Humanism to Transhumanism. A review of key concepts and authors via a historical analysis.

#Humanism #PositivePsychology #HumanisticPsychology #CognitiveSciences #PositiveNeuroscience #SelfRealization #PersonalDevelopment #Transhumanism #PostHumanism #4IR #AugmentedIntelligence #SalutogenicModel #Salutogenesis #Resilience #HumanEnhancement #CogntiveNeuroscience #Flourishing #HET #NBIC #Biohacking #DIYbio #BodyModification #QuantifiedSelf #Cybernetics #AugmentedHumans #Cyborgs

Introduction

In recent years there have been many advancements in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and bionic engineering. Examples include the release this year of products like Alexa Echo virtual assistant and Microsoft Hololens, and the development of a bionic pancreas (*). This has led to an important debate on the ethics of transhumanism, a movement begun by futurologists and thinkers that support human enhancement through emerging and converging technologies. This debate is starting to come into play in the media. For example, in August of this year, TechCrunch published the article "The ethics of transhumanism" which debated the social impact of the use of emerging technologies in combination with the human body. This debate is of the utmost importance for our society, as we move towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a concept coined by World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab in which he refers to the progressive integration of emerging technologies with our environments and our bodies. However, these ideas of discovering human potential are not new. Humanism (psychology) is another important movement that started in the last century and could have inspired transhumanism.

In this article, I claim that humanism and transhumanism operate to some degree on the same basis, in that they share the goal of fulfilling human potential. I argue that there is a transformation of ideas that goes from humanism to transhumanism. Humanistic psychology, positive psychology and positive neuroscience are some of the main disciplines in between this transition. For the sake of clarity, I will explain each transition with bullets points of important dates and key authors. I also want to remark that, at present, given that they share these similarities, we should develop integrative communities comprised of current humanist and transhumanist thinkers (for instance positive neuroscientists and biohackers), especially in emerging economies. They can work together to study human potential from an unusual perspective and thereby empower their local communities through the development of innovative ventures. I am a true believer that it is supremely important to enhance human capabilities and democratise this knowledge.

Let's start with the definitions:

0- Definitions

On one hand, Humanism is a philosophical movement that emphasises the value of human beings. In psychology, humanists believe that every person has a strong desire to achieve his/her full potential, that is to say, to reach a level of "self-actualization". Notable authors include Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

On the other hand, Transhumanism is an intellectual movement that aims to update the human condition by using emerging and converging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC). They believe in the rights of cognitive liberty, morphological freedom and procreative liberty. Raymon Kurzweil is one of the current most popular transhumanist thinkers.

Now, which ideas inspired humanism?

1- Humanism's Predecessors

• From 2100 BC to 211 BC -> Ancient China: For instance, Ji Liang says, "People are the zhu" (master, lord, dominance, owner or origin) of gods.
• 9th century BC to the 6th century AD -> Ancient Greece: Greek philosophers such as Thales of Miletus and Xenophanes of Colophon explained the world in terms of human reason rather than gods.
• 14th, 15th and 16th centuries -> Renaissance humanism.
• 18th century -> Age of Enlightenment – Thinkers considered the power of reason to be valuable in redefining society.
• 19th and 20th centuries -> Phenomenology: An epistemology adopted by humanists. Authors: Beltrano, Dilthey, Husserl.

What about transhumanism?

2- Transhumanism's Predecessors

• In 1883, Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the concept of the superhuman or "übermensch" in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
• In 1923 the British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane, in his essay Daedalus: Science and the Future, predicted that human biology would be impacted by advancements in science. He was particularly interested in eugenics and ectogenesis.
• In 1948 Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics as:

"the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine."

• In the 1970s, new cybernetics, (also known as second-order cybernetics) emerged in multiple fields such us biology.
• In 1972, Robert Ettinger contributed to the conceptualisation of "transhumanity" in his book Man into Superman.

3- Humanist Psychology's Predecessors

• In 1927, Heidegger, a German philosopher, elaborated the idea of "Being" in his book Being and Time. For him, there is no such thing as the essence of a soul, just the fact of existing. Being is a continuous movement and evolution.
• In 1935, Goldstein, a neurologist, formulated the organismic theory of self-realisation. In his book The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man he explained this concept: 

"The tendency to actualise oneself as fully as possible is the basic drive... the drive of self-actualisation." (Goldstein, 1935)

• In 1946, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl published Man's Search for Meaning. This author is considered an inspiration for humanist psychology.

4- Humanist Psychology

• In the mid-1920s, Carl Rogers, a psychologist from the United States, started working on the study of processes that lead to greater creativity and health.
•  In 1943, Abraham Maslow, a North American humanist psychologist, published the paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in which he presented the concept of the hierarchy of needs, nowadays known as Maslow′s pyramid. Self-actualization is on the top of the pyramid

Humanist psychology was developed as a counterpoint to behavioural and psychoanalytic theory. It was called the third force in Psychology.

According to Maslow:

It is as if Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half

• In 1956, Rogers was awarded a Distinguished Scientific Contribution by the American Psychological Association (APA).
• In 1962, Yalom, a psychologist, also explained the main interest of humanist psychology:

“Humanist psychology is mainly interested in human potential and capabilities that do not take place in the behaviourist, positivist or classic psychoanalytic theories. For instance, love, creativity, self-realization and the higher values of the self, the game, humour, transcendence, mental health and so on."

• In the 1960s, the Human Potential Movement emerged.

5- The move from the Traditional Medic Model to the Salutogenic Model:

Medic model: Before WW2 health was defined just as the absence of disease.

• However, in 1947 the WHO proposed a new definition:

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." ( *)

That was the beginning of the salutogenic approach which focuses on health promotion.

• In 1999, Godoy defined this concept as:

The group of actions related to protection, maintenance and improvement of health at an operative level and the group of actions centred in the individual or community related to the design, elaboration, application and evaluation of programmes and activities that help education, protection and maintenance of health. (Godoy, 1999, p 61-62)

Traditional Psychology was focused only on studying pathological factors. Humanist psychology wanted to study salutogenic factors.

Marietan (1994) formulated two different conceptions of normality according to the medic model:

Statistical: You are normal if you are like most other people.

Normative: You are normal if you have certain desirable qualities.

Maslow proposed a new concept of normality:

The euphysic man or natural man. What the human is, or can potentially become.

The sociologist Aaron Antonovsky proposed asking a new medical question. Instead of asking what make people get ill, he asked, what makes people stay healthy?

• In 1979, he coined the concept of "Salutogenesis". The term describes an approach focusing on factors that support well-being and health, rather than on pathogenic factors (those that cause disease).

Antonovsky's theories reject the "traditional medical-model" that separated health from illness, so:

• In the same year (1979), he proposed the concept of a "health-ease versus dis-ease continuum"

Moreover, Salutogenesis is also connected with the concept of Human enhancement technologies (HET) which transhumanists are really interested in.

HET are technologies that can be applied not simply for treating disability, but also for enhancing human capabilities.

6- Positive Psychology

Humanist psychology studies salutogenesis instead of pathology but it does so without a scientific epistemology. The lack of scientific approach to studying positive aspects of human experience and behaviour has led to the creation of Positive Psychology. This discipline can be defined as the scientific study of positive experiences, positive aspects of individuals as well as the institutions that ease their development.

• In 1998, Positive Psychology was established as a discipline when Martin Seligman became president of the APA.
• In 1999, the first Positive Psychology summit took place.
• 2003 saw the first International Conference on Positive Psychology.

Positive Psychology has a positivist methodology instead of a phenologic methodology, as humanist psychology has. It shares the same theory as cognitive psychology but in this case, positive psychology studies the human mind from a salutogenic perspective.

There are three different research clusters...

1) The study of positive experiences

Lead by Diener.

2) The centre for the study of the characteristics of a positive individual.

Lead by Csikszentmihalyi.

He studies creativity and coined the psychological concept of flow.

3) The centre for the study of positive institutions.

Lead by Hall Jamieson, Csikszentmihalyi & Seligman.

These are some important concepts of Positive Psychology:

• Coping

In psychology, coping means to invest conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimise or tolerate stress and conflict.

• Resilience
• In 2000, Luthar defined resilience as:

The dynamic process that has, as its result, the positive adaptation of a human in a context of great adversity. (p.543).

• Flourishing

This concept is defined as living in an optimal range of human functionality leading to growth, wellness and resilience.

7- Positive Neuroscience

Positive Neuroscience can be defined as a branch of Cognitive Neuroscience that studies human potential and positive experiences.

• In 2009, the University of Pennsylvania started to conduct neuroscientific research into the positive aspects of human behaviour.

8- Transhumanism

• In 1998 the World Transhumanism Association was founded by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce. This is an international organisation which advocates the ethical use of technologies to enhance human capabilities.
• In 1998, the WTA established the Journal of Transhumanism.
• In 2004, it changed its name to journal the Journal of Evolution and Technology. Moreover, it was transferred to the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
• In 2008, the WTA was renamed Humanity+ (HumanityPlus)

9- Biohacking

Biohacking is a growing biotechnological social movement in which individuals, communities, and small organisations study biology and life science using the same methods as traditional research institutions. Biohackers or Grinders are life-hackers who enhance their own bodies with DIY cybernetic devices.

• In 1998, Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics, started the Project Cyborg, that consisted of a set of experiments to upgrade his human condition.
• In 1999, Steve Mann, a Canadian researcher and inventor, created EyeTap digital eye glass. The first known smart glass device.
• In 2004, Neil Harbisson, British-born Catalan artist who has a disease and cannot see colours, attached an antenna to his skull that let him hear colours by transmuting colours to audio signals.
• In 2006, Claudia Mitchell became the first woman with a Bionic arm.
• In 2007, Stelios Arcadiou, a performer, surgically implanted a cybernetic ear surgically attached to his left arm.
• In 2012, Nigel Ackland became the first person to trial a bebionic3 myoelectric prosthetic hand.
• In 2013, Tim Cannon, a software developer, became the first person to be implanted with the biometric sensor Circadia designed by Grindhouse.

Biohacking is also related to the Quantified-Self movement, also known as life-logging which is a movement that uses wearables, software and biohacking technologies to extract biometric data such as food consumption, quality of surrounding air, mood, blood and oxygen levels, tracking this data to improve wellness.

Augmented Intelligence is another concept that refers to the usage of information technology to enhance cognitive abilities.

10- Conclusion

To sum up, Humanism (Psychology) can be considered a predecessor of the Transhumanist movement as they share the idea of studying and developing human potential. Before the 1970s, Medicine was focused only on pathology but in 1979 the salutogenic model was created. Humanistic psychology was born in opposition to psychoanalysis and behaviourism. The need for a scientific methodology to study human potential triggered the move from humanistic psychology to positive psychology. At the same time, advancements in Neuroscience led to the creation of positive neuroscience. As current transhumanists and biohackers are especially interested in NBIC technologies I think that positive neuroscientists and biohackers can potentially work together to develop eclectic communities that promote disruptive entrepreneurship which can impact their society. I think this is of the utmost importance, especially for the development of emerging economies.

References and sources:

• Massachusetts General Hospital (2016). Bionic Pancreas System Successfully Controls Blood Sugar Without Risk of Hypoglycemia.
• O. Hern?s, Christoffer. (2016) "The ethics of transhumanism". Techcrunch.
• Sandberg, Anders (2001). "Morphological freedom -- why we not just want it, but need it". Retrieved February 21, 2006.
•  Wiener, Norbert (1948). Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Karl M. Newell & Peter C. M. Molenaar (1998), Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics to Developmental Process Modeling, p.217.
• Ettinger, Robert (1974). Man into Superman. Avon. ISBN 0-380-00047-4. Archived from the original on August 28, 2013.
• Gancedo, M. (2008). Historia de la Psicología Positiva, antecedentes, aportes y proyecciones. En M. M. Casullo (comp.). Prácticas en Psicología Positiva. Buenos Aires: Editorial Lugar.
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• Goldstein, quoted in Arnold H. Modell, The Private Self (Harvard 1993) p. 44
• Goldstein, Kurt. The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man. 1934. New York: Zone Books, 1995
• Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, in Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, volume 2, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann, 1977, XIV, 586p
• Man's Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8070-1427-1 (Originally published on 1946)
• Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961) p. 350-1
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•  Participants at the 6th Global Conference on Health Promotion. The Bangkok Charter for health promotion in a globalized world. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2005 Aug 11. Accessed 2009 Feb 4.
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Read more:

• Gerpe, Patricio Julian. (2016) Artificial Consciousness: The necessary path to Human Super Intelligence?
• Gerpe, Patricio Julian. (2016) Why is Cognitive Science being reborn?
• https://singularityhub.com/2016/12/21/exponential-growth-will-transform-humanity-in-the-next-30-years/?

v. 1.0 Last edit: 02.01.2017

Author: Patricio Julian Gerpe

Cognitive Business Architect | TEDx Speaker