What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective

Abstract

The human individual has been preoccupied with the phenomenon of death since death expresses the end of the existence on earth. The issue of life and death has not lost its actuality, whereas nowadays life extension (and why not immortality) is considered the ultimate goal of scientists.
The aim of this article is to highlight the problems that will arise along with the achievement of eternal life. In this regard, I shall focus on human enhancement and the principle of procreative beneficence as means of achieving this objective. In addition, I shall bring into question the fact that the principles of bioethics are being violated along with human enhancement: the principle of respect for autonomy and beneficence, avoiding harm-causing behaviours and the principle of justice. Given that the researchers in the field of transhumanism argue that the penetration of the new technologies into the private sphere of the individual is inevitable, I shall present arguments that prove the fact that the principles of bioethics are being violated along with the achievement of eternal life, given that human enhancement is only accessible for an elite both in terms of costs as well as in terms of the Christian values.

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How to cite: Terec-Vlad, L. (2015). What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective. Postmodern Openings, 6(2),
33-41.Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/po/2015.0602.03
Postmodern Openings
2015, Volume 6, Issue 2, December, pp. 33-41
What about Eternal Life? A
Transhumanist Perspective
Loredana TEREC-VLAD
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/po/2015.0602.03
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DOI: 10.18662/po/2015.0602.03
33
What about Eternal Life?
A Transhumanist Perspective
Loredana TEREC-VLAD
1
Abstract
The human individual has been preoccupied with the phenomenon of death since
death expresses the end of the existence on earth. The issue of life and death has not lost its
actuality, whereas nowadays life extension (and why not immortality) is considered the
ultimate goal of scientists.
The aim of this article is to highlight the problems that will arise along with the
achievement of eternal life. In this regard, I shall focus on human enhancement and the
principle of procreative beneficence as means of achieving this objective. In addition, I shall
bring into question the fact that the principles of bioethics are being violated along with
human enhancement: the principle of respect for autonomy and beneficence, avoiding harm-
causing behaviours and the principle of justice. Given that the researchers in the field of
transhumanism argue that the penetration of the new technologies into the private sphere of
the individual is inevitable, I shall present arguments that prove the fact that the principles of
bioethics are being violated along with the achievement of eternal life, given that human
enhancement is only accessible for an elite both in terms of costs as well as in terms of the
Christian values.
Keywords: Bioethics, transhumanism, human enhancement, eternal life,
fundamental principles.
1
PhD Candidate at Stefan cel Mare University, Suceava, Romania, loredanaterec@gmail.com,
0040749978910.
Terec-Vlad, L. (2015). What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective. Postmodern Openings, 6(2), 33-41.Doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/po/2015.0602.03

34
1. Introduction
The term „life” has multiple senses that reveal universal openness
within the history of interpretation: the Greek philosophical interpretation, the
sense from the Old Testament, the establishment of Christianity, redefining the
issue of life from the biological perspective, the perspective of the philosophy
of life or the perspective of the sciences of the spirit, the phenomenology of
life; therefore, there are different meanings of the idea of life from the
religious, theological, philosophical, psychological, aesthetic, ethical etc.,
perspective (Ciocan, 2013).
According to the Christian tradition, eternal life means life after death
and life after the second coming of the Messiah, which was shown precisely by
Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection. In the Apocryphal Gospels,
one can note man’s concern for the life after death, and the Holy Fathers
advise the Christians to live their lives in such a way as to please God because
in the other world the ones who have followed the right path will experience
eternal happiness alongside God (Beke, 2009). Man’s bet is to reach another
level of life, another life – the eternal life –which is the Kingdom of God
(Ciocan, 2013).
The concern for the afterlife has existed from the ancient Egyptians -
who buried their dead together with clothes, objects or food-, the Hindu or the
Indian tradition (Beke, 2009). The idea of soul transmigration and the fact that
births occur in ontological order can be found not only in the ancient cultures,
but also in the evolved nations; this is, in fact, the law of Karma (Beke, 2009).
Since the world where Christianity arose was dominated by the Platonic
philosophy, one of the most popular beliefs was that the biological body is just
a shell that houses a soul, and after the death of the biological body the soul
can either ascend to heaven or eternal punishment lies ahead of him (Beke,
2009).
Today we are facing fundamental changes regarding the idea of life and
its quality. Scientific developments have brought important contributions in
almost all the areas: philosophy, biology, physics, chemistry, genetics etc. in
order to help the human species overcome its condition. It is not only about
the scientific findings in terms of genetic engineering, but also the artificial (we
may say) achievement of eternal life – which until recently was being analysed
only from the Christian perspective: life after death.
In this paper I shall bring into question the issues that will arise along
with immortality, since I believe that, as human goal, it will entail the violation
of the current society’s values, jeopardizing the fundamental rights of the
individual.
Terec-Vlad, L. (2015). What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective. Postmodern Openings, 6(2), 33-41.Doi:
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2. Are we afraid of death?
Each of us has surely felt fear of death at a certain point, or better yet
fear of something that we do not know rather than death itself; anyway; this
process of passing over has been associated with physical pain since, the
physical and mental illnesses of the human individual cause suffering. Perhaps
Christian traditions and doctrines have made us believe that passing from life
on earth to eternal life is (physically) difficult and painful especially since,
depending on his sins from the life on earth, the individual can spend eternity
in the fire of hell or in the paradise promised within the holy books; that is why
the issue of death is a taboo subject (Alvarez Chicano, 2002).
We are not sure which is the reason why ever since ancient times man
has been trying to achieve eternal life without the help of divinity; whether it is
about the fear of suffering (divine punishment), or about the individual trying
to play God because God is associated with power, today the issue is much
more complex than it seems, since the researchers in the field of the new
technologies have discovered how to clone the human or achieve artificial
blood, and in a not too distant future will be able to achieve head transplants
(Sandu, 2015) or how to upload the individual’s memory so that he no longer
needs a biological body in order to survive. These issues are extremely complex
and call for debate regarding life and death since the researchers are divided
into two camps: those who support the transformation of the human condition
through the new technologies and those who believe that only God is able to
decide upon our purpose on earth, since He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Since eternal life is a goal, the supporters of transhumanism believe
that once we achieve eternal life there is no way back, since once we discover
synthetic life and the way to survive without using a biological body we will
actually kill death (Terec-Vlad, 2015). Eternal life built in a perfect society
(similar to Heaven) has been the subject of various writers, dramatists and
social engineers (Mitchell, Kilner, 2003), but now the subject belongs to the
“techno-utopians”, who believe that by means of the new technologies a
perfect society, with perfect persons, on a perfect earth can be built (Mitchell,
Kilner, 2003).
This goal can include the posthuman individual, who has been
cognitively modified in order to be better and whose conscience can be
uploaded or downloaded, who has managed to achieve eternal life through
human enhancement, who is connected to a universal system and who lives in
perfect harmony with the other posthuman “beings”. Kurzweil believes that
when these events occur, we will witness technological singularity; however,
being singularitarian means many things:
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- The right means to live long enough to live forever (Kurzwel, 2005)
- The body is temporary (Kurzwel, 2005)
- We should strive to improve these patterns by optimizing the health of
our body and extending the reach of our minds (Kurzwel, 2005)
- Information is not knowledge (Kurzwel, 2005)
- Death is a tragedy, it is not demeaning to regard a person as a
profound pattern (a form of knowledge) (Kurzwel, 2005)
- A primary role of traditional religion is deathist rationalization
(Kurzwel, 2005).
- The purpose of the universe reflects the same purpose as our lives: to
move toward greater intelligence and knowledge (Kurzwel, 2005)
- We can apply the enormous leverage provided by the acceleration of
technology. An example is achieving radical life extension through a
bridge to a bridge to a bridge (Kurzwel, 2005)
The supporters of transhumanism believe that we can imagine a
posthuman world where humans as we know them would no longer exist: we
can wake up in a computer and still be ourselves, with all our memories, and
what makes us what we are: we would be able to communicate with other
people from other computers, we would be able to communicate with people
still residing in a biological body, and we could experience all the pleasures of a
biological body, but avoiding fatigue, indigestion and AIDS (Rael, 2001). We
could also meet sexual partners living in other computers and have lasting
relationships with them, including sexual relations, up to the point of wanting
to live together in a virtual house (Rael, 2001).
However, we believe that once eternal life can be achieved, all the
values that we believed to be primordial so far will be replaced, since not the
entire society we are part of will benefit from mind uploading, but only those
persons with a good financial situation and who are willing to give up the
human life for a virtual one. The concepts of autonomy or justice could be
removed from the sphere of the values or could have a different meaning,
adapted to the new virtual society. An example of the violation of the principle
of autonomy is moral bioenhancement (Persson, Savulescu, 2014), whereas - in
our opinion - if we improve ourselves morally, we will not be able to assess
whether our actions are moral or (bio) ethical. I believe that the transhumanist
discourses, which bring into focus the idea of eternal life, could get anyone
drunk with cold water since, in order to become reality, artificial eternal life
requires experiments - which will be conducted on human individuals, not
robots - as we cannot yet introduce a chip into a robot’s brain, because it has
Terec-Vlad, L. (2015). What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective. Postmodern Openings, 6(2), 33-41.Doi:
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What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective
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no brain. However, we must outline the fact that the transhumanist discourse
brings back into the attention of researchers and philosophers the issues
related to ethics and morality and calls for debates regarding the human rights,
the human condition and the evolution of the human being.
3. Human values and posthuman values
Lydia Feito believes that, from the transhumanist values, one promotes
all those values that would lead to posthumanism, whereas the posthuman
individual could have a life that is worth more than the life of the current
individual (Feito, 2007): in order to become posthuman, the individual needs
certain technologies and a certain social organization that would enable safe
exploration and certain conditions: global security, technological progress,
open access of all the persons (Feito, 2007). The implementation requires the
existence of derived values such as individual freedom and the ability to choose
the enhancement technologies, morphological freedom – that is the individual
choice of enhancement, enhancement of enhancement (open mind, critical
thinking, investigation, philosophical failibilism, pragmatism, science and
technology, becoming more intelligent individually and collectively, diversity
(of the species, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, lifestyle), lifesaving (Feito,
2007). However, in this respect we can only speculate since there is no
evidence and no research showing that after the individual’s physical death his
consciousness can be uploaded.
However, how can we know which will be the values of the posthuman
society? We can no longer talk about not killing, or not entering someone’s
private property, or not stealing. Still, which will be the values of
posthumanism?
4. (Bio) ethical dilemmas
“Artificial immortality is not an individual given resulted from personal
magic, but the culmination of the technological efforts of a humanity being on
the way of self – transcendence” (Sandu, 2015). As stated above, achieving
eternal life will be a landmark for all the beings on this planet. But even if this
is achievable, it does not exclude controversy, pros and cons or even academic,
religious or philosophical debates. In this chapter I intend to bring up for
discussion the ethical and bioethical dilemmas (Sandu, Caras, 2013) that could
appear along with the achievement of eternal life. First of all, a person or
individual or citizen is composed of biological matter (that is why we can get
their fingerprints and find out their DNA) and soul. Summing up, I am
pointing out the fact that the individuals act according to their knowledge,
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38
depending on the socio-cultural environment and the beliefs and values of the
society where they live.
However, if we take into consideration a man from the third world,
who lived in a precarious environment, had no chance to study, and his only
concern was to get food for himself and his family, how can we make him
immortal? If we upload his mind on the computer, he will not be concerned
with anything else but providing food for his family and safety. Of course,
many would say that we can reprogram him: but wouldn’t reprogramming this
person be incompatible with his autonomy? Or with the right to express his
will freely or the right to equality and justice? An answer to this dilemma might
be the following: but we have achieved immortality – it is an important step for
our future as self-conscious individuals.
Another aspect that draws attention regarding eternal life is related to
the (bio) ethical implications of this subject. As we know, bioethics is defined
as the systematic study of human behaviour in the field of life sciences and
healthcare, analyzed in the light of the moral values and principles (Reich,
1995). When we achieve eternal life without the need for a biological body, we
will no longer be able to bring into question the implications of bioethics, since
we will lack the biological part of life. Soledad Cordoba Cuardado believes that
virtual reality is the main tool aimed at achieving a posthuman individual that
lives in the computer networks (Cordoba Guardado, 2007); once this objective
that regards living in the virtual space is reached, we will be able to talk about
the individual only as consciousness, not a human person.
Besides autonomy, one of the following victims of transhumanism is
the equity of rights: if we start transforming ourselves into something superior
what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they
possess when compared to those left behind? (Fukuyama, 2004). The recent
studies conducted in this field show that only the persons with an exceptional
financial situation will be able to benefit from the enhancement of the human
body in order to increase their physical capacities; hence results the fact that
the concept of justice is violated from the very beginning. Since the priority of
justice is a requirement that arises from the fundamental plurality of the human
species and the integrity of individuals, sacrificing justice for the sake of general
good means violating what is inviolable (Miroiu, 2008).
Another aspect that draws the attention upon the new technologies is
related to the fact that not all the findings can be considered good; therefore,
this aspect makes us carry through an assessment regarding the way the new
technologies influence the quality of our life for the better, but also regarding
the way their excessive use may lead to the infringement of the society’s values
Terec-Vlad, L. (2015). What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective. Postmodern Openings, 6(2), 33-41.Doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/po/2015.0602.03
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What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective
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or the freedom of the individual as a person. Achieving eternal life in an
artificial way or not is the goal of the vast majority of the individuals, since we
fear death because we do not know what will happen with our spirit
(consciousness) after the biological matter disappears.
5. Conclusions
Along with the new scientific findings arose a variety of moral issues
that call for debates regarding the use of the new technologies, since we are in
the stage of technological somnambulism where we innovate first and ask
questions later (Metcalfe Rosales, 2009).
In this paper I have analysed the idea of eternal life from the following
perspectives: on the one hand, the Christian perspective and, on the other
hand, the trashumanist perspective, whereas according to the latest research we
are expected to achieve eternal life by year 2050. I believe that this goal of the
scientists violates the bioethical and Christian principles, since one tries to set
aside the Christian concepts regarding life and death, the idea of God, of
Heaven and Hell. In addition, principles such as justice, equality and autonomy
are being violated.
I have also brought into question the possible problems that the
human individual might be facing if he were to accept the eternal life proposed
by transhumanists. When we shall accept artificial immortality, we shall actually
give up our condition of autonomous being that seeks happiness in
rightfulness, justice and the equity of an imperfect society. I believe that we are
being offered a wonderful new world (Huxley, 2011), a sort of artificial,
robotized happiness, which hides soft slavery (Terec-Vlad, Terec-Vlad, 2013)
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the project “ Interdisciplinary excellence
in doctoral scientific research in Romania - EXCELLENTIA” co-funded from
the European Social Fund through the Development of Human Resources
Operational Programme 2007-2013, contract no.
POSDRU/187/1.5/S/155425.”
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What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective
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Biodata
Loredana TEREC-VLAD has graduated from the
Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences within
Petre Andrei University of Iasi, and is an expert in
Organizational Ethics and Ethical Auditing. She has
published various scientific papers in field such as
bioethics, business ethics, economy and organizational
sociology. The author has built a model of understanding
the Superman from Nietzsche and Hitler to transhumanism, seeing soft slavery
as an alternative to classical slavery.
She is PhD Student at Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava and
associated research assistant at Lumen Research Center in Social and
Humanistic Sciences, Romania.
Terec-Vlad, L. (2015). What about Eternal Life? A Transhumanist Perspective. Postmodern Openings, 6(2), 33-41.Doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/po/2015.0602.03