ENLIGHT IDenti-T Network – Work Focus:  

IUSPHILOSOPHICAL CHALLENGES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON IDENTITY. THE IMPACT OF TRANSHUMANISM ON THE LEGAL CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY.

My work within the ENLIGHT IDenti-T network focuses on the impact of transhumanism on the development of the legal concept of human dignity.

The impact of AI on the legal system has sparked debates on issues that concern the philosophy of law. Today, legal philosophy addresses the ethical problems generated by the transhumanist philosophical movement. One of the contributions of the European Union is that it has managed to define what AI is. Philosophy has a very important task in this regard, as there must be conceptual clarity on this issue. We now need a generation of researchers who, within the philosophy of law are trained in these topics.

Transhumanism is an international cultural and intellectual movement whose ultimate goal is to transform the human condition through the development and manufacture of widely available technologies that enhance human capabilities, whether physical, psychological, or intellectual. Transhumanist thinkers have in common the study of the potential benefits and dangers of new technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the appropriate tech­no-ethics of developing and using such technologies. They speculate that human beings may become capable of transforming themselves into beings with extensive capabilities. Some of the transhumanist thinkers believe that the phenomenon will contribute to the shaping of an enhanced human person. Others consider that a new human subject will emerge, for which it would be appropriate to use the term post-human. Still others believe that transhumanism poses dangers to the human condition itself.

What underlies the transhumanist movement is both an enormous potential market that is emerging and the idea that human beings are biologically too limited to be able to effectively face the challenges of the world’s growing complexity. Transhumanism also acquires an almost religious gnostic dimension, given that many authors believe in the possibility of making human beings immortal in the long term, or even in the technological resurrection of the dead. The “post-human” individual that would result from this process would have basic capabilities that radically exceed those of humans today, to the point that they could no longer be qualified as merely human according to our current ways of understanding life. The risks associated with transhumanism’s ethical conflicts refer to the possibility that human enhancement technologies may undermine some­thing as fundamental as the concept of human dignity, the cornerstone of our legal system. The implications of transhumanism on the concept of human dignity are enormous. This leads us to investigate how the content of human dignity can be altered by this movement.