This book argues that the first-person experience of pure
consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology.
In exploiting the mind’s capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists
seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind
outward through the continuity of thought, body and the material world.
Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote
this extension by artificially enhancing our mental and physical powers,
arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move
toward pure awareness. As each chapter of this book contends, the
posthuman condition may undermine human nature, defined as the
effortless capacity for transcending the mind’s conceptual content, by
forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of
consciousness.