Human 2.0: some determinants of personal affinity towards transhumanist practices

Fila, Filip. (2017). Human 2.0: some determinants of personal affinity towards transhumanist practices. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Sociology. [mentor Nikodem, Krunoslav and Klasnić, Ksenija].

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Abstract

By approaching transhumanism as one possible articulation of future, research concerning its acceptance was conducted in this thesis. A sociological perspective tried to shed light on transhumanism's connection with the postmodern condition, which is hypothesized to aid the movement's growth. A quantitative empirical study was conducted on the sample of students of University of Zagreb (N=163). Two defined goals were to test the characteristics of constructed scales of transhumanism in regard to validity and reliability, and to test for correlation of these scales with variables deemed theoretically relevant. Three scales were constructed: scale of key points of transhumanism, scale of affinity towards transhumanist outcomes and scale of affinity towards transhumanist practices – out of which the last one was shown to be best tool for measuring affinity towards transhumanism. Regarding independent variables, special focus was placed on religiosity as a predictor of affinity towards transhumanism. It was confirmed that the correlation between religiosity and affinity towards transhumanist practices is statistically significant and negative. The student sample showed an inclination towards agreeing with the key points of transhumanism and affinity towards transhumanist outcomes. The same was not true, however, in the case of affinity towards transhumanist practices, as the students were pushed back by explicit mentioning of potential technologies and thus generally exhibited a slight aversion towards them.

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