 | Ivana Greguric PhD. Researcher/Lecturer, Head of Communication Department - The Centre of Excellence for Integrative Bioethics, University of Zagreb/ Zagreb Business School |
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02.02.2015-27.02.2015
Ethical and Scientific Issues of creating enhanced ‘human’ beings:Framework for Cyborgoethics
By the end of the 21st century humans could have increasingly bionic bodies with greatly enhanced brains and sensory organs. Exploration of issues from the frontiers of bioethics, genetic research, nanotechnology and robotics, should lead us to the establishment of ethical boundaries of a science researching and limits (if any) of a human body enhancement. In that context, project will also problematize a human–post-human differentiation and possible problems in the development of post-human life forms. How much of a human being could we replace and still preserve its essential humanity? While some of this technology still remains in the domain of science fiction, some of it is appearing here and now, in the form of exoskeletons, artificial limbs and prostheses, biological implants and electronic devices for restoring vision to the blind. The project objectives: 1. As a result of the play of genetics, informatics and tissue engineering, the boundaries of the human body are becoming more permeable and more plastic. How far do these changing boundaries create new challenges for our understanding of our bodies, rights and obligations as humans? 2. Human enhancement hold the promise to cure diseases, it also offers the option of "improving" or "perfecting" human beings, provides the ability to choose a child's sex, boost intelligence, or implant a predisposition to music. If we are not careful, we could end up engineering our children to the point that they are no longer humans. Or, in another argumentative way, if that is the future of our development, can we still be holding the right to deprive our successors of participation in that future? Technological advancements are proceeding so rapidly that we will soon need to make decisions about how much technology is enough.
Ivana Greguric, PhD, works as researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Integrative Bioethics and as a Lecturer and Head of Communication Department at Zagreb Business School (Croatia). In 2014., she received her Ph.D in Philosophy from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb with the dissertation entitled Philosophical aspects of cyborgisation of man in the era of scientific humanism and ability to think focusing on philosophical and bioethical issues relating integration of technology into human being. Her research interests include bioethics, philosophy of media, music and technics, cyberculture and transhumanism. She is a author of a chapter in the book Posthuman cultures (Oxford, 2013), co-author of a chapter in the book Chuck Klosterman and Philosophy (Open Court, 2012) and the co-editor of the book New wave and philosophy (Jesenski Turk, 2012).
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