A Buddhist Perspective on Human Enhancement and Extension of Human Lifespan
Abstract
Buddhism has nothing in principle against either human enhancement or lifespan extending technologies. Everything depends on motivation. In the case of human enhancement technologies in general, the argument that enhancing humans is unethical because it commits an unnatural act is found wanting because it relies on the untenable premise that the natural and the ethical are identical. However, Somparn Promta’s argument to the effect that in Buddhism there is no unnatural act is criticized because the argument conflates two different senses of “natural”, one being natural law and the other presupposed in the premise that the ethical and the natural are identical. Then the paper moves on to discuss the central idea in Buddhism concerning the emptiness
of all things. Since there can be no essence or core of identity of anything, person or non-person, any argument based on there being a subsisting person whose body is to be enhanced or whose life is to be extended is based on an untenable premise. Finally the paper discusses Steven Horrobin’s recent attempt to base the value of the extended lifespan on the ability to enjoy more pleasures. This is also found wanting because the extended life will contain not only pleasures but also pain and boredom. Moreover, the value of life, either extended or not, lies more on how well it is lived rather than how much pleasures the subject can consume.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
Consent to Publish and Transfer of Copyright
By publishing in Prajñā Vihāra, the author agrees to transfer and assign to Assumption University of Thailand as the Publisher of the Journal, the copyright to the Article in any form, including any and all rights, interests and claims related to it.
The author does retain the following rights:
- The right to make further copies of the published article for their use in classroom teaching.
- The right to reuse all or part of the published article in a compilation of his or her own works or in textbooks of which they are the author or coauthor.
- The right to make copies of the published article for internal distribution within their academic institution.
- All proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights.
- The Article is his or her original work, and has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
- It does not contain any matter that is obscene, libelous, or contrary to law.
- They have obtained the necessary license or written authority and paid any and all related fees for the use and reproduction of text, tables, illustrations and other copyrighted work from the owners of the intellectual property rights, and can furnish the Publisher copies of the license/written authority and proof of payment of related fees upon the signing of this Agreement.
- They have the consent of the Co-Authors of the article upon the signing of this Agreement.
- In the event that they intend to republish, reprint or translate all or part of the Article in other publications, they will secure the prior written permission from the journal Editor.
Prajñā Vihāra adopts the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-ND) license