Historical and Philosophical Reflections on Natural, Enhanced and Artificial Men and Women

This chapter considers human engineering from a historical and philosophical perspective. Engineering suggests artificiality and thereby takes us to the issue of ‘nature versus nurture’. Must any intervention in natural growth and development patterns be considered ‘artificial’? Humans belong to a domesticated species, and the notion that human beings are shaped through both their biological heritage and their upbringing is as old as Western thought itself. Ideas about the manufacturing of humans—homunculi, golems or Frankensteins—remained usually in the sphere of pure speculation. Only in the twentieth century was the old suggestion, first formulated by Plato, that it would be profitable to breed humans like cattle first translated into political measures, as a consequence of social Darwinist ideas. Historically, we find ourselves in a unique position because we are, for the first time, able to change the human body through technological means. While many current practices can still be defined as therapeutic interventions, as genetics and artificial intelligence are further developed, the ethical issues involved in their application will inevitably become more complex. It is of great importance that before science and technology present us with unpleasant choices, society itself, as well as legislators and scientists, should determine where to draw the line between desirable and undesirable modifications of human nature. As the Introduction to this volume has indicated, current discussions concerning the perfecting, engineering, conditioning, manufacturing or enhancing of humans Translated by Samuel van Kiel. C.H. Lüthy (&) Faculty FTR, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, 6525 HT, Nijmegen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.ru.nl/philosophy/chps/current_members/luthy/ B.-J. Koops et al. (eds.), Engineering the Human, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35096-2_2, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 11 mix facts and fictions and tend to view actual scientific and medical practices in the light of possible and imaginary future developments. For this very reason, the debate often suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. Let us therefore begin by unpacking some of the underlying concepts. The most important idea that calls out for analysis is that of the un-tampered with, ‘natural’ man, the presumed subject or victim of all technical interventions. The notion of ‘artificial man’ implies, after all, that there is such a thing as a ‘natural man’, from whom he can be distinguished. Traditional Ways of ‘Making Humans’ To begin with, let us recall that traditionally, Christianity considers man to have been made in a non-natural manner—namely by God. According to the biblical descriptions in Genesis 1 and 2, the Creator ‘made’ Adam and Eve (fecit, in the Latin of the Vulgate), together with the world and its other inhabitants. Conspicuously, the notion of nature and man as products of the divine Artificer, the summus Artifex, seems to suggest that humans, even when they dwelt in the most natural of places, Paradise, were artefacts. To disentangle the apparent contradiction inherent in the notion of a natural artefact, theological jargon distinguishes human acts of ‘making’ (from existing materials) from divine acts of ‘creating’ (out of nothing, ex nihilo). It is worth keeping in mind the distinction between fabrication and creation when considering the claim made by religious critics that today’s geneticists are ‘playing God’. Strictly speaking, this claim may be rejected by pointing out that geneticists are unlike God precisely because they cannot ‘create out of nothing’; at best, they intervene in, and modify, existing materials. Their ways of making would, therefore, differ fundamentally from the Creator’s. However, when the accusation of playing God is levelled against genetic engineers, this does not refer to the act of creating as such, but rather to the alleged modification of the essence of a God-given human nature. Nick Bostrom summarises the logic of the charges as follows: ‘playing God, messing with nature, tampering with our human essence, or displaying punishable hubris’. But note that this concatenation of accusations is hardly self-evident. To begin with, the belief in static, species-related essences is not Judeo-Christian, but Aristotelian in origin, and it is doubtful whether a modern theologian needs to subscribe to it. Even present-day supporters of ‘intelligent design’ are usually content with a God who created natural species in such a way that they may continuously change from within, and in so doing propel evolution in the process. More specifically, as far as the question of the essential nature of humans is concerned, both Aristotelian philosophers and Christian theologians would concur that it is to be found in the soul (which to the Aristotelian represents the specific form of man)—yet, no one accuses geneticists of tampering with the soul. Lastly, it is also to be doubted whether such an essentialist view on natural species should be upheld, even from a 12 C.H. Lüthy