Transentience's video: Estranging Ourselves From Nature: From Existential Principle to Transhuman Practice UKH 2 2

After obtaining a Master's degree in Philosophy (Ghent University) and a Bachelor's degree in Law (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), in 2010 Pieter Bonte started a doctoral research project at the Bioethics Institute Ghent at the University of Ghent, Belgium. His research project will investigate intrinsic arguments for and against self-enhancements (i.e. self-chosen improvements of one's own body and mind via direct technological interventions) as well as parental enhancements of children in the pre-birth stages of life, focusing on the peculiar nature of the new responsibilities we come to obtain over ourselves. In keeping with the freethought creed of the South Place Ethical Society, "to thine own self be true", this talk seeks to shed light on a possible blind spot in the entrenched enhancement debate -- something that may disturb the comfort zones of both bioconservatives (with 'bioregressives' at the back end) and bioprogressives (with transhumanists at the far end) alike. As the first highly effective human enhancement technologies (HETs) spread through society, allowing us to domesticate and recreate, bend and amend our own biology, a second wave of existentialist alienation may be starting to wash over society. The first wave smashed the external, divine realm as a moral compass, leaving the thinking person 'godforsaken' and on his own to figure out how to lead his life. To cope with this loss of divine direction, many 'sobered minds' found comfort in relying on their natural passions to provide a self-evident sense of purpose. This second existentialist wave, however, now comes crashing down on this internal realm of nature, on our own human nature -- smashing that as a moral compass as well. Thus the thinking person will be left thoroughly 'nature-forsaken', too. As a result, both externally and internally, we seem to be without a fixed, certain and self-evident lodestone to guide us out of absurdity and the confusion over what we should be doing with ourselves. The only dignified reaction is to confront this situation head-on and not delude ourselves. In our humanist self-understanding, from Renaissance Mirandola over Enlightenment Kant to post-war existentialist Sartre, we have long considered ourselves beings who are at liberty to choose for ourselves our own nature. Sartre was right to end the humanist self-delusion, that this fundamental shape-shifting liberty of ours is an intrinsically 'happy' state. Au contraire: "Man cannot find anything to depend upon either within or without himself. Man is without excuse. He is condemned to be free." Indeed, our difficulty in finding a convincing, consistent drive to direct our lives is arguably one of the major causes of human grief and despair. The bioconservative solution, although steeped in the language of 'dignity', seems positively undignified. Only with a mauvaise foi (false conscience) could we hold that it is somehow more authentic that a person is predetermined by the 'natural' factors bestowed on him by pitiless, pointless evolutionary processes, than by factors he himself chose to insert in himself. Bioconservatives are right to point out the profound debasement and disorientation that HETs bring about, but their proposal of 'nature cultism' can only make sense as a sad charade of cognitive dissonance, committing the freethinker's cardinal sin of subconscious self-delusion, debasing us even more. In turn, this talk poses the following question to transhumanists in the audience: How can you be so breezy about finding yourself so foundationlessly free, so ruthlessly responsible? This lecture was recorded on 29th January 2011 at the UKH+ meeting. For information on further meetings please see: http://extrobritannia.blogspot.com/