“HEAD-TRANSPLANTING” AND “MIND-UPLOADING:” PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS AND POTENTIAL SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF TWO MEDICO-SCIENTIFIC UTOPIAS
“HEAD-TRANSPLANTING” AND “MIND-UPLOADING:” PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS AND POTENTIAL SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF TWO MEDICO-SCIENTIFIC UTOPIAS

Summary/Abstract: This paper raises the possibility of a sociology of outer space that examines the spatial turn and the turn to space in recent sociology. Rapid developments in space technology, travel and colonization now raise a set of questions about the extension of the spatial turn in sociology to outer space, to a space and territory no longer tied to earth’s limits. A significant theme in the sociology of outer space is how space-time compression is conceptualized outside of the frame of planet Earth to describe the overcoming of the friction of distance with new forms of space travel, transportation and communication and the extent to which new technologies driving and associated with the globalization of postmodern capitalism are generating new extra-world spatialities as an extension of Earth-bound economic and political processes. In this context, the paper also briefly records and examines the shift from the “Space Race” to space commercialization.This article discusses the philosophical implications and potential social consequences of two experimental – and at the present moment still widely speculative – topics at the intersection between scientific and medical advances, the human body, the human mind, and the globalized health care sector. Head-Transplanting is a chirurgical endeavor envisaged by the HEAVEN project announced to be practically implemented around 2017 and to be available for routine-use around the mid-2020s by a group of internationally as prominent as disputed transplant surgeons. Mind-Uploading is a procedure currently in the first stages of development to create artificial representations of the human brain and its processes in computers and on the internet. An example of this was made in a proposition by the Global Future 2045’s 2013 Congress which stated the goal “Towards a New Strategy for Human Evolution” in an open letter to United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, and was debated at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and other institutions. Part 1 of this text describes the current societal framework and the rise of human-technology convergence to civilizational center-stage. Part 2 analyses the philosophies and social imaginaries of Head-Transplanting and Mind-Uploading, as envisaged by their proponents as examples of future “anthropomorphic” technology destined to blend with the human body. Eventually, part 3 draws a non-conclusive and temporary outlook of and around these developments.

• Details
• Contents