Is Transhumanism Heading Towards Redefinition of Human Being or Towards Utopia?

Abstract

Transhumanism has enormous affect on temporary philosophical thought by forcing philosophers to take on many intellectual challenges generated by scientists who try to create technological solutions that enable implementation of transhuman-istic ideas. The question is whether all these ideas will be realized. The purpose of the article is to show that the ulitmate goal of transhumanism, to create posthumanistic society, is impossible to realize. The first reason is that transhumanism limits human’s understanding to the material dimension (from a theological viewpint). While this is understandable in the naturalistic paradigm, this approach is insufficient when it comes to all complexity of human being and for this reason transhumanism represents too narrow a human’s understanding to be able to implement its all assumptions. The second reason is that to enable people to become posthumans the latest technologies would have to be available to everyone and this seems impossible. If so, such a sit-uation will divide people into ordinary ones and posthumans and this could lead to conflicts that transhumanists want to avoid after all. Finally, the body-mind problem is essentially limited to emergentism, which corresponds to the naturalistic paradigm. It seems, however, that without the concept of the soul it is impossible to understand who a man is, their identity and consciousness and this is crucial for mind uploading.