Mutants, cyborgs, AI & Androids - Russell Blackford - Meanjin, March 2004

Mutants, cyborgs, AI & Androids: Russell Blackford surveys the range of prospective ‘new humans’ in the new millennium.

Russell Blackford.

WHAT does it mean to be human? We are, of course, biological creatures, and the question allows a literal answer when approached at that level. Modern humans are classified biologically as Homo sapiens sapiens. We are definable by our genetic code, and are closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos--somewhat less so to gorillas, orang-outangs and gibbons. It is to our own species that Jared Diamond is alluding in the title--and text--of his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee (1991).

We are also physical entities, located in space and time. We occupy a relatively confined place on or near the surface of the planet Earth--which is one of the lesser planets of our local solar system and is separated from the other planets by much greater distances than any we can encounter on the Earth’s surface. Our solar system, in turn, occupies a tiny place in a universe that contains uncountable galaxies, each with many millions of stars. Yet, as physical entities on our planet, we are special in one way: we are extraordinarily complex beings. Our brains and nervous systems contain billions of neurons, with a seemingly unmappable intricacy of interconnections. They are also intimately connected with the other parts of our bodies, and all aspects of their functioning. Nothing else that we have encountered to date matches our extreme organisational and functional complexity, not even the most closely related apes, whose big brains cannot compete with the highly developed human cerebral cortex.

Most important, we are social and fully moral beings. Our current knowledge of human evolution suggests that our immediate precursors were already social animals. As Peter Singer puts it, ‘We were social before we were human.’ (1) From this, Singer argues that our evolutionary ancestors must have restrained their behaviour towards each other to the extent required for their societies to function; they showed the beginnings of morality. But it is not that we merely happen to exercise some restraint towards each other as we pursue our goals; we also believe that this is the right way to act and to live. We perceive each other as having moral worth, as being worthy of moral respect.