Is language technology? Analyzing a transhumanist argument

Abstract

One of the arguments on which the transhumanist project relies is based on a consideration of the technical nature of humans, particularly, on the idea that what human beings are is a pure result of the techniques they have. On this basis, it is stated that the legitimacy of the use of human enhancement technologies is the same as that of other devices used in the evolutionary process, so that the division between two qualitatively different enhancement methods – natural or instrinsic, and artificial and extrinsic – is untenable. We analyse the argument, which is based on the assumption that languaje is a tool just as other devices. We conclude that the term ‘tool’ is used in a very broad sense when applied to language. This is so not just because language cannot be explained based solely on experience – since this fails to explain its genetic factor –, but also because this idea results in a technification of human experience: what thinking would mean at each time – and, consequently, what we would know – would be totally determined by the tools we had, so that there would not be any trascendence of thought over these. We conclude that this results in an impoverished conception of knowledge.