7.2.1. Enhancement as action

Enhancement represents an activity, an action, by means of which an object is changed in a direction regarded as positive. There are actors (subjects of the enhancement) who enhance something (the object of the enhancement) in accordance with criteria. The three-point reconstruction “someone enhances something according to a criterion” may represent the minimal semantically sensible reconstruction of the word “enhancement”. A two-point reconstruction “someone enhances something” would be less definite since an enhancement in one direction can be a deterioration in another. This is well known with regard to technological developments, e.g. enhancement of an automobile from the perspective of sportiness can be at the cost of environmental compatibility, and enhancement from a cost perspective can endanger safety requirements. Enhancements in one sense are frequently linked with deteriorations in others.

Of course, this is not clearly expressed in the general use of language. Enhancements are often mentioned as if they were improvements per se and that they were therefore per se welcome. This fundamentally positive connotation of enhancement might explain the popularity of this concept. But precisely this popularity can lead us astray over and over again. Enhancement, just as every other type of action, is confronted with the possibility of unintended side effects (see below). To let the fundamentally positive-sounding term “enhancement” block out this possibility is tied to substantial risks and can be a source of disappointments or disagreeable surprises.

A second property of the concept of enhancement might also be a reason for its attractiveness. Enhancement is comparative, and not superlative. It is not about an optimization or perfectioning, which frequently triggers ambivalent perceptions in communication. Expressions mentioning perfect or perfected humans or optimized animals quickly raise concerns associated with control, hubris and abuse. Enhancement, in contrast, is something gradual, breathes the aura of human measure, always proceeds stepwise and can be stopped or modified at any time. As a concept, enhancement is positive and attractive, and its stepwise nature does not trigger concerns about abuse and human hubris.

Indeed, viewed conceptually, enhancement is fundamentally different from optimization and perfection. This deep-ranging difference is mostly ignored: optimization and perfection include a telos, but enhancement does not [GRU 12b]. Enhancement represents an activity through which an object is changed in a particular direction: actors enhance something according to criteria, as already mentioned. In accordance with this, enhancement necessarily includes three semantic dimensions:

1. 1) A starting point. Any change is only plausible relative to a starting point of change; therefore, the starting point has to be identified.
2. 2) A criterion of enhancement. A criterion relative to which some change might be classified as enhancement must be given. It consists of the declaration of a parameter (quantitative or qualitative) and the direction in which the parameter will be altered to constitute an enhancement.
3. 3) A measure of enhancement. Measuring the size of an enhancement is primarily significant in weighting processes if enhancement in one place is offset by deterioration in another, and balancing is necessary.

Whereas enhancing relates to the change compared to a starting point in the intended direction, optimizing and perfecting are oriented to an envisaged final or target status and therefore involve a telos. Although enhancing is bound up with a direction, it is open in measure and has no defined end, while an optimization is at an end when the optimum is reached [GRU 12b]. Optimization is a teleological approach, while enhancement opens up an infinite step-by-step process during which criteria and direction of enhancement might change. In this sense, enhancement is close to what Sir Karl Popper [POP 57] and Charles Lindblom [LIN 73] called “piecemeal engineering” and “muddling through”, respectively. These processes should start with a deficit analysis of the present state and then ask for incremental improvement, in opposition to the classical planning approach which departs by setting goals and then asks for instruments to reach them [CAM 79].

The significance of the criteria of enhancements clearly demonstrates that enhancement is a value-based notion. Regarding something as enhanced compared to something else requires normative criteria for judging what is regarded better for which reasons. Thus, talking about enhancement inevitably takes place in a moral landscape of values and norms. There is no objective enhancement outside the value dimension. Discursive ethics and deliberative democracy, being applied to RRI debates (Chapter 1), call for making the underlying values and norms explicit.

When enhancement is understood as a type of action, the next step is to take into account the distinction made in action theory between the goals of an enhancement measure that are determined ex ante and the real consequences of this measure ex post facto. It is possible for a measure intended to be an enhancement to turn out ex post facto to be a deterioration or for there to be unintended side effects in other ways. When the issue is to assess enhancements in terms of responsibility, the following factors must be taken into consideration: the goals of the enhancement, the criteria for these goals, any possible deterioration in other senses, the criteria and measures for assessing any conflicts between goals and finally the possible manifestation of unintended consequences of the enhancement measures. Such an action theory perspective of enhancements avoids a naive, purely positive perception.

7.2.2. Technical enhancement

The next step in a semantic clarification concerns the notion of a technical enhancement. Engineers know perfectly well what a technical enhancement is. Every form of technology can be described using certain parameters, which include performance features. Enhancement would mean improving the level of achievement on one or more of the performance features; according to the traditional standards of technology, this could be, e.g. performance of the motor, efficiency, service life or price. This manner of speaking assumes that the initial situation for the enhancement itself – which must be ascertained (see above) – can be described in technical terms. The criteria and direction of the enhancement then result relative to the initial situation as determined technomorphically. As a rule, the measure to be used for an enhancement results directly from the usually quantitative comparison of the values for the respective parameters before and after the enhancement.

Accordingly, a technical improvement of humans or animals, if it is not to be meant merely metaphorically, needs modeling of humans or animals following models of technology through the declaration of performance parameters that will be enhanced. For instance, assume that a sensory organ like an eye could be technically rebuilt in a way which is functionally equivalent to the natural eye (see Chapter 9) [GRU 12b]. An artificial eye of this kind would – as is customary in technical development and production – be given a version number by its manufacturer: this would be “eye 1.0”. Surely, version 1.0 will not be the last one because as soon as version 1.0 has been developed and tested, engineers and physicians will be thinking of the next version: continuous improvement of what has been achieved already is a technological imperative in modern technology. The technological imperative necessarily moves from one version to the next, if it is guided or restricted normatively by arguments of a different type.

In itself, enhancement knows no limits but opens an infinite room of possibility. Once a particular status has been achieved regarding the enhancement of humans or animals, the enhancement process does not come to a stop in the sense that the goal has been achieved. This status, on the contrary, serves as the starting point for the next enhancement and so on. In the process, the direction of the enhancement, e.g. the performance parameter being employed, can be changed. This property distinguishes enhancement radically from, for example, healing (section 7.3.3): healing reaches an end when the patient has recovered. Enhancement, even if successful, does not come to an end but is driven further and further by the restlessness of the technological imperative, unless limitations are imposed on this enhancement spiral, such as by social measures or ethical limitations.

In this way, enhancement makes immediate reference to a central feature of technological progress, namely, the gradual advancement from one version to the next. Enhancement is adaptive in this progress: the direction of the enhancement or the parameters to be enhanced can be modified at every step, such as being adjusted to a change in society’s values. Enhancement thus takes the thought of an open future seriously, in contrast to the ideas of perfectioning and optimizing. No target status is foreseen; this is a process that is open to the future.

7.3.1. Enhancement in history: some ambivalences

The dissatisfaction of many or most human beings with themselves is presumably as old as mankind². Dissatisfaction with one’s physical endowment, physical and mental capacity, dependence on external events such as illnesses, the inevitability of aging and ultimately death, or dissatisfaction with his or her appearance is well known. These are daily examples that represent a general self-experience of man throughout history. This self-experience extends from annoying forgetfulness concerning both harmless and important items of knowledge to a collective experience of inadequate morality, such as in conflicts and wars, and of moral failure in view of the temptations of power or wealth or simply for the sake of convenience.

Stories, fairy tales and sagas process this experience, such as the story of the fountain of youth or the legends in which humans acquire superhuman powers. Spiderman and other superheroes of both sexes are modern expressions of such dreams. Several practices were developed to compensate for perceived deficits. Cosmetic surgery is today probably the most commonly used form of compensation for features perceived by an individual to be deficits. What does not please and does not correspond to one’s own expectations or to external ones is adapted – often by technical means. Even a cultural achievement such as our judicial system can be interpreted as compensation for man’s experience of deficits and as an aid in stabilizing civilization regarding its fragile nature. A new manner of experiencing deficits is itself linked with technical progress: the experience of not being able to keep up with technical progress, of feeling inferior in view of the possibilities of technical systems and of experiencing oneself to be antiquated even relative to one’s own technical creations [AND 64].

While the forms of compensating for or overcoming deficits in specified properties or capacities refer to individuals (personal beauty, good results on examinations), the collective enhancement of humans is certainly not a new topic. The frequently lamented deficits of humans from the perspective of morality and civilization led in the European enlightenment to approaches emphasizing education in order to enhance man as a whole. Beginning with the individual, above all in school education, a far-reaching higher development of human culture, civilization and morality was to be stimulated and supported.

Thus, it is obvious that the idea of human enhancement is largely linked with individuals’ experience of their own individual and collective imperfection. Unfortunately, this idea stands in an ambivalent tradition. In some totalitarian regimes, human enhancement was at the service of the respective ideology. In Nazi Germany and in the context of its biologically racist ideology, for example, enhancement was understood to refer to breeding to strengthen the allegedly Aryan ideals represented by physical features (blond, blue-eyed and athletic) in connection with an unconditional subordination under the Nazi regime. With regard to social qualities, the multiple possibilities of indoctrination and propaganda were utilized for what was understood to be enhancement. Dictators Stalin and Mao also employed propaganda and indoctrination in order to “enhance” individuals according to the respective orthodox ideology. These historic examples drastically demonstrate that ideas of enhancement must be scrutinized carefully with respect to values and possibly underlying political and totalitarian aspects. Regarding man’s negative experience with enhancement fantasies and the measures employed by totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century, caution is necessary to prevent that enhancement in favor of some propagated bright form of future society might be instrumentalized to suppress contemporary humans.

That this concern does not come completely out of the blue can be demonstrated by quoting the opus magnum of the human enhancement debate:

“However, we may not have the luxury of delay, because the remarkable economic, political, and even violent turmoil of recent years implies that the world system is unstable. If we fail to chart the direction of chance boldly, we may become the victims of unpredictable catastrophe” [ROC 02, p. 3].

The threat is very clear. If we do not achieve the promises held by converging technologies and human enhancement very quickly, “we may become the victims of unpredictable catastrophe”. This is not scientific argumentation but a barefaced threat, the logical conclusion of which is that the end justifies the means in this context. Structurally, the rhetoric pattern in this case is the same as that of the dictators named above. This demonstrates that it is imperative for us to be cautious. Enhancement is ambivalent and prone to being misused.

7.3.2. Human enhancement: some illustrations

The recent wave of debates on human enhancement is rooted in a report to the National Science Foundation (NSF) which had considerable influence. Its title is its programme: “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance” [ROC 02]. The technologies assumed to converge – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC) – offer, according to this report, far-reaching perspectives for perceiving even the human body and mind as formable, to improve them through precisely targeted technical measures, and, in this manner, also to increase their societal performance. There are three key fields of human enhancement which will be introduced here only very briefly [JOT 08, SCH 09, ACH 06, GRU 12b]:

1. 1) Extension of human sensory and organ faculties: human sensors such as eyes and ears can be interpreted as technical facilities, then emulated by technology and finally be improved. The capabilities of the human eye can be augmented, for example, with respect to visual acuity, or with regard to a night vision capability by broadening the electromagnetic spectrum visible in the direction of infrared; other sensory organs, such as the ear, could likewise be improved, or completely new sensory capabilities, such as, for instance, the radar sense of bats, could be made accessible to human beings. Human physical and motoric capacities could be improved by exoskeletons or prostheses with higher functionalities in some respect as the natural model.
2. 2) Neuro-enhancement to improve cognitive and mental capabilities addresses the cognitive functions of the brain and nervous system [FAR 04, GAL 07]. If the brain is modeled in the sense of information technology, i.e. as a machine that stores and processes data, these functions would include expanding the storage function of the human brain and creating the possibility to back up the information stored in the brain on a brain chip. By connecting a chip directly to the visual nerve, it might be possible to record and externally store all visual impressions in real time. In this way, all the visual impressions acquired in the course of a human life could be called up at any time. Via a wireless connection, the impressions could even be coupled with external bodies of knowledge or stored externally. Such a wireless connection could also be used, for example, to “upload” the content of books directly into the brain, or a device could be created that could load different language modules onto this chip and activate them as needed, making the tedious work of learning a foreign language superfluous. Such thoughts are pure speculation, both now and far into the future. Yet, they indicate a direction of thought that is certainly not irrelevant to, for example, a modification of the image of man or for the relationship between man and technology (section 7.5).
3. 3) Retardation of aging: ideas and expectations that aging might be slowed markedly or stopped entirely play a central role in the discussion of human enhancement. Such hopes are being nurtured by several developments in nanomedicine, which, however, is supplemented by rather speculative assumptions. There are hopes for new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures causing much fewer side effects than the classical therapies. If aging is a degradation process at the cellular level – an understanding that is a matter of real controversy in medicine – then aging could be delayed by immediately discovering and repairing any manifestation of a degradation process. Even further reaching ideas are in circulation. Intelligent nanomachines could move in the bloodstream, serving as a technical immune system monitoring the human body in order to constantly maintain an optimal health status [DRE 86]. According to these visions, any degradation and every sign of physical decline should be recognized immediately at the atomic level and be stopped or repaired. In this manner, the machines might succeed in healing injuries perfectly within a short period of time and, ultimately, in stopping aging. Whether such visions can be realized, whether they are possible in principle and how long a period of time is expected to be necessary for visible advances to be made are all issues that are highly uncertain.

These examples indicate the direction of the new thinking: it is a matter of broadening human capabilities in comparison with those we traditionally ascribe to a healthy human being:

“Technologies of the self that permit individuals to effect […] a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and a way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality” [FOU 88, p. 18].

It is obvious that an entire series of ethical or anthropological questions are associated with these visionary expectations (or even just possibilities), which increase the contingency of the conditio humana [GRU 07a]. These questions pertain to the consequences for our concept of mankind and for the society of the future, to the question of the possible limits of technical enhancement, to the question of identifying criteria for drawing boundary lines and, finally to the question of the future of the relation between humans and technology. The wave of debates on transhumanism [BOS 03, CAR 12] and posthuman futures [HUR 16, DER 16] demonstrates how far-reaching these developments might be in future – and it also shows that these issues motivate many scholars, researchers, philosophers, journalists and others to engage themselves on the issue of human enhancement with high effort, creativity and passion. The latter is of highest interest in the hermeneutic perspective (section 7.5).

7.3.3. Healing, doping and enhancement

The debate on human enhancement has been accompanied by controversies about its definition from its very beginning (this is characteristic for NEST developments, see Chapter 4). In particular, the line between healing and an enhancement beyond healing has been subject to debates. Some argue that healing and enhancement cannot be clearly differentiated. “The accent in the discussion of bioethics today is usually on the question of whether it is at all possible to draw a line separating therapy and enhancement” [SIE 06, p. 306]. Yet intuitively and in everyday understanding, human enhancement is categorically different from healing an illness or compensating for damage as result of an accident. Healing is oriented toward the regulative idea of a healthy individual. Healing reaches its goal when the patient has recovered, while enhancement does not contain any criterion within itself (section 7.2.1). Healing follows a telos, while enhancement does not (see above). This observation allows to shed more light on the various notions and offering a more differentiated structure among them (see Chapter 9) [GRU 12b].

The understanding of enhancement as an action that changes particular performance indicators relative to certain starting points (section 7.2.1) requires, first, that the point of departure of the enhancement be clarified. Possible options are:

1. 1) the physical or mental endowment of a specific human individual;
2. 2) the physical or mental endowment of an average healthy person in normal situations (i.e. without special training or other measures of enhancing);
3. 3) the physical or mental endowment of humans under optimal conditions, that is to say, the achievement potential at the upper end of the statistical distribution (e.g. training measures of high-performance athletics).

In the first case, a pair of glasses would even be an enhancement in some sense of the word for an individual whose eyes did not meet the expectations of healthy human eyes. The second case would only constitute an enhancement if a particular measure meant that the standard of a healthy but not extremely specialized or trained human were exceeded. In the third case, one would ultimately only speak of enhancement if the abilities achieved exceeded what seems possible at the upper end of the performance spectrum.

My proposal is to consider only those measures as human enhancement that take the condition of a healthy human being under optimal conditions as the starting point and go beyond this. Thus, I will only regard those alterations as human enhancements that in some manner make humans more effective or efficient than is normally expected under optimal conditions. This means that, for example, cosmetic surgery, in contrast to what is widely maintained, does not serve to enhance humans, at least as long as its aim is to achieve accepted ideals of beauty, i.e. those which are not out of the ordinary within cultural development and history. This approach allows for opening up a more complex field of notions and introducing the following distinctions [GRU 12b]:

• – healing: the elimination or compensation of an individual’s deficits relative to the accepted standards of an average healthy human being as a starting point;
• – doping: an increase in an individual’s performance potential without there being a deficit in terms of the accepted standards of an average healthy human being and without the individual’s performance exceeding what still appears as conceivably normal, i.e. within the spectrum of usual human performance, whether in sports or normal life;
• – enhancement: an increase in performance that goes beyond abilities that are regarded to be “normally” achievable by humans who are healthy, capable and ready to perform under optimal conditions;
• – alteration of the human composition that exceeds increasing the performance of existing functions [JOT 08], for example by implanting new organs³.

The following example will illustrate this proposal [GRU 12b]. Assume that a person lost his/her legs in a traffic accident and was given prostheses in order to compensate for the loss. Restoring the capabilities of that person according to the status before the accident would obviously fall under the category of “healing”. If, however, completely new mechanisms of mobility would become possible via the prostheses – for example, that enable this person to jump like an Australian kangaroo – then, this would be an “alteration” according to the list above. If we consider the highest speed available in short-distance running as the relevant parameter, we could make this distinction: if the prostheses would allow the person to finish a 100 m sprint in 5 s, we would agree that this is a super-human capability. In this sense, we should speak of a real “enhancement” as mentioned above. If the prostheses would allow us to finish a 100 m sprint in about 10 s, then things would become really complicated – as the “real-life” case of Oscar Pistorius has already illustrated [WOL 08b]. In this case, a debate would arise about whether the technical prostheses would give the owner an advantage over his competitors – and this is precisely the issue at hand in the well-known debate of “doping” in sports.

This proposal for a more precise usage of terms in the enhancement debate closes a gap in the debate about the distinction between healing and enhancement so far. The semantic gap between healing and enhancement is filled by putting “doping” at this place: when the outcome of an improvement exceeds the average performance of a healthy person but does not exceed a level reachable by humans under optimal conditions, we will speak of doping beyond the world of sports. Doping is something in between healing and going beyond abilities that are humanly possible.

This characterization of different types of “constructional work” on humans [ACH 06] is obviously not an ontological classification since the categorization depends on interpretations and explanations. The characterization should provide a differentiated structure for the debate that takes the different interpretations of this construction into account ethically, socially and anthropologically. Seen from this perspective, this characterization is the expression of the hermeneutic perspective (Chapter 1) of inquiring into the meaning of NEST developments in the RRI debates. The following characterizations are intended to elucidate this.

Healing ends when the statistically determined normal state of healthy persons has been reached. In traditional medical conduct, a presumed normal state functions as a normative evaluative criterion for recognizing deviations and diagnosing the necessity of interventions. Even though the border between healing and enhancement ontologically is controversial, in discourse, it represents a rather clear border. The discourse of healing is a different one from that of enhancing, and the normative frameworks of both discourses, for example, differ distinctly. In the realm of healing, the medical oath of healing is relevant and is supported in reflection and analysis by medical ethics. Therapy is subject to a sense of obligation, advisability or expectation inasmuch as its purpose is the (re)creation of biological functioning in an understanding of being healthy that is adapted to a specific culture. Talk about human enhancement forsakes this discourse, however, and (still) has no regular place in the traditional system of applied ethics. Thus, the hermeneutic question of the meaning of enhancement technologies leads to different areas of ethical or anthropological inquiry [GRU 12b].

The distinction between doping and enhancement proposed above also leads to clear classifications. First and trivially, sports doping as we know it today [GER 08] would not fall under enhancement. Everyday doping, such as taking stimulating pharmaceuticals like Ritalin [FAR 04, GER 11] prior to examinations, would not be enhancement unless it would lead the individual to exceed the customary abilities of test candidates to an inordinate degree. Even steps in cosmetic surgery would therefore not be enhancement, but partly healing – if suffering from beauty deficits made one ill – and partly doping – beauty doping – if the goal is to win a beauty competition. Both are linked to the known ethical problems of a lack of fairness and unknown risks.

An example that illustrates the dependence of an individual measure on the context and interpretation is Viagra [GRU 12b]. If it is taken for an erectile disorder, then this is a measure in the context of eliminating deficits and thus belongs in the realm of healing. If it is taken by a healthy person and leads to an inordinate “superhuman” increase in the duration of erection, then this is performance enhancement. Between these two, there is a region in which the increase in duration of erection is still in a customary range but nonetheless constitutes an improvement for the individual. This would then be a type of doping for improving one’s competitive ability in this special sphere. This illustrates that the attribution of the terms healing, doping and enhancement depends on interpretations of the respective situation and in particular on what “customary” is taken to mean.

The boundaries between these categories are visibly dependent on interpretation and may be a matter of controversy. Even though the boundaries between them must not be regarded as ontological ones at the object level, they exert a decisive influence on the societal, ethical and anthropological debate because each is involved in a different context of meaning and related ethics [GRU 12b]: in the case of healing, health and medical ethics; in the case of doping, competition, the fairness imperative and considerations of risk; in the case of enhancement, there is still a largely normatively and philosophically uncharted area needing hermeneutic enlightenment (see section 7.5).

7.3.4. Human enhancement: from visions to the marketplace

No strong ethical arguments have been raised against human enhancement so far [GRU 12b]. If human enhancements are not carried out on people who are unable to give their consent, an informed consent could and would have to be created. This informed consent takes on a central role in ethical argumentation and prevents the possibility of “strong” ethical arguments which quickly could lead to a ban on human enhancement. Other ethical arguments such as access, prevention of misuse, fairness and responsibly dealing with risks involved are highly relevant to human enhancement but do not show that “strong” character.

Viewed from this perspective, it does not seem implausible for enhancement technologies to be introduced according to a market model [GRU 12b, GRU 16c]. It is not only possible but even probable that there might be an emerging demand for enhancement technologies caused by increasing competition or other various developments:

“[…] several market pressures leading to rapid development of HE [human enhancement] technologies: (1) global competitiveness; (2) brain drain/depopulation economics; (3) national security concerns; and 4) quality of life/consumer life-style demands” [WIL 06, p. 3].

The market model means that enhancement technologies could be offered as a kind of service analogous to aesthetic surgery today. Consumers willing to enhance themselves would be informed about the available enhancement services, their costs, implications and possible risks. Then, they could decide within the framework of informed consent. This scenario would exemplify the libertarian ideal of autonomous persons deciding about their personal issues [GRE 08].

However, the libertarian perspective might not cover the whole story. The question is whether individuals are “really” autonomous or whether they are subject to external pressures and forces. If we look at possible driving forces of an emerging marketplace for enhancement technologies, we soon become aware of the crucial role of competition. This model strongly resembles that of competition within the world of sports: for example, the stronger the competition and the corresponding pressure of the system, the larger the willingness of individual sportsmen and -women to use drugs for doping.

A society that has accepted the idea of competition as its central motor at nearly every level, from the economy to the military to lifestyle, might feel a need to achieve human enhancement if this were available. Phrased differently, competition and enhancement are inextricable [GRU 12b, GRU 13d], since, from a technical point of view, doping and enhancement are only different in degree. The pressure of competition could result in developments that first are of the “doping type” and then will lead in the direction of enhancement.

In the United States, the creation of an enhancement society as a possible political goal has already become an item of debate [COE 08b]. Michael Sandel [SAN 04] offered a diagnosis of the US middle class showing that the idea of enhancement is already part of its self-understanding and everyday acting, in particular in the field of parenting. In particular, in view of the fact that many societies are aging, enhancement could be an appropriate means to create competitive advantages for companies and economies. The question is whether we stand at a transition from a capitalist achievement society to an enhancement society:

“In a political-analytical and sociological line of reasoning of this kind, social structures are considered which favor the spread of HET [human enhancement technologies, A.G.] as are new tendencies which may boost their use. The pathologisation and medicalisation of more and more emotional and physical states, the commodification of the human body, its use as an improvable tool for competition, and the prospects of radically changing the human body by means of second stage HET are only some of the aspects relevant here” [COE 09, p. 44].

An above-average and constantly improving performance at work, a beautiful and strong body, high resistance to stress: these abilities [WOL 07] are moving to the top of the agenda for many people. Competition and abilities are inseparable; thus, the improvement of one’s abilities becomes part of the dynamics of development under the pressures of competition. This is because every success in competition is only for a finite period and is constantly threatened by the possibility that others might catch up or pull ahead. Enhancement as an infinite process without a telos (section 7.2) opens up an infinite spiral of further and further improvement. In this manner, the idea of competition and human technical enhancement indeed are inseparable from each other.

In a liberal market model, regulation would be limited to compensation for the side effects of a market failure (e.g. from the clarification of liability issues, such as what would happen if an enhancement does not succeed) and to ensuring distributive justice and access. Consequently, it seems that, through a combination of liberalism, ubiquitous competition and the advance of technology, there are strong forces that support human enhancement. These forces are part of our contemporary social reality already at work and should be investigated and reflected in order to avoid running blindly into possible problems related with the constellation mentioned above, e.g. into a social Darwinist transformation of society.

7.5.1. Conclusions I: dissolving borders between humans, animals and technology

Human and animal enhancements are tied to an elimination of borders: the traditional border between living beings and technology is being transcended to an increasing degree. This is making classical biological borders porous, such as between different species. Chimeras arise in a manner supported by technology [FER 10]. Cyborgs, as hybrid beings that are a mixture of man and technology, have become an accepted topic of speech. While the cyborg scenarios were suitable to constitute a dystopian vision (see Chapter 5) [SCH 06] when Bill Joy wrote his essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” [JOY 00], we seem to have grown accustomed to it in the meantime. There are cyborg clubs and people who pursue their own technicalization as a lifestyle activity. The technical aspects of the body are in great demand, whether it is tattoos or piercings. Artificiality is in vogue, completely different from in the 1970s and 1980s when naturalness was an ideal for many people. However, borders are being obscured. It is not only the technicalization of living beings but also the vitalization of technology that has contributed to the classical borders being transcended. Increasingly, robots, which are becoming autonomous (Chapter 6), and the prospects for artificial life [BOL 16] represent the primary lines of development.

It is possible that radical shifts are looming also in the relationship between animal and machine in the form of animal–machine hybrids [FER 10]. The methods and visions in this area could in the future raise the question of whether strongly modified animals could or should be regarded as animals any more. Robots that can be controlled by the use of animal elements such as rat neurons at least also point in the direction of the de facto disintegration of the boundary between machine and animal.

How fluid the traditional borders have become is shown, above all, by a look at cultural traditions. For instance, a partly millennia-old order of being that has dug itself deep into our cultural self-image is handed down in religion. In the genesis story in the Bible, for example, an ontological order is grounded in the sequence of acts of creation, at the end of which is man. When at the beginning of the 20th Century Gustav Mahler starts his third symphony with impressions from the rocks and proceeds via plants, animals, humans and angels to reach love, this portrays this Old Testament order in pantheistic vestment. In view of the fluidity of borders, this order is visibly disintegrating, just as is Aristotle’s almost 2,500 year-old distinction between the natural (the realm of nature) and the man-made (the realm of Man’s culture).

Ontological classifications are, of course, decisive for orientation, for Man’s self-image, for an understanding of his place in nature and for his relationship to the other elements of nature, such as animals. Some authors want to retain the traditional conceptual categories and argue that for conceptual reasons alone, there cannot be any artificial life: “We can reject the thesis that life can be produced just like an artifact by referring to the fact that aggregation is not growth and physical appearance is not habitus” [KAR 06, p. 555]. For several reasons, we must critically ask, however, whether the possibility or impossibility of transcending the border between life and technology can be adjudged purely conceptually. At least argumentatively, it appears very daring to make a general assertion that it is impossible. Even if “a life process cannot be reduced to a constellation of chemical processes” [PSA 06, p. 594], we will not be able to preclude once and for all that a connection of individual functions could result in an animate or lifelike constellation. It is probably more an empirical question, not a conceptual one, as to how far the transcendence of the border between life and technology will reach.

Similar to the situation with robots (Chapter 6), the literature and films of science fiction have already prepared us in a certain sense for the transcendence of boundaries discussed here. The fact that such a transcendence becomes familiar does not by any means indicate, however, that there is a new conceptual system which could be used for creating orientation. Yet, a new system is necessary for ethical and legal reasons because the ontological system, as expressed in concepts, determines how the various elements are classified ethically and legally and are then assigned their respective rights and obligations. For example, in legal debates, the question is raised whether robots should be considered as objects, or perhaps as legal subjects, analogous to animals, or even analogous to small children. The two latter groups themselves cannot be made liable, but they are entitled to rights. For them, issues of responsibility and liability have to be resolved in an advocative manner.

To illustrate the issue of attribution, let us assume that an artificial cat could be produced in a laboratory that is the functional equivalent of natural cats. It would, for instance, exhibit all the signs of feeling comfortable and suffering. Is such a technological cat entitled to the protections afforded by animal ethics and the corresponding legal regulations or is it a technological object like a machine? Even if it showed signs of a capacity for pain, would this cat “genuinely” suffer if it were tortured? Or would the signs of pain not really just be simulated by the software? After all, it would be possible to track technically which algorithm was employed to program the capacity for pain.

Behind this is the question as to which criteria are employed to classify objects in an order of being. Currently, we would probably intuitively say that a cat is a cat because it has descended from cats and is thus protected by the rules of animal welfare. If a cat, on the other hand, is produced in a laboratory, it was not born by a cat. If this object is acknowledged to be a cat in the sense of animal welfare rules, then the rules of acknowledgment will have to be changed: certain properties (e.g. metabolism and purring) would have to become the definiens instead of its ancestry (being born by a cat).

This differentiation in classification between ancestry and the presence of certain properties also has far-reaching consequences for humans. Human rights, for example, are valid for all humans because they are distinguished as humans by their ancestry, and not because they have certain properties or abilities. This is the foundation of all regulations. Even humans who possess only hardly developed properties (e.g. premature babies, the severely handicapped and coma patients) are afforded full human rights. Precisely, this approach has, however, been called speciesism and criticized by Peter Singer [SIN 99, SIN 11]. Conversely, Gregor Wolbring [WOL 07] has criticized ableism which increasingly makes the presence of certain capacities a precondition for someone to be fully recognized as a human.

In any case, these brief comments clearly demonstrate the implications of a disintegration of traditional borders: we need new conceptual systems on which anthropological, ethical and legal regulations can build when the old systems no longer function. This would be a task of a hermeneutics that is not merely comprehending in nature but also constructive.

7.5.2. Conclusions II: better understanding contemporary time

One of the central theses of this book is that far-reaching images of the future often have little to say about the future but much about the present (Chapter 3). With regard to enhancement, it is possible to quickly formulate corresponding assumptions, whose analysis and validation of course require detailed research [GRU 13d, GRU 16b]:

1. 1) A first assumption can be formulated with reference to the point in time at which the enhancement debate broke out. It is conspicuous that, following its rather academic forerunners, the big wave of this debate only arose after 2000. The turn of a century or a millennium is historically frequently linked with new perceptions of the future, even though they are purely contingent on the decimal system. Anyhow, a wave of positive expectations appears to fit the onset of a new century.

This can, however, also be interpreted in another direction. The high expectations placed in enhancement can also be an expression of horrified and depressing reactions to the great humanitarian catastrophes of the 20th Century. Names such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot stand for unprecedented developments in human history. Post- and transhumanism repeatedly refer to the moral deficits of humans. It is possible that the horror at the 20th Century and the dialectic consequences of Enlightenment [HOR 47] also play a role in these utopias. The rapid spread of the concepts of post- and transhumanism could indicate the diagnosis of a collapse of humanism.

Of course, if this were the case, then one would have to immediately point to a possible dialectic of these hopes themselves. The central argument of the criticism of utopia, namely, that utopias exhibit a tendency toward totalitarianism because all means are permitted to achieve them, would self-critically also have to be applied to the utopian ideas in trans- and posthumanism. Whoever sees man’s salvation in technological progress can get into the danger of pushing aside any doubts, every criticism and any resistance. In avoiding the mistakes of the past, there is the dialectical danger of making the same mistakes all over again (see the comments on Roco/Bainbridge [ROC 02] at the end of section 7.3.1).

1. 2) A second thesis picks up the representations of an enhancement society in section 7.4.3. Following the main idea of this volume, I would like to focus on aspects of the human enhancement debate that might tell us something about our society and its perceptions, attitudes and concerns at the present time [GRU 13d]. Thoughts of an “enhancement society” possibly being already part of reality have been expressed so far in few publications only [COE 08b, WOL 07, COE 09, GRU 13d]; by far most of the reflections on human enhancement technologies refer to ethical questions and criteria which usually focus on the individual level [GRE 08].

It has been shown (section 7.3.4), however, that competition and enhancement are interrelated and that they possibly reinforce each other. If the enhancement debate is not about the future of human nature but about present social uneasiness, then the perception of the role of competition in contemporary society will be at the heart of this view. This would mean that many people feel uneasy with the ever-increasing and dominant role of competition in many fields of life, particularly within education and worklife:

“Today, on university campuses around the world, students are striking deals to buy and sell prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin – not to get high but to get higher grades, to provide an edge over their fellow students or to increase in some measurable way their capacity for learning” [GRE 08, p. 702].

Moreover, there also might be hidden criticisms against capitalism and concerns about more and more self-exploitation in many fields of life. If the dominant imperative of sports – you have to be better than your competitor – holds true for large or even all parts of society, and if people are concerned about this situation, then the story of human enhancement is not about possibly creating super-humans in the future but about competition in our contemporary societies. The politically explosive nature of this turnaround is obvious. It includes the question: do we approach a new type of society characterized by crude social Darwinism and the possible end of the welfare state based on solidarity according to the Western European model? In this respect, it seems promising to take a look at this world under the perspective of doping and enhancement as exemplified in a recent technology assessment report to the German Bundestag:

“The principal social and political relevance of the topic ‘Enhancement’ arises not because enhancement is perceived as contributing towards a scientifically and technically based ‘improvement of human beings’, but rather because pharmacological interventions to improve performance form part of the ‘medicalization of a performance (enhancement)-oriented society’. The social and political debate about this issue should therefore focus on the likely future status of pharmacological and other (bio)medical strategies and measures for coping with performance targets and demands in a globalized educational and working environment, and on the consequences of demographic change. To this end, rather than assuming at the outset that adoption of strategies designed to maximize individual and collective performance is inevitable, we need to look into conditions in secondary and tertiary education and at the workplace, and where appropriate adjust performance indicators. Commercial and economic considerations also favor such an approach, at least in the medium and long term. In this regard the example of doping in sport shows how a system of competition could potentially self-destruct as a result of unlimited expectation of ever-improving performance” [GER 11].

Consequently, the question arises: are we witnessing a historical change from a performance society to an enhancement society with an inherent and infinite spiral of enhancement including, as critics assume, increased self-exploitation and self-instrumentalization? Coenen and colleagues point out:

“One could argue that there is growing evidence for the hypothesis that we are witnessing at the moment a transition from a performance-oriented society, in which the fulfilment of predefined tasks is rewarded, to a performance-enhancing society, in which tasks in work life, and even private life, are ever harder to calculate and foresee, and therefore the most pressing task for individuals is the competitive improvement of bodily preconditions and requirements for successful performance” [COE 09, p. 45].

If this is the case, then the demands placed on people and the pressure put on them to be successful in this world increasingly dominated by competition will grow. Simultaneously, the pressure will grow for us to be better than our competitors and possibly even to reach for kinds of doping or even, if it goes beyond this, for means of enhancement. In a world that is developing in this manner, one’s capacities play an ever stronger role. The analysis of ableism [WOL 07], a phenomenon that can already be seen in the present day, can therefore be considered as a form of hermeneutic enlightenment.

1. 3) A third thesis only leads to the diagnosis of a contradiction. Technology is increasingly penetrating our cohabitation with other species and modifying the material basis of the relationship in very different ways (section 7.5.1). We can note on the one hand a stronger acknowledgment of animals as being cohabitants of the Earth, an increase in animal welfare and growth in civic involvement for a vegetarian diet and against animal experiments during the last two decades. On the other hand, there is a continuing spiral of increasing exploitation of animals in a globalized food economy and agriculture, and animal enhancement is in this tradition (section 7.4). The feeling of being related to animals is increasing just as is the instrumentalization of animals for human ends. Currently, no clear developmental trend can be recognized in these contrasting observations. What is needed are monitoring, hermeneutic questions as to the significance of changes in the relationship between humans and animals, and thorough reflection on these analyses.

These three possibilities for establishing a relationship between enhancement as a cipher of the future and current developments are certainly not exhaustive. Further possible interpretations may well be found from a hermeneutic perspective.

7.5.3. Conclusions III: technicalizing the self-image of humans

Technology is a product of humans, yet it is also his image. Man is continuously creating himself anew in his constructive creation of technology. In the technology he has created, man ultimately confronts himself, as one position in the philosophy of technology has put it in a nutshell:

“Man knows himself to be more and more free, for technique has eliminated all natural forces, and in this way has given him the sense of being master of his fate. The new man being created before our eyes, correctly tailored to enter into the artificial paradise, the detailed and necessary product of means which he ordains for himself – that man is I” [ELL 64, p. 227].

A consequence of this mirror imagery of technology is that its mirror image, i.e. man’s image of himself, itself changes in step with technological progress. The images of man change as part of and with progress [BOT 15]. For example, before the discovery of cybernetics and computers, it was not possible to view man as a cybernetic information-processing machine [JAN 96]. Metaphors from technology and machinery, coined by man himself with the technology he has created in mind, creep into man’s description of himself.

In this sense, the enhancement debates have consequences that can further radicalize the antiquatedness of man, as Günter Anders [AND 64] diagnosed it already in the 1960s. Man’s technological creations are getting more and more features than he himself, their creator, has. A current vision, for example, is autonomous driving in order to reduce the high number of accidents caused by man’s own shortcomings. The car computer does not drink alcohol, it does not get tired and it does not have any small children on the back seat to take care of; it has an eye on everything, at least that is the expectation [MAU 16]. The talk about robots that are better than we are in many respects or about our own technological enhancement produces a feeling of inferiority. Although we are the creators of technology, a perceived deficit is created. Man is becoming a deficient being, but in a different sense than Arnold Gehlen meant [GEH 40]. The human factor is becoming a problem, and a look in the mirror shows our weakness. This is the way that a self-fulfilling mechanism can begin that leads to a world of different types of enhancement technology: the talk about the future possibilities offered by enhancement could reduce man’s self-esteem, possibly increasing the demand for enhancement.

However, there is the question as to man’s self-image, namely, about how he describes himself after looking into the mirror of technology. It changes the language with which we speak about ourselves. An increasingly technomorphic manner of describing ourselves has found its way into our language that employs technological concepts and analogies borrowed from engineering and the sciences. The suggestion has been made, for example, to model humans as a construction site [ACH 06]. This linguistic technicalization possibly mirrors the ongoing naturalization of man that is being pursued by many from the sciences and several philosophers [ENG 05]. It is possible, for example, for neuroelectric interfaces to provide an impetus to further technicalization by fostering talk about humans and the brain in the manner of information technology [JAN 96] and interpreting sensory organs as sensors, nerves as data lines and memory as a hard disk.

In this sense, the technicalization of man consists of the fact that such technical interpretations of man become established in the form of technological images of man [GRU 07b]. Technological modeling of man is, however, not tied to such technological images of man as long as these images remain in their respective contexts of meaning and function, and as long as they are recognized and reflected on within the restrictions imposed by their respective purposes⁴. One can only speak of the first signs of a technicalization of man when such technological images of man are separated from the context of their use, are robbed of their necessary conditions and premises and entered into the debate as images of man in general with a claim to being absolute. With a purely technical description, this process would reach an end that would no longer be accessible to competition or to being supplemented by other, non-technical descriptions of humans (e.g. as a zoon politicon (political animal), as a social being or as a participant in a communication community). There would then be no room left for facets of humans that could not be conceived from a perspective of man as a machine.

The consequences of considering enhancement as a cipher of the future can be seen in how we view ourselves. Hermeneutic reflection is needed to permit technological progress to enrich humanity, e.g. for medial purposes, but without running into danger of spreading merely technological images of man or assisting in their dominance. It must continue to be possible to consider man as a trans-technical being, i.e. as a being that profits from technology in and on his body without losing himself in this technology.

7.5.4. Conclusions IV: RRI debates on enhancement

Since the conclusions to be drawn from the preceding sections for the RRI debates are obvious, a short summary will suffice here. The classical consequentialist view of the possible futures of a world with human and animal enhancement has hardly played any role at all in the analyses. At issue was and is the meaning of these developments and of the subsequent debates for the world today. It is precisely the hermeneutic perspective that provides this knowledge, which was even the case before this term was used to designate this activity (e.g. [GRU 07a, WOL 07]).

This turnabout means that notions about a future world with animal and human enhancement will become relatively less important as an object of the RRI debates. Alongside them will be objects for a different kind of attributing responsibility (Chapter 2). In the case of enhancement, they are expressed in questions of the following type:

• – how much competition can man and society bear? How long does competition promote creativity and when does it become destructive?
• – how do changes in traditional orders take place in the relationship between animals and humans or life and technology? How and according to which criteria can new orders be established?
• – how can we deal responsibly with asymmetrical relationships such as between animals and humans?
• – how can we organize responsibility in constellations of humans and technology that are undergoing fundamental change?
• – how can we establish a balance in the conflict between, on the one hand, tendencies of humans to exploit animals in an increasingly efficient manner and, on the other hand, the desires for a better treatment of animals, to be heedful of others, and for deceleration?

The futures of animal and human enhancement in this context obviously serve merely as the medium of the debate. They are expressions of the challenges facing the present world, not those of the future. Issues of man’s self-assurance play a large role in this. Who are we in comparison to animals? Who are we as the creators of the technology that threatens to make us its vassals? Who do we want to be if traditional borders disintegrate?

These questions are not about decision making on NEST developments in the immediate or near future. They are rather pre-ethical issues: questions about the ontological constellation in which ethical issues can first be raised and considered. They are part of RRI. RRI cannot let itself be limited to responsibility for the future consequences of technology, but must concern itself with how and why something constitutes itself as a consequence of technology and which role communication plays in a contemporary situation.

This conclusion shows that ethics is only part of the game. As in other cases of new and emerging developments in science and technology, the issues in human and animal enhancement are in many regards not concrete ethical ones at all, but rather the need to reach a social and anthropological self-understanding. Questions such as regarding the development of the relationship of humans to animals or of humans and technology and the tendencies toward technicalization that are at work in this context need first and above all hermeneutic analysis, public dialogue and expert discourse. Thus, debates on the relationship between humans, technology and animals should be regarded as part of RRI.