Human Enhancement

Defining Human Enhancement

Social technologies—the modern state system for example—have certainly served to enhance human capacities, but such a statement is uncontroversial and seems to belie the energy with which many oppose what has come to be known as human enhancement technology. The same can be said of learned skills and arts; it is not unusual to describe these things as enhancing our natural abilities.

Further, it is likewise uncontroversial to argue that mundane—and perhaps even cutting edge—commercial material technologies enhance our natural abilities. [Page 317]The personal digital assistant serves to augment memory and the motor vehicle enhances our personal mobility. Glasses perfect our eyesight and clothing adds to the protective properties of our skin and hair. It is the very mendacity of such technologies that marks them out from human enhancement technologies proper.

The future of human enhancement will likely cause more controversy among professional sporting committees.

If analytically and epistemologically, human enhancement technology is a distinct category, then what does it consist of? Biomechanical prosthetics that possess greater strength than a normal human limb—even though they are deficient in many other ways—are human enhancement technologies, despite the fact that they are intended as therapy. The recent ruling by the International Olympic Committee established prosthetics as a potential enhancement by excluding sprinter Oscar Pistorius of South Africa—a decision that was recently overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport—arguing that Pistorius's carbon-fiber legs extended his stride beyond what he would naturally be capable of.

Likewise, certain classes of psycho-pharmaceuticals constitute enhancements when used by the healthy to increase their ability to concentrate, remember, and remain unaffected by sleeplessness. Finally, genetic or nanotechnological alterations constitute enhancements in a way which is far more obvious to the casual observer in that that they confer properties or advantages which are not analogous to past technologies. Pharmaceuticals can be compared to caffeine or illegal stimulants and prosthetics can be seen as similar to technologically advanced equipment like the specialized suits and shoes employed by elite level sprinters, but the alterations offered by genetics and nanotechnology appear to be of a different quality, rather than just quantity.

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