Posted by Bob Janova at 7:43am Sep 3 '11A large part of our perception about the world comes from our bodies and how we feel inside them. Change the body, and you change the perception and therefore how that person interacts with the world. We aren't just a personality in the mind using the body as a shell, because all the input and output of the mind goes through the body. (Simple example: you can't stay as a sportsman if the limbs you require get blown off.)
There's that guy who wired up a magnetic field sensor to some part of his body (fingers, I think), and astonishingly quickly the brain worked out how to process that input to help with direction finding. So any 'aug' that gave you extra senses or powers would affect your perception of the world, which is a big part of your humanity.
The question that you're not really asking is whether that is a problem. As you point out, we already do this for prosthetic limbs, and no-one would argue that that is a problem – though there is perhaps an ideological difference between artificial replacements and artificial enhancements, in technical terms it's essentially the same thing. And as someone mentioned in the subthread below, mind-altering drugs are widely used and those have a direct effect on personality and perception. So we obviously have no problem with manipulating our humanity to our advantage in at least some cases.
I don't really have a problem with people wanting to 'upgrade' themselves. The only thing is that (obviously, I hope) they should be banned from any sort of physical competition, because those are about testing how the body you started out with works, not how much you can improve it (as is shown by the current drug policy in sports).
Personally though I wouldn't get augmented. I like my body and don't want to mess with it. Even now, I avoid medication if at all possible.
There's that guy who wired up a magnetic field sensor to some part of his body (fingers, I think), and astonishingly quickly the brain worked out how to process that input to help with direction finding. So any 'aug' that gave you extra senses or powers would affect your perception of the world, which is a big part of your humanity.
The question that you're not really asking is whether that is a problem. As you point out, we already do this for prosthetic limbs, and no-one would argue that that is a problem – though there is perhaps an ideological difference between artificial replacements and artificial enhancements, in technical terms it's essentially the same thing. And as someone mentioned in the subthread below, mind-altering drugs are widely used and those have a direct effect on personality and perception. So we obviously have no problem with manipulating our humanity to our advantage in at least some cases.
I don't really have a problem with people wanting to 'upgrade' themselves. The only thing is that (obviously, I hope) they should be banned from any sort of physical competition, because those are about testing how the body you started out with works, not how much you can improve it (as is shown by the current drug policy in sports).
Personally though I wouldn't get augmented. I like my body and don't want to mess with it. Even now, I avoid medication if at all possible.
I think it does - Bob Janova