Transhumanism, Progress and the Future

This paper argues that one can advocate a moral imperative to pursue enhancement technologies while at the same time rejecting the historical reality of progress and holding a pessimistic view of the future. The first half of the paper puts forth several arguments for why progress is illusory and why one has good reason to be pessimistic about the future of humanity (and posthumanity). The second half then argues that this is entirely consistent with also championing the futurological vision of transhumanism. The claim is that, relative to the alternatives proposed, this vision actually offers the safest route into the future, even if it also entails an increase in the probability of self-annihilation. 1. Transhumanism and progress Transhumanism is a recent philosophical and cultural movement that has both descriptive and normative components: (1) the descriptive claim is that current and anticipated future technologies will make it possible to radically alter both our world and persons, not just by “enhancing” the capacities that we already have but also by adding entirely new capacities not previously had. (2) The normative claim is that we ought to do what we can to foment and accelerate the creation of such “enhancement” technologies, thereby converting the possibility of a “posthuman” future into an actuality. A primary focus of the present paper is the notion of progress that one often finds wrapped around the theoretical and programmatic core of transhumanist philosophy. For example, the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), founded by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce in 1998, lists “technological progress” as one of four fundamental conditions necessary for realizing the transhumanist project (Bostrom 2005a); and the extropian Max More specifies “perpetual progress” as one of seven basic “Principles of Extropy” (More 1998). Similarly, the singularitarian Ray Kurzweil situates the idea of progress center-stage in his theory of cosmic history, which identifies exactly six historical epochs through which the universe