11 - Concluding remarks
Summary
What do we want in man, asked Franz Boas a hundred years ago: physical excellence, mental ability, creative power or artistic genius? We need to make a decision here, thought Boas, if we want to create better humans, because we cannot have it all. And right he was. There are so many different ideals between which we would have to choose if we wanted to enhance the human, so many different conceptions of what it means to be human, and what it means to be a good human and a better human, so many different goals to pursue, so many different lives to live, none of which is in itself better than any of the others, more humanlike, more desirable, more worth pursuing. It all depends on what we want, and we do not all want the same. Even if we did, what we wanted might not be consistent, for instance not to die and not to live forever. Each step we take in the project of human enhancement, we take in a certain direction. There is more than one path to follow, and if we follow one we cannot follow another. Each step, unless it is entirely haphazard (which it never really is), embodies and reinforces particular value decisions, even though we may not always be conscious of them.
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- Information
- Better Humans?Understanding the Enhancement Project, pp. 183 - 190Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013