PERSONA

Research Group


Coordinator
Prof. Dr. Brunello Stancioli

Team
Prof. Dr. Antonio Cota Maral
Prof. Dr. Flvio Guimares da Fonseca
Anna Cristina Carvalho Rettore
Daniel Mendes Ribeiro
Las Godoi Lopes
Mariana Alves Lara
Nara Pereira Carvalho
Patrick Arley Santiago Barbosa
FROM THE NECESSITY OF BEING
HUMAN TO THE POSSIBILITY OF
BEING WHATEVER YOU WANT
Human Enhancement as Basic Right
Brunello Stancioli
LLB, LLM, LLD
Law Professor (UFMG, Brazil);
Academic Visitor Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Bennett Foddy (coauthor)
Abstract
The presentation has two main goals:

1) It argues that human enhancement is not new in human
history. On the contrary, it was fundamental for the
emergence of mankind. With further developments, human
enhancement can play a vital role on the construction of
personhood and raising new possibilities for human existence.

2) To demonstrate that human enhancement, strongly
connected to a non-positional value, must be considered a
basic right. On this path, it will be argued that the ethical basis
for human rights is the very same of human enhancement:
autonomy and the good life.
Sketch
I- Conceptual Basis
II- Person & Body
III- Personal Rights
IV- Final(?) Conclusions
I- Conceptual Basis
Mario Bunge McGil University.
I- Conceptual Basis
a) System

If we have a system s then follows that:

C (s) = Composition: Collection of all parts of s;
E (s) = Environment: Collection of items, other than those in s
that act on or are acted upon some or all components of s;
S (s) = Structure/Organization/Architecture: Collections of
relations, in particular bonds, among components of s or
among these and items in its environment E(s);
M (s) = Mechanism (modus operandi): Collection of processes in s
that make it behaves the way it does.
Examples:

Solar System

Composition: planets, the Sun,
asteroids, etc.
Environment: the Universe.
Structure: disposition and the
interaction between sun and planets,
the movement of the planets etc.
Mechanism: the Universal
Gravitation.
I- Conceptual Basis
The Eco-System

Composition: animals,
plants, virus, bacteria, etc.
Environment: water, earth,
sunlight, air.
Structure: the many
relations between the
organisms, as parasitism,
mutualism, commensalism
etc.
Mechanism: Ecology.
I- Conceptual Basis
Internet

Composition: PCs,
laptops, tablets, wires, etc.
Environment: houses,
electricity, universities, human
society.
Structure: physical
connections, FTP, e-mails, etc.
Mechanism: exchange,
(re)production and storage of
information.
I- Conceptual Basis
A Linguistic Community
Composition: people talking the same language.
Environment: culture and Country.
Structure: all social interactions.
Mechanism: mutual understanding/disagreement.
I- Conceptual Basis
I- Conceptual Basis
b) Emergence

Emergence is a characteristic of complex systemic
collections, in which a set of things has a property (or
properties) that are not had by any of its components, in
a way that can be said that a higher level of the system is
produced. Emergence is a property of material systems
and material things, and, as such, requires an explanation,
more than a mere description. Emergence is the reason
why there is qualitative novelty, or, putting it more simply,
why new things, properties and processes arise from old,
known objects.
I- Conceptual Basis
Examples:

Airplane
I- Conceptual Basis
Nation-State
I- Conceptual Basis
Living Beings
I- Conceptual Basis
c) Person

Composition: a body (necessarily including the brain).
Environment: artifacts, information, language-as-
action.
Structure: society (family, polis, state).
Mechanism/modus operandi: during direct and symbolic
interaction with the environment, the information is
encapsulated by the brain, from which emerges an identity,
a sense of self and a person.
I- Conceptual Basis
The newborn infants cannot walk.
They have to learn to walk, and the
help of older persons, already
competent in the art [is needed]. In
short, walking is a skill that emerges
for every individual in the course
of a process of development,
through the active involvement of
an agent the child within the
environment.
Tim Ingold University of
Aberdeen
I- Conceptual Basis
Tim Ingold University of
Aberdeen
"[T]he abilities both to speak and to
read and write emerge within a
continuous process of bodily
modification, involving a fine-tuning
of vocal-auditory and manual-visual
skills together with corresponding
anatomical changes in the brain, and
taking place within the contexts of the
learner's engagement with other persons
and diverse objects in his or her
environment. Both capacities, in short,
are the properties of developmental
systems.
I- Conceptual Basis
First Conclusions

Human enhancement is not new in human history. Some
forms of enhancement (mainly language) were fundamental for
the emergence of the person and personhood.
Human Enhancements have always been fundamental to the
emergence of personhood.
The main effect of human enhancement is to provide new
possible forms of personhood, thus allowing everyone to live a
life according to his own desires and his own conception of the
good life.
II- Person & Body
What is the bodys role in the concept of person and
his values?
II- Person & Body
PRE-MODERN CONCEPTION
OF REALITY
MODERN CONCEPTION OF
REALITY
1 A given, static Nature, considered an
object of contemplation.
Reality as a process, continuous
flow of changes.
2 The body is the abode of the soul,
therefore it is inviolable.
Body regarded as part of reality;
thus, subjected to constant changes.
3 In the conception (fusion of
gametes), it occurs the infusion of
the soul, moment in which the
person is constituted.
Biological explanations about the
beggining of the life; person just
exists in a social context.
4 Uses of the body pervaded by
taboos.

Persons have got an active role in
the (re)construction of reality, and,
therefore, are agents of self-
manipulation of the body.
II- Person & Body
Individuals: The P-Predicates and M-Predicates.

Peter Strawson Oxford University.
II- Person & Body
Williams rebuttal: Body swap experiments.

Bernard Williams Cambridge University.

II- Person & Body
[A] person is distinct from his
brain and body, and his
experiences. But persons are not
separately existing entities. The
existence of a person, during any
period, just consists in the
existence of his brain and his
body, and the thinking of his
thoughts, and doing of his deeds,
and the occurrence of many other
physical and mental events.
Derek Parfit Oxford University.

II- Person & Body
When one change one's body (and brain), does his
values change as well?
II- Person & Body
Total Recall
II- Person & Body
Hulk
II- Person & Body
Wolverine
II- Person & Body
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
II- Person & Body
Technobody vs. Physical Integrity?
II- Person & Body
Human Enhancement and the Spirit of Sport
II- Person & Body
Life Span vs. Social Security, Religious Values etc.
II- Person & Body
New Bodies: New Concept of Health?
II- Person & Body
Could we even have the right to walk again?
Miguel Nicolelis Duke University.
II- Person & Body
Conclusion
If one enhances the body/brain (or equivalent), the
person is enhanced as a whole. This implies new values,
new forms of living and even new personal rights.
III- Personal Rights
Declaration of Independence (1776)

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness [].
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives,
our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
III- Personal Rights
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

The representatives of the French people, formed into a
National Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect or scorn
of the rights of man to be the only causes of national
misfortunes and the corruption of governments, have resolved
to set out, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalienable
and sacred rights of man [].
III- Personal Rights
Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (1988)

PREAMBLE

We, the representatives of the Brazilian People, convened in the
National Constituent Assembly to institute a Democratic State, for the
purpose of ensuring the exercise of social and individual rights, liberty,
security, well-being, development, equality and justice as supreme values
of a fraternal, pluralist and unprejudiced society, founded on social
harmony and committed, in the internal and international orders, to the
peaceful settlement of disputes, promulgate, under the protection of
God, this Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil.
III- Personal Rights
Those ideas are completely anachronistic.

An alternative, the vision of Korsgaard:

The ethics of autonomy
is the only one consistent
with the metaphysics of
the modern world, and
the ethics of autonomy is
an ethics of obligation.
Christine Korsgaard Harvard University.
III- Personal Rights
Person, Autonomy and Action
III- Personal Rights
Mirandola: Dignity and Autonomy
The free and proud
shaper of your own
being, fashion
yourself in the form
you may prefer.
Pico della Mirandola

III- Personal Rights
Dignity and Enhancement
"While Mirandola does not
distinguish between different
forms of dignity, it seems that he
is suggesting both that our
Human Dignity consists in our
capacity for self-shaping, and
also that we gain in Dignity as a
Quality through the exercise of
this capacity.
Nick Bostrom Oxford University.
III- Personal Rights
Person as an agent (autonomy), with a physical
body, that aspires to the Good Life.

The person possesses a memory, conscience, is
capable of action, transformation, of provoking
objective changes in the World, in itself in its
subjectivity and in other persons.
IV- Final(?) Conclusions
The way we manipulate bodies and values, and,
somehow, the person implies infinite forms of (not) being
human.

There are infinite forms of (not)
being human.
IV- Final(?) Conclusions
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IV- Final(?) Conclusions
The main goal of Human Enhancement is to
increase autonomy.

Any change in the biology or psychology of a
person which increases the chances of leading a
good life in the relevant set of circumstances. [...] It
ties enhancement to the value of well-being.
(Savulescu, Sandberg, Kahane)
IV- Final(?) Conclusions
Living the true autonomy implies the conscious self-
apropriation of one's own body as means to a broader
concept of Life Project, which should include the
notion of a self-constructed dignity.

(STANCIOLI, Brunello; CARVALHO, Nara Pereira.
2011. Da Integridade Fsica ao Livre Uso do Corpo: Releitura
de um Direito da Personalidade.)
IV- Final(?) Conclusions
Towards a Common Basis: Human
Rights and Human Enhancement
Human
Enhancement
as a Human
Right
Autonomy
Human
Rights
The
Good Life
Human
Enhancement
IV- Final(?) Conclusions
The Person as a Possibility
(Being Whatever you Want)

Live Long and Prosper
(if you want it).