💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anders-sandberg-morphological-freedom.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:37:26. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Morphological Freedom Author: Anders Sandberg Date: April 2015 Language: en Topics: anarcho-transhumanism, Freedom Source: https://anarchotranshuman.org/post/117749304562/morphological-freedom-why-we
This argument largely be based on a rights ethics framework, although I
am fairly certain most of the arguments easily carry over to other
ethical frameworks and perspectives.
What is morphological freedom? I would view it as an extension of one’s
right to one’s body, not just self-ownership but also the right to
modify oneself according to one’s desires.
Different human rights can be derived from each other. The right to
life, the right to not have other people prevent oneself from surviving,
is a central right, without which all other rights have no meaning. But
to realize the right to life we need other rights.
Another central right for any humanistic view of human rights is the
right to seek happiness. Without it human flourishing is unprotected,
and there is not much point in having a freedom to live if it will not
be at least a potentially happy life. In a way the right to life follows
from it, since death or the threat of it is one of the main threats to
the pursuit of happiness.
From the right to seek happiness and the right to life the right of
freedom can be derived. If we seek to survive, we must be able to act
freely in our own interest. Similarly, since we are different and have
different conceptions of happiness (which is after all a deeply personal
thing that cannot be separated from the person pursuing happiness) we
need freedom to practise these. Also, since values differ and
uncertaintiesin knowledge and intelligence make people come to opposing
conclusions about the best way of acting even when their goals are
exactly the same, there is a need for freedom to enable different
approaches to be tested, compared and pursued.
The right to freedom and life imply a right to one’s body. If we have a
right to live and be free, but our bodies are not free, then the other
rights become irrelevant. If my body is coerced or threatened, I have no
choice to obey whatever demands the coercer makes on me if I wish to
continue to survive. Even worse, changes to my body can be used to
affect my pursuit of happiness.
Similarly, a right to ownership can be derived in the same way. We are
technological beings who cannot survive without the tools and resources
we employ, and if we are denied them we cannot thrive.
From the right to freedom and the right to one’s own body follows that
one has a right to modify one’s body. If my pursuit of happiness
requires a bodily change -- be it dying my hair or changing my sex --
then my right to freedom requires a right to morphological freedom. My
physical welfare may require me to affect my body using antibiotics or
surgery. On a deeper level, our thinking is not separate from our
bodies. Our freedom of thought implies a freedom of brain activity. If
changes of brain structure (as they become available) are prevented,
they prevent us from achieving mental states we might otherwise have
been able to achieve. There is no dividing line between the body and out
mentality, both are part of ourselves. Morphological freedom is the
right to modify oneself.
Morphological freedom can of course be viewed as a subset of the right
to one’s body. But it goes beyond the idea of merely passively
maintaining the body as it is and exploiting its inherent potential.
Instead it affirms that we can extend or change our potential through
various means. It is strongly linked to ideas of self ownership and self
direction (More98).
Morphological freedom is, like the others, a negative right. It is a
right to be able to do certain things, but it does not in itself imply
othersare morally obliged to support exercise of it. It would after all
be unreasonable to demand others to support changes in my body that they
would not see as beneficial or even ethical according to their personal
moral. If I want to have green skin, it is my own problem -- nobody has
the moral right to prevent me, but they do not have to support my
ambition. Of course, other ethical principles such as compassion would
imply a moral obligation to help, but I will here mainly concentrate on
the skeletal rights framework.
As a negative right, morphological freedom implies that nobody mayforce
us to change in a way we do not desire or prevent our change. This
maximizes personal autonomy.
This talk will only deal with the basic case of informed consenting
adults as regards to morphological change. There exist a number of
special cases where volition becomes problematic, such as mentally ill
people, pre-persons or deliberate changes in the motivational systems of
the brain. That these cases are troublesome cannot be held as an
argument against morphological freedom or any other freedom, since any
ethical system will have its limits and messy borderlands. What is
important is how well the general principle can be applied, and if it
can be adapted with as little contrivance as possible to the special
cases. In the case of this kind of rights ethics many liberal thinkers
have analysed the rights of deranged persons, embryos or the dead (c.f.
Nordin 92).
In current debate and legal systems the right to one’s body and
morphological freedom has been divided into a large number of subject
fields, weakening the underlying right. Debates rage about medical
privacy, women’s right to their bodies, doping, reproductive rights,
euthanasia and the appropriateness of various medical procedures while
largely ignoring that they are all based on a common issue: our right to
modify (or allow others to modify) our bodies in various ways. It is
important to assert the underlying unity before looking at the various
special cases and considerations that have to go into the different
issues. Otherwise there is a risk that the right to one’s body and
morphological freedom will vanish from the ethical debate, to be
replaced by a patchwork of largely independent ethical judgements with
no overall coherence. In the face of rapid technological and social
change we need robust basic ethical principles to build on.
Being technological animals we have a long tradition of both integrating
artificial components into ourselves or our personal space, as well as
deliberately modifying ourselves to fit personal or cultural aims (Weber
00). Clothing, ornamentation, cosmetics, tattoos, piercing and plastic
surgery have all long traditions. They have mainly been intended to
affect our appearance and social impression, rather than actual bodily
functions.
Today we have the technological means to modify functions in addition to
appearance, making morphological changes far more profound. Various
chemical methods of adjusting or enhancing physical or mental efficacy
exist and many more are under development (Sandberg 97). Sex changes
have gone from something extremely rare and outrageous to something
still rare, but merely unusual (it was amusing to notice that when asked
few in the 2001 audience even remembered the transsexual Israeli artist
Dana International, who in 1998 won in the Eurovision song contest).
We are already seeing suggestions for human genetic modifications
(either somatic or germline) for not just treating disease but to
enhance quality of life through increased DNA repair, decreases in
age-related muscular decline, cancer and AIDS prevention as well as
possibly cognitive enhancements (Stock & Campbell 99, Migliaccio et al
99, Tang et al 99, Barton-Davis et al. 98). While implants are currently
only used for treating illness, it seems reasonable to assume that
implants for preventing illness or enhancing health or other functions
are possible, for example ways of maintaining or controlling homeostatic
functions and interfacing with external information sources.
In the past medicine was mainly curative and palliative. Today there is
an emphasis of preventative medicine. But the edges are being blurred
between the areas. A more heath conscious public is integrating
preventative medicine in the form of exercise, nutrition and functional
food into their lifestyle. Methods intended for one field, such as
hormone replacement therapy, can be applied to enhance quality of life
outside the field. Techniques are rapidly becoming cheaper and available
to more people. We are rapidly approaching a time where there is not
just curative, palliative and preventative medicine, but also
augmentative medicine.
Technology and morphological freedom go hand in hand. Technology enables
new forms of self-expression, creating a demand for the freedom to
exercise them. The demand drives further technological exploration. It
is not just a question of a technological imperative, but a very real
striving of people towards self-actualisation.
It should be noted that morphological freedom is not atomic. Although it
has been stated, as is common with a rights ethics, from the perspective
of individuals, morphological freedom is part of human interactions.
That individuals have rights does not absolve them from their
obligations to each other or their need of each other. But these
obligations and needs cannot ethically overrule the basic rights. No
matter what the social circumstances are, it is never acceptable to
overrule someone’s right to life or morphological freedom. For
morphological freedom -- or any other form of freedom - to work as a
right in society we need a large dose of tolerance.
Morphological freedom doesn’t threaten diversity, as has been suggested
repeatedly by critics of genetic modification or other forms of physical
modification, but in my opinion would have quite the opposite effect.
Today we see in western societies an increasing acceptance and
cherishing of individual self-expression and diversity (Brin98,
Weber00). Although peer pressure, prejudices and societal biases still
remain strong forces, they are being actively battled by equally strong
ideas of the right to "be oneself", the desirability of diversity and an
interest in the unusual, unique and exotic. These ideas are being
expressed through organisations and institutions that are affecting our
culture in pervasive ways (Brin 98).
If new tools for expressing individuality and uniqueness become
available, there are always some people willing to embrace them
regardless of risks and societal condemnation, just as there are always
others who refrain from them for different reasons, including wanting to
retain their individuality. While a large majority may chose practical
or popular tools, be they telephones or plastic surgery, that only
enhances the self-definition of those who refrain from them, which is
attractive to a noticeable fraction of people. There is little risk in a
diversity-valuing society that everybody is going to jump on a
bandwagon, because we also value the critics, conservatives and
opponents highly (Brin 98).
It is sometimes argued that morphological freedom, for example genetic
therapy, would increase class differences, possibly leading to a
strongly stratified world of haves and have-nots. This argument is based
on the assumption that any morphology changing procedures are going to
be costly and remain so. However, this is not borne out in economic
experience where the costs of technology in generall decrease
exponentially compared to the average wages. In addition the rate of
technological diffusion is getting faster, both within western societies
andbetween rich and poor societies. Especially regarding technologies
that may affect future generations such as germline therapy or life
extension itis important to remember that the time constant of
technology diffusion appear to be much shorter than the human generation
time. Issues of value differences may be far stronger determinants of
inequalities, in addition to regulations artificially keeping prices up.
The best way of making actual morphological freedom an option is not to
restrict it, but rather to encourage the use and development of it among
a wide variety of people.
Why do we want morphological freedom? As has already been suggested,
humans have an old drive for self-creation through self-definition. It
is not done just through creating narratives of who we are and what we
do (Hardcastle 01) but by selecting aspects of our selves we cultivate,
changing our external circumstances and physical bodies (Weber 00). We
express ourselves through what we transform ourselves into.
This is a strong drive, motivating and energising us in many fields.
From an evolutionary perspective it improves the fitness of an
intelligent being if that being actively seeks to explore and achieve
its potential rather than passively wait until a need or circumstances
arise. The highly pleasurable flow state we experience when we are doing
(to us) purposeful and challenging tasks (CsĂkszentmihályi 90) might be
an evolved incentive towards self-improvement. Since self-definition is
often challenging and by its nature intensely personal, it is not
surprising that it is deeply motivating to most people.
A common criticism against ideas of morphological freedom is that there
exists a natural human nature that is disrupted by morphological
freedom. But even if one accepts the idea of a particular human nature
this nature seems to include self-definition and a will to change as
important aspects; a humanity without these traits would be unlike any
human culture ever encountered. It is rather denying these traits to
oneself or others that would go against human nature. Also, there is no
contradiction in having a nature that implies a seeking of its own
overthrow; it would rather be a transitory nature that would change as
humans change.
Another kind of reason for morphological freedom is practical benefits.
Although people have a broad range of views and personal projects, a
sizeable fraction experience various forms of self-transformation as
beneficial for their personal lives. It may range from improvements in
health or life quality to specific desires such as enhanced skills.
We change as humans not because we are unhappy about who we are, but
rather because we desire to become better. Self-transformation is not a
search for some imaginary state of perfection, as is sometimes
suggested, but rather an open-ended process. As we grow as people our
ideals and values also grow and change.
Just as there are positive arguments for morphological freedom, implying
why it would be beneficial to regard as a basic human right, there are
also negative arguments showing why not accepting morphological freedom
as a basic right would have negative effects.
A strong negative argument, possibly the most compelling argument for
the acceptance of morphological freedom as a basic right that may not be
infringed, is to protect from coercive biomedicine.
Many have expressed fears that technologies such as genetic
modifications would be used in a coercive manner, enforcing cultural
norms of normality or desirability. Preventing the development of
technology cannot hinder this efficiently, since the technology is being
developed for a large number of legitimate reasons on a broad front in
many different cultures and jurisdictions. But misuse can be prevented
by setting up strong ethical safeguards in our culture and institutions.
Seeing morphological freedom as a basic right is one such safeguard. If
it is widely accepted that we have the right to control how our bodies
are changed both in the positive sense (using available tools for
self-transformation) and in the negative sense of being free to not
change, then it becomes harder to argue for a compulsory change.
The desirability to many of the possibilities allowed by morphological
freedom also helps support the right to not change, as people see that
they are two sides of the same coin. This can be compared to purely
negative expressions, such as the statement in the UNESCO Declaration on
the Human Genome and Human Rights that children have the right to be
born with an unmodified genome. In this example there is already an
inherent conflict between the positive demand for giving children the
best possible health that is mentioned elsewhere in the document and the
negative right. The positive demand is sometimes expressed through in
utero surgery for certain congenital defects, a process that changes the
body and the potential person far more than any present form of genetic
modification could hope to achieve. (see Mauron & Thévoz 91 and Stock &
Campbell 99 for furtherdebate and criticism of the genetic heritage
concept)
If protection from coercion and ill-advised procedures is the only goal
of laws and norms, then they will only gain support proportional to how
strongly people feel their rights are being threatened. As various
potentially transforming technologies become available, common and
eventually familiar, it is very likely that the familiarity would erode
the fear and suspicion that today underlie many bans on applying new
biomedical procedures leaving very little support for these regulations,
even when they provide a protection against real possibilities of abuse.
However, if the regulations are instead based on both the positive and
negative aspects of morphological freedom, then they gain continually
renewed relevance as they are being supported both by the desire to
prevent abuses and the desire to reap the benefits from the
technologies.
Without morphological freedom, there is a serious risk of powerful
groups forcing change upon us. Historically the worst misuses of
biomedicine have always been committed by governments and large
organisations rather than individuals. The reason is simply that
centralised power broadcast error: if the power makes an erroneous or
malign decision, the decision will affect the lives of many individuals
who have little recourse against the power and the consequences will
encompass the whole of society. Individuals may make mistakes equally
often, but the consequences remain on the individual level rather than
affecting society as a whole. It hence makes sense to leave decisions on
a deeply personal ethical level to individuals rather than making them
society-wide policies. Global ethical policies will by necessity both
run counter to the ethical opinion of many individuals, coercing
citizens to act against their beliefs and hence violating their freedom,
and also contain the temptation to adjust the policies to benefit the
policymakers rather than the citizens.
As an example, we can imagine that in a near future treatments exist to
restore function to many currently handicapped people. In countries with
national health care systems it becomes very tempting for cost-conscious
government officials to reduce costs by curing people -- being
handicapped is a very expensive "lifestyle" from the perspective of the
official.
There clearly exist many people who deeply wish to be cured from various
disabilities. But there are also many people who over time have become
used to them and instead integrated them into their self-image. The
investment of personal growth and determination necessary to accept,
circumvent or overcome a disability is enormous. Suggesting a cure to
them implies a change to themselves on a far deeper level than just
"fixing" a broken tool, and quite often is experienced as an attack
ontheir human dignity.
The government official would from his perspective do society good by
enforcing a cure. But he would deeply violate the self image and
autonomy of a large number of people in doing so. In a society where
individual freedom is not viewed as essential, such a violation would be
acceptable.
A simple ban of coercive medical procedures would not be enough, even if
it is better than nothing. The reason is that it does not imply any
right to have an alternative body or protect differently bodied people.
The official could encourage "normal" bodies through various means,
including officially pronouncing disabled people who did not change as
irresponsible and wasting public resources. Without any protection of
the right to have a different body, both in the legal sense to prevent
discrimination and in the ethical sense as a part of public ethics
guiding acceptance and tolerance, the disabled would be in a very
disagreeable situation.
It should be noted that the disability movement have been strong
supporters of right to determine ones body just for this reason. This
seems to be a natural point of agreement between transhumanists and the
disability movement which might prove fruitful in future debate. The
postmodern critique of the normal body also support the right to be
differently bodied, although in this case rather by dethroning normality
than by supporting any ethical project.
It might be argued that what is needed here is merely the protection of
those whose bodily state are the result of accidents and illness, rather
than the full morphological freedom I have discussed. But as the lines
blur between curative and augmentative treatments, self-expression moves
further into the realm of self-transformation and treatments that might
be desirable by some people but not others (such as cochlear hearing
implants or genetic therapy) become more available, it becomes
increasingly hard to define what constitutes a natural body and what is
a body modified in a volitional way. Attempting to set up regulations
based on any such distinction will lead to a situation where the
dividing line is constantly challenged due to new technological
advances, experienced as arbitrary and not protecting people in need of
protection. Taking the step to full morphological freedom creates a far
simpler ethical guideline, which both protects those who do not wish to
change, those who are differently bodied and those wanting to change
their bodies.
The health official example points at a relevant issue regarding
healthcare in the future. As new and often initially expensive
biomedicine becomes available it is not obvious what to make available
in health care. The blurring of the lines between curative and
augmentative medicine compounds the issue.
As an example, at the time of writing the earlier subsidies of Viagra
and Xenical treatments in Sweden have been withdrawn as they are
regarded as "lifestyle medication" rather than normal medication.
However, it is possible to be granted exception for this, but the
Cabinet will handle the case! This not only makes the details of the
case public according to Swedish law, but also puts politicians rather
than medical professionals in the position to judge the medical needs of
a person. This odd situation will unfortunately likely become more and
more common as traditional health care must deal with ever more advanced
options for morphological change. Even without a public or legal
acceptance of morphological freedom the mere existence of such options
will force health care systems to consider them.
Morphological freedom implies that health care systems must be ableto
deal with not just wishes for health but different kinds of health.
Since the purpose of health care is to be life enhancing but the amount
of resources is always finite, the allocation issue is a dilemma. It
might be possible to define a baseline health everyone is entitled to,
with further treatments left to the private sector. Voucher systems
might entitle to a certain amount of health care, and so on. These
issues are complex and controversial, but not unsolvable. Although to my
knowledge there does not exist any health care system -- private or
nationalised -- that is unanimously agreed to work well, societies can
and do reach more or lessworkable compromises. Morphological freedom
just adds another factor to this issue.
Morphological freedom implies the need to redefine concepts of health
and illness.
A possible model for how to do this might be the volitional normative
model of disease of Robert Freitas, which implicitly includes
morphological freedom. In the volitional normative view health is the
optimal functioning of a biological system. Normal and optimal function
is defined from the patient’s own genetic instructions rather than by
comparing with the rest of the population or some Platonic ideal of
function, making health something individual. The physical condition of
the patient is viewed as a volitional state, and the desires of the
patientare crucial elements in the definition of the health. Disease is
a failure of optimal functioning or desired functionality (Freitas99).
This fits in well with the new view of patients not as clients but
rather as customers. Patients participate in the health process as
active partners rather than passive subjects of the physician.
Emphasising this new view and shoring it up with a strong system of
individual rights will likely help people gain access to individually
life enhancing tools and to avoid or at least counteract the paternalism
that is currently common in healthcare.
I have sketched a core framework of rights leading up the morphological
freedom, showing how it derives from and is necessary for other
important rights. Given current social and technological trends issues
relating to morphological freedom will become increasingly relevant over
the next decades. In order to gain the most from new technology and
guide it in beneficial directions we need a strong commitment to
morphological freedom.
Morphological freedom implies a subject that is also the object of its
own change. Humans are ends in themselves, but that does not rule out
the use of oneself as a tool to achieve oneself. In fact, one of the
best ways of preventing humans of being used as means rather than ends
is to give them the freedom to change and grow. The inherent subjecthood
of humans is expressed among other ways through self-transformation.
Some bioethicists such as Leon Kass (Kass 01) has argued that the new
biomedical possibilities threaten to eliminate humanity, replacing
current humans with designed, sanitised clones from Huxley’s Brave New
World. I completely disagree. From my perspective morphological freedom
is not going to eliminate humanity - but to express what is truly human
even further.
Elisabeth R. Barton-Davis, Daria I. Shoturma, Antonio Musaro, Nadia
Rosenthal & H. Lee Sweeney, Viral mediated expression of insulin-like
growth factor I blocks the aging-related loss of skeletal muscle
function, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 95, pp. 15603--15607,
December 1998
David Brin, The Transparent Society, Perseus, Reading, 1998
Mihalyi CsĂkszentmihályi, Flow: the psychology of optimal experience,
1990
Robert A. Freitas Jr., Nanomedicine, Vol 1, Landes Bioscience, Austin,
1999
Valerie Gray Hardcastle, The Development of the Self, Journal of
Cognitive Systems Research 1 (2001) 77-86
Leon R. Kass, Preventing a Brave New World, The New Republic, 05.21.01
Tibor R. Machan, Freedom Philosophy, Timbro, Stockholm, 1987
Mauron, A., Thévoz, J. "Germ-line engineering: a few European voices."
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16: 649-666 1991
Enrica Migliaccio, Marco Giorgio, Simonetta Mele, Giuliana Pelicci,
Paolo Reboldi, Pier Paolo Pandolfi, Luisa Lanfrancone & Pier Giuseppe
Pelicci, The p66shc adaptor protein controls oxidative stress response
and life span in mammals. Nature, vol 402, 309-313 1999
Max More, Self-Ownership: A Core Extropian Virtue, Extropy Online,
January1998, http://www.maxmore.com/selfown.htmIngemar Nordin, Etik,
Teknik & Samhälle: Ett Rättighetsetiskt Alternativ, Timbro. Stockholm
1992
Anders Sandberg, Amplifying Cognition: Extending Memory and
Intelligence, Extropy Online,
http://www.extropy.org/eo/articles/ampcog.htm Based on talk given at the
Extro 3 conference, San José, August 9-10 1997.
Gregory Stock and John Campbell (eds.), Engineering the Human Germline,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
Ya-Ping Tang, Eiji Shimizu, Gilles R. Dube, Claire Rampon, Geoffrey A.
Kerchner, Min Zhuo, Guoasang Liu & Joe Z. Tsien, Genetic Enhancement of
Learning and Memory in Mice, Nature, Vol 401, 63-69, 1999
Robert J. Weber, The Created Self: Reinventing Body, Persona and Spirit,
W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2000