Inquiring into Human Enhancement Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives

What is human enhancement all about? Why has it become a major concern in debates about the future of contemporary societies? This book is devoted to clarifying the underlying ambiguities of these major debates. It proposes novel ways of exploring what human enhancement means, what practices and technologies are involved, and what goals are invoked, with their respective justifications and criticisms. It calls on contributors from different countries and backgrounds—sociology, philosophy, bioethics, political science, engineering, medicine, literary studies, science fiction—to examine three fundamental aspects of human technological enhancement: firstly, what the concept of human enhancement means; secondly, what practices constitute human enhancement today, and; thirdly, what it might become in the future.

Simone Bateman is Emeritus Senior Researcher CNRS in Sociology at the Centre for Research on Medicine, Science, Health, and Society (CERMES3), France.
 
Jean Gayon is Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.
 
Sylvie Allouche is Assistant Professor at the Human Formation Department and General Biology Laboratory, Université Catholique de Lyon, France.
 
Jérôme Goffette is Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Medicine at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, France.
 
Michela Marzano is Professor of Philosophy and Applied Ethics at the Université Paris Descartes, France.

Introduction; Simone Bateman, Jean Gayon, Sylvie Allouche, Jérôme Goffette, Michela Marzano

PART I: HUMAN ENHANCEMENT: WHAT DO WE MEAN?
1. The Concept and Practices of Human Enhancement: What is at Stake?; Simone Bateman and Jean Gayon
2. Enhancement: Why We Should Distinguish Anthropotechnics from Medicine; Jérôme Goffette
3. Why Do We Wish to Be Enhanced; Vincent Menuz
4. The Moral Ambiguity of Human Enhancement; Ruud ter Meulen

PART II: LEARNING FROM ENHANCEMENT PRACTICES
5. A Scale and a Paradigmatic Framework for Human Enhancement; Pascal Nouvel
6. From Repair to Enhancement: The Use of Technical Aids in the Field of Disability; Myriam Winance, Anne Marcellini and Eric de Léséleuc
7. BMI (Brain-Machine Interface) as a Tool for Understanding Human-Machine Cooperation; Selim Eskiizmirliler and Jérôme Goffette
8. Doping Behavior as an Indicator of Performance Pressure; Patrick Laure and Sylvie Allouche

PART III: VISIONS OF THE FUTURE: LESSONS FROM ART AND FICTION
9. The Earth as Our Footstool: Visions of Human Enhancement in 19th and 20th Century Britain; Christopher Coenen
10. Transcendental Medicine Versus the 'Prisonhouse of the Flesh': Enhancement in R.L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Françoise Dupeyron-Lafay
11. Biotechnology and the Future of Sport: A Scenario; Jean-Noël Missa
12. Adaptation and Emortality: Human Enhancement in 'Tales of the Biotech Revolution'; Brian Stableford