{"id":1061,"date":"2015-12-07T21:09:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T02:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2015-12-07T21:09:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T02:09:25","slug":"cyborg-inevitability-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/2015\/12\/07\/cyborg-inevitability-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Cyborg Inevitability&#8221; &amp; Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a child, I was fascinated by blackholes. I remember thinking Mars was pretty cool, but my love for space reached it&#8217;s max at my elementary school blackhole phase. Regardless, I found the lecture last Tuesday incredibly intriguing. And if I&#8217;m being completely honest, a tad disturbing. Roger Launius&#8217;s cyborg discussion is when I really began to furrow my brows. In my philosophy class, we explored the morality of robots and, more generally, the relationship between humans and robots. The concept of a human cyborg, of a\u00a0<em>Six Million Dollar Man<\/em>-esque being perturbs me; I wonder, can this be moral? Certainly this is not natural (although perhaps natural is not always a prerequisite to progress). The idea of &#8220;cyborg inevitability,&#8221; as Launius puts it, assumes that humanity is willing to part ways with the essence of humanity, does it not? If in creating cyborgs we really are able to create &#8220;better, stronger, faster&#8221; humans, what are the moral implications of such an action? Certainly this falls under a similar heading as genetic engineering, and as German philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas tirelessly and convincingly argues, genetic engineering would be doubtlessly destructive for humankind. If cyborgs carry the &#8220;best traits of humanity,&#8221; what happens to regular humans? How does society shift? Will it not become a super-privilege, an even greater system of oppression? If the price is our humanity, is the &#8220;inevitable&#8221; really worth it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a child, I was fascinated by blackholes. I remember thinking Mars was pretty cool, but my love for space reached it&#8217;s max at my elementary school blackhole phase. Regardless, I found the lecture last Tuesday incredibly intriguing. And if&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/2015\/12\/07\/cyborg-inevitability-morality\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6960,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251241],"tags":[258956,258955,258921,22277],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6960"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1062,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/humanslashnature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}