A conference to be held at Yale University in December brings together animal rights activists and fans of human enhancement who are interested in the rights of robots and aliens.

A conference to be held at Yale University in December brings together animal rights activists and fans of human enhancement who are interested in the rights of robots and aliens. “Personhood Beyond the Human” is sponsored the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a think tank for enhancement, the Nonhuman Rights Project, and Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. The keynote speakers will be utilitarian ethicist Peter Singer and a leading animal rights legal theorist, Steven M. Wise.

The event will focus on personhood for nonhuman animals, including great apes, cetaceans, and elephants, and will explore evolving notions of personhood by analyzing them through the frameworks of neuroscience, behavioral science, philosophy, ethics, and law. 

Below is a video discussion of the issues inspiring the conference by Dr James Hughes, of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, is a bioethicist at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.  He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.

Michael Cook
Creative commons
animal rights
enhancement
personhood