Our future: neohuman or posthuman?

The paper presents the authors’ solution to the problem of establishing the final result in the human transhumanist transformations. There are two poles in the global transhumanist movement, i.e. the moderate and radical transhumanism. According to the first, the transhumanist transformations result in the appearance of a neohuman, who preserves the human essence despite alteration in the material carrier of this essence. His consciousness would ensure the main human values, including spiritual exaltation, creativity, love, justice, truth, beauty, and goodness. The paper shows that neohumans are able to become a higher stage of the human development, and continuity would exist between them, due to which humanism could be replaced by the moderate transhumanism (neohumanism) having the same core with humanism, but with a richer content compared to it. Radical transhumanists believe that as a result of transhumanistic transformations, a hypothetical creature would arise - a posthuman with a different essence than the modern man. The posthuman would have a worldview of radical transhumanism, which is fundamentally different from the humanism. It was proven that only radical transhumanism is incompatible with the humanism. This circumstance is not taken into account by the bioconservatives, who do not recognize the need to transform the human nature. Hypothetical options are considered in regard to a creature of the future: genetically modified and technically improved individual, nanocyborgized individual and virtual digital (incorporeal) individual. Doubt is expressed on expediency of incorporeal existence of an individual on the basis of impossibility to identify its system of motives. Conclusions are drawn that humanity would choose the path of moderate transhumanism. It would not agree to its own extinction, even at the cost of emergence of the intelligent being new species. The future of humanity is not a posthuman, but the neohuman, i.e. an individual with human essence and physical body.

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