Morphological freedom refers to a proposed civil right of a
personA person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
to either maintain or
modify his or her own bodyBody modification is the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons, such as sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, aesthetic reasons, denoting affiliation, trust and loyalty, religious reasons, shock value, and self-expression....
, on his or her own terms, through
informed, consensualInformed consent is a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and future consequences of an action. In order to give informed consent, the individual concerned must have adequate reasoning...
recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling
medical technologyMedical technology is a part of the Health technology which encompasses a wide range of health care products and, in one form or another, is used to diagnose, monitor or treat every disease or condition that affects humans...
.
The term may have been coined by strategic philosopher
Max MoreMax More is a philosopher and futurist who writes, speaks, and consults on advanced decision-making about emerging technologies....
in his 1993 article,
Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy, where he defined it as "the ability to alter bodily form at will through technologies such as surgery, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, uploading".
Morphological freedom refers to a proposed civil right of a
personA person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
to either maintain or
modify his or her own bodyBody modification is the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons, such as sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, aesthetic reasons, denoting affiliation, trust and loyalty, religious reasons, shock value, and self-expression....
, on his or her own terms, through
informed, consensualInformed consent is a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and future consequences of an action. In order to give informed consent, the individual concerned must have adequate reasoning...
recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling
medical technologyMedical technology is a part of the Health technology which encompasses a wide range of health care products and, in one form or another, is used to diagnose, monitor or treat every disease or condition that affects humans...
.
The term may have been coined by strategic philosopher
Max MoreMax More is a philosopher and futurist who writes, speaks, and consults on advanced decision-making about emerging technologies....
in his 1993 article,
Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy, where he defined it as "the ability to alter bodily form at will through technologies such as surgery, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, uploading". The term was later used by science debater
Anders SandbergAnders Sandberg is a researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist, and author. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stockholm University in computational neuroscience, and is currently a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.Sandberg's...
as "an extension of one’s right to one’s body, not just
self-ownershipSelf-ownership is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to be the exclusive controller of his or her own body and life. According to G...
but also the right to modify oneself according to one’s desires." In March 2008 Sandberg and
Natasha Vita-MoreNatasha Vita-More is a media artist and theorist known for designing "Primo Posthuman. This future human prototype incorporates biotechnology, robotics, information technology, nanotechnology, cognitive and neuroscience for human enhancement and extreme life extension.
Vita-More is the...
gave a joint talk on morphological freedom in
Second LifeSecond Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
.
Politics
According to technocritic Dale Carrico, the politics of morphological freedom imply a commitment to the value, standing, and social legibility of the widest possible variety of desired
morphologiesIn biology morphology is the form, structure and configuration of an organism.This includes aspects of the outward appearance as well as the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs...
and
lifestyleLifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives. A lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviors that makes sense to both others and oneself in a given time...
s. More specifically, morphological freedom is an expression of
liberalLiberalism in the United States is a broad political and philosophical mindset favoring individual liberty. According to Louis Hartz, it differs from liberalism in the rest of the world, because America never had a hereditary aristocracy and therefore never turned to socialism, as many European...
pluralism,
secularismSecularism is the concept that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs.In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and freedom from the government imposition of religion upon the people, within a...
,
progressiveProgressivism is a political and social term for ideologies and movements favoring or advocating changes or reform, usually in a statist or egalitarian direction for economic policies and liberal direction for social policies...
cosmopolitanismCosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single community, possibly based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian theories, in particular the ideologies of patriotism and nationalism...
, and posthumanist
multiculturalismMulticulturalism is the acceptance of multiple ethnic cultures, for practical reasons and/or for the sake of diversity and applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities or nations...
s applied to the ongoing and upcoming transformation of the understanding of
medical practiceMedicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
from one of conventional therapy to one of
consensualInformed consent is a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and future consequences of an action. In order to give informed consent, the individual concerned must have adequate reasoning...
self-determinationSelf-determination theory is a general theory of human motivation and is concerned with the choices people make with their own free will and full sense of choice, without any external influence and interference...
, via
geneticHuman genetic engineering is the modification of an individual's genotype with the aim of choosing the phenotype of a newborn or changing the existing phenotype of a child or adult....
,
prostheticCyberware is a relatively new and unknown field . In science fiction circles, however, it is commonly known to mean the hardware or machine parts implanted in the human body and acting as an interface between the central nervous system and the computers or machinery connected to it.More...
, and
cognitiveNeuropharmacology is concerned with drug-induced changes in the functioning of cells in the nervous system..Within the discipline of neuropharmacology there are two branches, behavioral and molecular....
modification.
See also
- Bioethics
Bioethics is the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, philosophy, and theology.- History...
- Biopolitics
The term "biopolitics" or "biopolitical" can refer to several different yet compatible concepts.-Definitions:# In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through biopower .# In the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, anti-capitalist insurrection using...
- Body modification
Body modification is the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons, such as sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, aesthetic reasons, denoting affiliation, trust and loyalty, religious reasons, shock value, and self-expression....
- Cognitive liberty
Cognitive liberty is the freedom to be the absolute sovereignty of the individual’s own consciousness. It is an extension of the concepts of freedom of thought and self-ownership....
- Disability rights
- Human enhancement
Human enhancement refers to any attempt to temporarily or permanently overcome the current limitations of the human body through natural or artificial means. The term is sometimes applied to the use of technological means to select or alter human characteristics and capacities, whether or not the...
- Meliorism
Meliorism is an idea in metaphysical thinking holding that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned...
- Participant evolution
Participant evolution is a process of deliberately redesigning the human body and brain using technological means, rather than through the natural processes of mutation and natural selection, with the goal of removing "biological limitations." The idea of participant evolution was first put...
- Personhood theory
A person is a legal concept both permitting rights to and imposing duties on one by law. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term has specialised context-specific meanings....
- Prosthesis
In medicine, a prosthesis is an artificial extension that replaces a missing body part. It is part of the field of biomechatronics, the science of fusing mechanical devices with human muscle, skeleton, and nervous systems to assist or enhance motor control lost by trauma, disease, or defect...
- Procreative liberty
- Techno-progressivism
Techno-progressivism, technoprogressivism, tech-progressivism or techprogressivism is a stance of active support for the convergence of technological change and social change...
- Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles....
- Transhumanism
Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. The movement regards aspects of the human condition, such as disability, suffering, disease, aging, and involuntary...
External links