#205 Laura Cabrera: The Philosophy of Human Enhancement
Dr. Laura Cabrera is Assistant Professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences and the Department of Translational Science & Molecular Medicine at Michigan State University. Dr. Cabrera’s interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work focuses on the ethical and social implications of environmental changes for brain and mental health. She’s also the author of the book Rethinking Human Enhancement: Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies.
In this episode, we discuss human enhancement from a philosophical perspective. We talk about the difficulty in defining “enhancement”, and also about the three paradigms of human enhancement, as defined by Dr. Cabrera in her book, Rethinking Human Enhancement: the biomedical, the transhumanist, and the social.
Time Links:
Trying to define “human enhancement”
Transhumanism
The influence of science fiction
The biomedical paradigm, health, and therapy vs enhancement
Enhancement in other animals
The moral and legal status of other beings
The social paradigm of enhancement
Follow Dr. Cabrera’s work!
Follow Dr. Cabrera’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/2UwWRwK
Researchgate profile: https://bit.ly/2v3hSjG
Rethinking Human Enhancement: Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies: https://amzn.to/2WuJE8x