Assignment 9-1: Lecture

Nick Acheson
March 26, 2010

ORONO- In a continuation of Lectures on Western Civilization and American Liberty Charles T. Rubin , a professor at Duquesne University gave a lecture Friday afternoon titled “Technologically Enhanced Humanity: Is the End Liberty, or is it the End of Liberty?”

The topic covered the ethical bargain between science and technology vs. American liberty. According to Rubin, a small but growing number of people known as “Transhumanists” have started a movement to use science and technology for the purpose of redesigning humanity in order to make mankind healthier, safer, and better than we presently are. Transhumanism describes human life presently as undesirable, disabled, suffering, aging, and unnecessary death.

Professor Rubin used an example of the Transhumanist argument to cover the topic of a prosthetic limb. If we can make a prosthetic limb for a disabled veteran or accident victims couldn’t be design one to be better than a regular, healthy working human hand? This prosthetic limb topic opens doors to more topics that seem closer to science fiction books than to actual science or technology. These include: uploading human minds into computers, and making humans so they never need to eat, as well as the very controversial topic of serious life extension.

Ethical dilemmas are faced in each of the arguments brought about by transhumanists. The major topic that each dilemmas faces is, “Just because we can do/create something, does that mean we should?”

Rubin, equates the transhumanist movement to a topic out of a George Orwell book called “Brain in the Bottle” where all that is needed to control vast amounts of machines and technology is a human brain but no other human parts. This is similar to the transhumanist view of “post humans” where everything would be performed by genetically enhanced parts and no actual human parts.

The argument that most transhumanists have come to side with is, “you can’t stop science and technology from growing and coming up with new ideas.” When asked about this argument, Professor Rubin agreed that it might not be possible to stop science and technology from coming up with new ideas but he also stated that, “Not everything (humans) do becomes popular and desirable, in order for these new technologies to take effect they must be desirable to humans.”