This volume engages with post-humanist and transhumanist approaches to present an original exploration of the question of how humankind will fare in the face of artificial intelligence. With emerging technologies now widely assumed to be calling into question assumptions about human beings and their place within the world, and computational innovations of machine learning leading some to claim we are coming ever closer to the long-sought artificial general intelligence, it defends humanity with the argument that technological ‘advances’ introduced artificially into some humans do not annul their fundamental human qualities. Against the challenge presented by the possibility that advanced artificial intelligence will be fully capable of original thinking, creative self-development and moral judgement and therefore have claims to legal rights, the authors advance a form of ‘essentialism’ that justifies providing a ‘decent minimum life’ for all persons. As such, while the future of the human is in question, the authors show how dispensing with either the category itself or the underlying reality is a less plausible solution than is often assumed.

"The book contributes to debates about the dualism of structure and agency which have their origins in (critical) realism. Post-Human Futures: Human Enhancement, Artificial Intelligence and Social Theory (Carrigan and Porpora 2021) distinguishes between the epistemological and the ontological realms and establishes a new humanism that will be meaningful to praxis. "
-Birgul Ulutas, Postdigital Science and Education

Mark Carrigan is Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Douglas V. Porpora is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Communication at Drexel University, USA.