Human Technological Enhancement and Theological Anthropology

A cross-disciplinary theological engagement with proposals for the technological enhancement of humans.

Victoria Lorrimar (Author)

9781316515020, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 May 2022

300 pages
22.2 x 14.5 x 2.7 cm, 0.592 kg

In this book, Victoria Lorrimar explores anthropologies of co-creation as a theological response to the questions posed by technologically enhanced humans, a prospect that is disturbing to some, but compelling for many. The centrality the imagination for moral reasoning, attested in recent scholarship on the imagination, offers a fruitful starting point for a theological engagement with these envisioned technological futures. Lorrimar approaches the topic under the purview of a doctrine of creation that affirms a relationship between human and divine creativity. Traditionally, theological treatments of creativity have been almost exclusively applied to artistic endeavours. Here, Lorrimar breaks new ground by extending such theological accounts to include technology, and uniting them with the strengths of scientific accounts of co-creation. She draws on metaphor studies, cognitive sciences, as well as literary studies, to develop an account of human creativity in relation to divine creativity, which is then applied to various enhancement scenarios.

Part I. Understanding the Challenges: 1. Visions of human enhancement
2. Human creativity
Part II. Responding Theologically to Human Enhancement: 3. Humans as 'created co-creators'
4. Co-creation and the imagination
5. Humans as 'sub-creators'
Part III. Seeking a Synthesis: 6. A new model of human creativity
7. A productive approach.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Religious ethics [HRAM1], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]