Morphological freedom refers to a proposed civil right of a person to either maintain or modify his or her own body, on his or her own terms, through informed, consensual recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling medical technology.[1]
The term may have been coined by strategic philosopher Max More in his 1993 article, Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy,[2] where he defined it as "the ability to alter bodily form at will through technologies such as surgery, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, uploading". The term was later used by science debater Anders Sandberg as "an extension of one’s right to one’s body, not just self-ownership but also the right to modify oneself according to one’s desires."[3] In March 2008 Sandberg and Natasha Vita-More gave a joint talk on morphological freedom in Second Life.[4]
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Politics
According to technocritic Dale Carrico, the politics of morphological freedom imply a commitment to the value, standing, and social legibility of the widest possible variety of desired morphologies and lifestyles. More specifically, morphological freedom is an expression of liberal pluralism, secularism, progressive cosmopolitanism, and posthumanist multiculturalisms applied to the ongoing and upcoming transformation of the understanding of medical practice from one of conventional therapy to one of consensual self-determination, via genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive modification.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b Carrico, Dale (2006). The Politics of Morphological Freedom. http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2006/08/politics-of-morphological-freedom.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
- ^ More, Max (1993). Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy (Extropy #10, vol. 4, no. 2). http://www.maxmore.com/selftrns.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
- ^ Sandberg, Anders (2001). Morphological Freedom -- Why We not just Want it, but Need it. http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Texts/MorphologicalFreedom.htm. Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
- ^ Natasha Vita-More & Anders Sandberg on Morphological Freedom in Second Life. 2008. http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/today_natasha_vita_more_anders_sandberg_on_morphological_freedom_in_second/. Retrieved on 2009-01-05.
External links
- Carrico, Dale (2004). Keep Your Laws Off My Body. Betterhumans
- Carrico, Dale (2005). A Dose of the New Medical Reality. Betterhumans
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