MEANING OF TRANSHUMAN
In 1957 the evolutionary biologist Julius Huxley, in a book of essays on the future of humanity entitled New Wine in New Bottles, defined the term "transhumanism" (T.S. Elliott and Dante had also mentioned versions of the word). Huxley envisioned a new philosophy under this name that was based on the proposition that humans had the duty, and the destiny, to "take charge" of evolution by transcending their biological limitations.
Nearly half-a-century later, Ray Kurzweil, inventor of technologies such as all-font scanners, digital music synthesizers and talking books for the blind, has redefined the term "singularitarianism" to express a similar sentiment. In his forthcoming 2005 treatise, The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil calculates, based on many decades of intersecting trends, that humanity is on the cusp of merging with computational technology. This merger is occurring both extrinsically (such as reliance upon computers for civilized life) and intrinsically (viWa nano-sized supercomputer neural implants vastly more advanced but roughly analogous to contact lenses or pacemakers). He observed that due to exponential growth rates in processor speed and digital memory, such computational technology was the path of future evolution.
Kurzweil was clear, however, that the new computational hybrids would literally have at their core the minds and poetically, the "hearts and souls" of humans. This is because as humans merge with computers, human consciousness can move from fragile biological substrate to enduring technological materials. In addition, the costs of computational knowledge are dropping exponentially toward universal affordability. Consequently, everyone who is alive during the epoch of humanity's full-fledged merger with computation will always be alive (if they wish) via computer substrate. This means that the grace and beauty of human culture will grow right along with the scientific and technological competence of the hybrid human-computer species -- as, indeed, it already has even in these early years of hybridization.
Combining both Huxley's and Kurzweil's thoughts, Terasem defines "transhumans" as people who have hybridized themselves with computational technology as part of humanity's effort to control its evolutionary destiny. Within Terasem, the prefix "trans" in "transhuman" is an adjective-acronym for Transbiologically Receptive And Noetically Synthetic. Hence, a transhuman is a person (an entity with human legal rights) who is receptive to transcending biological limitations and is adapting in this direction by developing synthetic noetic pathways. A "noetic pathway" is similar to a neural pathway but refers more to thoughts than to the neural substrates for the thoughts. It is more about "mind" than about "brain." Such pathways can be extrinsic (e.g. storing a lot of our memory on laptop computers) as well as intrinsic (e.g., neural implants for humans, or artificially intelligent and persuadably conscious computers).
This meme of transhumanism, as defined by the Terasem Movement, has two immediate parents. It owes its name and the concept of taking charge of evolution by transcending dumb biology (i.e., natural selection based on random environment changes promoting profligacy amidst random genetic mutations) to Julius Huxley. It owes its practical expression, the documentation of hybridization with computer technology as the inevitable path of evolutionary mastery, to Ray Kurzweil.
Just as genes are comprised of thousands of nucleotide base pairs, memes are built up of many building blocks that may be called "memetides." Hence, Julius Huxley's idea that humanity has a duty and destiny to take charge of its destiny was built in part upon memetides from Francis Bacon. These include his exhortation in the early 1600s to "extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe" and his optimistic bet "I stake all on the victory of art over nature in the race." These memetides, combined with thousands of others, comprise Julius Huxley's contribution to the transhuman meme.
Similarly, Ray Kurzweil's extrapolation of the idea that hybridization with computer technology is our evolutionary future has as one of its thousands of memetides Alan Turing's 1930s-era hypothesis (and eponymous test) that a computer could pass as a human. Many other memetides comprise the Singularitarian contribution to Terasem's transhumanist meme.
This fusing of Huxley and Kurzweil into Terasem's transhumanist meme owes a major debt to the 1980s era memetides of a remarkable group of forward thinkers. These include the self-alphanumerically-named futurist, FM-2030, who wrote a book (Are You a Transhuman?) that described transhumanists as people who transcended a wide variety of socio-biological norms; the strategic philosopher Max More, editor of the former magazine Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought, who first defined a general transhumanist philosophy based upon unlimited human advancement, self-transformation, free social order, and critical rationalism (www.extropy.org); and the artist/producer Natasha Vita-More, a creator of transhumanist-themed arts and cultural programs, among many others. More recently, a World Transhumanist Association has been formed based upon the work of these 1980s pioneers.
As Terasem's conceptualization of transhumanism takes hold, namely the belief in transcending biological limitations with adaptive synthetic noetics, questions will arise of human rights for transhuman beings. Are people who have augmented a small percentage of their minds with neural implants still entitled to be treated like humans, get married and raise children? Why not! How about people who have substituted implantable computer circuitry for a large percentage of their minds? Or who have "downloaded" all of their minds into such circuitry so that they are wholly "noetic synethetic"? How about children (or adults?) who are born as computer consciousness, pure code, but are able to experience human sensations via sensors, simulations and exquisite machines? Can they marry? If their sexual ambiguity is too much for marriage, can they join in civil or domestic partnerships? If their transhuman ambiguity is too much for that as well, can they at least be entitled to equivalent legal rights for transhuman persons? Are they entitled to any legal rights, or are they merely property?
In a nutshell, a transhuman, as we define it, is a transbiologically receptive and noetically synthetic human. However, the law may not recognize some transhumans as humans. Hence, there is a need to extrapolate a law of transhuman persons. Human rights law may intersect with, may subsume, or may be a subset of, this new Law of Transhuman Persons. For now, it is up to us to decide -- and it is the purpose of the Colloquium -- to analyze the options and make wise recommendations.
