 So my name is Brian Green, I'm at Santa Clara University, and I've been studying transhumanism and Catholic ethics for a long time, about 10 years. Ever since I started my master's program at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and now this is my big exciting chance to talk about it, so I'm happy to be here. Oh, do I have a clicker? Let's see. There we go. So, I want to go back to the first transhuman visions conference in February. So at the February 1st conference there were two things that were simultaneously asserted by different speakers. So the first is that Christians oppose life extension because extending life will compete with their vision of otherworldly immortality. And the second one is that once mortality becomes possible then Christians won't allow transhumans to die. This is something of an interesting contrast I think. So what could be going on here? It seems unlikely that these are both true and I'm going to assert that these are actually both false. So the previous assertions seem to contradict which may mean there's a problem in knowledge. Transhumanists don't actually know that much about Christianity. Now of course that varies because some transhumanists are Christian and probably know a lot about it. Interpretation, they know Christianity but misunderstand it. See, politics, transhumanists know and understand Christianity but are misrepresenting it in order to use it as a political opponent. Or D, categorization. Christianity is too diverse to qualify as one category. And I might add that transhumanists are probably too diverse to qualify as one category also. I think the most likely answer is a little bit of all four options. There's a lack of knowledge, trouble with understanding, political tribalism, just plain old miscategorization, just lumping together groups that ought not to be lumped together. So let's clarify things. Let's bust some myths. Let's find some real points of tension and suggest some new ideas. So in this talk I want to not only resolve some conflicts by presenting better knowledge and helping mutual understanding, I also want to try to defuse some of the tribalism, see where Christians and transhumanists might be allies, and encourage seeing Christianity as a diverse category. I'll also present some real points of tension between transhumanism and Catholicism and suggest some new ideas that might help transhumanism deal with some conceptual problems. I'll summarize these in eight points. So myth one, the Roman Catholic Church materially opposes life extension. Myth two, Roman Catholic Church conceptually opposes life extension. Myth three, it opposes human genetic manipulation. And myth four, it opposes letting people die. Okay, so those are all going to be myths. Real tension number one, there's strong improbability of material immortality, I would say, and that's something that we need to, that should be talked about more. Another tension would be the justice issues, access, inequality, and attitude problems that could be surrounding the interaction between Catholicism and transhumanism. Real tension three, the impossibility of human omnipotence. We're going to talk about that in a little detail. I'm just going to argue that omnipotence is not the word that we should be using. There's a different word. And real tension four, the dangers of pursuing utopia. So let's get started. Myth number one, the Roman Catholic Church materially opposes life extension. So what's materially opposed mean? Roman Catholic Church physically, actively opposes life extension. If this were true, the Roman Catholic Church would want people to die and the earlier the better Catholic hospitals would not exist nor any other Catholic entities which promote health and life extension. So this truth, or this myth, verges on being a straw man except for the fact that some people actually seem to believe it. Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental organization in the world providing healthcare. And depending on how you're asking and how it's calculated, it might be the largest healthcare provider period with, for example, 26% of all the world's healthcare facilities. Now, I totally grant that's from a pontifical council that determined that number so it might not be fully accurate. It might have a bias to it. But it's well known that in the United States somewhere between a quarter and a third of the healthcare is provided by Catholic hospitals and other healthcare services. So it can't be too far off. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church might do more to extend life than any other organization in the world. With regards to extending human lifespan by providing access to healthcare, transhumanism and Catholicism are on the same side. And for supposed enemies, this seems somewhat strange, I'd say. Why could this be? So the Roman Catholic Church, or people seem to know the Roman Catholic Church is pro-life, but simultaneously might think that it's anti-life extension. While these categories aren't necessarily co-extensive, I think that perhaps they should be. In my mind, pro-life and pro-life extension should be almost the same thing. The main differences would be on who counts, who's, you know, qualifies in these categories, who's going to be counted for protection. And as I said, the Catholic Church has official positions for things that transhumanists don't. It's a diverse movement. So in any case, it's interesting to see how these might line up in the future. Alright, myth number two, the Roman Catholic Church conceptually opposes life extension. What does that mean? So the idea is that if this were true, the Church would oppose those searching for cures for diseases, disorders, and so on. So once again, I would say that this is not true. Plenty of research towards life extension is done by Catholics and also by Catholic organizations. Only possible exception to this would be the belief in an afterlife. So Roman Catholic Church doesn't see death as the ultimate evil. It sees the ultimate evil as being loss of heaven. So if one loses temporal life to gain heavenly life, that's a worthy trade. Or if one gains temporal life by losing heavenly life, that's a bad trade. But need extending temporal life and gaining heavenly life necessarily be mutually exclusive, I don't think so. Catholic organizations seek to extend life because life is a good in itself, as well as a means to other goods. Life is a gift from God to be protected, but not a gift to protect at all costs. If staying alive would mean dereliction of duty or killing the innocent, then allowing oneself to die would be a better choice. Alright, myth number three. So the Catholic Church opposes human genetic manipulation. What does that mean? If this were true, the Church would oppose gene therapy, enhancement for humans, Catholic hospitals would oppose gene therapy, and the Roman Catholic Church would oppose such research. So this is a topic where people seem to really assume the worst of the church, I would say. Based on the fact that it opposes so many other things, such as abortion and contraception, the truth is that the Catholic Church has no intrinsic objection to human genetic manipulation. In fact, way back in 1930 Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Leather Casti Canubi in paragraph 66 stated, What is asserted in favor of the social and eugenic indication may and must be accepted, provided lawful and upright methods are employed within the proper limits. In other words, the ends are sensible, though whether descriptively or prescriptively is not exactly clear in this statement. It could be intentionally unclear. I looked at a couple other languages to see if this translated differently and they all come out to be somewhat unclear. But the means are what's morally problematic. So go back to 1930. There are obviously no methods to do any kind of human genetic manipulation no more way back in 1930 back then. The means were euthanizing the handicapped or incarcerating them, infanticide abortion, forced sterilization, controlling who could marry all the standard totalitarian eugenic tactics, which have gone rather out of favor, thankfully. But since then, obviously, things have changed a lot. Things have become a lot more precise. So the Roman Catholic teaching on genetic manipulation has been repeatedly specified. In other words, future, the methods, everything that's come up for the last 80 years has been specified. But nothing validates the general sense of that statement. Therapy is completely unproblematic and enhancement, although it's looked on with great wariness and skepticism, is still debatable. So that's an interesting contrast. I mean, there are documents that will say, look, these things are not allowed. Basically, there will be a checklist of everything that's not allowed, but that doesn't cover everything. There's still space in the list. All right. So repeated specification. Let's see. Gene therapy, even germline therapy, could be acceptable given the development of proper technologies. Now, there's a document that came out in 2008, I believe, Dignitas Personae that says that currently there's no form of germline therapy, which would be acceptable, but there aren't any germline therapies that are really working very well right now anyway. So the Roman Catholic Church, I'd say, has grown in wariness since the time of Pius XI, but it's so committed to health care and the fact that it's providing health care and wants to be able to have the best techniques available that whenever these techniques for therapeutic genetic manipulation do become available, it's almost certain that they will be allowed. Now, there are Roman Catholic Church opposes letting people die, so if this were true, Roman Catholic hospitals could not discontinue treatment on patients. People know the Roman Catholic Church is pro-life, so it won't let people die, right? And then you look at the case of Terry Shiveau. You bring that up because it's the natural place that you go. And I would say rather than looking at particular Catholics, you'd want to look at Catholic health care policy. So this is not a problem in Catholic hospitals. It's not required. What will occasionally happen is that particular Catholics refuse to stop treatment over one whom they have decision-making power. These often involve family-centered problems and, you know, often they're covered by religion, I would say. From my experience on people on health care committees, they say it's usually the relative from out of town who's had bad relationships with the family and they're in the state where they know that finally this person that they feel guilty about has reached their end and they say, well, because they have this guilty feeling and they'll say, why? Well, it's because I'm Catholic. Or I'll give some other religious explanation. But the Roman Catholic Church has a long tradition of allowing people to refuse burdensome or futile treatment. For example, in earlier times a case might have involved a doctor telling a patient to move to a warmer climate. Would it be a mortal sin to refuse the treatment if it would be burdensome? And the answer was no. You wouldn't have to move. Life isn't intrinsic good, but it's not the only good. So if a transhumanist is in a burdensome existence at some point in the future, I mean, the whole point of transhumanism is to avoid burdens, but let's say uploading is not all it's cracked up to be and it's actually, you know, pretty unpleasant, then you could probably discontinue that treatment with no problems. All right, so now what might some real tensions be? First one I would say is the improbability of material immortality. Two, justice access, inequality and attitude issues. Three, the impossibility of human omnipotence. And four, the danger of pursuing utopia. So real tension one. The Roman Catholic Church is, I think, justifiably skeptical of material immortality. People have been peddling immortality for a long time. The fact that it's not yet been achieved doesn't mean that it can't be, only that it's not probable. I'd say it isn't very improbable. Inductive strength, I would say, is a very natural solution is to say, but things are different. We have more technology, all these things have changed and I would say still, it hasn't been done yet. When it's done, of course you'll have the proof. Until then, it's an experimental hypothesis. So with this long history to speak from, I think the church would remind people not to be gullible and also that lying about stuff is a sin. So if someone is going around telling you stuff, you know, you probably shouldn't listen to them. Don't buy snake oil. Don't buy stem cell injections off the internet. Likewise, don't tell people lies about what's definitely going to happen. These are just probabilities and they're probably low probabilities at that. Aging is extremely complex. It's not well understood. It's not just going to be figured out in a couple of years. That's not very likely. Overall, I think that's just something that people need to be realistic about. Alright, so real tension number two would be justice, access, inequality, and attitude. So what's going on with justice? Every day thousands of people die from things that are easily prevented. The money that's going into life extension or radical life extension research could save lives now. Now that could be an argument used against any kind of scientific advancement. What are you doing now? And in that case, we wouldn't have all the things that we have now. We'd just be stuck in the past with an argument to be made there. Should this money be going to these projects? Alright, access. If radical life extension or even just a medium-sized life extension becomes available, it'll probably be affordable to the rich first, obviously. And then it's going to be trickled down from there, hopefully. Maybe it'll trickle down, maybe it won't be. That's the other question. How expensive is this going to be? And as people live longer, then their investments are going to keep building over time. Are they going to just keep getting richer and richer? There's all sorts of interesting questions that could happen there in terms of exacerbating social inequality. So if you want to talk about inequality between the rich and poor, if rich people never die, that's going to be a really interesting problem. Lastly, there's an attitude problem, I would say. It's not a necessary attitude problem. It's just a probabilistic one. The potential for some to seek life extension to avoid facing a reality of death, avoid thinking about God, judgment, things like that. But these are probably things that the church would recommend people think about. You ought to be able to think about your death. You should still write up a will, even if you're a transhumanist, stuff like that. All right, so I'd say four of these are serious objections, but they're not killer ones. Transhumanism could exist in a way that satisfies them. While the social questions might be hardest to solve, the attitude question might be the hardest one to dislodge from individuals given current transhumanist rhetoric. So this might just be a rhetorical problem. It might be a philosophical or ideological problem. It's an interesting area to explore, I would say. All right, now let's talk about omnipotence. So the idea that humans can or should think of omnipotence has been mentioned in several previous meetings. It's been mentioned in this one also. Immortality requires omnipotence. I guess the basic idea being that so much power is already on the side of death. To defeat death, you have to have a greater power on the side of preserving life. The only way to fully protect one's life is possible, but the word omnipotence is not the right word to use. Omnipotence is a concept which cannot apply to humans or transhumans. It can only apply to a singular deity. This is a conceptual problem. So omnipotence requires not just being able to do everything. One must already be everything. One would need to be self-causing and self-existing among other things. So, you know, if you want to look at some of the basic definitions of God, God exists. God is the act of existing. Being outside of time, God contains no potential or power. All of God's power is already actualized. So that's another question. Omnipotence isn't exactly even the right word to apply to God, because God being outside of time has no power. God is fully actualized already. So one cannot become omnipotent. One has to already be omnipotent. The concept can't be applied to humans. Even used analogously as in, I'm going to become like a God in the opinion of what a God is like. You know, it all depends on what your threshold bar is. All right. Now, that doesn't mean that the idea of human and transhuman power isn't worth exploring. It's very interesting to explore, because contemporary humanity is obviously very powerful, and that's very worth looking. I mean, I argue strongly that we have qualitatively different power than humans in the past have ever had. So it's definitely worth talking about. I'm going to propose a new word for it. Call it anthropotence. It's a more modest measure that can be applied to both individual and whole species power among humans. Anthropotence would measure relative power. So the average human score would be 1.7 billionth, since that would be the total of what everyone can do. Of course, in reality, some people are way more than this, and some people are going to be less due to inequality, whether by wealth, political power, influence, otherwise. The nature and scope of human action and power has changed over time. The basic assertion of the philosopher Hans Jonas, who's one of my favorite philosophers, and the main reason he wrote his book, The Imperative Responsibility, discusses how humans should avoid extinction, because now we've become so powerful, ever since the environmental crisis, the advent of nuclear weapons, all sorts of that stuff. This has become a real question. So he doesn't propose a word for what we should call this human power, which is why I'm proposing the word anthropotence. Anthropo just means it means human in Greek, and potence means power in Latin. I know it's a hybrid. Some people are against mixing languages together in that way, but they just fit together so well I couldn't resist. So I want to relate that to Kardashev levels, because Kardashev, if you're familiar with any of his work, he's already come up with a scale for this type of thing on a much more cosmic type of scale. It might help to compare it to Kardashev levels. Type I civilization controls the planetary scale energy. Type II civilization controls solar scales of energy, and type III would be galactic scales. True, omnipotence would be type infinity. You're not talking about stars. You're talking about creating the entire universe from nothing or the entire multiverse that there is one. So perhaps someday one human might control type I or type II levels of power, which would be very impressive, no doubt. And it still might not allow immortality. I'm not sure how immortality works. There are lots of theories, but who knows how much energy that's going to take. And before that happens, humanity as a whole probably needs to get past type zero. Now, power might not be the raw thing that you want to use for your computing, whether immortality is possible, because it probably has more to do with information and technology and that sorts of things, but nevertheless, no matter how you look at it, humans are pretty distant. Alright, I want to talk about real tension number four, which is the danger of pursuing utopia. Utopia is an infinite good, and being an infinite good it can justify any finite evil. Now, Christians have the same problem with this, because heaven being an infinite good, you could say you could argue any finite evil that we commit in this life if it gains us heaven, then it would be worth it, and therefore a Christian should go around doing evil, except for the fact that it is expressly forbidden in Romans, chapter three, verse eight, that you can't do evil that good may come of it, and while some other philosophies in the world of these don't have such scruples, so the Roman Catholic Church, I would say, has also seen a few utopian regimes in its 2,000 year history. The word utopia actually comes from a Roman Catholic saint who wrote a book called Utopia, St. Thomas More, he was beheaded by Henry VIII, and when he wrote the book he said, he explained this is a pun in Greek. It can be either utopia, you mean good, and utopia meaning place, or it can mean nowhere, you meaning nowhere, or meaning not, and then utopia, or utopia meaning place. So having entered for 2,000 years, like I said, the Roman Catholic Church has seen a lot of utopian visions, they tend to come and go, and often they turn out really badly. You can look at all of the totalitarian experiments of the 20th century, and some that are still ongoing, unfortunately. So utopia is also being an infinite state can imply that our current state is so bad as to be relatively worthless and therefore expendable. Surely this is a very overly pessimistic view of contemporary life. Life is not perfect, but certainly it could be a lot worse. Losing what goods we already have is a risk which utopian experiments might allow, because if you have an infinite good once again you could justify any finite evil. I'm not saying that transhumans advocate this. In fact, I don't think most transhumans do, or do not advocate it. But certainly some do. Some people have talked about this. So, and then the question you'd ask is, are we really in such bad conditions that we need to think about our present state being so bad? If there's a utopia in the future, I mean if that's infinitely good then we're relatively in a dystopia right now. Are we already living in dystopia? And then I would ask the question is, is one's own mortality so frightening as to justify doing evil in order to hold it off? So, Aubrey DeGurion at the first transhuman vision meeting talked about broadening the appeal of radical life extension. But if it is the case that transhumanists are so obsessed with their own immortality that they are willing to sacrifice anything in order to achieve it, then transhumanism will probably never gain much popularity because its stance is both narcissistic and cowardly. As I said, most transhumanists do not hold this opinion, I think. But those that do kind of endanger transhumanism's reputability. So utopia and dystopia. So, if you have an infinite good on one side, there are very likely to be some people who find that same idea of utopia to be a dystopian itself, possibly at the level of an infinite evil, especially if it involves extinction risks. So if you're going to start talking about existential risks, existential risks, that could be a problem. People are going to want to hold this off. This presents a major potential for conflict, especially if the conflict is between those who find that you transhuman vision, utopian vision, you know, find that to be utopian and those who find it dystopian. If two groups decide that infinite goods and evils are at stake, then the problem becomes irresolvable. I'm not saying this is the case or will become the case, only that the future, in the future, cool heads will need to prevail on this. Even so, I think transhumanists should care a little bit more about dystopia and what the risk that might involve. Actually, I was very happy to learn that existential risk is going to be one of the topics for the next conference, so that's a good thing to know. So existential risk, I think should be a bigger concern. So here's a standard risk equation. This is something that all engineering students learn. Risk equals harm times probability. For any unacceptable harm, whether human extinction or your own death, if the probability is non-zero, then the risk is too high. If this is a course of action that you can choose, then you want to choose against it. People have said this about nuclear power. People have said this about global warming. You can apply it to synthetic biology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence. There are all sorts of things you could apply it to. But in other words, if the harm is infinite, then anything other than a zero in that probability category creates an unacceptable risk. And even a zero in the category by the nature of multiplying infinity times zero, it still comes out indeterminate. Now, you could say that means we just need to never have an infinite value in that spot there. That could be your solution. But then, I don't know, it's an interesting question. What should be in that spot? How high a number would you give it if you had to give it a numerical value? So as we grow in technological power, I would argue that the risk of dystopian totalitarianism, global catastrophe, civilizational collapse, and extinction are going to grow. Almost needless to say, transhuman life extension requires technological civilization to support it without an advanced technological civilization and one which is more advanced than the one that we have right now. Transhumanism gone, which is not a possibility. And yet, transhumanism also requires advances in technology and perhaps the exact same ones that will themselves threaten the catastrophe, such as synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology. So how we navigate these technological risks will be of ultimate interest to humanity on this planet. Perhaps even gaining this knowledge of these existentially dangerous technologies is self too dangerous. If even the knowledge itself is too dangerous, maybe we shouldn't even research it. People have proposed that. In that case, transhumanism might need to give up its aspirations of immortality unless there are pursuit in ways that don't involve these risky technologies. In my opinion, the most likely future scenario is that human lifespan will gradually continue to increase, perhaps to an average of more than 100 years in the next century. But there's no, well, next century, actually I'm thinking of this century, we'll see whether we're around in the next century. Provided we have a civilization and species at all. As long as rogue individuals, much less in entire states exist, there's no safety from genetically engineered disasters in particular. So I would say, if you want to live forever, figure out how to solve North Korea. They are dangerous and unpredictable. That's your homework. Figure out that problem. Compared to that with regard to life extension to Catholic Church and transhumanism are very close allies. So in conclusion, I would say the sources of tension which transhumanists at least at this conference and in other places have raised with Christianity might not be the real sources of tension. I would argue that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with extending human life. There may be some very wrong associated problems. Clarifying these will be a benefit to both Christianity and transhumanism. The best reason to extend human life is for the sake of love of God and of others. For Christians, that's what life is all about. We love our families, we respect each other and help each other and if transhumanism can agree with that then there's very little to disagree about relatively speaking. Alright, last I would say the role of theology. If transhumanists want to become like gods they need to talk to theologians. Theologians have been studying God for a long time. If you're an atheist you might think that theologians don't have an object of study but if you're trying to become gods they're giving us an object so thank you very much. We appreciate your efforts. Gladly offer our advice. Thank you. And one thing I would say also is that Santa Clara University, Nick Bostrom should be coming to Santa Clara University sometime in September. I don't think a date has been set yet but if you're interested in seeing Nick Bostrom he'll be probably doing a book tour so he might come to some other places in the Bay Area also but he'll be definitely at Santa Clara University. It seems like the Catholic Church is all into extending life as long as it's quote, natural. If you go to the 110 or 120 year old oldest person but if somebody was looking like they were going to be 300 I think they'd freak out. Because that's not natural and God didn't intend for humans to live that long. And also as far as immortality well you'd never know whether you had achieved it yet because forever is longer than you'll ever have lived. It's a long time. So I'm not really sure they would say that immortality isn't for humans to even contemplate. Those are really good questions and you put your finger on the question of natural which is exactly where it needs to be. It all comes down to what's natural and what's unnatural. And there's a debate that has been ongoing in Catholic moral theology for a thousand years at least actually it goes back to the Roman Stoics so it's been as soon as Catholicism picked up ancient philosophy it picked up the same problem which is the tension between what's natural about humans is it our physical existence or our minds. So if it has to do with our rationality then as long as we can apply our rationality our life isn't that exactly what we're supposed to be doing and on the other hand if it has something to do with what's physically natural then you could put a you could make that argument but I think that there's no clear reason why the Catholic Church would object to life extension and if it happens to be life extension for a long time then I'm not exactly sure what argument anyone could use they could use the unnatural argument but that's something that I think most Roman Catholic theologians I think would disagree with that so it might be there would be definitely a strong debate within the Church or there could be a debate within the Church but I don't think that there's a strong reasoning on the other side We have a question in here Oh, very immortality I think I just I find it even though you know you never know what the future is going to bring the future is very different and you can never discount technology I think it's really difficult this is a really difficult problem I think we're much more likely to drive ourselves extinct than we are to become immortal And that part of a love of God as an argument could you just say that little piece of him Yeah, I think that basically there's no reason I mean people are put on this earth in order to love God and in order to love neighbor I mean those are the two basic commandments that Jesus boils everything down to you love God you love neighbor if you're not then work on it a little harder but if you're loving people and other people are loving you they're going to want you to live a long time because life is a good thing so I think about my parents I don't want them to die it's good to have them alive I love my parents I love other people in my family I would like everyone to live as long as possible this is a well understood thing if this is a possibility to extend people's life there's not a good argument against to help people I mean because at the most basic level it's a charitable act that you're helping people you're trying to extend their life so I guess I just want to know what you would think of I like that argument but using that kind of argument for something else contraception I think you can use a similar argument right love of God and love of your neighbor to justify other things I just want to think about it yeah I mean that's been brought up in past bioethics cases where they only one rule in that's love and that means that you're what a preference utilitarian or what a deontologist or you know pick your philosopher and whatever their primary highest good is the catholic church definitely it wouldn't say that it's a loving thing to kill the fetus or destroy other forms of life and other circumstances so it's just a matter of where you're going to put your values on that where you're going to stake your flag Hi my name is Gio Vermeer I'm a Catholic and I'm an electrical engineer and I guess I'd say since I went to a Bishop out of high school and became a senior in high school I've kind of been an agnostic but you say the two items you just mentioned love of God and love of was it life love of neighbor yeah or whoever is around you so if you love your neighbors and want them to be well then isn't it wouldn't it be an imperative in the catholic church that they should pursue life extension yeah I think you could make that argument I think you could make that argument now what the church does is it doesn't have like giant church wide we're all going to focus on one thing right now but it would say that you know what if you want to work on that yourself good for you go ahead so you're at Santa Clara University yes that's correct Catholic University in the heart of Silicon Valley strong maybe like you talked about the Catholic medical care might be 25% of all life so does this university have a strong trans humanist engineering ethos and engineering effort underway no it does not I would say it would be the simple answer there I mean first of all it doesn't have a medical school so it can't go in that direction it's not a department where they work on tissue engineering they work on biomedical devices but it's not Stanford it's not Berkeley it's not a R1 level university it's mostly a MA level university but shouldn't it by policy have that sort of goal and intention that maybe it's in the leading technology center it's the place to lead transhumanism right that's a good question I think I'd have trouble selling that to the administration why would it be just because institutions don't think that way once by the time you're ahead of an institution you're generally not thinking about things that are pretty radical transhumanism is very radical right now so you have to think about maintaining your institution the way it is with a certain view to the past and expectations of the future