Day (session) 2/Dr Mutelo: Bioenhancement and the Quest for Personal and Collective Identity...

Описание: 2nd International Virtual Conference on BIOTECHNOLOGY, HUMAN ENHANCEMENT AND AFRICAN ETHICS, 01-02 October 2025.

Advances in biotechnology, such as pharmaceutical intervention, genetic engineering, and implant technologies, have renewed interest in the human desire for improvement. For transhumanists, these advances suggest that it would become possible to modify, augment, and manipulate human biology using biotechnology to improve the human condition, which is vulnerable to disease, aging, and death beyond the species-typical limit. These biotechnologies would, for instance, directly modulate human cognitive and moral capacities, alter human genetic makeup, implant cybernetic chips in the human brain and attach prostheses to the human body.

Human bioenhancement has generated a lot of debate in Western philosophy and mainstream media for a long time. However, African ethics' place, influence, and roles in evaluating and providing guidance for human biotechnological enhancement remain underexplored. This conference will gather a diverse group of academic researchers to examine the ethics of human biotechnological enhancement as well as the prospects and challenges of such enhancement from African ethical perspectives. Is biotechnological enhancement of human beings morally or ethically necessary? Should we limit ourselves to the traditional means of enhancing humans, such as education, diet and exercise? Or should we advance and use biotechnological means to augment our physical and mental capacities? Is human biotechnological enhancement beneficial to humanity? To what extent will human biotechnological enhancement impact global justice and existing deep-rooted global inequality? Can African ethics ground the argument for the human enhancement project? How will African conceptions of human nature, dignity and flourishing be challenged and changed by biotechnological human enhancement? Can the Afro-communitarian assumptions about personhood remain the same in a community shared by enhanced human beings? Will enhanced human beings have a higher moral status than (non-enhanced) human beings? We encourage contributions that will critically engage these questions and work towards developing ways of enhancing humans without transcending the species-typical limit and jeopardizing African moral values.