jmpjmpJournal of Medicine and Philosophy1744-50190360-5310Oxford University Press10.1093/jmp/jhq048ArticlesA Transhumanist Fault Line Around Disability: Morphological Freedom and the Obligation to EnhanceBradshawHeather G.*University of Bristol, Bristol, UKTer MeulenRuudUniversity 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.uk12201012112010356Bioethics and Transhumanism670684© The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org2010The transhumanist literature encompasses diverse nonnovel positions on questions of disability and obligation reflecting long-running 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.disabilityhuman enhancementmorphological freedomnegative libertytranshumanistI.INTRODUCTIONEnhancement 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. 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 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).4Sandberg, 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 FREEDOMIn 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 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 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).6The 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)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 VALUESHere 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)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 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 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 well-being, 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 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 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 DISTINCTIONThis 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.11But 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 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.CONCLUSIONThrough 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.AtkinsonRI hoped our baby would be deafThe Guardian2006BaumanH.-D. 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Available: http://www.nada.kth.se/∼asa/Texts/MorphologicalFreedom.htm (Accessed February 26, 2009)SavulescuJDeaf lesbians, “designer disability” and the future of medicineBritish Medical Journal20023257713Sims BainbridgeWRoccoM———Justice, fairness and enhancement Progress in convergenceAnnals of the New York Academy of Science2006109332138SavulescuJBostromNHuman enhancement2009Oxford, UKOxford University PressSavulescuJKahaneGThe moral obligation to create children with the best chance of the best lifeBioethics20082327490ScullyJ. LDisability bioethics: Moral bodies, moral differences2008Lanhan, MDRowman and LittlefieldStockGRedesigning humans: Choosing our genes, changing our future2003Boston, MAMariner BooksTakalaTConcepts of “Person” and “Liberty,” and their implications to our fading notions of autonomyJournal of Medical Ethics20073322581For 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.2And 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.3Sandberg was the main author of Version 1 of the Transhumanist FAQ. See S7, Acknowledgments and Document History, within Bostrom (2003a).4Later 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.5Neither 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.6Transhumanist is often seen as a theory of physical self-realization.7Despite common speech not everyone affected suffers from such differences.8Some such work has been done. See Savulescu and Bostrom (2009, 8).9We 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.10This is a version of Derek Parfit's nonidentity problem. Parfit (1984, 351–90).11We 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.