Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 35: 670–684, 2010
doi:10.1093/jmp/jhq048
Advance Access publication on November 12, 2010

A Transhumanist Fault Line Around
Disability: Morphological Freedom and the
Obligation to Enhance
HEATHER G. BRADSHAW*
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

RUUD TER MEULEN
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
*Address correspondence to: Heather G. Bradshaw, Centre for Ethics in Medicine,
University of Bristol, 3rd Floor Hampton House, Cotham Hill, Bristol BS6 6AU, UK.
E-mail: heather.bradshaw@bristol.ac.uk

The transhumanist literature encompasses diverse nonnovel positions on questions of disability and obligation reflecting longrunning political philosophical debates on freedom and value
choice, complicated by the difficulty of projecting values to enhanced
beings. These older questions take on a more concrete form given
transhumanist uses of biotechnologies. This paper will contrast
the views of Hughes and Sandberg on the obligations persons with
“disabilities” have to enhance and suggest a new model. The paper
will finish by introducing a distinction between the responsibility
society has in respect of the presence of impairments and the
responsibility society has not to abandon disadvantaged members,
concluding that questions of freedom and responsibility have
renewed political importance in the context of enhancement
technologies.
Keywords: disability, human enhancement, morphological freedom,
negative liberty, transhumanist
I.  INTRODUCTION
Enhancement in the context of disability draws out areas of continuing debate
and development in transhumanist ethics and political philosophy. We will
introduce the fault line by contrasting the words of people with disabilities
with two strands of thought in the transhumanist literature. Section II explains
the fault line, following Isaiah Berlin (2002/1958), via two models of freedom.
© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc.
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In Section III, the transhumanist conception of freedom is developed and
critiqued. Sections IV and V each address objections to our preferred model
of freedom in transhumanist work referring to disability. The conclusion
summarizes the contextual threats of the rejected model of freedom. We turn
now to the fault line.
James Hughes (2004, 147) writes that we have “a duty and right to provide
children with the healthiest and most able bodies we can.” He calls this “a
really basic idea.”
But there exist persons living with differences or disabilities who do not
think they do have such an obligation to enhance themselves or their children.1
For example, Louisa, a congenitally deaf academic and linguist who is also a
childhood cochlear implantee (CI) said: “[I]f for example you get a deaf baby,
there is enormous pressure from doctors and society etc to take CI, because ‘it
is there’ . . . whilst I think it is not because it is there, that it is automatically
‘good’ or matching the particular situation/environment of the person.”
“Healthiest” and “most able” can be seen as situationally dependent
(Savulescu, 2006, 324) and thus less basic than Hughes’ use suggests. This
partially explains why Louisa and others living in the Deaf community
(Savulescu, 2002; Atkinson, 2006; Murphy, 2008) are uncomfortable with and
do not see themselves as bound by what is expressed in Hughes’ “basic idea.”2
Of course, there are others living with disabilities of various types who do want
the opportunity to enhance themselves, for example, a young congenitally
partially sighted man interviewed in the same research project as Louisa: “It’s
just . . . ah you know . . . just . . . just be able to see in my case.”
A view from the transhumanist literature that contrasts with Hughes’
acknowledges this complexity:
There clearly exist many people who deeply wish to be cured from various disabilities. But there are also many people who over time have become used to them and
instead integrated them into their self-image. The investment of personal growth and
determination necessary to accept, circumvent or overcome a disability is enormous.
Suggesting a cure to them implies a change to themselves on a far deeper level than
just “fixing” a broken tool, and quite often is experienced as an attack on their
human dignity. (Sandberg, 2001, S6 Why do we need morphological freedom?, Para 9)

Sandberg develops the concept of “morphological freedom” to express one
transhumanist attitude to morphology or body configuration:3 “The desirability to [of] many of the possibilities allowed by morphological freedom also
helps support the right to not change, as people see that they are two sides
of the same coin” (Sandberg, 2001, S6, Para 4). Hughes (2004, 138) similarly
writes: “People should have a right to control their own genomes and have
children without permission from the government”; however, he goes on:
But if eugenics includes believing that individuals, free of state coercion, should
have the right to change their own genes and then have children, then the advocates
of human enhancement and germinal choice are indeed eugenicists. If eugenics also

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includes the belief that parents and society have an obligation to give our children
and the next generation the healthiest bodies and brains possible, then most people
are eugenicists. (Hughes, 2004, 131)

It may be that most people do believe that parents and society have such an
obligation (Hughes does not give evidence) but “most” leaves out perhaps
significant minorities and most people can be ethically mistaken, collectively
as well as individually.
Strikingly, Hughes adds with reference to Deaf people having this same
“right to control their own genomes and have children”: “Physicians should
refuse to accede to such a request, and public and private insurance should
refuse to pay for it. When the deaf child reaches maturity they should be
able to sue their parents for damages . . .” (Hughes, 2004, 140).4
Sandberg, in contrast to Hughes, makes an in-principle defense of the
right not to change, including the right to stay disabled or choose disability
(or Deafness). He is concerned with defending radical technologies against
the serious charges that they might be misused “in a coercive manner,
enforcing cultural norms of normality or desirability” (Sandberg, 2001, S6,
Para 3). He proposes that this extension of the concept of freedom to the
control of the form of one’s body is required to defend against the threat of
coercive normalization from radical technologies.
If it is widely accepted that we have the right to control how our bodies are changed
both in the positive sense (using available tools for self-transformation) and in the
negative sense of being free to not change, then it becomes harder to argue for a
compulsory change (Sandberg, 2001, S6, Para 4).

Sandberg and Hughes represent two diverse streams of transhumanist
thought that are not yet always clearly delineated. One symptom of their
divergence is the different weight they place on countering the risk that enhancement technologies and the knowledge underpinning them will be used
in tyrannical or exploitative ways. That is, the weight they place on protecting
freedom.5 These contentious differences about how the risks should be addressed are especially prominent in transhumanist attempts to come to terms
with political, social, ethical, and economic questions involving human diversity, especially, impairment and disability. As differences over freedom are at
the epicenter of the fault line, we turn now to Berlin’s analysis of freedom.
II.  ABANDONMENT AND OPPRESSION ARE THE RISKS OF FREEDOM
In our view, the fissure in transhumanist positions (and politics) is a modern continuation of older political debates. Isaiah Berlin wrote of (but does
not claim to have created the distinction between) two sorts of political or
social risk arising from an institution or society’s attempt to meet citizens’
psychological need for control of their own actions, freedom. Two sorts of

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risk will be outlined in this section then related to transhumanist through a
dilemma. A potential solution and objection will take us to Section III.
Abandonment is the first type of risk. Abandonment occurs when freedom
is produced by society withdrawing from individual lives. We shall call this
the absence model of freedom. This has been experienced in recent human
history as “politically and socially destructive policies which armed the
strong, the brutal and the unscrupulous against the humane and the weak,
the able and ruthless against the less gifted and the less fortunate. Freedom
for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep” (Berlin, 2002/1969, 38).
Berlin wrote early in Europe’s welfare state era. He excuses his lack of critique
of the absence model by alluding to the voluminous contemporaneous literature
on the harms pure capitalism causes to all but a few (Berlin, 2002/1969, 38).
Oppression is the second type of political or social risk. Oppression’s
relation to freedom is complex. With regard to the involvement of society
in individual lives in the form of the welfare state or socialism, “the case
for intervention” (Berlin, 2002/1969, 38) to counter abandonment is
“overwhelmingly strong” (Berlin, 2002/1969, 38). Yet in his view, the case
for intervention still does not justify any model of freedom that carries the
risk of oppression. Models in which your control of your actions is accepted
as only partial invite others to help you increase your control. Oppression
follows because, in Berlin’s slippery slope argument:
This renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own
sake, in their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need
better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails, is that they would
not resist me if they were rational and as wise as I and understood their interests as I
do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I may declare that they are
actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist, [. . .] Once I
take this view, I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to
bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf, of their “real” selves [. . .].
(Berlin, 2002/1958, 180)

Such models of freedom we will call partial models (Berlin’s “positive”
liberty; Berlin, 2002/1969, 4). We explain their relevance to transhumanist
via respect for “the person-as-they-are.” By summarizing the argument so far
as a dilemma, we introduce John Christman’s “autonomy” resolution and
Takala’s liberal objection.
Berlin is clear that no matter how obvious it might appear from the
outside that certain people might do better, in some sense, if they were different, they are actually not other than they are. One has to start from the
person as they present themselves. To do otherwise is to oppress. One cannot start from the person one hopes another will become. To do this is to fail
to recognize and respect the person-as-they-are as a morally whole person,
as one who has his or her own ends in mind. It is to place one’s own mind
in place of theirs. “This monstrous impersonation, which consists in equating

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what X would choose if he were something he is not, or at least not yet, with
what X actually seeks and chooses, is at the heart of all theories of political
self-realisation” (Berlin, 2002/1958, 180).6
The dilemma abandonment and oppression pose is emotive in disability
and the transhumanist human enhancement context. The absence model
risks abandoning to involuntary suffering even those who are suffering from
a difference, impairment, disability or not being enhanced.7 Partial models
risk oppression for those who have a difference, impairment, disability, or
are not enhanced. Abandoned or oppressed? A poor choice for those already
perceived as at a disadvantage!
John Christman (2005) attempts a solution to the version of the dilemma
posed in medical care and especially relevant in mental health care (Gutridge,
2010) by choosing a partial model but attempting to provide a barrier on the
slippery slope. He argues that thinking about having “idealized,” complete,
control over our actions, or “effective agency” is useful (Christman, 2005, 86,
80). We have thus discovered that autonomy is partial because
. . . Autonomy is defined in various ways, but most conceptions stress the capacity for
critical self-reflection in the development of value systems and plans of action. Such
capacities do not merely emerge naturally, but must be developed through various
processes involving educational, social, and personal resources. (Christman, 2005, 87)

But autonomy is beneficial because it is self-limiting. Unlike other models of
self-realization, in autonomy the only goal that can be imposed on one by
others is the goal of being able to choose one’s own goals. So even coercion
in the name of autonomy can never lead to oppression and Berlin’s “monstrous impersonation.”
But Christman’s model, as he admits all defenses of self-realization are, is
based on what he calls a “cognitivist” understanding of justification: an action
is justified by being the right action, not by being an action that was chosen
(Christman, 2005, 84). Voluntarists, in contrast, claim that justification requires
only that the action was freely chosen (Christman, 2005, 84). The catch with
Christman’s “cognitivist” justification is that we require some way of knowing
which actions are right independently of whether people choose them or not.
But how can the rightness of the action be thus abstracted from the circumstances in which it is made? In particular, how can it be separated from the
nature, background, and subjective judgments of the agent that makes it?
Takala (2007) develops this objection to Christman’s abandonment/oppression
dilemma solution. She reminds us that societies like those of the United States
and Britain today do not have ways of agreeing on the right action in every ethically contentious case. This is because of cultural and value divergence:
If the account of autonomy is grounded on a positive notion of liberty, it annihilates
the value neutrality that respect for autonomy was supposed to protect. In multicultural societies there is no justification to build the notion of autonomy on an account
of liberty that presupposes a particular value system. (Takala, 2007, 228)

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Christman argues that any clarification of freedom must be normative, thus taking some value as prior. In contrast, Takala argues, liberally, for separation of
freedom from morality. Freedom is constituted by the space to follow and develop one’s own conscience, perhaps in opposition to the ways of the surrounding society. In the transhumanist future, this question of a preset guiding
value versus value-free space is exceedingly difficult due to the potentially
greatly increased diversity and consequent threat to social coherence from the
absence model of freedom in this context. Freedom in transhumanist thought
adds a further complication: variety in the sources of impediments to freedom
is greater than in Berlin’s work. In Section III, both Berlin’s human source of
impediment and transhumanist natural sources of impediment will be discussed
in order to complete and criticize the transhumanist model of freedom.
III.  TRANSHUMANIST FREEDOM: THE HUMAN SOURCE RESTRICTION
AND THE DISPOSITIONAL ACCOUNT OF VALUES
Here we discuss the human source restriction’s relevance to transhumanist
freedom and introduce objections from resource scarcity and obligation
scope. We counter by appeal to subjective, not universal, enhancement valuations, arguing that universalization requires particularly problematic empirical evidence in the enhancement context. Here the dispositional theory of
value is subject to Berlin’s objections from oppression. In contrast to Bostrom,
we see the absence model as providing part of the solution to the evidence
deficit. We conclude by returning to disability through Sandberg’s work.
Christman (2005) and Garnett (2007) emphasize Berlin’s “human source
restriction” (Christman, 2005, 82). Berlin wrote: “Helvetius made this point
very clearly: ‘The free man is the man who is not in irons, not imprisoned in
a goal, nor terrorised like a slave by the fear of punishment.’ It is not lack of
freedom to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale” (Berlin, 2002/1958 FN,
169). So, on Berlin’s view we are not unfree when subject to traditional
and contemporary human limitations, for example, lacking wings. But
transhumanist is “a belief that the human race can evolve beyond its current
limitations, especially by the use of science and technology” (Oxford English
Dictionary, 2009), and the Transhumanist FAQ version 2.1, which summarizes the movement’s values, describes it thus:
(1) The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging
and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
(2) The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies
that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related
study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.
(Bostrom, 2003a, 1, my italics)

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So a transhumanist may hold that if it would be possible given available or
near future technology and desirable; according to her understanding of
“‘enhance,” for her to fly like an eagle, then anyone preventing her from accessing, developing, or encouraging the development of such technology is
interfering with her freedom to spend her money and time and her freedom
to change herself—body, brain, and mind—in accordance with her ends.
Sandberg writes: “As a negative right, morphological freedom implies that
nobody may force us to change in a way we do not desire or prevent
our change” (Sandberg, 2001, S2, Para 11, my italics). That contradicts the
human source restriction.
An objection is society’s lack of resources to address these new limitations
to freedom as well as traditional human oppression. In reply we disagree
that Sandberg’s position entails a universal obligation to fund, buy, or use
eagle technology. Universalization would require the significant further step
that others ought to come to share that particular transhumanist’s value system. A universal social obligation to enhance would require the enhancement to be likely to improve anyone’s well-being, not just one’s own (for
individual welfarist definitions of enhancement, see Savulescu, 2006, Savulescu and Kahane, 2008; Kahane and Savulescu, 2009 ) as well as taking
one beyond one’s present state. But why should others share this value system, and how could we know if they did? Transhumanists who talk of universal enhancement obligations face a normativity problem similar to
Christmans’—their justification is not value neutral and so risks Berlin’s oppression rather than abandonment. In effect, they are using a partial model
of freedom not an absence model.
To generate a universal obligation to support an enhancement, the easiest
way around our reply is to start with an enhancement which it can be assumed everyone already does value, such as reducing the incidence of the
diseases of old age, as demonstrated by the Transhumanist FAQ. John Harris
(2007, 36) uses a version of this strategy and defines an enhancement as
such a widely valued ability.
We respond first that the original objection of oppression is not addressed
by seeking a universal value because it leaves no room for dissent. Second,
it is still an assumption in need of evidence that these technologies are valued universally by the sorts of beings who will invest in developing them. It
is not enough in this context of oppression avoidance that they ought to be
so valued if the arguments supporting that ought are themselves based on a
partial model of freedom or are otherwise oppressive. Third, it is a different
question whether beings who actually had such technologies would still
value them. And this question leads to its own set of problems, which we
shall call the Chimpanzee Challenge.
Not even the transhumanists have conducted large-scale surveys to
determine what technological changes to the human organism are actually
desired by the members of all human populations currently existing, let

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alone what the members of all human populations think they might desire if
they were different beings, that is, beings who actually had these technologies.8 As Bostrom (2003b, 3) acknowledges, this would be difficult because
“Just as chimpanzees lack the brainpower to understand what it is like to be
human, so too do we lack the practical ability to form a realistic understanding of what it would be like to be posthuman”. Research with differently
abled people (Bradshaw, forthcoming) shows that the change does not have
to be large, or in the direction of increased ability, for a being, even a human, embodied in one way to “lack the practical ability to form a realistic
understanding of what it would be like to be” differently embodied, that is,
to have a different morphology. Sighted teachers lack a realistic understanding of partially sighted pupils’ phenomenological experiences; even technically well educated, oral, and hearing-friendly deaf persons may lack a
realistic understanding of what life with a CI will be like. Hearing, orally
communicating people generally lack a realistic understanding of what it is
to be a Deaf parent.9 Most of us humans, like the chimpanzee, are just not
very good at projecting what different circumstances will feel like for us let
alone how these will change our values. If we were, there would be little
point to literature and film.
So the human “chimpanzee” seeking posthuman enlightenment will, phenomenologically, tread some very foreign roads, and visit some quite fantastic towns, and may well change value direction at each of them, seeking a
destination that always eludes and having forgotten after a while where he
or she came from. But none of this should stop him or her from setting out
on the journey if they so wish and as long as they are aware of there being
risks, including the risk of losing any sense of value direction.
Even the nature of the more specific, personal, risks must be largely,
though not entirely, unknown. “Here be serpents, Eve.” Not every road will
lead to Utopia, and if some claim they have found it and we should follow
them, how are we to know they have not just been taken in by some beguiling detour? (Bostrom, 2008; Miah, 2008, Letters from and to Utopia).
But this does not constitute an objection to voluntary individual enhancement or morphological variation, for instance choosing to remain deaf, as
supported by morphological freedom. Indeed, it is an argument for morphological freedom. This is because none of these risks, or the chimpanzee’s
necessary ignorance, should detract from the value of the journey itself, for
how can we learn to navigate such waters if none of the various willing volunteers are allowed to explore them?
But, to return us yet again to the question of there being a social obligation to enhance, Bostrom (2003b) goes further than the case of what one
may choose for oneself and writes:
Additionally, we may favour future people being posthuman rather than human,
if the posthumans would lead lives more worthwhile than the alternative humans

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would. Any reasons stemming from such considerations would not depend on the
assumption that we ourselves could become posthuman beings.

We agree that the ethical force of this need not depend on the posthumans
being in some way continuous with the original humans, but if there is no
such connection, and the posthumans are, for example, other people’s children, then the poor chimpanzee’s problems are multiplied.
This is because, although it is clear that I can favor, or wish, that my future
life, whether as the person I am now, with my present identity and values,
or with a new identity and values, will be posthuman rather than human,
without risk of oppressing others (assuming the means I take to this end do
not themselves harm others), it is not clear that I could favor this for someone else without risking oppressing them. There are various possibilities,
such as altruism, and hope in despair, but we will show that they are not
adequate.
Altruistically we can wish that others’ lives will be better than our own.
The hope that their children’s lives will be better than their own appears to
have carried many parents through dark times. To support and wish for technology that will benefit others, even if it arrives too late to help oneself, is
admirable and may provide something to hope for when there is no personal hope remaining (see Bradshaw, forthcoming, for an example of this).
Our objection to these two options is that they depend on a certainty that
what the technology has to offer will be better for that other person. But this
certainty is unavailable because of the Other Chimpanzee Challenge: If an
individual cannot predict his/her own future well-being, then how can we
predict well-being on behalf of another? And without certainty we have to
take account of the risk of loss. If it is that the technologically modified being
will have known nothing else (e.g., new morphology congenitally present),
then at least they will not suffer a loss. So consider if we chose to alter a
child’s morphology and our imagined “better” turns out worse for them than
what we can see in hindsight the original morphology would have done.
Then the child will have lost nothing, in the sense of having experienced
loss.10 But equally they will not experience a gain from the technology
either.
Such a risk of loss would, however, be present for any existing being who
takes our destination as his or her own, for better or, in this case, worse.
Because of this risk of loss due to the difficulty of predicting future wellbeing, it is important that he or she chooses of his or her own accord, and
not because of anyone else’s preferences so as to maximize the accuracy of
the well-being forecast, to clearly assign responsibility for the consequences
and to preserve agency. And for the choice to be fully theirs, it must be a
real option for them to refuse the technology.
This sort of refusal is, we think, what Sandberg means when he says that
the opportunity to enhance needs to be countered by the “right not to

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change” to form morphological freedom. A true enhancement, rather than
just a change, will be supported by many people’s uncoerced, and retrospectively valued, choices over time. But any hint of coercion will detract
from the information content of such changes as well as their psychological
acceptance. Furthermore, as the proportions of people choosing one way or
the other varies, so will the value of either choice. Staying the same when
everyone else changes is itself to explore a subspace different from staying
the same when everybody else also stays the same. And this requirement of
free choice is precisely what Bostrom’s formulation puts in doubt, especially
when interpreted with his references to Lewis’ dispositional theory of value
in mind. Bostrom writes:
The conjecture that there are greater values than we can currently fathom does not
imply that values are not defined in terms of our current dispositions. [. . .] According
to Lewis’ theory, something is a value for you if and only if you would want to want
it if you were perfectly acquainted with it and you were thinking and deliberating as
clearly as possible about it. On this view, there may be values that we do not currently want, and that we do not even currently want to want . . .. (Bostrom, 2003b, 4)

This may be quite consistent but in terms of political philosophy it is reminiscent of Berlin’s passages on the risks of positive or partial models of freedom
(Berlin, 2002/1958, 180). For Lewis and Bostrom are here suggesting that a
person’s set of present values can be split into the values they are aware of
and the values they are unaware of. Berlin claims such partial consciousness
entails only that if the subject were (i) rational, (ii) “as wise as I,” and (iii)
“understood their interests as I do,” then they “would not resist me.” It does
not imply that present resistance is not significant! Nor that such people “are
actually aiming at what in their benighted state they consciously resist” (Berlin,
2002/1958, 180). Berlin sees a great risk of oppression in attributing such currently unwanted or occluded values to those who are obviously not presently
in the ideal state. “Once I take this view,” he writes, “I am in a position to
ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in
the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves” (Berlin, 2002/1958, 180). And
that, when connected with the sorts of technologies in question, is more than
enough to generate, and realize, the fears Sandberg refers to that “technologies
such as genetic modifications would be used in a coercive manner, enforcing
cultural norms of normality or desirability” (Sandberg, 2001, S6, Para 3).
Sandberg connects his idea of morphological freedom as a defense against
such risks with the experience of those living with disabilities and facing
present technological choices. As they are the group for whom the obligation to enhance is often thought to be strongest, but rest lightest, it is a good
test case. He writes:
A simple ban of coercive medical procedures would not be enough, even if it is better than nothing. The reason is that it does not imply any right to have an alternative
body or protect differently bodied people. The official [a bureaucrat considering

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that being disabled is a very expensive lifestyle] could encourage “normal” bodies
through various means, including officially pronouncing disabled people who did
not change as irresponsible and wasting public resources. Without any protection of
the right to have a different body, both in the legal sense to prevent discrimination
and in the ethical sense as a part of public ethics guiding acceptance and tolerance,
the disabled would be in a very disagreeable situation. It should be noted that the
disability movement have been strong supporters of right to determine ones body
just for this reason. (Sandberg, 2001, S6, Para 11)

Transhumanist pushes the boundaries of the human source constraint by
attributing to human actions or omissions one’s bodily inability to perform
posthuman actions. Thus, transhumanist reiterates in a particularly concrete
form the questions of freedom and oppression wrestled with by Berlin.
IV.  MATERIALIZATION OF THE SELF AND TWO RESPONSIBILITIES:
A NEW DISTINCTION
This transhuman materialization precipitates the hitherto abstract “self” to be
realized into a material, though malleable, body or brain. Then the suffering
of the “sheep” becomes not an act of fate beyond human power (as it was
considered in the early lassaiz-faire period) but a human responsibility because of our matter manipulating technology. This apparently strengthens the
argument against the absence model of freedom under which not only would
the disadvantaged be abandoned but also now their disadvantage as well as
their abandonment could be directly attributed to others’ omissions.11
But now there are two responsibilities: the disadvantage responsibility and
the non-abandonment responsibility. We may reason that if we can ameliorate disadvantage, we should, to fulfill our disadvantage responsibility. But
exactly this benevolent (though self-serving) intent also leads to coercion
and oppression. Consider instead who is relieved of this responsibility when
the person concerned voluntarily accepts it, for example, when a Deaf person freely chooses to remain Deaf even when speech reception technology
is available to them. This transfer of responsibility is how morphological
freedom manages disadvantage. Society has no further obligation to “cure,”
enhance, or encourage self-enhancement for those disadvantaged by freely
chosen morphologies.
We do retain a strong obligation to continue with enhancement research
for the benefit of others with the same disadvantage who, voluntarily, do not
choose to retain it. Our non-abandonment responsibility is unaffected by
either choice and implies support for the ends of those who choose to retain
a disadvantage just as we support the ends of other members of society
within the constraints of just resource allocation.
In our view, there is also a further set of constraints on morphological
freedom. They can be derived from consideration of a model society within
which morphologically homogenous, economically independent subgroups

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interact in a structured way supported by a neutral state. In this model, there
is no single “basic cooperative framework” (Buchanan et al., 2000, 20, 288–
303). Instead, multiple cooperative frameworks, each representing different
combinations of physical, social, and morphological factors, are coordinated
through collectively financed state institutions.
In this model, the efficiencies of morphological similarity are exploited
within the subgroups, but technology and new political institutions ensure
that the benefits of morphological diversity are available, collectively to the
whole society and personally to individual members wishing to explore
and take up other morphologies or lifestyles. Freedom to found new subgroups helps the society to explore a variety of morphology-environment
fits. It should be noted that constraints on acceptable morphologies will still
be present in this model, but they will be far fewer than at present in our
single basic cooperative framework societies. Such multiple cooperative
framework societies seem capable of supporting much greater levels of
morphological freedom while minimizing the risks of both abandonment
and tyranny.
V.  CONCLUSION
Through the lens of transhumanist’s attempts to address disability, we have
glimpsed one of the schisms fundamental to the movement’s history and
future. The fault line lies between freedom as the absence of interference
with people’s existing ends—a pluralist, voluntarist, liberal conception, compatible with disability studies’ models of disability—and the less compatible,
partial—monistic, rationalist, objectivist—conception of freedom. This conceptual gap has not grown with the advent of greater understanding of
human psychology, neuroscience, or biotechnology; it has just become more
material.
Commercialization of recent technological innovations may make the
political importance of this schism greater than at any time since Berlin wrote.
Transhumanist literature such as Hughes (2004), Stock (2003), and Naam
(2005) demonstrates that sociopolitical understanding is still stymied by humans’ inability to imagine how morphological fluidity (MacKenzie, 2008,
399) will affect their identities and value systems (Scully, 2008). Subjective
experience, by analogy or experimentation, may be the only way out of the
impasse. Meanwhile, reducing the risks posed by oppression, tyranny, despotism, abandonment, and the use of force against discontent requires more
diligent study of existing reports, theory, and history of value change. Attention to available data may yet enable technological, political, and social
progress to continue without war’s destruction, fueled by perceived oppression, and conducted with the full force of our crude, present or near future,
levels of technological understanding.

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NOTES
	
1.	 For the purposes of this paper, we will consider enhancement to include any intervention that
takes an individual beyond the level they have previously experienced for that ability. Therapy, in contrast, returns an individual to an ability level they had previously experienced. In the case of children, for
the purposes of this paper we will take enhancement to be any intervention on the part of the parents to
deliberately produce offspring who have greater abilities than either of the parents do or to increase the
probability with which the offspring are likely to carry a particular trait that at least one of the parents has
experience of. We would consider it unethical to deliberately cause offspring to carry traits considered to
be detrimental to life success by the parents and which neither parent has personal experience of. This
leaves open the risk that some traits considered by the parents to be enhancing will prove to be detrimental. It also allows parents who live with a trait considered undesirable by those without it to deliberately pass this trait on to their children.
	
2.	 And enshrined in UK law at present in the form of the illegality of implanting embryos known
to have an “abnormality” which involves a “significant risk” of the development of a “serious” “disability,”
“illness,” or “any other serious medical condition.” (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 c.22.
Clause 14 Subsection (9)). People identifying as Deaf do not consider Deafness to be a medical condition
of any sort and certainly not a disability or illness.
	
3.	 Sandberg was the main author of Version 1 of the Transhumanist FAQ. See S7, Acknowledgments and Document History, within Bostrom (2003a) .
	
4.	 Later the same page he acknowledges that the benefits of respect for reproductive freedom
would allow us to ignore the few such cases of “bizarre” choices because the resulting harm
done would be small in comparison to the overall benefits of reproductive freedom. This seems ad
hoc and in need of empirical confirmation though we agree the numbers involved may be quite
small.
	
5.	 Neither they nor we feel that these fears and risks justify preventing the development of technologies with such potential for ameliorating involuntary suffering and increasing achievement. Indeed,
we would all argue strongly for more support for research in these areas.
	
6.	 Transhumanist is often seen as a theory of physical self-realization.
	
7.	 Despite common speech not everyone affected suffers from such differences.
	
8.	 Some such work has been done. See Savulescu and Bostrom (2009, 8).
	
9.	 We use Deaf where a clear allegiance to the Deaf community is known to be present and deaf
where such an allegiance cannot be assumed. We also differentiate between hard of hearing but orally
oriented and deaf and/or Deaf in the sense of nonorally oriented persons who may feel a greater or lesser
allegiance to the Deaf community.
	
10.	 This is a version of Derek Parfit’s nonidentity problem. Parfit (1984, 351–90).
	
11.	 We are using “disadvantage” here to refer to those whose competitive advantage may be considered low in their society, for example, those with body morphologies today considered “impaired” or
those who are not “enhanced.” That is, those with a smaller range of abilities or a lower level of key abilities than is usual in their society. We would like to contrast this sense of “disadvantaged” with what is
implied by “disabled” in the social model of disability—the negative effects of an impairment that are due
not to the impairment itself but to the social circumstances in which the impaired individual finds themselves. The latter have always been within society’s power to change and thus have always been the
responsibility of society to ameliorate. But the impairment was until now often accepted as being beyond
human power to alter. That is no longer the case.

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