Cyborgs-R-Us

• Authors: Neil Levy
• Venue: CRPIT '03 Selected papers from conference on Computers and philosophy - Volume 37
• Year: 2003

The prospect of a merger of human beings and technologies to create cyborgs arouses great fear as well as great excitement. I argue that neither the fear nor the excitement is justified. The threat from cyborgization to human nature is non-existent, because there is a clear sense in which we are already cyborgs. Our great cognitive abilities are a product as much of the world, as we alter it, as of our unadorned brains. By the very same token, however, the excitement surrounding cyborgization is overblown: it is not a radical departure from our preexisting mode of being, but an extension of it. Cyborgization presents us with many challenges and opportunities, but both the dangers and the benefits are of a familiar kind.