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Posthuman Bliss?
 Posthuman Bliss?
The Failed Promise of Transhumanism

SU S A N B. L EV I N

1
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Levin, Susan B., 1961–​author.
Title: Posthuman bliss? : the failed promise of transhumanism /​
Susan B. Levin.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University
Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016071 | ISBN 9780190051495 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780190051518 (epub) | ISBN 9780190051501 (updf) |
ISBN 9780190051525 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Transhumanism.
Classification: LCC B842.5 .L48 2020 | DDC 144—​dc23
LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2020016071

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. Assessing Transhumanist Advocacy of Cognitive Bioenhancement  9
1. Introduction  9
2. The (Unsuccessful) Essentialism of Enhancement Critics  11
3. Transhumanists’ Rational Essentialism: An Avowed Enlightenment
Legacy  17
3.1 Transhumanists’ Rational Essentialism  17
3.2 As We Augment Reason, We Should Eliminate Negative Affect  20
4. The “Cognitive” in “Cognitive Enhancement”: Its Meaning and
Backdrop  25
5. Why Are Transhumanists So Confident That Cognitive
Enhancement Is Upon Us?  27
6. Hoisting Transhumanists by Their Own (Mental) Petard  29
6.1 Experimental Results Problematize the View That Cognitive
Enhancement Actually Occurs  30
6.1.1 Cognitive Tradeoffs  30
6.1.2 Baseline-​Dependent Effects  31
6.1.3 Creativity  34
6.2 Improvements May Be to Noncognitive Faculties, with Indirect
Boons for Memory and Attention  37
6.3 Moods and Cognitive Functioning  38
7. Conclusion  41
2. Why We Should Reject Transhumanists’ Entire Lens on the Mind
and Brain  42
1. Introduction  42
2. Basic-​Emotion and Dual-​Process Approaches to Emotions and
the Brain  44
2.1 Basic-​Emotion Theory  44
2.2 Dual-​Process Theory  46
3. The Superior Lens of Appraisal Theory  51
3.1 Introducing Appraisal Theory  51
3.2 Scherer’s Appraisal Theory  52
4. The Wider Resonance of Scherer’s Theory  59
5. Aristotle’s Lens on the Mind  68
5.1 Grounding Aristotle’s Approach to Nonrational Faculties  69
vi Contents

5.2 Desire and Emotion United as Pathē  70

5.3 Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean and Idea of Psychic Balance  70
5.4 Strong Emotional Responses Can Be Morally Required  72
5.5 The Import of Desire, Pleasure, and Pain  74
5.6 Phusis 1 Carefully Distinguished from Phusis 2  75
6. The Alignment of Aristotle’s Theory with Contemporary Science  77
7. Casebeer’s “Neo-​Aristotelian” Position  81
8. Conclusion  84
3. Evaluating the Debate Thus Far over Moral Bioenhancement  85
1. Setting the Stage  85
1.1 Transhumanist Concern with Moral Bioenhancement  85
1.2 What We Should Fear Most, and Why  87
2. What, Specifically, Should Moral Bioenhancement Be Directed To?  89
3. Practical Proof of Concept for Moral Bioenhancement?  91
3.1 Oxytocin  92
3.2 Serotonin  96
3.3 Genetics  100
3.4 Conclusion  105
4. Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Morality  106
4.1 Defining “Altruism” and “Cooperation” within Evolutionary
Biology  106
4.2 Persson and Savulescu’s Confusion regarding Altruism  108
4.3 Persson and Savulescu on “a Sense of Justice/​Fairness”
and Economic Games  110
4.4 The Upshot: Persson and Savulescu Fail to Provide Theoretical
Proof of Concept for Moral Bioenhancement  116
5. An Alternate Focus on Erasing Antisociality  119
5.1 Factors That Propel Persson and Savulescu’s Alternate Focus on
Elimination  120
5.2 A Focus on the Elimination of Negative Affect, with Particular
Attention to Akrasia  121
5.3 Not Being Antisocial Does Not Equate to Being Prosocial  123
6. Trading Psychological Richness and Freedom for Survival  123
6.1 The Vanishing of Psychic Complexity, Moral Cultivation, and
Freedom  124
6.2 Avoiding Ultimate Harm Should Not Be Our Governing Priority  128
7. Conclusion  130
4. Utilitarian Commitments of Transhumanists and Their
Sociopolitical Implications  131
1. Introduction  131
2. General Features of Utilitarianism  132
3. “Health” and “Public Health”: Relating Transhumanism to Wider
Trends  133
 Contents vii

4. Transhumanists’ Display of Utilitarian Commitments and Their

Sociopolitical Implications  137
4.1 An Expressly Utilitarian Rationale for Moral Bioenhancement  137
4.2 Transhumanists’ Broader Suggestion That We Should See, and
Thus Value, Bioenhancement in the Light of Classic Public-​Health
Measures  143
4.3 Procreative Decision-​Making: A Utilitarian Defense of Maximal
Capacitation and Its Sociopolitical Implications  149
5. Resource Allocation  160
6. The Moral Permissibility of Using Reproductive Technologies to
Avoid Disease and Disability  164
7. Conclusion  170
5. Creating a Higher Breed: Transhumanism and the Prophecy of
Anglo-​American Eugenics  172
1. Introduction  172
2. The Need for a Fuller Assessment of Transhumanists’ Claims
about Earlier Eugenics  173
3. Human Agency Creates, Then Becomes, the Divine  176
4. Our Elevation with Respect to “Non-​Disease” Conditions  178
5. In Tandem, Eliminate the Allegedly Deleterious  180
6. The Great Wingspan of Public Health  181
7. Shared Utilitarian Commitments  182
8. Sociopolitical Commitments and Implications  185
9. Conclusion  189
6. Transhumanists’ Informational View of Being and Knowledge  191
1. Introduction  191
2. A Historical Foray  194
2.1 McCulloch and Pitts on Nervous Activity  194
2.2 Shannon and Information Theory  195
2.3 von Neumann and Cellular Automata  197
2.4 Wiener and Cybernetics  198
2.5 Watson and Crick’s Discovery of the Double Helix  202
2.6 Crick’s Central Dogma  205
2.7 Deciphering the Genetic Code  206
2.8 Biology as an Information Science?  208
3. Persistence, Problems, Pitfalls  211
4. Kant versus Transhumanism  221
5. Conclusion  230
7. Living Virtuously as a Regulative Ideal  232
1. Introduction  232
2. Ancient Greek Ethics  234
3. We Need Not Be Made to Care about Virtue  240
viii Contents

4. What Now?  241

5. What Now? Part Two: Our Civic Scene  251
6. Perfectionism Suitable for Human Beings: Living Virtuously as a
Regulative Ideal  261
7. Conclusion  263

Notes  265
Bibliography  287
Index  337
 Acknowledgments

In a post I wrote for Oxford University Press’s blog in the fall of 2014, I remarked
that, beyond enriching bioethical debate over the practice and profession of
medicine, ancient Greek philosophy “offers a fresh orientation to pressing
debates on other bioethical topics, prominent among them high-​stakes discord
over the technologically spurred project of radical human ‘enhancement’ ” (i.e.,
transhumanism). In terms of my own research, this mention of the debate over
radical enhancement was largely promissory. When I first encountered trans-
humanism during my bioethical research for the final chapter of Plato’s Rivalry
with Medicine: A Struggle and Its Dissolution (Oxford 2014), the topic gripped
me mightily, and I had intimations of how I could bring Greek philosophy to
bear on the controversy.
From 2014 onward, I immersed myself in the interdisciplinary debate over
radical enhancement. This absorbing and invigorating endeavor represents ex-
actly the sort of commitment that being at Smith College, my academic home
of more than a quarter-​century, not only allows but encourages. As I published
articles and essays on the advocacy of radical enhancement, the contours of a
book emerged in my thinking. I offer here the result, a fundamental critique of
transhumanism on philosophical and scientific grounds.
My colleague Jill de Villiers read most chapters in draft form, and I am
grateful for her feedback. I also appreciate the comments of another colleague,
Jeff Ramsey, on drafts of two chapters and helpful conversations we had about
Kant. I wish, as well, to thank You Jeen Ha, who was my student research assis-
tant during the summer of 2018.
My thanks go to the referees for Oxford University Press for very helpful feed-
back on the project. In addition, I appreciate the efforts and confidence of Peter
Ohlin, my editor at Oxford. Further, I wish to thank Madeleine Freeman, his as-
sistant, and Ayshwarya Ramakrishnan, who oversaw the book’s production, in-
cluding preparation of the index.
I gratefully acknowledge permission to include previously published ma-
terial: “Upgrading Discussions of Cognitive Enhancement,” Neuroethics 9/​1
(2016): 53–​67, © Springer Nature Switzerland AG; “Enhancing Future Children: How
It Might Happen, Whether It Should,” in Reproductive Ethics: New Challenges and
Conversations, edited by Lisa Campo-​Engelstein and Paul Burcher, 27–​44, © Springer
International Publishing AG 2017; and “Creating a Higher Breed: Transhumanism
and the Prophecy of Anglo-​American Eugenics,” in Reproductive Ethics II: New
x Acknowledgments

Ideas and Innovations, edited by Lisa Campo-​Engelstein and Paul Burcher, 37–​58, ©
Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature, 2018.
Last but not least, I am grateful to Howard Dupuis for his support throughout
my writing of this book.

Northampton, Massachusetts S.B.L.

December 2019
 Introduction

Optimally, would decisions be reached by reason alone? If you could spend a

leisurely afternoon listening to Mozart or use that time to zip at lightning speed
through half the contents of the Library of Congress, which activity would you
choose? Would existence be better if we felt only pleasure, having excised the
very capacity to experience anger, grief, and anything else deemed unpleasant?
Are institutions and communities of a suitable kind required for our flourishing,
or is freedom from constraints on individuals’ discretion ultimately decisive? Is
genetic information largely responsible for the sorts of people we become, with
“environment” playing a far less powerful role? Are the key societal challenges we
face rooted in human biology, to which, therefore, we should look for solutions?
Such questions point us to contending values, positions, and yearnings within
the current bioethical debate over human enhancement.1
If the controversy over human enhancement were a purely bioethical affair,
those outside the field might simply shrug and say, “I’ll leave them to it—​this
has nothing to do with me.” But it does, for the above queries are not distinc-
tively bioethical: underneath the discrete threads of bioethical controversy over
enhancement are answers, often presupposed, to questions about who we are as
human beings and what makes for a flourishing life.
The focus of this book is the controversy over radical enhancement, or trans-
humanism.2 Its advocates press us to feature research aimed at the biotechno-
logical heightening of select capacities so far beyond any human ceiling that the
beings thus endowed could not simply be called “better humans”: the term used
to designate them—​whether “posthuman,” “godlike,” or “divine”—​should in-
stead signal their existence on a higher ontological plane. Their own, highly con-
tentious priorities and assumptions about what makes for a flourishing life drive
transhumanists’ insistence that we make this commitment.
Though the responses of transhumanists and their critics to the above queries
diverge, for both, what we commit to going forward will reflect what we value
most and the basis on which we do so (Levin 2014b, 4). The human stakes of how
we respond are immense both because transhumanists urge humanity’s own
self-​transcendence via science and technology and because their arguments state
or suggest that bioenhancement may be morally required.3
In critiques of transhumanism thus far, outcomes—​as distinct from core
convictions of its advocates—​have often been the focus of critical assessment.

Posthuman Bliss? Susan B. Levin, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190051495.001.0001.
2 Posthuman Bliss?

Challenging transhumanism based on possible results of the availability of

radical-​enhancement technologies, such as increased social inequality, is cer-
tainly important. But it has limited range, by which I mean that if consequences
identified as undesirable could be alleviated or forestalled via regulation and
subsidies, then moral objections to transhumanism would be met.
The paramount area of moral concern, right now, should not be how we re-
spond if and when immensely high-​tech interventions become available but
instead whether we may—​let alone must—​commit massive resources to the
targeted pursuit of radical enhancement at all. Opponents give transhumanists
an unearned argumentative edge when they allow the focus to be on outcomes,
with the associated back and forth over what regulations and subsidies, if any,
should be put in place to forestall increased social inequality and permit all who
are thus inclined to make good on what Nick Bostrom depicts as “the birthright
of every creature” to a vastly augmented existence—​“a right no less sacred for
having been trampled upon since the beginning of time” (2019, 5).
Though prior critics have addressed transhumanists’ fundamental claims
about what we are and should become, discrete disputes, for example, conten-
tion over whether there exists a “human nature,” have often taken center stage.
Transhumanists’ overarching commitments have received valuable considera-
tion, but contesting transhumanism at its roots requires that one tackle advocates’
overarching commitments in a more thoroughgoing and integrated way than has
occurred thus far. In Posthuman Bliss? The Failed Promise of Transhumanism,
I reveal transhumanists’ notion of humanity’s self-​ transformation into di-
vinity via science and technology as pure, albeit seductive, fantasy. I do this by
unmasking grave weaknesses in their views and assumptions about the mind
and brain, ethics, liberal democracy, epistemology, and ontology. My arguments
unite philosophical with scientific challenges to transhumanism based on cur-
rent findings in fields including cognitive psychology, genetics, and neurosci-
ence. By proceeding in this way, I strengthen an existing case for our needing to
reject it.
Philosophically and, to a great extent, scientifically, I proceed in sharp con-
trast to transhumanists themselves. They deny all intrinsic merit to human
values, priorities, and aims—​indeed, to humanity itself—​without making the
requisite philosophical arguments, which could then be subjected to the light
of day. Vintage philosophical inquiry is even eschewed (Bostrom 2014, 58–​59,
256). Contra transhumanists, in taking up the gauntlet that their push for cate-
gorical enhancement and associated technologies throws down, we have never
needed philosophy more.
Transhumanists may appear to be philosophically engaged when, at times,
they assert continuity with august figures, including Plato, Aristotle, and
Immanuel Kant, but these claims are decontextualized and self-​serving. My
 Introduction 3

extensive, prior research in Greek philosophy gives me a distinctive platform on

which to critique transhumanism and propose an alternative. In addition, my
background in the broader history of Western philosophy enables me to draw
where relevant on other figures, above all, Kant.
Insofar as my arguments against transhumanism are philosophical, their
conclusions stand apart from the technological feasibility of what advocates
propose. It turns out, however, that “the factual premises upon which the en-
tire . . . project is built are false” (Rosoff 2012, 174). On scientific grounds, we are
justified in opposing transhumanists’ presumption that pertinent developments,
if properly resourced, will occur. They, of all people, should root their claims for
what I term theoretical and practical “proof of concept” in extensive familiarity
with cognitive psychology, neuroscience, molecular and evolutionary biology,
and genetics. In reality, not only do transhumanists tend to neglect deep engage-
ment with these sciences, but my examination of current findings shows that
they often rely on questionable or outdated claims. At pertinent junctures, my
arguments go into a good bit of scientific detail because that level of engagement
is needed to counteract the visceral appeal of transhumanism, together with
advocates’ thin provision of supporting evidence.
Chapters 1 to 3 elucidate and critique transhumanists’ views of the mind and
brain, as illustrated by their advocacy of cognitive and moral bioenhancement.
Chapter 1 shows that transhumanists are rational essentialists, of an extreme
sort, whose conviction of boundless prospects for self-​creation is folded into that
essentialism.
Crucially, transhumanists conflate reason and cognition, defining the latter
faculty and its upgrading informationally. Taking reason/​cognition to operate
in a self-​contained, or “modular,” way, they presume that the brain reflects this
circumscription; as a result, their cherished capacity could be singled out from
the rest for heightening. Not only is this construction of reason vastly constric-
tive, but research on psychostimulants, which transhumanists cite as practical
proof of concept for more dramatic augmentation, undermines their view that
our cognitive operations are segmented, self-​contained, and upgradable as such.
A normative position is embedded in any proffered construction of human
nature. By definition, rational essentialism treats nonrational faculties (i.e., those
besides reason proper) as subordinate to reason, but this relative valuation does
not itself settle the question of whether faculties other than reason also have
necessary roles in a life well lived. Committed to extreme rational essentialism,
transhumanists deem it irrational to support anything short of a maximal
heightening of rational/​cognitive ability. Purportedly, reason/​cognition operates
best when unchecked by nonrational/​noncognitive activity. Thus, alongside
their advocacy of cognitive bioenhancement, transhumanists propose to weaken
and even eliminate the capacity for “negative” affect, including emotions such as
4 Posthuman Bliss?

anger. Once again, they evince a view of the mind as composed of faculties that
can be discretely assessed and manipulated per their evaluations.
Chapter 2 extends the argument of Chapter 1 by directly contesting
transhumanists’ entire picture of the mind and brain. Across the board, they fail
to appreciate the complexity of our mental operations. Centrally in this regard,
transhumanists are on the losing side of a decades-​long dispute about the nature
of emotion: on the merits, “appraisal theory” has superseded “basic-​emotion”
and “dual-​process” views, whose proponents, like transhumanists, view the
mind as a set of compartments whose functionality is explained by dedicated
areas or systems in the brain. Klaus Scherer’s version of appraisal theory is es-
pecially promising, for it integrates well the insight that “cognition” is not a
separately identifiable aspect of our mental operations; distinguishes clearly be-
tween wide and narrow senses of “cognition”; and accommodates the subtlety of
human emotion. Further, it is compatible with mounting evidence of the brain’s
complexity.
Regarding the mind, what is problematic is not rational essentialism per se but
transhumanists’ version. Here, comparative discussion with Aristotle is instruc-
tive. Bostrom wrongly views his and Aristotle’s versions as compatible (2008,
130), for only the latter incorporates a necessary role for nonrational faculties
and intrapsychic harmony. By Aristotle’s lights, insisting that maximal aug-
mentation of reason is the sole “rational” course testifies to one’s irrationality.
Philosophically speaking, I heartily agree. What’s more, concerning the mind
and brain, my investigation unearths a powerful alliance between Aristotle,
writing in the fourth century bce, and the present day. While transhumanists’
lens is at odds with contemporary findings, Aristotle’s view of the mind shares
important commitments with Scherer’s appraisal theory and is broadly com-
patible with mounting evidence of the brain’s complexity. Thus, in the trio com-
prising Aristotle, transhumanism, and contemporary science, transhumanism is
the outlier!
Though its typical focus is augmenting rationality/​cognition, transhumanist
discourse also addresses moral bioenhancement. One might hope that a richer
picture of our nonrational faculties would emerge when this occurs. Regrettably,
as I argue in Chapter 3, this is not the case. The most visible advocates thus far
of moral bioenhancement are Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, who trace
the threat of “ultimate harm,” or human extinction, to inadequate prosocial mo-
tivation. Since a species-​wide upgrade is needed, on utilitarian grounds, our
use of bioenhancers to augment their favored attitudes, altruism and “a sense of
justice,” could be compelled. As elsewhere, transhumanist faith in the manipu-
lability of favored mental targets reflects a commitment to “neuroessentialism”
and to the strength and precision of what genetic adjustments could deliver re-
garding complex phenotypic traits (Racine et al. 2005, 160–​61; FitzGerald and
 Introduction 5

Wurzman 2010, 222–​26; Rosoff 2012; Malmqvist 2014, 47; Jotterand 2016, 45;
Hall 2017, 8–​10).
Challenging transhumanists’ views of the mind and brain is quite impor-
tant, but a thorough assessment of transhumanism also requires that its guiding,
often tacit, ethical commitments be made transparent so that they—​and their
sociopolitical implications—​can be scrutinized. In Chapter 4, I argue that
transhumanists’ avowed commitment to personal autonomy in decisions about
bioenhancement is undercut by evidence in their accounts of a utilitarian obli-
gation to enhance, well beyond the moral domain of Persson and Savulescu, that
could jeopardize liberal democracy.
At first, this may be surprising since routine claims of a bedrock commit-
ment to autonomy, often combined with libertarian propensities, frame trans-
humanist advocacy of bioenhancement. When these assertions are taken at face
value, transhumanists are critiqued for a lack of concern with broader welfare. In
fact, they evince a driving concern with broader welfare, at the species level.
Though Persson and Savulescu’s utilitarian rationale for bioenhancement
is explicit, it is far from unique in transhumanist discourse. When arguing
for their agenda, transhumanists give evidential import to parallels with ex-
isting measures taken to promote the health and welfare of the public. In so
doing, they reflect a current, broader tendency to extend the scope of “public
health” beyond familiar initiatives. They forge these ties, however, without
flagging the backdrop as that of public health, let alone owning the utili-
tarian justification that anchors measures instituted on that basis. Since what
transhumanists trumpet in decisions about bioenhancement is individual au-
tonomy, we might not even register pockets of argumentative reliance on the
sphere of public health as sounding a countervailing note. But we should, as
they are signs of transhumanists’ willingness to defend their proposals on util-
itarian grounds.
As transhumanists’ foremost concern is the capacities of future beings, they
are necessarily invested in the content of procreative decisions. In their handling
of this topic, we witness a key tension between transhumanists’ usual proclama-
tion that choosing bioenhancement is simply one legitimate expression of per-
sonal autonomy and the tacit, utilitarian undergirding of its valorization. More
specifically, their commitments fit with an “ideal” form of utilitarianism, devoted
to maximizing featured, “objective” goods. Further, while utilitarianism usually
instructs us to give equal weight to current and future beings, transhumanism
gives such precedence to the latter that it “assign[s]‌. . . moral responsibility to
the present generation for the potential harms caused to all future generations”
(Buchanan et al. 2000, 231).
Ethical stances always have sociopolitical implications, and every politics
presupposes an ethical position (Nagel 1988, 171). But the link between ethics
6 Posthuman Bliss?

and politics is especially tight for utilitarianism, whose supporters have tended
to think that the justification for utilitarian political governance is more pow-
erful than that for such decision-​making by individuals (Williams 1973, 136).
Transhumanists’ notion that bioenhancement could be morally required, con-
joined with their utilitarian commitments, yields a strong concern that socio-
political requirements would flow from the implementation of transhumanists’
agenda so as to put liberal democracy at risk. This risk has generally been
underappreciated by commentators across the spectrum of positions on
bioenhancement.
The bulwark of transhumanists’ defense against claims of common ground
between their position and eugenic history is that prior eugenics was state man-
aged, while transhumanism features freedom of choice. To preserve this line of
defense, transhumanists must make a strong case that personal discretion would
steer decisions relating to enhancement. That their rejection of substantive ties to
earlier eugenics zeroes in on this point of contrast shows transhumanists’ aware-
ness of its pivotal role.
When transhumanists distance themselves from eugenic history, Nazi eu-
genics is typically at the fore, either directly or by implication. Reference to it
does not settle the matter, however, for an investigation of links between trans-
humanism and Anglo-​American eugenics, conducted in Chapter 5, yields im-
portant connections that span notions of human agency, views of our mental
faculties, ethical commitments, and deleterious implications for democracy as
we know it.
Since ethical imperatives are only as strong as their epistemological and on-
tological underpinnings, in Chapter 6, I identify and critique those that steer
transhumanism. Addressing central weaknesses in advocates’ handling of
the mind, brain, ethics, and politics, prior chapters dealt, to some degree, with
transhumanists’ ontological and epistemological commitments. Here, I critique
directly their equation of the real and knowable with information.
Both transhumanism and Anglo-​American eugenics are “totalizing visions,”4
meaning that scientific positions on what is and can be known are sup-
posed to reflect the unfiltered findings of reason and are seen, on that basis,
as the guideposts for ethical decision-​making. Having previously addressed
transhumanists’ ethical commitments, I challenge the ontological and epistemo-
logical prongs of their totalizing lens. In crucial respects, what they take to be
context-​independent truths involving information that will be fully fleshed out
with continued research by biologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists
are actually problematic holdovers from a particular historical and cultural set-
ting, World War II and its aftermath: prior to that time, the informational van-
tage point that came to seem self-​evidently true was nowhere to be found. The
lens on human biology anchored in information theory, cybernetics, and Francis
 Introduction 7

Crick’s Central Dogma, questioned from the start, increasingly recedes today in
favor of “developmental systems theory.”
Once we reject an informational vantage point on reality and knowing, the
question becomes: Are we capable of arriving at any ontology and epistemology
whose context-​independent rightness we could confirm? We have good reason
to conclude that the answer is “no,” for not only does scientific realism “[commit]
one to an unverifiable correspondence with the world” (Fine 1984, 86), but
also—​as Kant saw long ago—​how humans approach anything at all stems from
the way in which our minds work, indeed, must work for us to think, experience,
and imagine anything at all. Evelyn Fox Keller brings the scientific and broader
points together well:

By what mandate is the world obliged to make sense to us? Is such an assump-
tion even plausible? I would say no, and on a priori grounds. . . . The human
mind does not encompass the world; rather, it is itself a part of that world, and
no amount of self-​reflection provides an escape from that limitation. . . . The
mind—​along with its capacity to make rational sense—​is itself a biological phe-
nomenon. . . . The need for understanding, as for explanation, is a human need,
and one that can be satisfied only within the constraints that human inquirers
bring with them. (2002, 295–​97)

Transhumanists fail utterly to glean this unbreachable human scenario,

citing Kant as a backdrop for rationally steered pursuit of humanity’s self-​
transcendence. His Critique of Pure Reason does, indeed, bear on transhu-
manism. It does so, however, by showing as irrational advocates’ insistence that
human reason will spearhead a project requiring fundamentally more of it than
reason, as a capacity of ours, could shoulder.
For transhumanists, humanity is gravely and irremediably flawed, but salva-
tion is achievable if we would but dedicate ourselves to creating posthumanity.
All together, Chapters 1 to 6 strongly support the view that transhumanists’ vi-
sion is misguided, on philosophical and scientific grounds. If dramatic, salutary
change involving the human occurs, it will stem from our dedicated efforts, indi-
vidually and collectively, to narrow the gap between reflectively affirmed human
ideals and their worldly manifestations. This view reflects a hopefulness for hu-
manity that is absent from transhumanism. In this way, it is far more optimistic.
If we sign on to transhumanism, beyond endorsing fantastical claims about
what will be, we are accepting that we should no longer see human goods and
flourishing as having intrinsic worth. In the book’s closing chapter, I propose that
Aristotle’s virtue ethics, adjusted to accommodate liberal commitments reflected
in America’s founding documents, is well worth consulting as we consider how
best to move forward.
8 Posthuman Bliss?

Virtue ethics is presented as a “third way—​an alternative to the deontolog-

ical and consequentialist approaches that dominated modern moral philosophy
until very recently” (Farrelly and Solum 2008, 1). This characterization is mis-
leading, for, strictly speaking, the three approaches are not competitors for the
same role. Unlike utilitarianism and deontology, virtue ethics foregrounds “the
importance of the agent’s life as a whole, and, relatedly, the importance of moral
education and development” (Annas 2006, 519). Virtue ethics is holistic, too, be-
cause it builds in the ethical value of commitments to other people; incorporates
and integrates levels of human concern, individual up through civic; and defuses
the thought that in any situation, we must choose between pursuing our own and
others’ good.
In my view, virtue ethics can help America frame a way forward amidst its
struggles with illiberalism. Quite apart from the impossibility of our mapping
ancient notions wholesale onto the present, the attempt would be detrimental
because our vision of how to proceed must incorporate liberal commitments to
justice and equality; hence, I sketch cornerstones of an approach that is rooted
in Aristotle but adapted to America today. With the reinvigoration of liberal
democracy in view, a potent way to mobilize people is to tap into what many
already care substantially about but whose opportunities for cultivation and ex-
pression are constricted by our present milieu. On my account, virtue and core
American ideals fit the bill, and the latter can be accommodated under the um-
brella of virtue ethics.
There is no proxy for the thought and practical engagement involving human
goods and flourishing that must be done in the present, but we have emerged
from and belong to philosophical and political traditions that richly repay our
consultation. My belief that we can shoulder this work reflects my view that
human capacities promise a great deal more than transhumanists appreciate.
Not only do their arguments fail, but transhumanism fails to do us justice.
 1
Assessing Transhumanist Advocacy
of Cognitive Bioenhancement

1. Introduction

According to Savulescu and Guy Kahane’s Principle of Procreative Beneficence,

parents are obliged “to create children with the best chance of the best life” (2009)
or, per John Harris, to optimize “possible functioning” (2010, 53). Central to
this pursuit, as advocates conceive it, is profound cognitive enhancement. If the
Principle of Procreative Beneficence were implemented regarding cognitive en-
hancement, the result would be highly impoverishing.
To see this, we must lay out what cognitive bioenhancement would al-
legedly augment and, correspondingly, what transhumanists devalue about
our mental life, even favoring its extirpation.1 Though transhumanists cri-
tique their opponents’ human essentialism while denying their own, they em-
brace a version of rational essentialism (Sections 2 and 3.1). Reason, they
assert, is the heart of what counts about us, and, suitably heightened, it would
both enable the emergence of posthumanity and anchor posthuman existence.
Although transhumanists align themselves here with a grand Western tradi-
tion extending back to Presocratic philosophy, avowedly, their particular tie is
to the Enlightenment, where our rational faculty was to be the Ariadne’s thread
allowing us to sidestep lairs and dead ends represented by religion, tradition, and
nonrational faculties undergirding our reliance on them.
By definition, rational essentialism treats other faculties as in some way sub-
ordinate, but this relative valuation does not, of itself, preclude their also having
necessary roles in a flourishing life. In the present work, the nonrational domain
of interest is “affect,” broadly construed to cover emotion, mood, and desire/​
motivation. As I show in Section 3.2, transhumanists’ version of rational essen-
tialism includes outright hostility to the nonrational in the form of “negative”
affect, spanning desire, emotion (e.g., anger), and mood (e.g., sadness). Quite
apart from the impoverishment of our mental life that such a picture embodies,
this dismissal turns out to be problematic for transhumanists’ own investment in
cognitive enhancement.
Though transhumanists link themselves to a rich philosophical tradition
when foregrounding reason as the linchpin of our humanity, when they directly

Posthuman Bliss? Susan B. Levin, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190051495.001.0001.
Another random document with
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 While I am over the sea;
Let me and my passionate love go by,
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happen to me.
Me and my harmful love go by,
But come to her waking, or find her asleep,
Powers of the height, powers of the deep,
And comfort her though I die.”

Surely this is the pure, unadulterated metal. Alas! that it should

sometimes lack the glitter of that counterfeit which women grasp at
so eagerly in preference to the true gold. So, in extremity of danger,
shattered in battle against the chosen friend and comrade whose
treachery was only less galling to his noble heart than the disloyalty
of his queen, beset by

“The godless hosts

Of heathen swarming o’er the Northern sea,”

stern old foes of himself and Christendom, erst by prowess of that

“glorious company,”

“The Table Round,

In twelve great battles ruining overthrown,”

now panting for reprisal and revenge, menaced with open rebellion
by a sister’s son, his army melting, his adherents failing, his sceptre
sliding from his grasp, Arthur can yet provide tenderly and carefully
for her safety who has brought down on him all this shame, ruin, and
defeat.

“And many more when Modred raised revolt,

Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave
To Modred, and a remnant stays with me.
And of this remnant will I leave a part—
True men who love me still, for whom I live—
To guard thee in the wild hour coming on;
Lest but a hair of this low head be harmed.
Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death.”
 Well might the Queen, when he had passed from her sight for
ever, reflect bitterly on the comparative merits of lover and husband,
having, like all such women, proved to extremity of torture the
devotion of both.

“I wanted warmth and colour, which I found

In Lancelot. Now I see thee what thou art—
Thou art the highest, and most human, too,
Not Lancelot, nor another.”

Could she but have seen him as he really was in the golden days
long ago, when her court formed the centre of all that was bravest
and fairest in the world of Christendom, when her life seemed one
long holiday of dance and revel in the lighted halls of Camelot, of tilt
and tournament and pageantry of mimic war, held in honour of her
own peerless beauty, in the Lists of Caerleon, of horn and hound and
rushing chase and willing palfrey speeding over the scented moors
of Cornwall, or through the sunny glades of Lyonesse, of sweet May
mornings when she went forth fresh and lovely, fairer than the very
smile of spring, amongst her courtiers, all

“Green-suited, but with plumes that mocked the may,”

to walk apart, nevertheless, with flushing cheek and eyes cast down,
while she listened to his whispers, whose voice was softer and
sweeter than fairy music in her ears! Could she but have known then
where to seek her happiness and find it! Alas! that we see things so
differently in different lights and surroundings—in serge and velvet,
in the lustre of revelry and the pale cold grey of dawn, in black
December frosts and the rich glow of June. Alas for us, that so
seldom, till too late to take our bearings and avoid impending
shipwreck, can we make use of that fearful gift described by another
great poet as

“The telescope of truth,

Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
 And brings life near, in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!”

but still reality, and, as such, preferable to all the baseless visions of
fancy, all the glitter and glamour and illusion of romance. We mortals
must have our dreams; doubtless it is for a good purpose that they
are so fair and sweet, that their duration is so short, the waking from
them so bitter and forlorn. But at last most of us find ourselves
disenchanted, weary, hopeless, memory-haunted, and seeking
sanctuary after all, like Guinevere, when Lancelot had gone

“Back to his land, but she to Almesbury

Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald,
And heard the spirits of the waste and weald
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan,—
And in herself she moaned—‘Too late! too late!’”

What a picture of desolation and despair! Mocking phantoms all

about her, now gibing, now pitying, now goading her to the
recklessness of despair. Before her, darkness uncheered by a single
beacon; behind her, the sun of life and love gone down to rise no
more, and, lifting helpless, hopeless eyes above,

“A blot in heaven, the raven flying high.”

Deep must be the guilt for which such hours as these are
insufficient to atone!
But the queen’s penance hath only just begun, for the black drop
is not yet wrung out of her heart, and even in her cloister at
Almesbury it is remorse rather than repentance that drives the iron
into her soul. As it invariably does in moments of extreme feeling, the
master-passion takes possession of her once more, and “my
Lancelot” comes back in all his manly beauty and his devoted
tenderness, so touching and so prized, that for him, too, it must
make the sorrow of a lifetime. Again, she sees him in the lists, best,
bravest, and knightliest lance of all the Round Table. Again, sitting
fair and courtly and gentle among dames in hall, his noble face none
the less winsome, be sure, to her, for that she could read on it the
stamp of sorrow set there by herself as her own indelible seal.
Again she tastes the bitter torture of their parting agony, and her
very spirit longs only to be released that it may fly to him for ever, far
away in his castle beyond the sea.
This, with true dramatic skill, is the moment chosen by the poet for
the arrival of her injured, generous, and forgiving lord—

“While she brooded thus,

And grew half guilty in her thoughts again,
There rode an armed warrior to the doors.”

And now comes that grand scene of sorrow and penitence and
pardon, for which this poem seems to me unequalled and alone.
Standing on the brink of an uncertainty more ghastly than death,
for something tells him that he is now to lead his hosts in his last
battle, and that the unearthly powers to whom he owes birth, fame,
and kingdom, are about to reclaim him for their own, he stretches the
hands of free forgiveness, as it were, from the other world.
How short, in the face of doom so imminent, so inevitable, appears
that span of life, in which so much has been accomplished! Battles
have been fought, victories gained, a kingdom established, a
bulwark raised against the heathen, an example set to the whole of
Christendom, and yet it seems but yesterday

“They found a naked child upon the sands

Of wild Dundagil by the Cornish sea,
And that was Arthur.”

Now in the height of glory, in the fulfilment of duty, in the prime of

manhood, such sorrows have overtaken him, as must needs whisper
their prophetic warning that his task is done, and it is time to go.
Where, he sees not, cares not. True to himself and his knighthood,
he is ready now, as always, to follow the path of honour, wherever it
may lead, and meet unflinching
 “Death, or I know not what mysterious doom.”

Arthur, dethroned, ruined, heart-broken, mortally wounded, and

unhorsed, will be no less Arthur than when on Badon Hill he stood

“High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume,

Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,”

and shouted victory with a great voice in the culminating triumph of

his glory.
“‘We two may meet before high God.’”
 Bones and I.] [Page 257

For him, too, at this supreme moment the master-passion asserts

its sway, and even that great soul thrills to its centre with the love
that has been wasted for half a lifetime on her who is only now
awaking to a consciousness of its worth. He cannot leave her for
ever without bidding farewell to his guilty queen. So riding through
the misty night to the convent where she has taken refuge, he looks
his last in this world on her from whom in his great loyalty of affection
neither her past disgrace nor his own approaching death shall part
him for ever. With that instinct of pure love which clings to a belief in
its eternity, he charges her to cleanse her soul with repentance and
sustain her hopes with faith, that

“Hereafter in that world where all are pure

We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband.”

Thus, with all his soul flowing to his lips, this grand heroic nature
blesses the guilty woman, grovelling in the dust, and moves off
stately and unflinching to confront the doom of Fate.
Then, true to the yearning nature of her sex, yearning ever with
keenest longings for the lost and the impossible, Guinevere leaps to
her feet, the tide of a new love welling up in her wayward heart,
fierce, cruel, and irresistible, because it must be henceforth utterly
hopeless and forlorn. With her own hand she has put away her own
happiness; and what happiness it might have been she feels too
surely, now that no power on earth can ever make it hers again!
Oh! for one word more from the kind, forgiving voice! Oh! for one
look in the brave, clear, guileless face! But no. It is never to be.
Never, never more! She rushes indeed to the casement, but Arthur is
already mounted and bending from the saddle, to give directions for
her safety and her comfort.
 “So she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel, but she saw—
Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights—
The dragon of the great Pendragon-ship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.
And even then he turned; and more and more
The moony vapours rolling round the king,
Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him, fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.”

“I think I like it better without your explanations and remarks,”

observed Bones. “There is a proverb, my friend, about ‘refined gold,’
and ‘the lily,’ that you would do well to remember. Hang it! man, do
you think nobody understands or appreciates poetry but yourself?”
Perhaps I have over-aired him lately; but it seems to me that
Bones is a good deal “above himself.” If I can only get him back into
the cupboard, I have more than half a mind to lock him up for good
and all.

THE END
 Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.

FOOTNOTES:
[1]

“If that’s a fight indeed,

Where you strike hard, and I stand still and bleed.”

[2]

“Cogitat Ursidius, sibi dote jugare puellam,

Ut placeat domino, cogitat Ursidius.”

[3] A narrow board, on which provisions, etc. are packed, to be

dragged through the woods on these expeditions in the snow.
 Transcriber’s Notes

pg 9 Changed: the value of “this here obserwation

to: the value of “this here observation
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