James Hughes

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

The Problems of Transhumanism Are Problems of the Enlightenment

Transhumanism is part of the family of Enlightenment philosophies. As such transhumanism has also inherited the internal tensions and contradictions of the broad Enlightenment tradition. From the beginning thinkers and movements have interpreted core Enlightenment values of reason, secularism, self-determination, progress, universalism and individualism in radically different ways. It is essential that transhumanists understand how our internal divisions and arguments are playing these three hundred year old debates so that we can avoid old mistakes and dead ends.

"Dr. J." Hughes is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and the former Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association. A bioethicist and sociologist, Dr. Hughes teaches health policy at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. Dr. Hughes is author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future, and produces a syndicated weekly radio program, Changesurfer Radio. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and the Working Group on Ethics and Technology at Yale University.