Transhumanism As a Futuristic Movement and the Necessity of Futures Study Researches

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 (Corresponding Author) PhD candidate in philosophy of education, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shiraz University, Iran

2 Assistant professor of philosophy of education at the Department of Fundamentals of Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shiraz University, Iran

3 Associate professor of philosophy of education at the Department of Fundamentals of Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shiraz University, Iran

4 Associate professor of Educational Psychology at the Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Shiraz University, Iran

Abstract

Transhumanism has emerged as a modern scientific and intellectual-cultural movement with futuristic approach relying on its scientific researches to propose biological enhancement for human beings and to increase life quality. This research is aimed at elucidating the scientific and futuristic aspects of this movement, and highlighting the significance of conducting futuristic studies in this field. The study follows a qualitative research approach employing documentary-interpretive method.
   The main finding of this study is to explain the framework and scope of scientific and futuristic research which transhumanists focus on. In this way, some of the issues and challenges following the fulfillment of the notions of this movement, are identified, which are in need of future studies. Although there is a long way to achieve the ultimate goals of this movement, indeed it seems impossible to achieve them, some steps have been taken in this way, and we can observe a degree of transhumanism. The realization of some part of the ultimate goals of this movement will surely brings about great outcomes in various aspects of human life. Hence, it is of special importance to address transhumanism from the viewpoint of futures study and its different interdisciplinary aspects.

Keywords


آلبرتس، ؟؟؟ (1387)، مبانی زیست‌شناسی سلولی، ترجمه حسین بهاروند، تهران: خانه زیست‌شناسی.
نیچه، فردریش (1389)، چنین گفت زرتشت/ کتابی برای همه کس و هیچ کس، ترجمه داریوش آشوری، تهران: نشر آگه.
 
Bostrom, N. (2005). A History of Transhumanist Thought. 1(April), 1–25.
Burzynski, S. R. (2005). Aging: gene silencing or gene activation? Medical
Csáki, A., Maubach, G., Born, D., Reichert, J., & Fritzsche, W. (2002). DNA-based molecular nanotechnology. Single Molecules, 3(5–6), 275–280.
Dancák, P. (2017). Homo Perfectus versus Educatio. Filozoficzne refleksje na temat transhumanizmu i edukacji. Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana, 20(1), 57.
Dornberger, R. (2018). Business Information Systems and Technology 4.0: New Trends in the Age of Digital Change (Vol. 141). Springer.
Esfandiary, F. M., & FM-2030. (1989). Are You a Transhuman? Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World. Warner.
Feynman, R. P. (1960). There’s plenty of room at the bottom. California Institute of Technology, Engineering and Science Magazine.
 
Fire, A., Xu, S., Montgomery, M. K., Kostas, S. A., Driver, S. E., & Mello, C. C. (1998). Potent and specific genetic interference by double-stranded RNA in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature, 391(6669), 806.
Gagnon, P. (2012). The Problem of Transhumanism in the Light of Philosophy and Theology. The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, 393–405.
Goertzel, B., Ikl’e, M., & Wigmore, J. (2012). The architecture of human-like general intelligence. In Theoretical Foundations of Artificial General Intelligence (pp. 123–144). Springer.
Hauskeller, M. (2012). My brain, my mind, and I: some philosophical assumptions of mind-uploading. International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 4(01), 187–200.
Iqbal, P., Preece, J. A., & Mendes, P. M. (2012). Nanotechnology: The Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches. Supramolecular Chemistry: From Molecules to Nanomaterials.
Jotterand, F. (2010). At the roots of transhumanism: From the enlightenment to a post-human future. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 35(6), 617–621.
Klichowski, M. (2015). Transhumanism and the idea of education in the world of cyborgs. Adam Mickiewicz University Press, 430–438.
Korotayev, A., & Zinkina, J. (2015). East Africa in the Malthusian trap? Journal of Developing Societies, 31(3), 385–420.
Kyslan, P. (2019). Transhumanism and the issue of death Peter Kyslan 1. Ethics & Bioethics, 9, 71–80
Lauterbach, A. (2019). Artificial intelligence and policy: quo vadis? Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance.
Lin, C.-J., Mecham, R. P., & Mann, D. L. (2020). RNA Vaccines for COVID-19: Five Things Every Cardiologist Should Know. Basic to Translational Science, 5(12), 1240–1243.
Lipowicz M. (2018). Overcoming Transhumanism: Education or Enhancement Towards the Overhuman? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53(1), 200–213.
Lutz, W., Sanderson, W., & Scherbov, S. (2008). The coming acceleration of global population ageing. Nature, 451(7179), 716.
Malthus, T. R. (1986). An essay on the principle of population. 1798. The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, London, Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 1, 1–139.
Mcintyre, R. L., & Fahy, G. M. (2015). Cryobiology Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation. Cryobiology, 71(3), 448–458.
Mubarak, N. M., Khalid, M., Walvekar, R., & Numan, A. (2020). Contemporary Nanomaterials in Material Engineering Applications. Springer.
Paura, R. (2016). Singularity believers and the new utopia of transhumanism. Im@ Go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary, 7, 23–35.
Penrose, L. S. (1959). Self-reproducing machines. Scientific American, 200(6), 105–117.
Sporns, O. (2011). The human connectome: a complex network. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1224(1), 109–125.
Suthakorn, J., Cushing, A. B., & Chirikjian, G. S. (2003). An autonomous self-replicating robotic system. Proceedings 2003 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2003), 1, 137–142.
Szigeti, B., Gleeson, P., Vella, M., Khayrulin, S., Palyanov, A., Hokanson, J., … Larson, S. (2014). OpenWorm: an open-science approach to modeling Caenorhabditis elegans. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 8, 137.
Szocik, K., Lysenko-Ryba, K., Banaś, S., & Mazur, S. (2016). Political and legal challenges in a Mars colony. Space Policy, 38, 27–29.
Tekinerdogan, B. (2017). Engineering connected intelligence: a socio-technical perspective. Wageningen University & Research.
Tirosh-Samuelson, H., & Mossman, K. L. (2012). Building better humans?: Refocusing the debate on transhumanism. Peter Lang Frankfurt.
Gagnon, P. (2012). The Problem of Transhumanism in the Light of Philosophy and Theology. The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, 393–405.
MacDonald, F. (2015). A robot has just passed a classic self-awareness test for the first time. Science Alert, 17.
Verschuer, F. Von. (2019). Freezing lives , preserving humanism : cryonics and the promise of Dezoefication Freezing lives , preserving humanism : cryonics and the. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 0(0), 1–19.
Vita-more, N., Barranco, D., & Vita-more, N. (2015). Persistence of Long-Term Memory in Vitrified and Revived C . elegans. 1–38.