All Together Now: Developmental and Ethical Considerations for Biologically Uplifting Nonhuman Animals
George Dvorsky
page 5 of 7
As these initiatives move forward, and as the animal rights movement continues to evolve, it can be said that humanity’s relationship with animals has transitioned from subjugation to moral consideration. And tomorrow it will transition from moral consideration to social co-existence.
The Ethical Imperative to Uplift
Enhancement biotechnologies will profoundly impact on thenature of this co-existence. Today, efforts are placed on simply protecting 
animals. Tomorrow, humanity will likely strive to take this further – to endow nonhuman animals with the requisite faculties that will enable individual and group self-determination, and more broadly, to give them the cognitive and social skills that will allow them to participate in the larger social politic that includes allsentient life.
As many transhumanists and technoprogressives are inclined to point out, human enhancement offers an unprecedented opportunity for the human species to transcend biological limitations. These include not just the benefits of what may be gained, but also the benefits of what may be discarded.
In terms of what humanity may hope to gain, there are potential enhancements such as greater health and wellness, increased intelligence and memory, improved psychological control, longer lives, and novel capacities. Some of the principle arguments in favour include the recognition of fundamental bio-rights that include reproductive, morphological, and cognitive liberties. Healthier people, it is argued, will also save individuals and their governments from spending inordinate sums of money that are currently required to battle all types of ailments, including the costs of aging itself.[1] It is also argued that enhancement technologies will result in persons more capable and willing to engage in social and political causes. In this sense, transhumanism holds radical promise for the furtherance of democratic and participatory values.[2]
As to what humanity may hope to lose with biological augmentation, humans are poised to discard their often fragile and susceptible biological forms. It is hoped that the ravages of aging will be brought to an end,[3] as well as the arbitrariness of the genetic lottery.[4] More conceptually, human evolution is poised to go undergo an evolution of its own where it goes from unconscious Darwinian selection to deliberate and guided quasi Lamarckianism.[5] Driving this transition is the ingrained human desire to move beyond a state of nature in which an existential mode is imposed upon Homo sapiens, to one in which humanity can grow increasingly immune to unconscious and arbitrary processes. An emergent property of intelligence is its collective aversion to chaos; it perpetually works to increase levels of order and organization.
These compulsions are held by many to represent strong ethical and legal imperatives. Given the animal rights movement's goal to increase the moral circle to include higher animals, and given that a strong scientific case can be made in favour of animal personhood, a time will come for humanity to conclude that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Furthermore, it would be unethical, negligent and even hypocritical of humans to enhance only themselves and ignore the larger community of sapient nonhuman animals. The idea of humanity entering into an advanced state of biological and/or postbiological existence while the rest of nature is left behind to fend for itself is distasteful.
Ultimately, the goal of uplift is to foster better lives. By increasing the rational faculties of animals, and by giving them the tools to better manage themselves and their environment, they stand to gain everything that we have come to value as a species.
Issues of Fairness, Primary Goods and Distributive Justice
The suggestion that a moral imperative exists to uplift sapient nonhumans infers that humans have an obligation to do so. Political and moral philosophers have struggled with the issue of obligations since the beginning of human social organization, due mostly to apparent incompatibilities and inconsistencies between liberty and the sense of imposition or even coercion. Various frameworks have been proposed to deal with these issues, including social contract frameworks devised by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant. More recently, and in the context of human enhancement, there has been the work of Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen who have proposed a capabilities approach in which an individual's "functioning" is tied directly to the quality of their ability to act in society.[6]
Footnotes
1. Olshansky et al., “The Longevity Dividend,” The Scientist, Volume 20, Issue 3, Page 28, March 2006. (back to top)
2. See James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future, Westview Press, 2004. (back to top)
3.See Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Rodale Books, 2004. (back to top)
4. See Robertson, Children of Choice, and Buchanan et al, From Chance to Choice. (back to top)
5. See Hans Moravec, Mind Children : The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard University Press, 1990, E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Vintage, 1999 and Kurzweil, Singularity is Near. (back to top)
6. As summarized by Cavery Bopaiah, " …Amartya Sen's capability approach looks beyond monetary measures and offers a flexible framework for recording improvements, disparities, and potentials even within a family. Capabilities are what people are able 'to do and to be' in leading a life - even if they are not necessarily doing it. What persons actually do are their 'functionings'. Capabilities are therefore potential functionings and not achievement or outcome. The capability framework sees well-being as a combination of 'functionings' that include being well nourished, healthy, and educated as well as having choices, political freedom, and the ability to participate in community life." (back to top)