1Modification of bodies beyond merely restoring health is going on all around us. Plastic surgery, sports medicine, and preventative medicine are large fields. Transgendered people are increasingly visible and accepted. We are used to glasses and vaccines. People take natural remedies, thinking they will not just cure but enhance.

2The fact that Oscar Pistorius, Aimee Mullins and Alex Minsky are not just admired but can get advertising and modelling contracts tells us something profound about our society’s acceptance of some kinds of morphed bodies: marketers would never approach them if they did not expect to get return on investment by a positive public reaction.

3Humanity has reached its current position thanks to its ability to manipulate nature technologically. But humans are a part of nature and can hence be manipulated. As our ability to perform such modifications grow, the number of possibilities increase and the threshold for experimentation becomes smaller.

An era of morphing bodies

Paul Erdõs

4Paul Erdõs was one of the most productive mathematicians ever, well renowned even though he was regarded as eccentric even by mathematics standards. For the last 25 years of his fife he used amphetamine (beside his prodigious coffee consumption) while solving problems. The stimulants were tools for achieving energy and perhaps clarity or creativity. While it can be argued that he was a great mathematician without them, clearly he felt he was a better mathematician using drugs.1 It also brings to the forefront that at least for mathematics we do not care how results are discovered as long as they are true and beautiful.

Elizabeth Parrish

5Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of BioViva, is the first case of self-experimentation gene therapy. She claims to have inserted extra genes for producing the proteins follistatin (causing muscle growth) and telomerase (involved in regulating ageing) at a clinic outside the US.2 Whether this will improve her health and/or slow her ageing is unknown at present, and even a positive result might be random chance – this is not a scientific experiment. But what is it?

6One explanation is medical self-defence: most societies acknowledge that people who have a terminal illness may try radical and unproven treatments because they have nothing to lose. As she points out, she is suffering from a lethal hereditary disease called “ageing” (Parrish 2015). Another explanation is that it is a symbolic act, hopefully starting a process.

Todd Huffman

7Todd Huffman implanted a magnet in one of his fingertips, making him able to sense magnetic fields by the microscopic movements of the magnet as it reacted to external fields.3 While he anticipated to sense many static magnetic fields, he discovered that he was more sensitive to devices like motors and current-carrying cables that generated oscillating fields. He can tell apart the experience of magnetic and mechanical vibration (for example when touching a frying pan on an induction stove).

8He did not expect a practical use for the implant, merely the exploratory use to discover what magnetic vision is like. The results were also outside the instrumental realm:

The benefit of insight into electromagnetic device distribution is difficult to analyze, as it leads to a fundamental shift in conception of objects in reality and not any easily judged change. (Personal communication.)

9The self-experimentation is pure experimentation, open to unbidden and serendipitous possibilities.

Neil Harbisson

10Neil Harbisson is colour-blind, but has developed a device that converts colour into tones. Installed in a camera on an antenna on top of his skull, it continually produces a sonification of the colours of the environment. The antenna is surgically attached, and he has argued the device is part of him.4

11Like other sensory substitution devices such as Todd’s implant continual use makes the user able to Interpret the signais; the brain adapts to the stream of input and develops representations that are meaningful. A small part of the cortex has reformatted itself to represent the altered sense. Whether Harbison’s colour sense is phenomenologically like a colour-seeing person’s sense is unknown.

Stelarc

12Stelarc is an Australian performance artist. In the 70s he performed suspensions, where he hung himself from hooks through his skin above streets around the world, but by the 90s he had turned towards extending, invading and changing his body as art. Works include a third arm and walking platform controlled by signais from his body, allowing signais on the Internet control his muscles, an art exhibition performed inside his stomach, and growing an artificial ear on his arm.

13Stelarc is not alone in experimenting with his body for art. There has been a long story of electrical experiments mixed with performances5. The French artist Orlan has used plastic surgery on herself as an art project. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge explored mixing appearance and gender with his/her wife. Marion Laval-Jeanet injected herself with horse serum. Aimee Mullins has explored choreography and fashion enabled by her lack of lower legs. The artistic aims are divergent, but often the body modification is no mere surface detail but integral to the point of the art.

14Body performance art often creates scandal deliberately, seeking to test the moral ground and demonstrate the fragility of cultural consensus positions. It can explore new terrain where the rules are unknown because they are yet to be made6. Performance artists like Orlan and Stelarc are extending the body in order to extend morality.7

Erik “The Lizardman” Sprague

15“The Lizardman” has reshaped his appearance using tattoos, tongue Splitting, sharpening his teeth, and implants to appear like a human lizard.

16It has been a long-running personal project involving a great deal of pain and effort. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s language philosophy he began the project to explore how permanently changing the surface physical characteristics of himself would change how he was perceived as a “human” or “person8”. The point of being the Lizardman is to be different from others, to break the human “family resemblance”. When he States “I am a professional freak” he both refers to his job – he is involved in freak show and counterculture events – and that he has made an existence out of being different, seeking to be the Other.

17The body modification community encompasses many people who change their bodies in ways that do not conform to mainstream aesthetics.9 To many participants the experience is emotional and spiritual.10 This appears to be in part because of the embodied learning effects of the process that acquaints the individual with the physical nature of their body and their mental and emotional responses to it11 (Anonymous, 2006).

18Deviating too far from social mainstream can be costly, especially if it is an irreversible change. The irreversible nature of body modifications makes them significant and identity-affecting: were they reversible their meaning would largely be lost. Asking people change their bodies to socially conformant States is to ask them to change their identities to be socially conforming.

Enhancement, extensions, expression

19Human enhancement is usually interpreted as an increase in function or efficiency of some capacity, e.g, Parrish’s health enhancement, or Erdõs improved cognition. While different definitions of enhancement abound, the enhancements all serve to improve a desired aspect of fife. However, there are technological modifications of the human that do not merely amplify capacities but enable new abilities. Such modifications are extensions in new directions rather than enhancements of existing capacities. The new senses of Huffman and Harbisson are of this quality.

20Current and foreseeable enhancements do not extend human capacities beyond the limits of our species: beating the evolved design is a significant challenge, and many enhancements involve complex trade-offs12. Extension can relatively easily go beyond the species-typical human range by adding new dimensions: any form of magnetic vision is far beyond the previous human range simply because there was no range of human magnetic vision.

21Extensions can certainly have instrumental uses, but the true uses of an extension may become visible only when actually used. If there is beauty in certain magnetic field configurations it can only be appreciated by experiencing it, not inferring its possible existence. Extensions are to their nature experiential in that they require us to develop a new subjective awareness in order to use them.

22Beyond extensions are pure expression and self-creation, such as the art of Stelarc or the Lizardman. Their meaning can be public or private, but it is not objective or instrumental.

The concept morphological freedom

23Morphological freedom (MF) has been defined as the fundamental right to freely modify (or not modify) one’s body according to one’s desires13.

24This perspective draws on libertarian views of rights14 and transhumanist views of self-transformation15 and self-ownership16. More originally defined it as the ability to alter bodily form through technology, but in the following we will instead focus on the moral right to do so or not.17

25MF as a right can be seen as a consequence of the right to one’s body combined with the right to liberty (where the right to one’s body follows from the right to one’s life). In order to flourish as humans we need others to respect our bodies, but also respect our freedom of action. Some of these actions in a biotechnologically advanced society will involve modifying our bodies, and hence the more fundamental rights imply MF. Parrish is explicitly invoking self-defence when she motivates her experiment.

26There are many meanings of “rights”: legal rights of various kinds, established social norms, or normative moral principles such as fundamental rights (applicable to a person since they are a person), natural rights (applicable because of facts of the world) or divine rights (imposed by God). The normative rights are universal and egalitarian: applicable everywhere, everywhen, and the same for everybody. Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as “nonsense on stilts” and there is a general scepticism today about rights being fundamental norms. Still, Systems of norms to protect the flourishing of people appear to be an attractor state of human self-regulation.

27While there may be doubts about the ontological nature of rights it is fairly uncontroversial that if such things exist – even as just cultural constructions aimed at protecting humans – there would be a right to life and liberty. MF hence would tend to be entailed to some degree.

28MF is so intrinsically tied with personhood that it becomes inalienable: it cannot be removed from a person without removing an important aspect of what it means to be a person. We are biologically changed by our deliberate personal actions (learning a new skill produces definite changes in the brain; preventing change prevents learning) and many body actions have deep links to identity and self-definition (changing appearance, gender reassignment).18 If being a deliberately self-changing being is part of being a person, then inalienable MF entails.

29MF, expressed in the Hohfeldian system, is both a liberty right (the person has a freedom to do certain things with their body) and a claim right (others have a duty to not interfere). The liberty is limited by other moral duties or obligations. Note that expressed this way MF is a negative right: others have no moral duty to assist me if I wish to modify my body. Were it a positive right I would have a moral claim on others to support this action.

30Accepting MF as a right does not appear to help us judge limits of bodily modifications. This is because the bare rights framework does not imply much without a grounding.

Grounding morphological freedom

31Hopkins performed a valuable analysis of how to ground a right to enhancement.19 Fie argues that there are three strategies in the discourse on rights that can be used to get a right recognized as fundamental or natural:

• That the right conforms to human nature. This requires showing that it fits a natural end.
• That the right is grounded in interests. Rights help us get the kinds of experiences or States of the world that we (rightly) care about.
• That the right is grounded in our autonomy.

32He notes that the current discourse on autonomy is often an unspecific demand to be allowed to do whatever we please as long as others are not harmed. It does not give much guidance about what is a good enhancement or not. It is however possible to draw on the more rigorous considerations of autonomy in deontological or consequentialist ethics to get a rational or practical autonomy concept. Such a concept also has stronger implications for MF: changes that undermine autonomy contradict the foundations of the right, and are hence impermissible.

33Interest-based grounds for rights base them on their ability to help humans flourish; typical lists of interests humans are assumed to have include “the preservation of life, health, bodily integrity, play, friendship, classic autonomy, religion, aesthetics, and the pursuit of knowledge”. Hopkins notes that most enhancements aim at furthering such flourishing and human values.

34Here the limit of MF is what defeats the interests of the person trying to enhance. While somebody may wish to permanently decrease their cognitive capacity it is actually against their interests in nearly all cases. Enhancements that make bodily integrity impossible would be outside MF. Extensions may be problematic in this account, unless we motivate them through the curiosity or the need for exploration.

35Human nature arguments may feel most archaic, but as Hopkins notes, transhumanists and bioconservatives are actually allied against social constructivism in this area. Both agree there is some form of essential human nature that is not culturally created or changeable through institutions, language or politics; if it were not, then biomedical enhancements would be an unnecessary tool for achieving what could be achieved more easily culturally.

36Indeed, transhumanists often claim self-change is a core part of human nature.20 This echoes Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), where the God-given plasticity of humans is at the root of our dignity. However, this makes self-modification the one key aspect of human nature that clearly must be retained. The openness of the human paradoxically defines a firm limit on what may not be changed.

Other approaches to morphological freedom

Standard medical ethics

37From a standard medical ethics perspective, MF is all about autonomy and capacity. The other Beuchamp principies – non-maleficence, beneficence and justice – seem to imply mostly issues of how this deals with the medical profession and healthcare System. “Western views of autonomy tend to allow people to do what they wish with their own bodies, up to some unstated point21”. This unstated limit point is often framed through risk/benefit calculations (see below).

Socially constructed within different domains

38MF has rules that are socially constructed within different domains. In sports the only acceptable form is traditional training and diet, while in performance art it is whatever achieves the artistic aims, and in science it is subjected to research ethics. The problems are (1) why these rules and not others? They are potentially arbitrary, and it is hard to see how to condemn a group that decides to follow other rules. (2) Ethics tries to find overarching rules for good behaviour: are there really none applying here? (3) How do we handle deliberate conflicting overlaps of domains, such as cyborg art?22

39If we accept social construction as a motivation for MF, it becomes a very circumscribed freedom, dependent on various cultural domains. It also leads to a further question of whether we have a freedom to create new cultural domains. What does it take to create something like medicine, sport or psychoanalysis? Can anybody do it? What about making a variation of another cultural domain? While an eminently promising sociological set of questions, they do not give much ethical, legal or practical guidance.

Virtue ethics

40Self-transformation can be seen as a moral virtue.23 By this perspective we are not only allowed to change ourselves, we ought to since it is part of human excellence: reshape yourself to become a more excellent version of yourself.

41It can also be framed in a more existentialist form as “construct yourself in an authentic way”. Enhancements that make you more of yourself are right, enhancements that make you fit in (in an unconsidered way) with other people’s demands are bad. Bostrom analyses this in terms of human dignity as a quality that can be cultured in different ways, including through the careful use of enhancement.24

42Both dignity as quality and self-transformation stress the importance of authenticity: the choice of what changes to undergo must come front inside the person and be unconstrained by outside influence. While this approach mainly favours enhancement rather than extension, clearly extensions can represent virtuous exploration or artistic growth.

Need for exploration

43Morphological change is by its nature uncertain. It involves modifying a complex adaptive System, and the expressed goals and values of the modification may not be the same that in the end are discovered to have been achieved. In order to learn enough to do it safely or in order to achieve certain ends information is needed, but this information can only be acquired by experimentation. Further, since there are potentially endless possible modifications that can be done, there will always be an information deficit.

44However, bodily trial and error is very compatible with fundamental freedoms of self-expression, self-definition and exploration. It is a literal example of J.S. Mill’s “experiments in living”. By allowing a wide range of experiments valuable information can be learned that will benefit future experimenters and less daring users. This is a robust practical reason to allow and support MF, but also suggest that its users might have a social obligation to document their experiences.

Right to explore

45A related approach is to view it as a right to explore the larger realm of (post) human modes of being. This was used by Nick Bostrom to derive his set of transhumanist values:25

Our own current mode of being, therefore, spans but a minute subspace of what is possible or permitted by the physical constraints of the universe... It is not farfetched to suppose that there are parts of this larger space that represent extremely valuable ways of living, relating, feeling, and thinking.

46Exploring this space of modes of being requires MF.

47Bostrom notes that this exploration is not just exploring for States of high value given current dispositions, but also States whose value at present are hidden from us but we would want to want if we were properly acquainted with them. We are unable to clearly recognize them without enhancement extending our deliberative capacities.

Duty to approach posthumanity

48A more radical view is that we have some form of duty to approach posthumanity, either because the gradient of value points this way or because there is some form of collective telos. Ideas like this can be found in the work of Nikolai Fyodorov, Teilhard de Chardin, Frank Tipler, and Ray Kurzweil.26

49Here the main problem becomes to detect the direction that is right: going in the wrong direction is bad even if it might be individually rational. It also requires some form of non-person affecting value linked to how humanity or a group develops.

50This view does not support the liberal MF presented above, since free exploration is at best instrumentally useful for finding good changes. Some morphological changes go against the duty and hence are impermissible. It also makes not wanting to change propro-blematic: the hesitant person is not contributing to the future of the species. Hence a duty to approach posthumanity does not imply an open-ended or negative right MF.

Limits and frontiere of morphological freedom

51In the end, where does this leave trepanationists, self-experimenters in neuroscience or gene therapy, whole-body tattooists, Stelarc or students taking Adderall? In the following I will examine some of the limits of MF. This is by no means an exhaustive exploration of the multidimensional boundaries of MF.

Safety

52If an enhancement is too dangerous, then the risk outweighs the benefit and it should not be done. It can be argued that taking too much risk is incompatible with autonomy (in the classical, rational sense) or interests. The right to free action does not always win over one’s interest in having a life.

53How to evaluate benefits is another matter. Even objective effects have different value to different people, depending on their situation or life projects. Enhancements and especially extensions have subjective benefits that are even more idiosyncratic. The spiritual aspect of body modification, the artistic work of performance art, the exploration of human possibilities through sensory expansion: these are valuable benefits, but not easy or even possible to compare interindividually. This means that judging the appropriateness of them based on the level of is in doubt.

54However, practitioners of enhancement and extension often do take risk into account. Whatever the benefit anticipated, it is rational (up to a point) to reduce risk for any individual. Some students taking enhancer drugs check the chemical composition of the pills they have bought. Todd Huffman carefully analysed how to minimize the risk of his implant. The body modification community has a vigorous internal debate and a code of conduct.

55The real risk boundary might not be a risk/benefit trade-off, but whether risk is handled in a responsible manner. If someone is not taking precautions there is a strong reason to suspect they are acting irrationally, and might not fulfil criteria for capacity. This may be the distinguishing feature between people doing self-harm and people doing risky enhancement. In the first case the harm and pain is the goal (or at least a means for achieving certain social and emotional goals), while in the second case it is secondary.

56A possible test of the validity of the self-experimentation would be if it would still take place if there was an option where it could be supervised (or done by) a medical professional, with complete pain relief. If it was merely attention-seeking or a pathological desire for pain, then there would be little incentive for getting proper medical support. If the goal was to achieve enhancement or self-expression through self-experimentation, then the professional support would be welcome. By this standard at least some of the voluntary trepanationists27 do have capacity, even though it can be argued that their epistemic standards are problematic.

Limits set by our own willingness to change/identity

57Even in a world where anything could be changed with no risk, cost or outside influence it is likely that many traits would remain stable. We express ourselves through what we transform ourselves into.28 The human drive for self-creation and self-definition expresses itself through any available means, including the selection of what selves we cultivate. This means that given a current self not all possible new selves are desirable: the exercise of MF implies imposing limits on it.

58Surveyed students were much less willing to enhance traits that were regarded more relevant to personal identity than peripheral traits. While a sizeable fraction (35-54%) were willing to enhance traits such as reflexes, rote memory, wakefulness, language or math ability, only 13% were willing to enhance empathy and 9% kindness. Rather than “becoming more than you are” the surveyed students were interested in being who they are, but better at it.29

59While exposure to people who had successfully modified themselves radically might gradually change people’s views on just what constitutes central identity traits, most would likely rather use their powers of self-modification to build a self of some kind. Given that personal identity is such a strong motivator it is unlikely that people would willingly give it up even if they could.

Ethics of self-Experimentation

60Many of the mentioned enhancements and extensions are self-experimentation. There exists a rich debate about the limits of acceptable self-experimentation.

61Scientific self-experimentation has a long history and has made many valuable contributions to medicine, yet it has often been criticized for being more adventuring than science. Motivations to self-experiment have ranged from genuine altruism to nationalism or a desire for recognition.30 During its Victorian heyday the practice of self-experimentation had not only instrumental value but took place within a framework of non-instrumental sacrifice. As the cultural and social conditions this was based on changed, excessive self-experimentation fell out of favour.31 It is however still practiced, even if many review boards frown on it.

62Self-experimentation has advantages in terms of reliability, access to observations, first-hand experience, reduced red-tape and especially informed consent, since the researcher is presumably the most well-informed person about the purpose, implementation and risks of the experiment. The participation is firmly grounded in the researcher’s autonomy by furthering their interests and promoting their values. However, health problems from repeated experiments, pathological motivations, lack of objectivity (including overconfidence in the validity of their own observations) and the limitations of research designs focusing on a single subject speak against the practice.32 There is also concern that self-experimentation could pressure colleagues into dangerous activities, since research is often done in teams.33

63London and London34 suggest that IRBs should evaluate self-experimentation in the same way as any other experimentation, viewing the researcher as a subclass of normal volunteers: injury to self-experimenters is just as bad as injury to normal volunteers. This would imply checking for eligibility criteria for participation, and risks for long-term effects (possibly by demanding follow-up examinations).

64An example of human extension self-experimentation was Kevin Warwick’s experiments with an implanted transponder chip in 1998 and a direct nerve-computer link in 2002. He stated “I did not have a medical need, I just wanted to find out what it would be like35”. Despite the simplicity of the transponder implant it had subjective effects, making certain machines part of his body image and when removed causing feelings of loss. The nerve-computer link was more ambitious and was used to investigate recording movements, Controlling robot hands locally and remotely, and receiving ultrasound information. Most controversially, his wife also had an implant and the couple successfully sent neural signais to each other.

65Warwick uses the experiments as a starting point for posing questions about who should be in control of the technology, issues of monitoring, tracking and control, the ethics of electronic intimacy and whether cyborgs need a new kind of ethics. To a large degree they seem to have been done to refute the notion that superhuman cyborgs are unwarranted speculation: the experiments do not prove much ethically, medically or cybernetically but do demonstrate an extended state that makes Warwick’s speculations relevant. In doing so, he is close to the prefigurative art of Orlan and Stelarc: by experimentally living various cyborg scenarios they are testing and shaping the future.36 Conversely, their art raises issues of medical ethics – and whether it can or should be applied to this sphere.37

Disability rights

66Disability rights advocates have sometimes accused transhumanists of down-valuing disabled bodies in favour of some state of supernormality. This is a misunderstanding of the pluralism inherent in the concept of MF: a freedom to choose one’s body must mean it can be different in qualitatively different ways, not just in some single quantity or functioning. At the very least, what functioning is being optimized is a personal choice. Since it is not possible to make a body that is best in every single respect – there are different modes of intelligence, strength, beauty, not to mention radically different new traits like new senses, cognitive modules or biochemistries- there is no implied convergence towards a single supernormality.38

67A key property of the presentation of MF in (Sandberg 2001) is that it is a negative right, a right to be left alone to change or not change. Critics have attacked this point as being too weak. Wolbring for example argues that MF as a negative right is ableist, since it is the top-functioning members of society that tends to define ability limits and this can leave less-functioning members behind, and that there is no obligation beyond altruism to protect morphological difference (Wolbring & Hutcheon; Wolbring 2008).

68Carrico (2006) argues that the original negative freedom account both would (1) invite “naturalization” accounts that depoliticise what actually are historically contingent conventions and hence give some constituency control over the term, (2) that there is an Interventionist bias in the account that would circumscribe the possible lifeways, and (3) that substantive consent requires a number of positive conditions such as access to trustworthy information, guaranteed income, universal healthcare or other entitlements needed to ensure nonduressed choice. As an alternative he argues for an alternate definition that stresses diversity and substantive consent, and a transition of medicine from conventional remedy to consensual self-creation (Carrico 2006).

69To a large degree this represents the debate between liberal and social democrat views on justice and the proper allocation of resources in society rather than a substantive disagreement about what MF is.

70It is interesting to note that these disability positions argue MF is a far stronger right than my account: it merely argued it morphological change is permissible and should be protected, while diese accounts demand that it be actively supported. As body modification moves from theoretical possibility to widespread practice we should expect MF to transmute from philosophical notions to a political battleground. It will also be captured in different ways by different ideologies, emphasizing different aspects of the core ideas.39

71There is a de facto MF in many domains. People both inside the cultural mainstream and outside it are modifying their bodies for a variety of reasons. As technology enables it, exploration follows. The actual limits to MF are largely set by how we constitute ourselves and our societies: self-creation and self-modification are not done in a vacuum but are shaped by our concepts of who and what we are, what our relationships require and allow, how our societies function.

72These constraints are not immutable. As the example of scientific self-experimentation shows, views on proper research ethics evolves with society in ways that have little to do with fundamental shifts inside ethics itself. Improvements in safety can make previously unthinkable changes practical. Wealthier societies can afford more positive rights, turning luxuries into rights.

73There is no single body, no single perfection, and no single society to determine the one true account of MF. Instead we need exploration. Not just to find the value, but to find the boundaries.