how technological progress can increase freedom, happiness, and human flourishing in democratic societies." It was incorporated in the United States in 2004, as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, by philosopher Nick Bostrom and bioethicist James Hughes.
Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.
Wild animal suffering is suffering experienced by non-human animals living in the wild, outside of direct human control, due to natural processes such as disease, injury, parasitism, starvation, malnutrition, dehydration, weather conditions, natural disasters, killings by other animals, and psychological stress. Some estimates indicate that these individual animals make up the vast majority of animals in existence. An extensive amount of natural suffering has been described as an unavoidable consequence of Darwinian evolution, as well as the pervasiveness of reproductive strategies, which favor producing large numbers of offspring, with a low amount of parental care and of which only a small number survive to adulthood, the rest dying in painful ways, has led some to argue that suffering dominates happiness in nature.
The term directed evolution is used within the transhumanist community to refer to the idea of applying the principles of directed evolution and experimental evolution to the control of human evolution. Law professor Maxwell Mehlman has said that "for transhumanists, directed evolution is likened to the Holy Grail".
Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. Specific topics include space migration, and cryogenic suspension. It is considered the opposing ideal to the concept of bioconservatism, as Transhumanist politics argue for the use of all technology to enhance human individuals.
Bioconservatism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes caution and restraint in the use of biotechnologies, particularly those involving genetic manipulation and human enhancement. The term "bioconservatism" is a portmanteau of the words biology and conservatism.
The eradication or abolition of suffering is the concept of using biotechnology to create a permanent absence of involuntary pain and suffering in all sentient beings.
The predation problem or predation argument refers to the consideration of the harms experienced by animals due to predation as a moral problem, that humans may or may not have an obligation to work towards preventing. Discourse on this topic has, by and large, been held within the disciplines of animal and environmental ethics. The issue has particularly been discussed in relation to animal rights and wild animal suffering. Some critics have considered an obligation to prevent predation as untenable or absurd and have used the position as a reductio ad absurdum to reject the concept of animal rights altogether. Others have criticized any obligation implied by the animal rights position as environmentally harmful.
The relationship between animal ethics and environmental ethics concerns the differing ethical consideration of individual nonhuman animals—particularly those living in spaces outside of direct human control—and conceptual entities such as species, populations and ecosystems. The intersection of these two fields is a prominent component of vegan discourse.
Suffering-focused ethics are those views in ethics according to which reducing suffering is either a key priority or our only aim. Those suffering-focused ethics according to which the reduction of suffering is a key priority are pluralistic views that include additional aims, such as the prevention of other disvaluable things like inequality, or the promotion of certain valuable things, such as pleasure. Nevertheless, these views still prioritize reducing preventable suffering over these other aims.
Risks of astronomical suffering, also called suffering risks or s-risks, are risks involving much more suffering than all that has occurred on Earth so far. They are sometimes categorized as a subclass of existential risks.
"The Meat Eaters" is a 2010 essay by the American philosopher Jeff McMahan, published as an op-ed in The New York Times. In the essay, McMahan asserts that humans have a moral obligation to stop eating meat and, in a conclusion considered to be controversial, that humans also have a duty to prevent predation by individuals who belong to carnivorous species, if we can do so without inflicting greater harm overall.
Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering is a 2020 book by the philosopher Kyle Johannsen, that examines whether humans, from a deontological perspective, have a duty to reduce wild animal suffering. He concludes that such a duty exists and recommends effective interventions that could be potentially undertaken to help these sentient individuals.
Existential risk studies (ERS) is a field of studies focused on the definition and theorization of "existential risks", its ethical implications and the related strategies of long-term survival. Existential risks are diversely defined as global kinds of calamity that have the capacity of inducing the extinction of intelligent earthling life, such as humans, or, at least, a severe limitation of their potential, as defined by ERS theorists. The field development and expansion can be divided in waves according to its conceptual changes as well as its evolving relationship with related fields and theories, such as futures studies, disaster studies, AI safety, effective altruism and longtermism.
"Letter from Utopia" is a fictional letter written by philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2008. It depicts, what Bostrom describes as, "A vision of the future, from the future". In the essay, a posthuman in the far future writes to humanity in the deep past, describing how wonderful their utopian existence is and encouraging their ancestors to do everything they can to make their future possible. This includes conquering aging, sickness, and death, increasing human intelligence, and eliminating suffering in pursuit of pleasure. The essay is considered a manifesto of transhumanism.
