> If you wear glasses or had braces or use an insulin pump, then, congratulations, you're a transhumanist. The rest is just a matter of degrees. Glasses restor

> If you wear glasses or had braces or use an insulin pump, then, congratulations, you're a transhumanist. The rest is just a matter of degrees. Glasses restore a function that was supposed to be there in the first place. They are called "corrective lenses" for a reason; to correct is to presuppose a defect which must be corrected to restore what is normative. Insulin pumps also restore a function that was supposed to be there in the first place. That it is implanted into the body is totally irrelevant. As with glasses, the relationship between the person and the pump is instrumental. My heart or brain, however, are not my instruments. They are part of me. However, the essence of transhumanism, and the ultimate source of issues, is that it turns the human being into an engineering project that seeks to transcend the human. Metaphysically, this is, as polite academic philosophers might say, problematic. To transcend presupposes an existing limit inherent to the thing by virtue of its nature. You wouldn't say that adding a new video card to your computer or building an additional floor on a building transcends the original computer or the original building. This was always possible, as these things are effectively aggregates. The mechanistic metaphysics here precludes the possibility of transcendence, because all you can ever really do is rearrange the furniture. You also wouldn't say that adulthood is the transcendence of childhood, or that adaptation is some kind of transcendence of the species. You're still operating within the scope of possibilities of the species. The nature of a thing is what circumscribes its limits. Technology is not able to transcend human nature, because technology is already within the scope of human power. You can no more cause your own transcendence than you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Transcendence is not merely the actualization of the potentials already present within a thing. It entails the intrinsic "expansion" of the powers of a thing beyond what is possible by virtue of the nature of a thing. However, any modification of a human being can only be either instrumental, the introduction of defect, or restorative. In the best case, we're talking medicine and health. In the worst case, dehumanization, objectification, and commodification of human beings.