Why I'm not a transhumanist

ANDRÉS VACCARI

Virtual

Simposio; I Simpósio Internacional Transumanismo, O que é, quem vamos ser; 2020

Centro Hans Jonas, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná

Many periodizations of the history of transhumanism have been offered. I will begin by offering my own brief intellectual history, which will be very simple and will help us situate transhumanism in the present. And also to explain why I´m not a transhumanist.I argue there are two main periods in transhumanism. The first period is what I will call soft transhumanism, a form of transhumanism that remains very close to humanism and sets out to be a smooth continuation of its intuitive moral universe. The core of soft transhumanism is the beneficence Argument.The most sustained and serious philosophical defense of soft transhumanism can be found in the work of Nick Bostrom, in a series of papers that span the 1990s and the first part of the decade of 2000, when Bostrom decided he was no longer a transhumanist and set off for greener pastures. In a moment we will return to Bostrom, in particular because his attempt at a concerted, rigorous defense of transhumanism exposes the failure of this period of transhumanism.Briefly, soft transhumanism failed, for reasons we shall soon see, giving way to the current phase, which returns transhumanism straight back to Silicon Valley. The alliance of transhumanism and Silicon Valley ideology give us the present configuration of transhumanism. What defines this new phase? The passage from beneficence to inevitability.