James Hughes

  James J. Hughes Ph.D. is a bioethicist and sociologist teaching health policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.^[1][2]

Hughes holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he served as the assistant director of research for the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.^[2] Before graduate school he was temporarily ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1984 while working as a troubleshooter in Sri Lanka for the development organization Sarvodaya from 1983 to 1985.

Hughes served as the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association from 2004 to 2006, and currently serves as the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He also produces the syndicated weekly public affairs radio talk show program Changesurfer Radio and contributes to the Cyborg Democracy blog.^[3][4] Hughes' book Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future was published by Westview Press in November 2004.^[5]

Rejecting the two extremes of bioconservatism and libertarian transhumanism, Hughes argues for a third way, "democratic transhumanism," a radical form of techno-progressivism which asserts that the best possible "posthuman future" is achievable only by ensuring that human enhancement technologies are safe, make them available to everyone, and respect the right of individuals to control their own bodies.^[6]

The term "radical", which appears several times in Hughes' work, (from Latin rādīx, rādīc-, root) is used as an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the root or going to the root. His central thesis is that emerging technologies and radical democracy can help citizens overcome some of the root causes of inequalities of power.^[6]

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Quote

The emergence of biotechnological controversies, however, is giving rise to a new axis, not entirely orthogonal to the previous dimensions but certainly distinct and independent of them. I call this new axis biopolitics, and the ends of its spectrum are transhumanists (the progressives) and, at the other end, the bio-Luddites or bio-fundamentalists. Transhumanists welcome the new biotechnologies, and the choices and challenges they offer, believing the benefits can outweigh the costs. In particular, they believe that human beings can and should take control of their own biological destiny, individually and collectively enhancing our abilities and expanding the diversity of intelligent life. Bio-fundamentalists, however, reject genetic choice technologies and “designer babies,” “unnatural” extensions of the life span, genetically modified animals and food, and other forms of hubristic violations of the natural order. While transhumanists assert that all intelligent “persons” are deserving of rights, whether they are human or not, the biofundamentalists insist that only “humanness,” the possession of human DNA and a beating heart, is a marker of citizenship and rights.

– James Hughes, Democratic Transhumanism 2.0, 2002

Works

• Hughes, James (1996). "Embracing Change with All Four Arms: A Post-Humanist Defense of Genetic Engineering". Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 6(4), 94-101
• Hughes, James (2002). "Politics of Transhumanism". 2001 Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science
• Hughes, James (2002). "Democratic Transhumanism 2.0". Transhumanity blog
• Hughes, James (2002-2004). Changesurfing Archived Betterhumans column
• Hughes, James (2004). Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-4198-1

References

Mentions

James Hughes or one of his works is mentioned in the following articles: