This diploma thesis focuses on the definition of cyborgization and to delimit it. The cyborgizatoon of body is one of the ways of human improvement next to gene manipulation and neuromanipulation. It is difficult to express the specific definition because the experts have a different point of view, what for thesis shows various point of view -- both technooptimistic and technopesimistic -- and it tries to find the most suitable definition. People do not want to admit the cyborgization is not only vision of distant future but all of us are the cyborgs practically. What for the thesis deals with various cyborgization methods using in practice or developing to apply them in practice in a short time. The major focus is put to eyesight, the thesis gives a detailed description of refractive surgery, it develops very fast nowadays. The thesis also deals with controversial topic -- digital chips beneath skin -- and then it tries to find an answer to cyborgization is able to separate the society.

Transhumanism is a philosophy and a contemporary movement dedicated to improving the human condition in various ways. This thesis explores how the transhumanist movement contributes to the contemporary conceptualization or reconceptualization of the human body and the human condition. Furthermore, this thesis discusses three transhumanist key concepts, namely Mind Uploading, Cryonics, and the Primo Posthuman, and how these ideas might affect the research participants’ understanding and enactment of the human body and the human condition. By relying on ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews and participant observations from a 12-week fieldwork in Arizona, the ethnographic material is then discussed with the use of Annemarie Mol’s body multiple theory. In addition to this, the material is also analyzed with literature discussing the three main themes of this thesis, namely the re-conceptualization of the body, the mind, and body dualism, and the redefinition of death and the dying body. The ethnographic material and the accounts made from the research participants illustrate that the body is enacted and understood as insufficient and fragile, cartesian, a current vehicle readable and quantifiable through numbers and graphs, and a body whose mind can be uploaded into a computational substrate by the transhumanist community. It also describes how the body can be enacted as alive, an anatomical object, and a body with agency and personhood. Furthermore, the thesis concludes that the transhumanist movement contributes to the contemporary conceptualization and reconceptualization of the human body and the human condition by enacting multiple bodies as well as discussing and imagining new possible human conditions and human bodies. Lastly, this thesis does not only address important anthropological questions regarding ontology and the enactment of the human body. It also discusses relevant questions about humans and technology, as well as questions regarding death and imagination.

Transhumanism is the name given to the cultural and philosophical movement which advocates radical human technological enhancement. In what follows, I use perspectives drawn from existential philosophy to problematize transhumanists' desire to recast human finitude as a series of technical problems with technical solutions. The ontological account of transhumanism offered here questions the assumed benefit and inevitability across six chapters. Following an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 introduces the key players, and present the philosophy of transhumanism and the opposing view of bioconservativism. Chapter 3 offers a narrative of transhumanism beginning with its mythical antecedents, and proceeds to describe the emergence of contemporary transhumanist institutions. Chapter 4 focuses on the challenge that transhumanists Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil present to mortality. The chapter asks whether human immortality is a coherent idea, and consider the consequences of achieving a data-driven amortality. Chapter 5 continues the analysis of transhumanism as it challenges limits to knowledge (ignorance), and limits to well-being (suffering). Ray Kurzweil is presented as a key figure of transhumanist thought, along with David Pearce, who desires to eradicate suffering through genetic engineering. The hubris of transhumanism is viewed through the lens of Friedrich Nietzsche in chapter 6. Nietzsche's critique of the "last human" is interpreted in terms of transhumanist thought, and a role for the philosopher in the context of transhumanism is presented. Finally, chapter 7 offers Buddhism as an alternative response to suffering. This chapter profiles "Buddhist Transhumanists," and consider what connection transhumanism has with Buddhism's philosophy of impermanence.

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Mit Transhumanismus, Migration und Gender werden in dieser Ausgabe von Medienwelten drei aktuelle gesellschaftliche Aspekte thematisiert, die im Rahmen von Filmanalysen sowie einer empirischen Rezeptionsstudie zu den Lieblingsfilmen und Lieblingshelden von Kindern bearbeitet werden.

Ce mémoire porte sur l’éthique des modifications génétiques à visées mélioratives. Les modifications génétiques à visées mélioratives sont l’une des technologies les plus étudiées dans le mouvement transhumaniste. Nous présenterons la défense transhumaniste de cette technologie à travers l’ouvrage « From Chance to Choice », qui propose une défense de nature politique, faisant remarquer que cette technologie peut venir offrir un outil précieux aux théories de la justice égalitariste. Cette défense est cependant dépourvue d’un volet éthique, puisque les éthiques classiques sont impuissantes à se saisir de ce phénomène nouveau de manière intelligible. Afin de fournir un cadre de régulation éthique de ces modifications génétiques, nous nous tournerons vers l’éthique de la discussion de Jürgen Habermas et l’éthique de la responsabilité de Hans Jonas. Nous montrerons dans un premier temps que l’éthique de la discussion, selon laquelle une norme morale est valide si elle peut espérer recevoir le consentement des sujets moraux impliqués à la suite d’un débat argumenté, permet de légitimer sur un plan éthique les modifications génétiques car il est possible d’espérer le consentement à venir du sujet de la modification génétique. Cependant, ce consentement ne peut être postulé que si la réflexion sur la modification à effectuer est effectuée sous le signe de l’éthique de la responsabilité, présentée par la suite, selon laquelle un tel choix doit être effectué dans un processus nommé « heuristique de la peur », soit avec en ayant en tête les effets lointains de notre action. / This memoir studies the ethical implications of human genetic modification. Human genetic enhancement is one of the most studied technologies by the transhumanist movement. We will present the transhumanist defence of genetic modification in the book “From Chance to Choice”, which defends this technology on political grounds, due to its efficiency in helping carry out egalitarian theories of justice. This defense is deprived of a substantial ethical aspect. More generally, classical ethical theories seem to be inadequate to grasp the issues of human genetic modification. In order to offer an ethical framework of regulation of this technology, we will study Jürgen Habermas’s discussion ethics and Hans Jonas’s responsibility ethics. We will first show that discussions’ ethics, according to which a moral norm is valid if and only if every moral subject affected by it can agree to it through an argumentative debate, ethically legitimates genetical improvements because we can hoe for the future consent of the modified person. This being said, this consent can only be postulated if the ethical reasoning is aided by responsibilities ethics, which is then presented, according to which a choice such as a genetic modification has to be made under the guidance of the heuristic of fear, in other words, while bearing in mind the long-term effects of our actions.

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In this paper, I explore the emerging field of voluntary implants as seen in the DIY biohacking scene. My work on such implants focuses specifically on implantable Radio frequency Identification capsules. With the approach of research through design, I have undergone an iterative process, combining research and prototyping methods to externalize insights and knowledge generated along the way, in an effort to bring shed light on the new ideas and design considerations that arise when we embed computer technology in our bodies. By challenging the status quo, and setting aside my preconceptions through speculative design, my work has resulted in a working prototype, inspired by the ideology of slow technology. Elmer, the memory machine, is a device that enables the implantee to capture memories in point of time via their implants. Here user are can record and review moments of everyday life, merely through a timestamp — a design decision that contributes to the debate on topics like convenience, privacy, and the right to be human.

This dissertation examines how the human bodymind has been seen as malleable by science, technology, and policy practitioners from the Eugenic era in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, to the future imaginaries of Transhumanists and technology innovators. I critique the main goal of these practitioners – to perfect the human bodymind and through that perfection, perfecting human society – as utopic, impossible, and amoral. I argue instead, that we are intra-dependent – dependent on and through each other and our ecological contexts. I ground this argument both in the lived experience of those whose bodymind arrangements go against our normative expectations – folks like disabled people, queer and transgender people, body modders, and more – and in the philosophical metaphysics of Karen Barad's Agential Realism. I argue that we can only produce a future where bodymind alteration is acceptable if we first value different bodymind arrangements. I argue both that we cannot consider ourselves individuals, separate from the world or each other, and that multiplicity of bodyminds is a generative, heterotopic (neither utopic nor dystopic), force toward which we ought strive through engaging intentionally with each other in care relations. / Doctor of Philosophy / An interdisciplinary examination of how science and technology has made possible bodymind alteration from the eugenics in the early 20th century until today. Particular focus is given to how futures were imagined by different groups (eugenics educators, regenerative medicine scientists, and transhumanists in particular), the practices used to realize these futures, and the ethics around the practices and beliefs that are often taken for granted. I also describe several communities (disabled people, body modders, otherkin, and more) whose bodyminds are decidedly non-normative in order to reveal practices of community, kinship, and resistance to power that illuminate the lived realities of having a different morphology. I argue that these communities reveal ways to value and include morphological difference that might bring about a Morphological Freedom in which we might all thrive.

This dissertation explores the role and significance of the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus in Western philosophy from Antiquity to today. Paying particular attention to its moral and existential meanings, an analysis of this in-depth investigation produces an overview of the exceptional array of the myth’s functions and themes. It demonstrates that the most significant functions of the Prometheus myth are its social, epistemic, ontological and moral functions and that the myth’s most significant themes are fire, rebellion, creation, human nature and ambiguity. The dissertation argues that this analysis brings to light meaningful information on two sides of a reference to the Prometheus myth: it reveals the nature, functions, themes and connotations of the myth, while information about these functions and themes provides access to fundamental meanings, moral statements and ontological concepts of the studied author. Based on its findings this work claims that, as in history, first, the Prometheus myth will still be meaningful in philosophy today; and second, that the analysis of the myth’s functions and themes will provide access to essential ideas underlying contemporary references to the myth. To prove the validity of these claims this thesis examines the contemporary debate on ‘human enhancement’. Advocates as well as opponents of enhancement make use of the Prometheus myth in order to support their arguments. Employing the acquired knowledge about the myth’s functions and themes, the dissertation analyses the references encountered. The results of this analysis confirm that the Prometheus myth still has a significant role in a contemporary philosophical context. They improve our understanding of the philosophical argument, ontological framework and ethics of the debate’s participants; and thus demonstrate that the information about the Prometheus myth acquired in this thesis is a useful means to reveal fundamental ideas and conceptualisations underlying contemporary (and possibly future) references to the myth.