Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UK and Malden, USABIOTBioethics0269-9702Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 20052005193202214Articles
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITYNICK
BOSTROM
Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online)
Volume 19 Number 3 2005
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY
NICK BOSTROM
ABSTRACT
Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be
(crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconserva-
tism. Transhumanists believe that human enhancement technologies
should be made widely available, that individuals should have broad
discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves, and that
parents should normally have the right to choose enhancements for their
children-to-be. Bioconservatives (whose ranks include such diverse writers
as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy
Rifkin, and Bill McKibben) are generally opposed to the use of technology
to modify human nature. A central idea in bioconservativism is that
human enhancement technologies will undermine our human dignity. To
forestall a slide down the slippery slope towards an ultimately debased
 posthuman state, bioconservatives often argue for broad bans on other-
wise promising human enhancements.
This paper distinguishes two common fears about the posthuman and
argues for the importance of a concept of dignity that is inclusive enough
to also apply to many possible posthuman beings. Recognizing the possi-
bility of posthuman dignity undercuts an important objection against
human enhancement and removes a distortive double standard from our
field of moral vision.
TRANSHUMANISTS VS. BIOCONSERVATIVES
Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has devel-
oped gradually over the past two decades, and can be viewed as
an outgrowth of secular humanism and the Enlightenment. It
holds that current human nature is improvable through the use
of applied science and other rational methods, which may make
it possible to increase human health-span, extend our intellectual
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY 203
and physical capacities, and give us increased control over our
own mental states and moods.1 Technologies of concern include
not only current ones, like genetic engineering and information
technology, but also anticipated future developments such as fully
immersive virtual reality, machine-phase nanotechnology, and
artificial intelligence.
Transhumanists promote the view that human enhancement
technologies should be made widely available, and that individu-
als should have broad discretion over which of these technologies
to apply to themselves (morphological freedom), and that
parents should normally get to decide which reproductive tech-
nologies to use when having children (reproductive freedom).2
Transhumanists believe that, while there are hazards that need to
be identified and avoided, human enhancement technologies will
offer enormous potential for deeply valuable and humanly bene-
ficial uses. Ultimately, it is possible that such enhancements may
make us, or our descendants,  posthuman , beings who may have
indefinite health-spans, much greater intellectual faculties than
any current human being  and perhaps entirely new sensibilities
or modalities  as well as the ability to control their own emotions.
The wisest approach vis-Ä…-vis these prospects, argue transhuman-
ists, is to embrace technological progress, while strongly defend-
ing human rights and individual choice, and taking action
specifically against concrete threats, such as military or terrorist
abuse of bioweapons, and against unwanted environmental or
social side-effects.
In opposition to this transhumanist view stands a bioconserva-
tive camp that argues against the use of technology to modify
human nature. Prominent bioconservative writers include Leon
Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy
Rifkin, and Bill McKibben. One of the central concerns of the
bioconservatives is that human enhancement technologies
might be  dehumanizing . The worry, which has been variously
expressed, is that these technologies might undermine our
human dignity or inadvertently erode something that is deeply
valuable about being human but that is difficult to put into words
or to factor into a cost-benefit analysis. In some cases (for exam-
ple, Leon Kass) the unease seems to derive from religious or
crypto-religious sentiments, whereas for others (for example,
Francis Fukuyama) it stems from secular grounds. The best
1
N. Bostrom. 2003. The Transhumanist FAQ, v. 2.1. World Transhumanist
Association. Webpage: www.transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf
2
N. Bostrom. Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective.
Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 493 506.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
204 NICK BOSTROM
approach, these bioconservatives argue, is to implement global
bans on swathes of promising human enhancement technologies
to forestall a slide down a slippery slope towards an ultimately
debased, posthuman state.
While any brief description necessarily skirts significant
nuances that differentiate between the writers within the two
camps, I believe the above characterization nevertheless high-
lights a principal fault line in one of the great debates of our
times: how we should look at the future of humankind and
whether we should attempt to use technology to make ourselves
 more than human . This paper will distinguish two common fears
about the posthuman and argue that they are partly unfounded
and that, to the extent that they correspond to real risks, there
are better responses than trying to implement broad bans on
technology. I will make some remarks on the concept of dignity,
which bioconservatives believe to be imperiled by coming human
enhancement technologies, and suggest that we need to recog-
nize that not only humans in their current form, but posthumans
too could have dignity.
TWO FEARS ABOUT THE POSTHUMAN
The prospect of posthumanity is feared for at least two reasons.
One is that the state of being posthuman might in itself be
degrading, so that by becoming posthuman we might be harming
ourselves. Another is that posthumans might pose a threat to
 ordinary humans. (I shall set aside a third possible reason, that
the development of posthumans might offend some supernatural
being.)
The most prominent bioethicist to focus on the first fear is
Leon Kass:
Most of the given bestowals of nature have their given species-
specified natures: they are each and all of a given sort. Cock-
roaches and humans are equally bestowed but differently
natured. To turn a man into a cockroach  as we don t need
Kafka to show us  would be dehumanizing. To try to turn a
man into more than a man might be so as well. We need more
than generalized appreciation for nature s gifts. We need a
particular regard and respect for the special gift that is
our own given nature3
3
L. Kass. Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of
Perfection. The New Atlantis 2003; 1.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY 205
Transhumanists counter that nature s gifts are sometimes poi-
soned and should not always be accepted. Cancer, malaria,
dementia, aging, starvation, unnecessary suffering, and cognitive
shortcomings are all among the presents that we would wisely
refuse. Our own species-specified natures are a rich source of
much of the thoroughly unrespectable and unacceptable  sus-
ceptibility for disease, murder, rape, genocide, cheating, torture,
racism. The horrors of nature in general, and of our own nature
in particular, are so well documented4 that it is astonishing that
somebody as distinguished as Leon Kass should still in this day
and age be tempted to rely on the natural as a guide as to what
is desirable or normatively right. We should be grateful that our
ancestors were not swept away by the Kassian sentiment, or we
would still be picking lice off each other s backs. Rather than
deferring to the natural order, transhumanists maintain that we
can legitimately reform ourselves and our natures in accordance
with humane values and personal aspirations.
If one rejects nature as a general criterion of the good, as most
thoughtful people nowadays do, one can of course still acknowl-
edge that particular ways of modifying human nature would be
debasing. Not all change is progress. Not even all well-intentioned
technological intervention in human nature would be on balance
beneficial. Kass goes far beyond these truisms, however, when he
declares that utter dehumanization lies in store for us as the
inevitable result of our obtaining technical mastery over our own
nature:
The final technical conquest of his own nature would almost
certainly leave mankind utterly enfeebled. This form of mastery
would be identical with utter dehumanization. Read Huxley s
Brave New World, read C. S. Lewis s Abolition of Man, read
Nietzsche s account of the last man, and then read the news-
papers. Homogenization, mediocrity, pacification, drug-
induced contentment, debasement of taste, souls without loves
and longings  these are the inevitable results of making the
essence of human nature the last project of technical mastery.
In his moment of triumph, Promethean man will become a
contented cow.5
The fictional inhabitants of Brave New World, to pick the best
known of Kass s examples, are admittedly short on dignity (in at
4
See e.g. J. Glover. 2001. Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century.
New Haven. Yale University Press.
5
L. Kass. 2002. Life, Liberty, and Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics.
San Francisco. Encounter Books: p. 48.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
206 NICK BOSTROM
least one sense of the word). But the claim that this is the inevitable
consequence of our obtaining technological mastery over human
nature is exceedingly pessimistic  and unsupported  if under-
stood as a futuristic prediction, and false if construed as a claim
about metaphysical necessity.
There are many things wrong with the fictional society that
Huxley described. It is static, totalitarian, caste-bound; its culture
is a wasteland. The brave new worlders themselves are a de-
humanized and undignified lot. Yet posthumans they are not.
Their capacities are not super-human but in many respects sub-
stantially inferior to our own. Their life expectancy and phy-
sique are quite normal, but their intellectual, emotional, moral,
and spiritual faculties are stunted. The majority of the brave new
worlders have various degrees of engineered mental retardation.
And everyone, save the ten world controllers (along with a mis-
cellany of primitives and social outcasts who are confined to
fenced preservations or isolated islands), are barred or discour-
aged from developing individuality, independent thinking, and
initiative, and are conditioned not to desire these traits in the
first place. Brave New World is not a tale of human enhancement
gone amok, but is rather a tragedy of technology and social
engineering being deliberately used to cripple moral and in-
tellectual capacities  the exact antithesis of the transhumanist
proposal.
Transhumanists argue that the best way to avoid a Brave New
World is by vigorously defending morphological and reproductive
freedoms against any would-be world controllers. History has
shown the dangers in letting governments curtail these freedoms.
The last century s government-sponsored coercive eugenics pro-
grams, once favored by both the left and the right, have been
thoroughly discredited. Because people are likely to differ pro-
foundly in their attitudes towards human enhancement technol-
ogies, it is crucial that no single solution be imposed on everyone
from above, but that individuals get to consult their own con-
sciences as to what is right for themselves and their families.
Information, public debate, and education are the appropriate
means by which to encourage others to make wise choices, not a
global ban on a broad range of potentially beneficial medical and
other enhancement options.
The second fear is that there might be an eruption of violence
between unaugmented humans and posthumans. George Annas,
Lori Andrews, and Rosario Isasi have argued that we should view
human cloning and all inheritable genetic modifications as
 crimes against humanity in order to reduce the probability that
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY 207
a posthuman species will arise, on grounds that such a species
would pose an existential threat to the old human species:
The new species, or  posthuman, will likely view the old  nor-
mal humans as inferior, even savages, and fit for slavery or
slaughter. The normals, on the other hand, may see the post-
humans as a threat and if they can, may engage in a preemptive
strike by killing the posthumans before they themselves are
killed or enslaved by them. It is ultimately this predictable
potential for genocide that makes species-altering experiments
potential weapons of mass destruction, and makes the unac-
countable genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist.6
There is no denying that bioterrorism and unaccountable genetic
engineers developing increasingly potent weapons of mass
destruction pose a serious threat to our civilization. But using the
rhetoric of bioterrorism and weapons of mass destruction to cast
aspersions on therapeutic uses of biotechnology to improve
health, longevity, and other human capacities is unhelpful. The
issues are quite distinct. Reasonable people can be in favor of
strict regulation of bioweapons, while promoting beneficial medi-
cal uses of genetics and other human enhancement technologies,
including inheritable and  species-altering modifications.
Human society is always at risk of some group deciding to view
another group of humans as being fit for slavery or slaughter. To
counteract such tendencies, modern societies have created laws
and institutions, and endowed them with powers of enforcement,
that act to prevent groups of citizens from enslaving or slaughter-
ing one another. The efficacy of these institutions does not
depend on all citizens having equal capacities. Modern, peaceful
societies can have large numbers of people with diminished phys-
ical or mental capacities along with many other people who may
be exceptionally physically strong or healthy or intellectually
talented in various ways. Adding people with technologically
enhanced capacities to this already broad distribution of
ability would not need to rip society apart or trigger genocide or
enslavement.
The assumption that inheritable genetic modifications or other
human enhancement technologies would lead to two distinct and
separate species should also be questioned. It seems much more
likely that there would be a continuum of differently modified or
enhanced individuals, which would overlap with the continuum
6
G. Annas, L. Andrews & R. Isasi. Protecting the Endangered Human:
Toward an International Treaty Prohibiting Cloning and Inheritable Alterations.
American Journal of Law and Medicine 2002; 28, 2&3: p. 162.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
208 NICK BOSTROM
of as-yet unenhanced humans. The scenario in which  the
enhanced form a pact and then attack  the naturals makes for
exciting science fiction, but is not necessarily the most plausible
outcome. Even today, the segment containing the tallest ninety
percent of the population could, in principle, get together and
kill or enslave the shorter decile. That this does not happen
suggests that a well-organized society can hold together even if
it contains many possible coalitions of people sharing some
attribute such that, if they ganged up, they would be capable of
exterminating the rest.
To note that the extreme case of a war between humans and
posthumans is not the most likely scenario is not to say that there
are no legitimate social concerns about the steps that may take us
closer to posthumanity. Inequity, discrimination, and stigmatiza-
tion  against, or on behalf of, modified people  could become
serious issues. Transhumanists would argue that these (potential)
social problems call for social remedies. One example of how
contemporary technology can change important aspects of some-
one s identity is sex reassignment. The experiences of transsexu-
als show that Western culture still has work to do in becoming
more accepting of diversity. This is a task that we can begin to
tackle today by fostering a climate of tolerance and acceptance
towards those who are different from ourselves. Painting alarmist
pictures of the threat from future technologically modified peo-
ple, or hurling preemptive condemnations of their necessarily
debased nature, is not the best way to go about it.
What about the hypothetical case in which someone intends
to create, or turn themselves into, a being of such radically
enhanced capacities that a single one or a small group of such
individuals would be capable of taking over the planet? This is
clearly not a situation that is likely to arise in the imminent future,
but one can imagine that, perhaps in a few decades, the prospec-
tive creation of superintelligent machines could raise this kind of
concern. The would-be creator of a new life form with such sur-
passing capabilities would have an obligation to ensure that the
proposed being is free from psychopathic tendencies and, more
generally, that it has humane inclinations. For example, a future
artificial intelligence programmer should be required to make a
strong case that launching a purportedly human-friendly super-
intelligence would be safer than the alternative. Again, however,
this (currently) science fiction scenario must be clearly distin-
guished from our present situation and our more immediate
concern with taking effective steps towards incrementally improv-
ing human capacities and health-span.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY 209
IS HUMAN DIGNITY INCOMPATIBLE WITH
POSTHUMAN DIGNITY?
Human dignity is sometimes invoked as a polemical substitute for
clear ideas. This is not to say that there are no important moral
issues relating to dignity, but it does mean that there is a need to
define what one has in mind when one uses the term. Here, we
shall consider two different senses of dignity:
1. Dignity as moral status, in particular the inalienable right to
be treated with a basic level of respect.
2. Dignity as the quality of being worthy or honorable; worthi-
ness, worth, nobleness, excellence.7
On both these definitions, dignity is something that a posthuman
could possess. Francis Fukuyama, however, seems to deny this and
warns that giving up on the idea that dignity is unique to human
beings  defined as those possessing a mysterious essential human
quality he calls  Factor X 8  would invite disaster:
Denial of the concept of human dignity  that is, of the idea
that there is something unique about the human race that
entitles every member of the species to a higher moral status
than the rest of the natural world  leads us down a very
perilous path. We may be compelled ultimately to take this
path, but we should do so only with our eyes open. Nietzsche
is a much better guide to what lies down that road than the
legions of bioethicists and casual academic Darwinians that
today are prone to give us moral advice on this subject.9
What appears to worry Fukuyama is that introducing new kinds
of enhanced person into the world might cause some individuals
(perhaps infants, or the mentally handicapped, or unenhanced
humans in general) to lose some of the moral status that they
currently possess, and that a fundamental precondition of liberal
democracy, the principle of equal dignity for all, would be
destroyed.
The underlying intuition seems to be that instead of the famed
 expanding moral circle , what we have is more like an oval, whose
shape we can change but whose area must remain constant.
Thankfully, this purported conservation law of moral recognition
7
J. A. Simpson and E. Weiner, eds. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd
ed. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
8
F. Fukuyama. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology
Revolution. New York. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux: p. 149.
9
Fukuyama, op cit. note 8, p. 160.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
210 NICK BOSTROM
lacks empirical support. The set of individuals accorded full moral
status by Western societies has actually increased, to include men
without property or noble decent, women, and non-white peo-
ples. It would seem feasible to extend this set further to include
future posthumans, or, for that matter, some of the higher pri-
mates or human-animal chimaeras, should such be created  and
to do so without causing any compensating shrinkage in another
direction. (The moral status of problematic borderline cases,
such as foetuses or late-stage Alzheimer patients, or the brain-
dead, should perhaps be decided separately from the issue of
technologically modified humans or novel artificial life forms.)
Our own role in this process need not be that of passive bystand-
ers. We can work to create more inclusive social structures that
accord appropriate moral recognition and legal rights to all who
need them, be they male or female, black or white, flesh or
silicon.
Dignity in the second sense, as referring to a special excellence
or moral worthiness, is something that current human beings
possess to widely differing degrees. Some excel far more than
others do. Some are morally admirable; others are base and
vicious. There is no reason for supposing that posthuman beings
could not also have dignity in this second sense. They may even
be able to attain higher levels of moral and other excellence than
any of us humans. The fictional brave new worlders, who were
subhuman rather than posthuman, would have scored low on this
kind of dignity, and partly for that reason they would be awful
role models for us to emulate. But surely we can create more
uplifting and appealing visions of what we may aspire to become.
There may be some who would transform themselves into
degraded posthumans  but then some people today do not live
very worthy human lives. This is regrettable, but the fact that some
people make bad choices is not generally a sufficient ground for
rescinding people s right to choose. And legitimate countermea-
sures are available: education, encouragement, persuasion, social
and cultural reform. These, not a blanket prohibition of all post-
human ways of being, are the measures to which those bothered
by the prospect of debased posthumans should resort. A liberal
democracy should normally permit incursions into morphologi-
cal and reproductive freedoms only in cases where somebody is
abusing these freedoms to harm another person.
The principle that parents should have broad discretion to
decide on genetic enhancements for their children has been
attacked on the grounds that this form of reproductive freedom
would constitute a kind of parental tyranny that would undermine
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY 211
the child s dignity and capacity for autonomous choice; for
instance, by Hans Jonas:
Technological mastered nature now again includes man who
(up to now) had, in technology, set himself against it as its
master . . . But whose power is this  and over whom or over
what? Obviously the power of those living today over those com-
ing after them, who will be the defenseless other side of prior
choices made by the planners of today. The other side of the
power of today is the future bondage of the living to the dead.10
Jonas is relying on the assumption that our descendants, who will
presumably be far more technologically advanced than we are,
would nevertheless be defenseless against our machinations to
expand their capacities. This is almost certainly incorrect. If, for
some inscrutable reason, they decided that they would prefer to
be less intelligent, less healthy, and lead shorter lives, they would
not lack the means to achieve these objectives and frustrate our
designs.
In any case, if the alternative to parental choice in determining
the basic capacities of new people is entrusting the child s welfare
to nature, that is blind chance, then the decision should be easy.
Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in
jail for child abuse and murder. And transhumanists can accept,
of course, that just as society may in exceptional circumstances
override parental autonomy, such as in cases of neglect or abuse,
so too may society impose regulations to protect the child-to-be
from genuinely harmful genetic interventions  but not because
they represent choice rather than chance.
Jürgen Habermas, in a recent work, echoes Jonas concern and
worries that even the mere knowledge of having been intentionally
made by another could have ruinous consequences:
We cannot rule out that knowledge of one s own hereditary
features as programmed may prove to restrict the choice of
an individual s life, and to undermine the essentially sym-
metrical relations between free and equal human beings.11
A transhumanist could reply that it would be a mistake for an
individual to believe that she has no choice over her own life just
because some (or all) of her genes were selected by her parents.
She would, in fact, have as much choice as if her genetic
10
H. Jonas. 1985. Technik, Medizin und Ethik: Zur Praxis des Prinzips Verant-
wortung. Frankfurt am Main. Suhrkamp.
11
J. Habermas. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Oxford. Blackwell: p. 23.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
212 NICK BOSTROM
constitution had been selected by chance. It could even be that
she would enjoy significantly more choice and autonomy in her
life, if the modifications were such as to expand her basic capa-
bility set. Being healthy, smarter, having a wide range of talents,
or possessing greater powers of self-control are blessings that tend
to open more life paths than they block.
Even if there were a possibility that some genetically-modified
individuals might fail to grasp these points and thus might feel
oppressed by their knowledge of their origin, that would be a
risk to be weighed against the risks incurred by having an
unmodified genome, risks that can be extremely grave. If safe
and effective alternatives were available, it would be irresponsible
to risk starting someone off in life with the misfortune of con-
genitally diminished basic capacities or an elevated susceptibility
to disease.
WHY WE NEED POSTHUMAN DIGNITY
Similarly ominous forecasts were made in the seventies about the
severe psychological damage that children conceived through in
vitro fertilization would suffer upon learning that they originated
from a test tube  a prediction that turned out to be entirely false.
It is hard to avoid the impression that some bias or philosophical
prejudice is responsible for the readiness with which many bio-
conservatives seize on even the flimsiest of empirical justifications
for banning human enhancement technologies of certain types
but not others. Suppose it turned out that playing Mozart to
pregnant mothers improved the child s subsequent musical tal-
ent. Nobody would argue for a ban on Mozart-in-the-womb on
grounds that we cannot rule out that some psychological woe
might befall the child once she discovers that her facility with
the violin had been prenatally  programmed by her parents. Yet
when, for example, it comes to genetic enhancements, eminent
bioconservative writers often put forward arguments that are not
so very different from this parody as weighty, if not conclusive,
objections. To transhumanists, this looks like doublethink. How
can it be that to bioconservatives almost any anticipated down-
side, predicted perhaps on the basis of the shakiest pop-
psychological theory, so readily achieves that status of deep
philosophical insight and knockdown objection against the trans-
humanist project?
Perhaps a part of the answer can be found in the different
attitudes that transhumanists and bioconservatives have towards
posthuman dignity. Bioconservatives tend to deny posthuman
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY 213
dignity and view posthumanity as a threat to human dignity.
They are therefore tempted to look for ways to denigrate inter-
ventions that are thought to be pointing in the direction of more
radical future modifications that may eventually lead to the
emergence of those detestable posthumans. But unless this fun-
damental opposition to the posthuman is openly declared as a
premise of their argument, this then forces them to use a double
standard of assessment whenever particular cases are considered
in isolation: for example, one standard for germ-line genetic
interventions and another for improvements in maternal
nutrition (an intervention presumably not seen as heralding a
posthuman era).
Transhumanists, by contrast, see human and posthuman dig-
nity as compatible and complementary. They insist that dignity,
in its modern sense, consists in what we are and what we have
the potential to become, not in our pedigree or our causal ori-
gin. What we are is not a function solely of our DNA but also of
our technological and social context. Human nature in this
broader sense is dynamic, partially human-made, and improv-
able. Our current extended phenotypes (and the lives that we
lead) are markedly different from those of our hunter-gatherer
ancestors. We read and write, we wear clothes, we live in cities,
we earn money and buy food from the supermarket, we call
people on the telephone, watch television, read newspapers,
drive cars, file taxes, vote in national elections, women give birth
in hospitals, life-expectancy is three times longer than in the
Pleistocene, we know that the Earth is round and that stars are
large gas clouds lit from inside by nuclear fusion, and that the
universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old and enormously
big. In the eyes of a hunter-gatherer, we might already appear
 posthuman . Yet these radical extensions of human capabilities
 some of them biological, others external  have not divested us
of moral status or dehumanized us in the sense of making us
generally unworthy and base. Similarly, should we or our descen-
dants one day succeed in becoming what relative to current stan-
dards we may refer to as posthuman, this need not entail a loss
dignity either.
From the transhumanist standpoint, there is no need to behave
as if there were a deep moral difference between technological
and other means of enhancing human lives. By defending post-
human dignity we promote a more inclusive and humane ethics,
one that will embrace future technologically modified people as
well as humans of the contemporary kind. We also remove a
distortive double standard from the field of our moral vision,
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
214 NICK BOSTROM
allowing us to perceive more clearly the opportunities that exist
for further human progress.12
Nick Bostrom
Oxford University
Faculty of Philosophy
10 Merton Street
Oxford, OX1 4JJ
United Kingdom
nick@nickbostrom.com
12
For their comments I am grateful to Heather Bradshaw, John Brooke,
Aubrey de Grey, Robin Hanson, Matthew Liao, Julian Savulescu, Eliezer Yud-
kowsky, Nick Zangwill, and to the audiences at the Ian Ramsey Center seminar
of June 6th in Oxford 2003, the Transvision 2003 conference at Yale, and the
2003 European Science Foundation Workshop on Science and Human Values,
where earlier versions of this paper were presented, and to two anonymous
referees.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005


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