Philosophy Now Forum

I heard this posser many years ago, it goes like this....

In 500years man finds that he is unable to make any new scientific descoveries. Many questions however remain and seem intractable, but not necessarily in themselves but in the limitations of human intelligence. The question is should we, if possible genetically enhance our brains? Also if we improve other physical attributes should we consider ourselves human or an evolutionary of shoot?

Regards.

By what standard does one judge whether GM crops are good or bad?

Is this a philosophical question or a scientific one?

Yes. The human condition is all about moving on, if we were to reach a limit it would be almost as if we were back in the Dark Ages as there would seem to be no way forward for the human race. In fact, it won't be 500 years but more like (within) 50 years that we start making ourselves smarter by biological means and what you are dealing with now is transhumanism. But this is philosophy, so my answer is yes, we are all about discovery and improving ourselves. If there were nothing left because it all resided on another plain of being, one in which our own puny prehistoric human minds could not exist on (or for long) because of their limitations, well there would always be people trying anyway you would never reach a complete dead-end but it would get so much harder for us to discover new things all the time as we are doing now and 99.999 percent of the time we would be moving in circles and not going forward any more. There would be people always trying to find a way onto the next plain and this merges with the idea of engineering the mind. So in other words, we are moving towards it, it is going to happen, ad it is what we were designed for. So the question is not whether we will do it, nor whether we should do it, but when it will come to pass, as all things do.


Thanks for a brilliant question.

hi diomedes,

I think genetically modified man would more than likely bring about similar pros & cons as genetically modified food.

I've watched some documentaries about it, and read some things here and there, and have formed the opinion that in some cases its better to leave well enough alone, if the benefit is not far outweighing the risks and costs, & definitly should move carefully and slowly.

Here's a link with some pros&cons for gmos, and i have some info in a book i'll try and copy some of it later, because am too tired to type all of it now (won't be able to cut and paste), but in general it gets into something called 'the devil seed' and some of the major damage it can cause, as well as being destructive to alot of smaller local economies, in general only benefitting a few. Anyhow, here's the link & will post the other stuff later:

http://www.biotech-info.net/needy_world.html

As for human engineering, i guess we allready chatted about this over on the transhumanist thread, but still i do think we should try to enhance our brains, but i don't know if i'd want to be the first one to try it, i might be too scared that something might go wrong. but since your also relating it to the gmo's, that makes it more interesting, because there are alot of problems as mentioned above with gmo's that could very well be replicated in a sort of way, if not worse with modified humans. But i think its still worth the go, as long as were careful.

As for the evolved 'human', if we are at least 50% similar to the original human in general, i'd guess we should keep calling ourselves human, but if much higher than that, maybe could call ourselves "H2's, i don't know, i'm sure we could come up with a better name than that tho, lol

will add more later, toodleloo'

oooo another thing i was thinking as a most likely usage for modified humans would be to adapt humans to be able to survive in different environments such as in outerspace, if it is not done for the sake of exploration, it might even end up having to be done for the sake of survival; so it is probably a good thing we are starting early before the possible necessity of it, do you agree?

Hi B2B,

Yeah i think you are right about the space thingy, which ever way you look at it, it's a comin. I heard once somebody say this years medical outrage is the next decades standard practice. They went on to say we had all the same holler balloo over heart transplants and stuff.

Regards.