Character and the Enhancement Debate (Part One): The Giftedness Argument

Many philosophers consider character to be both morally and existentially important. Perhaps the most prominent example of this attitude can be found amongst virtue ethicists. According to them, the morally good life is the one that consists in the cultivation of valuable character traits such as honesty, courage, justice, and so on. If something were to disrupt or distort virtuous character it would be, from this perspective, a “bad thing”.

Given the prominence of this attitude, it should come as no surprise to learn that many a critic of human enhancement has launched a character-based attack on the idea. Chapter 5 of Allen Buchanan’s book Beyond Humanity takes these critics to task and dismisses most of them with considerable vituperativeness. Over the next few posts, I want to see what Buchanan has to say. I begin in this post by looking briefly at some concepts that will help to frame the debate. I then move on to consider Michael Sandel’s giftedness argument against enhancement.

Bear in mind at the outset that a distinction is typically made in the enhancement debate between therapy or treatment and enhancement . This will crop up from time-to-time over the course of this series. How viable the distinction actually is, is a matter of some dispute: critics of enhancement usually think it is genuine; proponents of enhancement usually think it is not.



1. Character Concerns and Conclusive Reasons
Buchanan starts his chapter by identifying two types of character-based critique of enhancement. They are the expressivist critique and the consequentialist critique. The former maintains that the desire for enhancement is, in and of itself, expressive of a morally corrupt character; the latter maintains that the desire for enhancement has as its consequence the corruption of moral character. Expressivist critiques tend to be more common among the critics of enhancement.

When examining such critiques, we need to ask how exactly they fit in to an overall argument against biomedical enhancement. As Buchanan sees it, there are four possibilities:

(A) Expressivist concerns are conclusive objections to the pursuit of all forms of biomedical enhancement. 

(B) Expressivist concerns are conclusive objections to the pursuit of some forms of biomedical enhancement. 

(C) Expressivist concerns are conclusive objections to the society-wide endorsement of the enhancement enterprise, i.e. liberal democratic states should not lend their imprimatur to enhancement even if it is not completely outlawed or banished. 

(D) Expressivist concerns are merely considerations to be taken into account when deciding which enhancements should be pursued - they should be weighed against competing considerations.

Buchanan thinks that (D) is, by far, the most plausible line that a critic could take. Indeed, it is one that not even the most ardent proponent of enhancement is likely to dispute since they are rarely, if ever, unqualified supporters of all forms of enhancement. Nevertheless, some critics try to push the stronger argument. We’ve actually already come across an example of this on this blog. Nicholas Agar tries to use the precautionary principle to defend an argument against radical enhancement. This argument - the species relativist argument - is partly motivated by character concerns and would seem to be an instance of (B) above.

Another example of an alleged conclusive objection can be found in the work of Michael Sandel. He provides something called the giftedness argument against (all) forms of enhancement. At the start of chapter 5, Buchanan tries to reconstruct and critique this argument. The remainder of this post is dedicated to reporting on his efforts.

2. Sandel’s Argument
Sandel maintains that the use of biomedical enhancement is expressive of a desire for “mastery”. Thus, a person who seeks to biomedically enhance themselves is seeking to control all aspects of their lives, to overcome all contingencies, to leave nothing to chance. This, Sandel proposes, is incompatibile with the sense of “giftedness”. This is the sense that many aspects of one’s life, including those aspects that are most valuable, are the product of events and circumstances outside of your control. Sandel thinks the sense of giftedness is of great value, and that anything which undermines it should be stopped.

Dressing up these thoughts in a more formal garb, Sandel’s argument can be said to look like this (taken directly from Buchanan):

• (1) The sense of giftedness is a central human good (or an important part of good character).
• (2) The drive for mastery is incompatible with the sense of giftedness.
• (3) The employment of biomedical enhancements is an instance of the drive for mastery.
• (4) Therefore, the employment of biomedical enhancements is incompatible with the sense of giftedness (from 2 and 3).
• (5) Therefore, the employment of biomedical enhancements is incompatible with a central human good (or aspect of good character).
• (6) If something is incompatible with a central human good, then this incompatibility is a conclusive reason against it.
• (7) Therefore, there is conclusive reason against biomedical enhancement.

Buchanan notes that (6) is far from obvious here. Likewise, from my perspective, it’s not clear that mastery is necessarily bad and that giftedness is necessarily good. Still, we can grant those premises because the argument appears to fail for another reason.


3. Enhancement and Mastery
This reason has to do with the factual claim embedded in premise (3). If premise (3) is to be believed then all instances of the pursuit of biomedical enhancement are expressive of a drive for mastery. This is, according to Buchanan, “so clearly false that it is hard to know which is more puzzling: the fact that Sandel makes such a claim or the fact that some people have taken it seriously.”

Why is Buchanan so confident in this pronouncement? Well, it’s because he thinks there are several clear counterexamples to it. He cites two. The first involves someone who is having their eyes surgically corrected and decides in the process to seek better than 20/20 vision because it would help improve his birdwatching. Is this person pursuing mastery? Surely not; surely they just want a bit of a leg-up in their hobby? The same seems to be true for those pursuing enhancements such as increased numeracy and proficiency in order to increase their productivity at work. They want a leg-up at work, not control over all contingencies.

This brings in another important consideration: the motives underlying the pursuit of biomedical enhancements would be shared by other non-biomedical forms of enhancement (e.g. putting your children in better schools, giving them music lessons, improving their diet etc.). Are we then to assume that pursuing these more traditional forms of enhancement is indicative of a desire for mastery? That would seem to be the logical implication, but there’s very little criticism of the more traditional forms.

There’s another problem with the whole argument. It’s that it grants far too much power to biomedical enhancement and has far too little respect for the true extent of “giftedness”. Buchanan argues that even if we lived lives of up to 400 years and were cognitively and emotionally enhanced, we would not thereby gain control over all the contingencies affecting our lives. We would still be vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters, still at risk from the actions of others, still beholden to a thousand and one random everyday occurrences. So even with enhancement, there would be space for the sense of giftedness to thrive.

We can sum up these points as follows:

• (8) Several examples of the pursuit of biomedical enhancement would not appear to be indicative of the desire for mastery.
• (9) Biomedical enhancement would not eliminate all contingencies from our lives and so would not stifle the sense of giftedness.

(8) clearly targets premise (3). I’m a little less certain about (9), but I’ve decided that it really functions as a counterargument to the conclusion reached by the first part of Sandel’s argument. I’ve illustrated this in the diagram below.

4. Other Interpretations of Sandel’s Argument
Perhaps all is not lost; perhaps Sandel’s argument can be salvaged if it is reinterpreted in less decisive terms. Buchanan is willing to play this reinterpretive game but observes that it will require us to dismiss what Sandel actually says. (Note: I haven’t read Sandel, so I’m forced to assume that Buchanan’s characterisation here is fair). There are four alternative interpretations worth considering.

First, it may be that Sandel does not mean to imply that enhancement will leave nothing left that is outside of our control. It may be that he means to imply that our sense of giftedness is simply diminished. Buchanan responds to this by saying that since the domain of the contingent is so vast, it’s hard to know in advance whether biomedical enhancements would make a significant dent on it. Particularly not one that warrants giving up on its potential benefits. Buchanan can’t imagine what Sandel would plausibly say to defend even this weaker diminishment argument.

Second, perhaps this argument has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with beliefs. In other words, maybe what matters is that people begin to believe that they have mastery over the contingencies of life, not that this is actually the case. Buchanan responds that this would be a very strong prediction to make. Effectively, it proposes that the pursuit of enhancement will lead to a mass collective delusion. Sandel needs to provide evidence that such a thing is likely.

Third, maybe all Sandel is saying is that enhancement will provide an outlet for some unsavoury tendencies that some people tend to have, such as their overestimation of their ability to control things. Buchanan responds that this has been a standard critique of all forms of technology and is not unique to biomedical enhancement. Thus, it cannot be part of a conclusive case against enhancement. It can only count as another consideration to bear in mind when pursuing the enhancement enterprise.

Fourth, perhaps Sandel is saying that the pursuit of enhancement without limit is the problem, not the pursuit of any kind of enhancement. In that case, Buchanan responds, the argument amounts to little more than a platitudinous warning. No serious proponent of advocates the unrestrained, unregulated pursuit of enhancement technologies. They all urge a serious consideration of the risks and rewards involved.

In the end, even if some of these reinterpretations are successful, they do not support the strong conclusion that Sandel would like to reach. We would be wise to take into consideration Sandel’s warning, but we would be silly to treat it as determinative of anything in isolation from other considerations.

Citizen Cyborg: Agar on Democratic Transhumanism (Part Two)

(Series Index)

This is the second of two posts looking at chapter 8 of Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End . The chapter challenges the sociologist James Hughes’s optimistic views about the fate of the ordinary human being in a posthuman society. At the heart of the chapter is the concern that in a society with radically enhanced beings, ordinary humans are likely to be oppressed, ignored, compelled to undergo enhancement or conscripted into a kind of servitude.

James Hughes thinks that this need not be the case provided there is a shift in the moral framework adopted in a posthuman society. The particular shift which he envisions is one involving the substitution of a human rights based ethic for a personhood based rights ethic. “Personhood” being a broader normative concept which could grant to rights, privileges and responsibilities to humans, posthumans and, indeed, great apes.

Agar is sceptical. He thinks it unlikely that Hughes’s proposed shift will have the desired effect. He does so because the lessons of human history suggest that the dominant moral framework within a society - i.e. that one that actually shapes people’s behaviour - is usually disconnected from the ideals proposed by moral and political philosophers. And it is this dominant moral framework, not the ideal one, with which we are concerned: if this does not change in a posthuman society, then precautionary measures may be warranted.

As noted at the end of the last post, there is some reason to think that the lessons of human history would not apply to a posthuman society. In addition to their increased longevity and cognitive power, radically enhanced humans should also undergo moral enhancement. This could make them less prone to human errors in moral reasoning.

But there’s still cause for scepticism. Agar supports this point by looking at two leading contemporary ethical theories - contractualism and consequentialism - and seeing how they could be applied in a posthuman society. Let’s see what he has to say about each of these.



1. Posthuman Contractualism
A social contract theory of political morality usually takes as its starting point the belief that humans are, essentially, rational maximisers of their own well-being. It follows this with an obvious factual claim: if all individuals pursue their own well-being in an unconstrained, uncoordinated fashion, there will be chaos. Think Hobbesian-state-of-nature-style chaos. Because of this, it makes sense for rational actors to agree to be bound by a set of contractually agreed upon moral norms, enforced by social institutions if need be. Such a contract would be to their mutual advantage.

Self-interest may seem like an inauspicious place from which to begin to develop a moral code, but impressive things can be done if, in imagining the bargaining that might take place place between rational actors, the philosopher is allowed to play with his dearest friend: assumption. Take Rawlsian contractualism as an example. Rawls argued that if the bargainers assume themselves to be behind a veil of ignorance (a device that blinds them from their current traits and privileges) they would agree to a set of institutions that guaranteed equal rights and liberties to all, along with generous redistributions of wealth in favour of the least well-off.

There’s much to admire in what Rawls has to say (if not always in the way he says it) but there’s a snag. The egalitarian outcomes envisaged by Rawls are largely a product of (a) the rough empirical equality that exists between humans in terms of their capacity to thwart each others’ interests and (b) the fact that the bargainers are blinded from some but not all of their current traits and privileges. That rough empirical equality is likely to disappear in a posthuman society and so what gets included in the “some” but not “all” of the veil of ignorance is going to be crucial.

Is there any reason to think that posthumans will place their enhancements behind the veil when deciding on the preferred distribution of rights and rewards? Perhaps, but at the same time perhaps not. There are plenty of beings with whom contemporary humans enter into cooperative enterprises without treating them equally or ignoring differences in capacity.

Agar draws the following analogy: humans coordinate their activities with dogs on many occasions, e.g. dogs help the blind to find their way round and the police to sniff out drugs and we provide them with shelter, food and attention in return. But on neither occasion does the mere fact of cooperation grant the dogs moral privileges on a par with human beings. Posthumans could well take a similar attitude toward humans: they could grant us some rewards but only in proportion to our contributions to the pursuit of their desired ends. That hardly seems like a good outcome for humans.

Remember, Agar follows a precautionary principle. So he thinks that the possibility of this is enough to warrant restrictions of radical enhancement.


2. Posthuman Consequentialism
Suppose that instead of adhering to a contractualist ethic, posthumans adopt a consequentialist one. Would there be greater cause for optimism about the fate of the unenhanced then?

At first glance it might seem that there is. Take, for instance, the views of one of the leading contemporary consequentialists, Peter Singer. Singer is a preference utilitarian. He thinks that moral decision-making should have as its goal the maximisation of preference satisfaction. He has used this principle to advocate for vegetarianism and animal rights. He believes that the human preferences satisfied by the ill-treatment of animals pales in comparison to the animal preferences that are thwarted by that ill-treatment. If Singer can use his principle to advocate for the ethical treatment of animals, then surely posthumans would do something similar for ordinary humans?

There’s a slight problem with this. One that even Singer - trenchant utilitarian and animal rights activist though he is - acknowledges. To see what it is, we need to do two things. First, we must accept that some creatures with moral standing (“persons” in Hughes’s world) will count for more on the preference utilitarian metric than others. For instance, Singer suggests that humans, due to their greater cognitive powers and imaginations, will have a greater number of preferences than, say, a donkey. Second, we need to define something I’m going to call a “tragic choice”. This is a decision-making situation in which the options are limited in such a way that anything you choose to do will make at least one “person” worse off.

One of the key features of a consequentialist ethic like preference utilitarianism is that when faced with a tragic choice, there is still clearly a right answer to the question: what ought one do? The answer is that one should pick the option with the best overall consequences, even if some persons will suffer. So, for example, Singer acknowledges that some animal testing might be morally justified.

Could analogous choices arise for posthuman consequentialists? Could they be forced to choose between increasing aggregate satisfaction at a cost to ordinary humans? Indeed, could ordinary humans be drafted into some kind testing programme much like animals are today? Well, we already noted the possibility of medical conscription when discussing Aubrey de Grey’s ideas. And there are others way in which this could happen too. Agar mentions Kurzweil’s prediction that posthumans will seek to colonise the universe with their digitally uploaded minds. This would involve making using of every scrap of available physical matter, including the biological bodies of ordinary human beings. So a coercive programme of uploading (irrational though it may be) could easily be justified on consequentialist grounds.

This might be fanciful. Agar admits as much noting that perhaps one reason why animal testing can be justified is that animals can speak up or fight back using the language of moral reasoning. Humans, on the other hand, can do both of these things. But even still Agar urges caution. Posthumans are likely to far more sophisticated in their moral reasoning: they are unlikely to be swayed by the emotional appeals and fallacies that plagues contemporary moral debate. This might it more difficult for ordinary humans to make their case.


3. Closing Thoughts
In conclusion, Hughes’s arguments - if they are being fairly represented by Agar - seem naive. Even if posthumans are more morally sophisticated than contemporary humans, there is still some reason to think that the dominant moral codes in posthuman societies would be human-unfriendly.

Assuming that we think a human-unfriendly society would be a bad thing, we have two options: (i) force everyone to undergo radical enhancement or (ii) place restrictions on the development of radical enhancements. Agar finds is species-relative values drawing him toward the second option. Agar ends the chapter by noting that this would not lead to an outright ban on enhancement but, rather, a set of regulatory constraints on the enhancement agendas adopted by members of society.

Citizen Cyborg: Agar on Democratic Transhumanism (Part One)

(Series index)

After a brief interlude in which we discussed some key arguments from the philosophy of mind, I can now return to my odyssey through Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End. I left off having reached the end of chapter 6. Up to now, the book has been an interesting, if not always coherent, collection of arguments.

In this post, I turn my attention to chapter 8. In it Agar discusses the views of the sociologist James Hughes. Hughes’s work attempts to address head-on the concerns some have about the social implications of radical human enhancement.

But hang on a minute, amn’t I forgetting something? What, I hear you ask, happened to chapter 7? Well, faithful reader, I regret to inform you that chapter 7 was somewhat of a disappointment. It discussed the views of the philosopher Nick Bostrom but said relatively little of interest. Nevertheless, in the spirit of completeness, I will begin by offering an exceptionally brief summary of its contents.




1. Summary of Chapter 7
Bostrom’s back catalogue of papers is both vast and diverse so it was rather unsurprising to find Agar taking a fairly narrow perspective on it. He started by looking at Bostrom and Ord’s paper on the status quo bias in ethical reasoning. In this paper, Bostrom and Ord argue that many conservative critics of enhancement are guilty of harbouring an unreasonable loyalty to the existing state of humanity (the existing status quo).

To ensure that their loyalty to the status quo is not unreasonable, those critics should be forced to undergo a reversal test. The terms of this test dictate that the critic should ask, if they think changing the value of a parameter such as human intelligence in one direction is bad, whether changing it in the other direction is also bad. If they answer yes, then they must think the current state of things is optimal. They need to provide some reason for thinking that. If they cannot, then they are guilty of the status quo bias.

Agar didn’t really have much to say about this except that loyalty to the current state of affairs may also be due to the endowment effect -- which is an emotional attachment to the familiar -- and that this might not be unreasonable.

Agar then turned to consider Bostrom’s claim that many critics of enhancement actually share the values that support enhancement. Bostrom justified this claim by making use of Lewis’s dispositional theory of desires. According to this theory, occurrent conscious desires are not the only desires that agents might be said to have -- counterfactually determined desires (“X would desire Y if...”) are also at play. Agar argued that the kinds of counterfactual considerations Bostrom was willing to apply when assessing the desires of the critics of enhancement made a mockery of the dispositional theory.

Finally, Agar argued that Bostrom’s enthusiasm for radical enhancement may itself be the product of a focalism bias. This bias arises when we consider the future. Roughly, it seems to be true that the further and further into the future we project our plans and aspirations, the more and more contextual and complicating factors we seem to ignore. Thus, the idea is that Bostrom’s predictions about the wonders of our posthuman future may be due to his ignoring the contextual complications of enhancement.

2. The Posthuman Society
Moving on then to chapter 8, we need to start by appreciating the concern that critics have about the social implications of radical enhancement. Science fiction has many a rich dystopian vein that could be tapped at this point, but instead of doing that we’ll look to the views of Francis Fukuyama.

Fukuyama is a political theorist who earned a certain level of notoriety in the early 1990s for his “end of history” thesis. His claim was that after the collapse of Soviet Union the political state had reached an evolutionary plateau of sorts: liberal captialist democracies founded on individual freedom and the rule of law had won the day and they could be expected to dominate for the foreseeable future. Why? Because such a system of government is a perfect fit with human nature.

How does this perfect fit come about? Liberal states are founded on an assumption of moral equality. And that assumption is in turn founded on the assumption of rough empirical equality: although some people may be better than others along some dimensions, no group has a decisive advantage over another. That assumption turns out to be true. Hence the perfect fit.

But now we come to the problem: Radical enhancement may destroy the delicate balance that has arisen between human nature and liberal political governance. Radically enhanced humans will have decisive advantages over the unenhanced, and they may be inclined to put (strictly metaphorical) saddles on their backs as a result. The moral assumptions of the liberal state will no longer be tenable.


3. Citizenship and Personhood
Enter the reassuring head of the posthuman cavalry: James Hughes. He argues that Fukuyama’s dystopian vision need not become a reality. All we have to do is change the dominant moral framework in contemporary societies.

At present, the dominant moral framework is premised on the notion of human rights. Human beings, in virtue of their membership of the human species, are afforded certain moral and legal protections and entitlements. This is reflected in the human rights-oriented doctrines that pervade international and domestic laws.

This, Hughes argues, needs to change. We need to replace the species-centric framework of human rights with a more inclusive framework premised on the notion of personhood. Under this framework, any being worthy of moral concern will warrant the label person and will thereby obtain all the rights and privileges currently reserved for humans. Now this poses the question: Which properties make a being worthy of moral concern? All I can tell from Agar’s discussion is that Hughes’s has a fairly broad conception of the relevant properties. For instance, he thinks that great apes, humans, posthumans and artificial intelligences will all deserve to be called persons. (Perhaps, sentience or self-awareness is the criterion).

As Agar notes, Hughes thinks that quite a lot follows from this shift in moral perspective: all persons will have rights and responsibilities toward one another. In particular, posthumans will have a duty to respect the rights and autonomy normal humans, in much the same way that we now respect the rights and autonomy of the disabled.


4. A Precautionary Approach
There’s so much that could be said about this proposal that it almost makes my head hurt. Fortunately, we can narrow the focus somewhat. As Agar notes, the moral rectitude of Hughes’s proposal need not concern us. What matters is whether the shift in moral perspective will actually bring about the changes he envisions. And here there is some reason to be sceptical.

After all, moral ideals and laws do not change social conditions overnight. Anyone who works in the area of human rights will be painfully aware that translating ideals into realities can be a struggle. What’s more, changes can often only be sustained through constant vigilance and agitation. Cultural and social inertia has a real effect: slavery continued well after it was intellectually dismissed, and women continue to experience oppression despite significant legal and moral victories.

Hughes needs to show that his moral framework will guide the actual behaviour of the citizens in posthuman societies, that they won’t fall under the sway of cultural inertia. And there may be some cause for optimism on this front. Moral enhancement, in addition to physiological and cognitive enhancement, could well be part of the enhancement agenda. This might prevent posthumans from falling prey to the moral vices that have afflicted previous human societies.

At this point, Agar falls back on his precautionary strategy: if there is some reason to think posthuman society would not avoid those moral vices, then this might be sufficient to warrant rejection of radical enhancement. Unsurprisingly, Agar thinks there is some reason. We’ll see why the next time out.

Posts on Humanity's End by Nicholas Agar

Here's an index to all the posts I've written on Nicholas Agar's book Humanity's End. Agar's book is a contribution to the scholarly debate on the merits of human enhancement. It presents a species-relativist argument against radical enhancement and it assesses the views of Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom and James Hughes.

(More are on the way. I'm determined to make it through the whole thing.)

Index
1. An Introduction to the Species-Relativist Argument

2. The Species-Boundary Line

3. Should we upload our minds? The Searlian Wager (Part 1)

4. Should we upload our minds? The Searlian Wager (Part 2)

5. Who Wants to Live Forever? Agar on Negligible Senescence (Part 1)

6. Who Wants to Live Forever? Agar on Negligible Senescence (Part 2)

Who Wants to Live Forever? Agar on Negligible Senescence (Part Two)

He'd like to live forever, would you?

(Part One)

This post is the second in a brief series looking at Nicholas Agar’s critical assessment of the pursuit of strategies for negligible senescence (SENS). This is an idea associated with the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey. The pursuit of SENS, if successful, could allow us to live indefinitely extended lives with all the vim and vigour of young adults. Accepting that such a programme is feasible, the key critical question is whether we should pursue it.

In part one, I sketched a basic pro-SENS argument. I also sketched Agar’s three main lines of attack on that argument. In this post, I will go through all three in more detail. One general note at the outset: most of Agar’s comments depend on speculative predictions about the likely outcomes of negligible sensescent. As a fan of science fiction, I enjoy this, but it might prove to be frustratingly suppositional for some.


1. An (un)healthy dose of Fear
Agar argues, contra de Grey, that the success of SENS will not allow us to live lives that are roughly comparable to those lived by contemporary young adults. The reason being that a massively extended lifespan will dramatically alter one’s attitude towards certain kinds of risky activities. In short, it will turn you into a simpering, cowering wreck, paralysed by pathetic anxieties and reluctant to set foot outside your own door for fear of some fatal accident befalling you. The logic behind Agar’s sentiments is easily expressed.

Consider a simple decision that might face you today: the decision of whether or not to drive to the cinema to meet your friends and watch a movie. There are risks and rewards that need to be assessed when making this decision. There is the small, but nonzero, risk of a fatal road accident, and there is the moderate, but not negligible, reward of enjoying a congenial evening with your friends. For most of us today, unless we have other more pressing commitments, the rewards of going to the cinema will probably outweigh the risks.

But things will be oh so different for the negligibly senescent. They will have so much more to lose from the trip to the cinema. A forty-year-old senescing human being can expect to have maybe ten or twenty years of good health left (followed by more years of deteriorating health); a forty-year-old negligibly senescent being will expect to have maybe 1000 years of good health left. The increased life expectancy means the negligibly senescent have more to lose and so will have increased costs associated with a simple decision like driving to the cinema. [I’d like to see a calculation here, but Agar doesn’t offer one]

De Grey himself confirms the idea that the negligibly senescent will be more risk averse. He comments in one interview (p. 115 of Agar) that he reckons once we achieve negligible senescence driving will be outlawed because it is too dangerous. He resiles from this somewhat in a later interview when he suggests that cars will simply become more heavily protected. Whatever form it takes, increased risk aversion does seem to be likely consequence of increased life expectancy, as is evinced by contemporary attitudes to health and safety compared to those of former generations.

Increased risk aversion will have significant impacts on the kinds of lives the negligibly senescent will live. An increased reluctance to drive is only the start. Driving, after all, is a relatively safe activity. What about foreign travel to the more distressed regions of the globe or high-impact sports? Both could be ruled out, along with many more enjoyable activities such as real (as opposed to virtual) sexual intercourse. And this is where we hit upon the crucial point: becoming more risk averse might result in us losing much of what we value. Here we get a whisper of Agar’s species-relativist argument -- a whisper that will wait until chapter 9 to be properly heard.

There is a flipside to negligible senescence and risk that must also be addressed. While it is probably true to say that the negligibly senescent will avoid exposing themselves to sources of sudden or accidental risk, the same does not hold true for their exposure to sources of gradual or accumulating risk.

Currently, activities such as smoking and the excessive consumption of fast food are risky, but only in the sense that their continuation gradually increases the risk of contracting disease or illness. The advances medical treatment that accompany negligible senescence can be expected to reverse the risk associated with these activities. As a result, although we may become more isolated, timid, stay-at-home beings, we can at least smoke and eat to fill the emotional void in our lives.



[Cork band Fred sing about the need for a healthy dose of fear...]



2. Hidden Costs
Agar’s second line of attack on the pursuit of SENS is to point out that there may be hidden costs associated with extended life. These costs might be such as to reduce life expectancy from that envisioned by de Grey.

The main hidden cost is likely to come from an increased susceptibility to bacterial and viral infection. Bacteria and viruses reproduce and evolve at a frightening rate. As they do so, they tend to adapt to meet the challenges posed by their environments. This is readily apparent in the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. At the moment, outside of antibiotics, sex and death are among our primary defences against such pathogens.

Bacteria and viruses attack the body by attaching themselves to protein receptors on our cell surfaces. Sometimes they are unable to do this because they have not adapted to latch onto the relevant protein receptors. But given enough time, they are likely to do so (indeed, de Grey makes use of the adaptability of bacteria in part of his scientific defence of SENS). This is where sex and death enter the picture. Death ensures that particular types of cell surfaces don’t hang around for too long; and sex allows for novel combinations of genetic material to create new receptors.

But since the negligibly senescent won’t be dying as early, and will probably not reproduce (to prevent overpopulation), they may become highly susceptible to infectious disease. Defenders of SENS can, of course, interject here that medical advances may be able to counter the effect of these highly adaptive bacteria and viruses. This is indeed possible, but that’s not the issue. The issue is whether it is likely. Bacteria evolve quickly, are we confident that medical advances will outpace them? This is something we need to consider when determining the desirability of pursuing SENS.


3. Social Costs
Agar’s final line of attack looks to the possible social costs of pursuing SENS. We’ve already commented on the effects of negligible senescence on the individual and their attitude to risk. How might those individual effects translate into social effects?

On the one hand, there might be some laudable social effects. Due to their increased risk-aversion, the negligibly senescent are likely to avoid the hollow pursuit of glory on the battlefield. Violent conflicts and wars may become a thing of the past as we all retreat to our hermitages to indulge our predilections for fast food, cigars and virtual sex.

We must, however, be careful when considering such positive effects. If different societies achieve negligible senescence at different times, then those who have achieved it may become more vulnerable to attack from those who have not (and are still hungry for glory on the battlefield). This concern is not strictly speculative. As far as I recall, some believe the increased risk aversion of Western societies is what renders them vulnerable to, for example, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. The concern could be overcome by making negligible senescence available to all at the same time, but Agar thinks this will be highly unlikely: the wealthy funders of SENS are unlikely to wish to hold-off on receiving its benefits until they become universally available. Robot armies might also be an option, but Agar has already expressed qualms about making artificial intelligence too intelligent.

There is a deeper problem here. Increased risk aversion may end up compromising the very foundations of the SENS programme. If we are to achieve de Grey’s goal of longevity escape velocity (LEV) then we need to launch an aggressive campaign of developing and testing medical interventions. But testing such interventions is a risky business. Who among the risk averse is likely to subject themselves to unproven techniques?

Agar marches off into highly speculative territory in responding to this. He reckons the War on Aging (de Grey’s term, not Agar’s) will lead to an increased disregard for the welfare and rights of those subjected to medical tests. He suggests that the use of those who do not have access to longevity increasing treatments could be used as guinea pigs, and that the introduction of a kind of medical conscription is not impossible.

Anyone interested in pursuing these kinds of scenarios further would be well-advised to read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never let me Go (or check out the film of the same name). It depicts a society that breeds an underclass of donors whose organs are harvested in order to help others live for longer. It’s beautifully written and highly evocative

Who Wants to Live Forever? Agar on Negligible Senescence (Part One)

He'd like to live forever, would you?

Welcome to yet another entry in my series on Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End. Thus far, my relationship with the book has been somewhat dysfunctional. I was sceptical but intrigued by the species-relativist argument that Agar proposed in chapters 1 and 2; and I was disappointed by his failure to develop the argument further in chapters 3 and 4 (although I did, admittedly, enjoy the Searle’s wager argument).

I’m now going to turn my attention to chapters 5 and 6 of the book. In these chapters, Agar critically assesses the views of the Rasputin-esque computer-scientist-turned-gerontologist Aubrey de Grey. De Grey defends both the feasibility and desirability of pursuing strategies for engineering negligible senescence (or SENS for short). These are strategies that will slow down or completely halt the deterioration that is typically associated with aging. If successful, SENS may allow us to live lives of indefinite length (de Grey suggests up to 1000 years at least) with all the vim and vigour of young adulthood.

The initial phase of Agar’s critical assessment of de Grey (chapter 5) focuses on the science of SENS. I’m not going to address this, fascinating and all as it is, because I’m ill-qualified to do so. The important conclusion that Agar draws from this assessment is that de Grey’s views have considerable plausibility and that the funding of SENS is a public policy goal that could yield the desired fruit. The key question, however, is whether it would be desirable to do so. That is the question addressed in chapter 6 and it is the one I will focus on here.


1. The Irrationality of Deathism
To many in the transhumanist movement, the idea that SENS is undesirable seems downright irrational. Life, at least during its prime, is full of enjoyable experiences that we would all like to continue. To oppose SENS is to embrace the desirability of death. An ideology that is sometimes termed “deathism”.

Consider the charming picture that de Grey paints of an indefinitely extended life:

“For the moment, when you retire, you retire forever. We’re sorry for old people because they’re going downhill. [When negligible senescence is available] there will be no real moral or sociological requirement to do that....retirement will be a periodic thing. You’ll be a journalist for 40 years or whatever and then you’ll be sick of it and you’ll retire on your savings or on a state pension, depending on what the system is. So after 20 years, golf will have lost its novelty value [clearly a comment by someone who doesn’t play golf-JD], and you’ll want to do something else with your life. You’ll get more training and education, and go and be a rock star for 40 years and then retire again and so on” (de Grey, quoted on p. 108 of Agar's book).

Sounds lovely doesn't it? The sentiments expressed here suggest that the following kind of argument can be conscripted in service of SENS. (Call this the “pro-SENS argument”)

• (1) Our lives, as lived with the health, well-being and enthusiasm associated with early-adulthood, are desirable and so we should desire their continuance in that form.

• (2) SENS holds the possibility that (a) life could continue indefinitely (b) with the health, well-being, and enthusiasm of early adulthood.

• (3) Therefore, we should desire to pursue SENS.

I think this argument speaks for itself, but perhaps a word or two should be said about premise (1). Note that this premise does not propose that continued existence, in and of itself, is a good thing. This is important. Suppose scientists someday discover a technique for changing us gradually into tortoises (preserving our consciousness all the while). This would allow us to live the kinds of extended lives currently enjoyed by tortoises. Would this be desirable? Agar thinks not and I agree. It is only the kind of experiences had during the optimal phases of human life that might be worth continuing.



2. The Boredom Objection and Agar’s Strategy
But is even this kind of existence worth pursuing? There is a classic boredom-based objection to premise (1). It is associated with the work of Bernard Williams but anyone who has read Robert Heinlein’s novel Time Enough for Love will be familiar with it. The story begins with Lazarus Long, the oldest human being in the universe, who becomes bored after two millenia experiencing all the universe has to offer and decides he wants to die. This is a sentiment I think we can appreciate.

But as a source of criticism this sentiment is not particularly persuasive, and I think Agar justifiably gives it short shrift in his analysis. I won’t repeat all aspects of his analysis but I will suggest two main reasons that can be offered to justify the dismissal: (i) even if we would eventually get bored this does not mean significantly extending our life expectancy relative to what it is now would be a bad thing; and (ii) there is always the opt-out of suicide.

Despite the failure of the boredom-objection, Agar still thinks that the pro-SENS argument is unpersuasive. Why might he think this? He has three main lines of attack. First, he argues that there are reasons to think that the negligibly senescent would live lives that are quite different from those currently lived by typical humans in the prime of life. This would effectively be a rebuttal to (2b). Second, he argues that there might be unintended consequences associated with SENS that prevent it from extending life expectancy by as much as we might like. This would target (2a). Finally, he suggests that the pursuit of SENS could have undesirable social effects. This would give us reason to think about the desire of pursuing continued existence at all costs, and might lead to a significantly more compromised version of premise (1).

I’ll consider all three lines of attack in more detail in part two.

Should we Upload Our Minds? Agar on Searle's Wager (Part Two)

(Part One)

This post is the second in a brief series looking at Nicholas Agar’s Searlian Wager argument. The argument is a response to Ray Kurzweil’s claim that we should upload our minds to some electronic medium in order to experience the full benefits of the law of accelerating returns. If that means nothing to you, read part one.

The crucial premise in the Searlian Wager argument concerns the costs and benefits of uploading your mind versus the costs and benefits of not uploading your mind. To be precise, the crucial premise says that the expected payoff of uploading your mind is less than the expected payoff of not uploading your mind. Thus, it would not be rational to upload your mind.

In this post I want outline Agar’s defence of the crucial premise.


1. Agar’s Strategy
The following is the game tree representing Searle’s Wager. It depicts the four outcomes that arise from our choice of whether to upload or not under the two possible conditions (Strong AI or Weak AI).

The initial force of the Searlian Wager derives from recognising the possibility that Weak AI is true. For if Weak AI is true, the act of uploading would effectively amount to an act of self-destruction. But recognising the possibility that Weak AI is true is not enough to support the argument. Expected utility calculations can often have strange and counterintuitive results. To know what we should really do, we have to know whether the following inequality really holds (numbering follows part one):

• (6) Eu(~U) > Eu(U)

But there’s a problem: we have no figures to plug into the relevant equations, and even if we did come up with figures, people would probably dispute them (“You’re underestimating the benefits of uploading”, “You’re underestimating the costs of uploading” etc. etc.). So what can we do? Agar employs an interesting strategy. He reckons that if he can show that the following two propositions hold true, he can defend (6).

• (8) Death (outcome c) is much worse for those considering to upload than living (outcome b or d).

• (9) Uploading and surviving (a) is not much better, and possibly worse, than not uploading and living (b or d).

As I say, this strategy is interesting. While I know that it is effective for a certain range of values (I checked), it is beyond my own mathematical competence to prove that it is generally effective (i.e. true for all values of a, b, c, and d, and all probabilities p and 1-p, that satisfy the conditions set down in 8 and 9). If anyone is comfortable trying to prove this kind of thing, I’d be interested in hearing what they have to say.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to spell out how Agar defends (8) and (9).


2. A Fate Worse than Death?
On the face of it, (8) seems to be obviously false. There would appear to be contexts in which the risk of self-destruction does not outweigh the potential benefit (however improbable) of continued existence. Such a context is often exploited by the purveyors of cryonics. It looks something like this:

You have recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The doctors say you’ve got six months to live, tops. They tell you to go home, get your house in order, and prepare to die. But you’re having none of it. You recently read some adverts for a cryonics company in California. For a fee, they will freeze your disease-ridden body (or just the brain!) to a cool -196 C and keep it in storage with instructions that it only be thawed out at such a time when a cure for your illness has been found. What a great idea, you think to yourself. Since you’re going to die anyway, why not take the chance (make the bet) that they’ll be able to resuscitate and cure you in the future? After all, you’ve got nothing to lose.

This is a persuasive argument. Agar concedes as much. But he thinks the wager facing our potential uploader is going to be crucially different from that facing the cryonics patient. The uploader will not face the choice between certain death, on the one hand, and possible death/possible survival, on the other. No; the uploader will face the choice between continued biological existence with biological enhancements, on the one hand, and possible death/possible survival (with electronic enhancements), on the other.

The reason has to do with the kinds of technological wonders we can expect to have developed by the time we figure out how to upload our minds. Agar reckons we can expect such wonders to allow for the indefinite continuance of biological existence. To support his point, he appeals to the ideas of Aubrey de Grey. de Grey thinks that -- given appropriate funding -- medical technologies could soon help us to achieve longevity escape velocity (LEV). This is when new anti-aging therapies consistently add years to our life expectancies faster than age consumes them.

If we do achieve LEV, and we do so before we achieve uploadability, then premise (8) would seem defensible. Note that this argument does not actually require LEV to be highly probable. It only requires it to be relatively more probable than the combination of uploadability and Strong AI.


3. Don’t you want Wikipedia on the Brain?
Premise (9) is a little trickier. It proposes that the benefits of continued biological existence are not much worse (and possibly better) than the benefits of Kurweil-ian uploading. How can this be defended? Agar provides us with two reasons.

The first relates to the disconnect between our subjective perception of value and the objective reality. Agar points to findings in experimental economics that suggest we have a non-linear appreciation of value. I’ll just quote him directly since he explains the point pretty well:

For most of us, a prize of $100,000,000 is not 100 times better than one of $1,000,000. We would not trade a ticket in a lottery offering a one-in-ten chance of winning $1,000,000 for one that offers a one-in-a-thousand chance of winning $100,000,000, even when informed that both tickets yield an expected return of $100,000....We have no difficulty in recognizing the bigger prize as better than the smaller one. But we don’t prefer it to the extent that it’s objectively...The conversion of objective monetary values into subjective benefits reveals the one-in-ten chance at $1,000,000 to be significantly better than the one-in-a-thousand chance at $100,000,000 (pp. 68-69).

How do these quirks of subjective value affect the wager argument? Well, the idea is that continued biological existence with LEV is akin to the one-in-ten chance of $1,000,000, while uploading is akin to the one-in-a-thousand chance of $100,000,000: people are going to prefer the former to the latter, even if the latter might yield the same (or even a higher) payoff.

I have two concerns about this. First, my original formulation of the wager argument relied on the straightforward expected-utility-maximisation-principle of rational choice. But by appealing to the risks associated with the respective wagers, Agar would seem to be incorporating some element of risk aversion into his preferred rationality principle. This would force a revision of the original argument (premise 5 in particular), albeit one that works in Agar’s favour. Second, the use of subjective valuations might affect our interpretation of the argument. In particular it raises the question: Is Agar saying that this is how people will in fact react to the uploading decision, or is he saying that this is how they should react to the decision?

Agar’s second line of defence for premise (9) concerns species-relative values and claims that converting ourselves into electronic beings will result in the loss of experiences and motivations that are highly valuable. Here, at last, we get a whisper of Agar’s main argument, but alas it remains a whisper. He promises to elaborate further in chapter nine.


4. Conclusion
This concludes Agar’s main defence of the Searlian Wager argument. The implication of the argument is simple: the greater certainty attached to continued biological existence will make it the more attractive option. As a result, it will never be rational to upload our minds.

Following on from his main defence, Agar looks at the possibility of testing to see whether uploading preserves conscious experience before deciding to fully upload ourselves. This could reduce the uncertainty associated with the wager and thus make uploading the rational choice. Agar thinks any proposed experiments are unlikely to prove what we would like them to prove. The uncertainty would seem to be at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness.

Finally, Agar also discusses, at the end of chapter four, the problem of unfriendly AI and the dangers associated with creating electronic copies of yourself. I won’t discuss these issues here. Enough food for thought should have been provided by the wager argument itself.

Should we Upload Our Minds? Agar on Searle's Wager (Part One)

I’m currently working my way through Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End. The book is a contribution to the ongoing debate over the merits of human enhancement. Agar develops and defends something he calls the species-relativist argument against radical enhancement. I set out the basic structure of this argument, and commented on some of its key elements, in previous posts. My comments were based on my reading of chapters 1 and 2 of the book. I now wish to turn my attention to chapters 3 and 4.

My initial reaction to these chapters is one of disappointment. Things had been running along rather smoothly up until this point: Agar had set out his conclusion, told us how he was going to argue for it, and left some important threads of the argument dangling tantalisingly before us. That he didn’t continue with its development was rather surprising.

For you see, in chapters 3 and 4, Agar discusses the views of the arch-technological utopianist Ray Kurzweil. This was not unexpected -- Agar told us he would discuss the views of four pro-enhancement writers in chapter 1 -- what was unexpected was the aspect of Kurweil’s arguments he chose to discuss. Only the faintest whispers of the species-relativist argument can be heard in the two chapters.

Despite this shortcoming, there is still much of value in Agar’s discussion of Kurzweil. And over the next two posts I want to focus on what I take to be the most interesting aspect of that discussion: the Searle’s Wager argument.


1. Wager Arguments in General
We are all familiar with the concept of a wager. It is a concept that applies in a certain kind of decision-making context, one with uncertainty. So you put money on a horse because you think it might win a race; you bet with your insurance company that your house will burn down in the coming year; and so on.

Those contexts can be described in a cumbersome form, using the tools of informal argumentation; or they can be described in a more elegant form, using the tools of decision theory. I’ll run through both forms of description here.

This is the cumbersome form, it assumes that there are two possible states of the world and two possible courses of action:

• (1) The world is either in state X (with probability p) or state Y (with probability 1-p); and you can choose to do either φ or ψ.

• (2) If the world is in state X and you do φ, then outcome a will occur; alternatively, if you do ψ, then outcome b will occur.

• (3) If the world is in state Y and you do φ, then outcome c will occur; alternatively, if you do ψ then outcome d will occur.

• (4) Therefore, the expected payoff or utility of φ (Eu(φ)) = (p)(a) + (1-p)(c); and the expected payoff of ψ (Eu(ψ)) = (p)(b) + (1-p)(d). (from 1, 2, and 3)

• (5) You ought to do whatever yields the highest expected payoff.

• (6) So if Eu(φ) > Eu(ψ), you ought to do φ; and if Eu(ψ) > Eu(φ) you ought to do ψ.

That’s it. As I said, this is a cumbersome way of expressing the logic of the wager. The more elegant way uses the same set of equations and inequalities, but represents the decision-making context in a graphical or diagrammatic form. One form of representation uses a decision tree (or game tree) and the other form uses an outcome matrix. The latter should be familiar to anyone who has been reading my series on game theory.

I prefer the tree representation and I give it below. The first node in this tree represents Nature. Nature is like a player in a game, albeit an unusual one. She (I’ll use the convention of viewing nature as a female) selects the possible states of the world in accordance with certain probabilities, not in anticipation of what you might do (which is what a strategic player would do). To get the picture right you can imagine Nature rolling a dice before making her move. The second set of nodes represents you. You have to make a decision about the most appropriate thing for you to do. You do so in accordance with the standard principles of practical rationality: pick the option with the highest expected payoff, given what you know about the likely probabilities guiding Nature’s move.

The Wager

This should all be relatively straightforward. Where wager arguments tend to get interesting is when they point to one overwhelmingly good (or bad) outcome, that can make it rational to choose the action that leads to (or avoids) that outcome, even when the probability of that outcome arising is very low.

The most famous example of such a wager argument comes, of course, from Pascal. He argued that even if the probability of God’s existence was low (perhaps exceedingly low), the expected reward that comes from believing in his existence is so high, that it would be practically rational to believe in his existence. This is because the costs of all the earthly encumbrances of belief pale in comparison to the potential rewards.



2. Uploading our Minds
Agar employs a very similar argument in response to Kurweil’s view that we should, in the future, upload our minds to an electronic, non-biological medium. He calls it the Searlian wager argument because it utilises some of the views of the cantankerous old Berkeley philosopher John Searle. As you can probably guess from my description, Searle is not the most agreeable of figures (at least, not to me). Still, that shouldn’t cloud our judgment of Agar’s argument which, despite its appeal to Searle, seems quite legitimate to me.

First things first, what would it mean to upload our minds? Agar envisions two possible scenarios. The first is a one-off scenario in which a fully biological being presses a button and completely copies his or her psychology into a computer. The second involves a step-by-step process in which a biological being gradually replaces parts of his or her mind with electronic analogues until eventually the electronic components dominate.

Second question: why might this seem like a good thing to do? Answer: it would allow us to take full advantage of the law of accelerating returns.* As Agar puts it (describing Kurweil’s position):

“The message from AI is that anything done by the brain can be done better by electronic chips. According to Kurzweil, those who grasp this message will progressively trade neurons for neuroprostheses. When the transfer of mind into machine is complete, our minds will be free to follow the trajectory of accelerating improvement...We’ll soon become millions and billions of times more intelligent than we currently are.”

Sounds good, right?

Maybe not. Agar thinks there is crucial uncertainty facing the person making the decision to upload. And that the uncertainty is such as to make the potential costs of uploading outweigh any of the benefits arising from being “millions and billions of times more intelligent than we currently are.”

The crucial uncertainty arises from the fact that there are two possible theories of artificial intelligence:

Strong AI: According to this theory it will be possible someday to create a computer that is capable of genuine, conscious thought. In other words, a computer that will have experiences that are similar to those had by ordinary human beings (the experiences may, of course, be more stupendous and awe-inspiring, but they will be there nonetheless).

Weak AI: According to this theory although it might be possible for computers to completely mimic and simulate aspects of human thought and behaviour, this does not mean that the computer will actually have conscious experiences and thoughts like those had by human being. To believe that a computer simulating thought is actually consciously thinking, is like believing that a computer simulating a volcano is actually erupting.

Kurweil defends the first theory. Searle defends the second. Who is right does not matter. All that matters is that it is possible for Weak AI to be true. This possibility creates the conditions necessary for the wager argument to thrive.



3. The Searlian Wager Outlined
The Searlian Wager argument can now be stated. We start with the premise that our conscious experience is valuable to us. In fact, it might be supremely valuable to us: the ground from which all other personal values emanate. So it follows that it would be pretty bad for us to lose our consciousness. But according to Weak AI that’s exactly what might happen if we choose to upload ourselves to a computer. Now, admittedly, Weak AI is just a possibility, but the loss it entails is sufficient to outweigh any of the potential benefits from uploading. Thus, following the logic of the wager argument, it will never be rational to choose to upload.

Let’s restate that argument in the more cumbersome form:

• (1) It is either the case that Strong AI is true (with probability p) or that Weak AI is true (with probability 1-p); and you can either choose to upload yourself to a computer (call this “U”) or not (call this “~U”).

• (2) If Strong AI is true, then either: (a) performing U results in us experiencing the benefits of continued existence with super enhanced abilities; or (b) performing ~U results in us experiencing the benefits of continued biological existence with whatever enhancements are available to us that do not require uploading.

• (3) If Weak AI is true, then either: (c) performing U results in us destroying ourselves; or (d) performing ~U results in us experiencing the benefits of continued biological existence with whatever enhancements are available to us that do not require uploading.

• (4) Therefore, the expected payoff of uploading ourselves (Eu(U)) is = (p)(a) + (1-p)(c); and the expected payoff of no uploading ourselves (Eu(~U) is = (p)(b) + (1-p)(d).

• (5) We ought to do whatever yields the highest expected payoff.

• (6) Eu(~U) > Eu(U)

• (7) Therefore, we ought not to upload ourselves.

Here’s the relevant game tree.

Searle's Wager

What are we to make of this argument? Is it any good? Well, one obvious problem is that we have no figures to plug into the relevant equations and inequalities. And it is these equations and inequalities that carry all the weight. In particular, the inequality expressed in premise (6) seems to be the crux of the argument. Agar thinks that this premise can be defended. We'll see why in the next part.


* The law of accelerating returns posits that the returns we receive from technological advance grow at an exponential, as opposed to linear, rate.

The Species-Relativist Argument: The Boundary Line

I’m currently reading Nicholas Agar’s book Humanity’s End. It is an interesting contribution to the ongoing to debate over the merits of human enhancement.

In an earlier post, I introduced Agar’s species-relativist argument against radical human enhancement. The argument proposes that because our use of radical enhancement technologies may lead to the creation of a new species, and because the experiences of that species may not be valuable to us, we are justified in preventing radical enhancement.

I tried to sketch this argument in more detail in the last post. The outline was based on chapter one of Agar’s book. I now want turn my attention to chapter two of the book, which looks in more detail at two of the crucial premises in Agar’s argument.


1. The Questions that need Answering
The premises in question are the following:

• (2) Certain experiences and ways of existing properly valued by members of one species may lack value for the members of another species.

• (3) Activities and policies that promote radical enhancement may lead to the creation of beings that do not belong to the human species.

Both of these premises direct our attention to the boundary line between different species. This boundary line plays a crucial role in the normative and factual components of Agar’s argument.

On the normative side, the claim being advanced is that if a being crosses the boundary line (whether that being is a future version of ourselves or a friend or somesuch) it may then lie beyond the pale of a certain set of values that are significant to us. As Agar puts it, the species concept will “set the boundaries on an important collection of values, and that we should recognize radical enhancement as infringing on these values” (pp. 21-22).

On the factual side, Agar is claiming that the kinds of enhancement endorsed by the likes of Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom and James Hughes -- these four are the main conversants in Agar’s book -- will create a species boundary between the enhanced and the non-enhanced.

Given the important role that the boundary line between species plays in Agar’s argument, there are four questions that need to be addressed:

(a) What are the available species-concepts and which one does Agar use? 

(b) How is the boundary line defined by Agar’s preferred species concept? 

(c) How might radical enhancement create beings that cross that boundary line? 

(d) Why is that boundary line morally significant?

To be fair to him, Agar is mainly concerned with the first three questions in the course of chapter two. He seems aware of the need to answer the fourth question, but he doesn’t get round to it. Perhaps he will address it in future chapters. Acknowledging this possibility, I still want to pass some comments on this issue at the end of this post.


2. Agar’s preferred Species Concept
There are several species concepts available in the philosophical and biological literatures. John Wilkins -- who has been known to read this blog -- could no doubt regale us for hours around the campfire with tales from history of the species concept. Being somewhat more of a dilettante in this area, I’ll try to be brief and just mention three potential species concepts (from Griffiths and Sterelny, 1999).

First, there is the phenetic species concept. According to this concept, what makes two organisms members of the same species is some measure of their similarity across morphological, genetic or behavioural dimensions. There are problems with this concept. One concerns how we actually measure similarity; another concerns the fact that members of the same species can often be quite different (e.g. due to sexual dimorphism). As a result of these problems, this concept is generally out of favour in biology.

Second, there is the biological species concept (a process-based concept). This concept identifies a species by referring to the processes that create and sustain the species. In particular, to the fact that populations of organisms form reproductively isolated groups. So according to this definition, two organisms are members of the same species if they are part of population that shares and transfers genes.

Finally, there is the phylogenetic species concept (a pattern-based concept). This concept appeals to the tree of life and the relationships between organisms arrayed along the branches of this tree. Accordingly, two organisms are deemed part of the same species if they are part of the same lineage of ancestral and descendant populations and if they share a distinctive trajectory along the tree of life.

One of the important points about the biological and phylogenetic concepts is that they are, broadly speaking, historical in nature: a species is defined by having a particular kind of history. This stands in contrast to the phenetic approach which is based on either clusters of shared properties or, even, essential properties.

Which of the three species concepts does Agar opt for? Unsurprisingly, he goes for the biological species concept. I say “unsurprisingly” since this is the dominant species concept in modern biology. Agar acknowledges that it is not entirely without its own problems, but he can shrug those off. It does not matter to him whether the concept is the biologically or scientifically correct one; it only matters that it performs the normative and factual roles required by his argument. Does it?

3. Reproductive Barriers
Following the biological species concept, reproductive barriers between two populations are the key boundary lines between species. These reproductive barriers can come in a variety of forms. They could for example be physiological -- one organism is physically incapable of mating with another organism -- or psychological -- one organism is repulsed by or lacks the motivation to mate with another organism. They could also be geographical or genetic. Whatever form they take, they must, in accordance with the terms of Agar’s argument, divide one collection of important values from another.

There are problems with these kinds of barriers, particularly when it comes to humans. I want to look at some of these and consider how Agar responds to them.

First, it is not clear that humans are constrained by such barriers. Allen Buchanan (whose book I am also reading) argues, for instance, that technology has effectively allowed human beings to erode almost all reproductive barriers. Even when there are physiological or psychological barriers to reproduction, our technology allows (or will allow) us to combine genetic material according to our whim. Agar is unmoved by such an argument. He writes that:

“Facts about what might or might not happen in a laboratory are actually not directly relevant to decisions about species boundaries. We assign individual organisms to species not on the basis of what happens in human or posthuman laboratories, but according to what occurs in nature.” (p. 22)

This is not an unexpected move, but I worry about it. It’s willingness to disregard what may or may not happen in the lab might contradict something Agar says later on. Also, I think I’m with Buchanan in believing distinctions between the natural and unnatural, especially when applied to humans, are virtually pointless. So much of our lives are bound to our cultural and technological artifices that its difficult to know where nature begins and ends, if anywhere.

A second problem with reproductive barriers is that they may exclude a good number of beings we routinely consider to the members of our species, e.g. the post-menopausal woman, the castrated male, the homosexual, the celibate priest. Many more examples could be adduced. Agar responds to this worry by pointing out that in each of these cases there are past, potential or counterfactual reproductive connections with other human beings: "but for his castration, the male would be able to reproduce"; "the post-menopausal woman could have reproduced in the past"; and so on.

This kind of response is mildly persuasive, but then it raises the question: why can’t we take into account past, potential or counterfactual uses of technology when determining where the species boundary lies? Why not say that but for current technological limitations humans and chimpanzees could form a reproductively connected population? This point is significant. Agar’s belief that radically enhanced humans will in fact constitute a distinct species could arguably be vulnerable to this kind of counterfactual objection.

A third, and for now final, problem with reproductive barriers is that they are not, as Agar notes, all-or-none affairs. He cites the example of the New Zealand bird the black stilt which has been breeding itself to death by mating with the Australian pied stilt. The fact that such interbreeding occurs may suggest that they are not truly distinct species, but Agar argues that the situation is more complex than that. There is still some degree of reproductive isolation between the populations: pied stilts prefer to mate with other pied stilts; and black stilts prefer to mater with other black stilts. It is only when their preferred mating partners are absent that they mate with one another. Given this situation, it might be possible for full reproductive isolation to be reinstalled or for the reproductive barriers to break down completely.

I have no doubt that this is all true, but it seems to create problems for Agar. He argues against radical enhancement by using the precautionary principle. This principle maintains that if there is a risk of particularly bad outcomes arising from a set of activities, we should restrict those activities. But if the creation of reproductive barriers is not an irreversible process, then maybe things are not bad enough to warrant precautionary measures. The force of this criticism depends on how Agar chooses to specify the kind of precautionary principle he is using.

4. Would Posthumans be Non-humans?
The next topic we need to address is Agar’s factual claim that radical enhancement might lead to the creation of a new species. In line with his preferred species concept, this would happen if reproductive barriers were put in place between the normal and the enhanced. He accepts that not all enhancement would create such barriers, he only claims that some might.

What form would those barriers take? Agar notes that there might be physiological barriers created. For instance, genetic enhancements might require the creation of a new chromosome which makes reproduction impossible between those who have the chromosome and those who lack it. Or, if we replace significant parts of our bodies with mechanical or electrical components, we might be prevented from mating with one another.

Agar is not too interested in those kinds of barriers. He is more concerned about the psychological barriers that might be created. He thinks that radically enhanced beings would have little reproductive interest in normal human beings: they would them as something akin to pets. He makes this point through an amusing thought experiment involving a futuristic singles-ad placed by a normal human (“merelyhuman”) that has to compete with that of an enhanced human (“singularityman”). He thinks the psychological boundaries between singularityman and merelyhuman would be more robust and permanent than those between different cultural groups. Indeed, it might be the case that enhanced human beings with indefinitely extended lifespans drop out of the reproductive game altogether.

I won’t challenge any of this here. I have some concerns, expressed above, about the application of the biological species concept to human beings, and I do wonder how much can be inferred from a thought experiment about potential future being, but I’m more interested in the moral significance such reproductive barriers.


5. Why do we care about reproductive barriers?
The species-relativist argument hinges on the claim that by crossing the boundary between species we might be forced to sacrifice or give up something of great value. But if the boundary primarily concerns how we identify and select potential mating partners then I’m having trouble seeing what all the fuss is about.

Now, certainly, I would not deny that reproduction has some value to human beings. But is the value such as to outweigh the potential benefits of enhancement? More precisely, is the value such that a slight risk of losing it is sufficient to warrant taking precautionary measures? One obvious rejoinder to Agar is that even if singularityman is no longer interested in mating with merelyhumans, he might still be interested in mating with fellow singularitarians. And so whatever loss may initially be experienced might be pretty insignificant.

Agar doesn’t address these issues in chapter two. But he’ll need to do it sooner or later. If his argument is to succeed, he will need to convince me that the reproductive barrier is one that we should not cross.