|
Current Issue Contents | Past Issues | Subscribe | Contact | Terasem Journals Home |
||
|
Volume 1, Issue 1 Other Terasem Journals |
Forms of Transhuman Persons and the Importance of Prior Resolution of Relevant LawMartine Rothblatt, J.D., Ph.D.page 2 of 5Since the time of Darwin’s contemporaries, many people have assumed that evolution always went in an upward path of increasing complexity. This idea persists even though Darwin These exceptions illustrate that the term "transhuman" is an evolving term, which is actually a good thing. It ties in with the theme of this article, which is a comparison between the law of outer space and the law of transhuman persons, because outer space itself has never been a well-defined concept. Outer space has been a continuously evolving concept. When we talk about the Law of Transhuman Persons, that gives rise to some questions about how we define persons. The United States Code defines a person as a human or organization with legal rights and duties. This gives rise to several questions, such as the following: Are transhumanized US citizens still citizens? If there is no renunciation or death, are you still a citizen even if you have chosen bit by bit to replace yourself, or to just change your attitudes and become transhumanized as an individual physically or attitudinally? What about a revived person? How about somebody who has experienced legal death, even perhaps heart death, but not information-theory death? In other words, their brain is vitrified or cryonicized as within an organization such as ALCOR, and subsequently becomes revived, and is then living, autonomous and conscious. Is that individual a citizen or not? We also need to ask whether non-citizens can be organized as a trust or other business entity. The Terasem Movement decided to organize the Colloquia on the Law of Transhuman Persons because we were inspired by the ongoing Colloquia on the Law of Outer Space. In 1958, a group of about thirty technologists and lawyers gathered together to hold the first Colloquia on the Law of Outer Space. This happened at the very dawning of the space age. This was the era of the Khrushchev-Nixon kitchen debates over such seeming trivialities as which political and economic system would produce a better washing machine. It was the time of forced desegregation in Little Rock and the first launches of the US and Soviet satellites. Image 2 depicts this era.
I feel that we are at about that same point right now with regard to transhuman technology and that we can be inspired by that first Colloquia on the Law of Outer Space. Just as we are doing now, they began by bringing together technical and legal experts to start the field. I want to emphasize that it was a combination of the two, working hand-in-hand, in order to hash out a rational result in the field of technology law. <previous page 1 2 3 4 5 next page> |
The Terasem Pledge We pledge allegiance to the flag of the collective consciousness of Terasem, and to the principles for which it stands, education, persistently, with diversity, unity, and joyful immortality everywhere.
|
|
TerasemJournal.com Home | Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology | Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness Copyright 2006, Terasem Movement. Disclaimer |
||
himself was not of that assumption. Most evolutionary biologists emphasize that evolution occurs as much sideways as anything else. So when we consider other versions of humans that may not be more advanced intellectually or physically, would they also be transhuman? What about artificial intelligence that is not patterned on human thoughts? Peter Voss explores Artificial General Intelligence and how it may not be patterned on human thoughts in his article, "