Tecnologias de aprimoramento humano à luz da Individuação de Gilbert Simondon

Abstract

In this thesis, we approach technological human enhancement through Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation. Individuation is an alternative metaphysical model to the capability development approach, which is typically used to assess the ethics of human enhancement. Individuation encompasses a process of change that Simondon uses to analyze the common reality contained in the relationship between humans and technology within the environment in which they are both inserted. The relationships between humans and technologies maintain the coherence of successful transmissions of information that, when combined, contribute to clarifying the meaning or “functioning” of a machine, the human individual, or a set of these. We will show that in a strictly physical conception of human enhancement, the individual must be seen simultaneously as a technical object and a means (milieu) of the technology applied to it. This is because an artificial object (technology) is also an instrument for human development and fulfillment. In this way, we contribute to elucidating an aspect of philosophical knowledge, which concerns the possibility of technology constituting a simultaneously physical and ethical instrument for achieving human enhancement.