Alberto Giubilini, Andrew Moeller
In 2024, the TORCH Medical Humanities Hub, in collaboration with the Stanford Boundaries of Humanity project and the Uehiro Oxford Institute, organized a conference on Biotechnology and Human Identity. The conference inspired a special issue of the journal Bioethics edited by the conference co-organizers Alberto Giubilini and Andrew Moeller, which is now published. Here below is the editorial by Alberto and Andrew, and the full special issue is available here
Editorial
Human DNA, the capacity for self-awareness or for symbolic language, a sense of mortality, plasticity and adaptability, the disposition to pray, being created in the image of God. These are only a few of the answers that science, philosophy, (philosophical) anthropology, psychology, and theology have offered to the question of what makes us human. The relevance of the question contrasts sharply with the difficulty of understanding what exactly we are asking.
The most obvious and seemingly most unsatisfactory answer to the question of what makes us human is the one that philosophy, particularly in its analytic tradition, would provide. That is, “it depends on what you mean”. That is only unsatisfactory, however, if we forget that philosophy is often in the business of asking questions, rather than providing answers. The answer to “what makes us human?” depends in part on the way the question is interpreted within the conceptual and methodological boundaries of each discipline. And in turn, which discipline we choose to approach the question from is revealing of the kind of values and concepts that are central to our worldviews. Those who look for answers primarily in the biological or psychological sciences probably see the world and understand human identity differently from those who look for it primarily in theology.
Any answer to the question of what makes us human is likely to be, at best, partial. The attempt to achieve a more comprehensive view is further complicated by the fact that, when we ask that question, we are both the object and the subject of the inquiry. The point of view from which we inquire is itself something the investigation is supposed to explain. Thus, our view is likely limited not only by its grounding in a particular conceptual and ethical framework, but also because any such conceptual framework shapes the point of view itself from which we observe.
But here is another way to ask the same question: what would it take to change human identity? This question might help us disassociate subject and object of the inquiry just enough to make our inquiry more interesting and promising. It would force us to think of ourselves from a new perspective: how different would we need to be in order for us to no longer be human?
This is where bioethical and, more broadly, humanities-based reflection on new (bio)technologies emerging from the genetic and AI revolution can make an interesting contribution to reflection on human identity. For all the ink it has spent on the ethics of transhumanism and posthumanism, bioethics has largely missed the opportunity to investigate what exactly we may be transitioning or moving away from. Yet, this question is no less important than the questions that have so far dominated bioethical discussion, such as when and whether human enhancement is permissible, whether posthumans or transhumans have higher moral status, how the benefits of futuristic biotechnologies should be distributed, and so on.
This special issue wants to fill that gap by shifting the focus back on to ourselves. It wants to use reflection on current and futuristic biotechnologies to ask not so much where we should go with and through them, but where we are starting from. What, if anything, would be changing in (our understanding of) human nature if we were to implement radical forms of enhancement or to create AI-brain interfaces or human-machine chimeras, for example? The importance of such questions is both intrinsic and instrumental to more traditional bioethical reflection. After all, whether we are fundamentally changing human nature through (bio)technologies seems a necessary preliminary question to the question of whether we may or should change it at all. And if human nature is going to be modified in some significant, or even defining, aspect, it would be good to know exactly what we might be losing and whether it is worth the potential benefits.
The approach of this special issue is multidisciplinary and includes different contributions from the humanities. This is needed because the nature of the inquiry calls for contributions beyond ethics and philosophy. As suggested above, the question of human nature has many dimensions that different humanities disciplines can help capture. The idea for this special issue emerged from a series of activities and projects within the Medical Humanities Hub at the University of Oxford, of which both co-editors are part. In particular, the idea for a special issue was prompted by an interdisciplinary, humanities-based conference on Biotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Identity we held at the University of Oxford in 2024, within the Medical Humanities program on “Biotechnology and the Humanities”. The program draws and builds upon scholarship in the humanities, such as history, philosophy, theology, and ethics, to better understand biotechnologies and their relationship with human society, and to foster interdisciplinary and open discussion of emerging biotechnologies.