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.
Mind uploading is a speculative process of whole brain emulation in which a brain scan is used to completely emulate the mental state of the individual in a digital computer. The computer would then run a simulation of the brain's information processing, such that it would respond in essentially the same way as the original brain and experience having a sentient conscious mind.
David Pearce is a British transhumanist philosopher. He is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+. Pearce approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective.
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. He was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and is now Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative.
Humanity+ is a non-profit international educational organization that advocates the ethical use of technologies and evidence-based science to improve the human condition.
Freedom of conscience is the freedom of an individual to act upon their moral beliefs. In particular, it often refers to the freedom to not do something one is normally obliged, ordered or expected to do. An individual exercising this freedom may be called a conscientious objector.
Intersex medical interventions (IMI), sometimes known as intersex genital mutilations (IGM), are surgical, hormonal and other medical interventions performed to modify atypical or ambiguous genitalia and other sex characteristics, primarily for the purposes of making a person's appearance more typical and to reduce the likelihood of future problems. The history of intersex surgery has been characterized by controversy due to reports that surgery can compromise sexual function and sensation, and create lifelong health issues. The medical interventions can be for a variety of reasons, due to the enormous variety of the disorders of sex development. Some disorders, such as salt-wasting disorder, can be life-threatening if left untreated.
Cognitive liberty, or the "right to mental self-determination", is the freedom of an individual to control their own mental processes, cognition, and consciousness. It has been argued to be both an extension of, and the principle underlying, the right to freedom of thought. Though a relatively recently defined concept, many theorists see cognitive liberty as being of increasing importance as technological advances in neuroscience allow for an ever-expanding ability to directly influence consciousness. Cognitive liberty is not a recognized right in any international human rights treaties, but has gained a limited level of recognition in the United States, and is argued to be the principle underlying a number of recognized rights.
Techno-progressivism, or tech-progressivism, is a stance of active support for the convergence of technological change and social change. Techno-progressives argue that technological developments can be profoundly empowering and emancipatory when they are regulated by legitimate democratic and accountable authorities to ensure that their costs, risks and benefits are all fairly shared by the actual stakeholders to those developments. One of the first mentions of techno-progressivism appeared within extropian jargon in 1999 as the removal of "all political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization".
Many of the tropes of science fiction can be viewed as similar to the goals of transhumanism. Science fiction literature contains many positive depictions of technologically enhanced human life, occasionally set in utopian societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong.
Human enhancement is the natural, artificial, or technological alteration of the human body in order to enhance physical or mental capabilities.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the human self:
Body hacking is the application of the hacker ethic in pursuit of enhancement or change to the body's functions through technological means, such as do-it-yourself cybernetic devices or by introducing biochemicals.
Health is the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. This article lists major topics related to personal health.
Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. In the field of human rights, violation of the bodily integrity of another is regarded as an unethical infringement, intrusive, and possibly criminal.
Liebenberg syndrome is a rare autosomal genetic disease that involves a deletion mutation upstream of the PITX1 gene, which is one that's responsible for the body's organization, specifically in forming lower limbs. In animal studies, when this deletion was introduced to developing birds, their wing buds were noted to take on limb-like structures.
The philosophy of medicine is a branch of philosophy that explores issues in theory, research, and practice within the field of health sciences, more specifically in topics of epistemology, metaphysics, and medical ethics, which overlaps with bioethics. Philosophy and medicine, both beginning with the ancient Greeks, have had a long history of overlapping ideas. It was not until the nineteenth century that the professionalization of the philosophy of medicine came to be. In the late twentieth century, debates among philosophers and physicians ensued of whether the philosophy of medicine should be considered a field of its own from either philosophy or medicine. A consensus has since been reached that it is in fact a distinct discipline with its set of separate problems and questions. In recent years there have been a variety of university courses, journals, books, textbooks and conferences dedicated to the philosophy of medicine.
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 Transhumanist Bill of Rights is a crowdsourced document that conveys rights and laws to humans and all sapient entities while specifically targeting future scenarios of humanity. The original version was created by transhumanist US presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan and was posted by Zoltan on the wall of the United States Capitol building on December 14, 2015.
