Journal of Northeastern University(Social Science) ›› 2018, Vol. 20 ›› Issue (1): 1-6.DOI: 10.15936/j.cnki.1008-3758.2018.01.001

• Scientific and Technological Philosophy •     Next Articles

Type, Paradigm and Ethical Dispute of Human Enhancement

ZHANG Can1,2   

  1. (1. School of Humanities, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China; 2. School of Marxism, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China)
  • Received:2017-05-10 Revised:2017-05-10 Online:2018-01-25 Published:2018-01-19
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Abstract: Emerging human enhancement technologies are increasingly penetrating into the mankind's inner body, constantly building and reinventing human beings. Proponents argue that human enhancement technologies make human beings super-humans while opponents hold that man will eventually become Frankenstein. Human enhancement can be divided into four types: physiological enhancement, cognitive enhancement, moral enhancement and compound enhancement. Human enhancement technologies constantly challenge such traditional concepts as body/mind, natural/artificial and living/non-living, accompanied by ethical disputes including treatment and enhancement, human nature and dignity, moral freedom and social risk. There are different explanation paradigms for these disputes-the biomedical paradigm is focused on the definitions of treatment and enhancement, the transhumanism paradigm gives priority to how to understand the mankind while the social paradigm pays more attention to moral freedom and social risk.

Key words: cognitive enhancement, moral enhancement, biomedical paradigm, transhumanism paradigm

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