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Articles

Elastic Selves in the Age of Enhancement

Susana Badiola wonders how technology will help us understand our selves.

“I find it important in philosophizing to keep my posture, not to stand for too long on one leg, so as not to get stiff.”
(From Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notes, published in Culture & Value, 1977)

Scientists and futurists are spreading before a dazzled public all kinds of astonishing prospects of humans in the near future being deliberately transformed through the use of technology. Through advanced medicine and by integrating technology into our lives and our very bodies, we may soon be stronger, healthier, longer-lived, happier, with more acute senses, and capabilities undreamed of by our ancestors. Such technological enhancements of ourselves will be our own conscious choices. What will that mean for our sense of self?

Old questions such as ‘What are we?’ or ‘What makes us be who we are?’ still resonate through contemporary philosophy.

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