Human Dignity and Bioethics

196 | Nick Bostrom
A Relational Component?
Let us return to the Dignity as a Quality of individuals. One might
attribute Dignity as Quality to an individual not only because of her
intrinsic characteristics but, arguably, also because of her relational
properties. For example, one might think that the oldest tree has a
Dignity as a Quality that it would not possess if there were another
tree that was older, or that the last of the Mohicans had a special
Dignity as a Quality denied to the penultimate Mohican.
We humans like to pride ourselves on being the smartest and
most advanced species on the planet. Perhaps this position gives us a
kind of Dignity as a Quality, one that could be shared by all humans,
including mediocrities and even those who fall below some nonhuman
animals in terms of cognitive ability. We would have this special
Dignity as a Quality through our belonging to a species whose membership
has included such luminaries as Michelangelo and Einstein.
We might then worry that we would risk losing this special dignity
if, through the application of radical enhancement technologies, we
created another species (or intelligent machines) that surpassed human
genius in all dimensions. Becoming a member of the secondmost
advanced species on the planet (supposing one were not among
the radically enhanced) sounds like a demotion.
We need to be careful here not to conflate Dignity as a Quality
with other concepts, such as social rank or status. With the birth
of cognitively superior posthumans, the rank of humans would suffer
(at least if rank were determined by cognitive capacity). It does
not follow that our Dignity as a Quality would have been reduced;
that is a separate question. Perhaps we should hold, rather, that our
Dignity as a Quality would have been increased, on grounds of our
membership in another collective—the Club of Tellurian Life. This
club, while less exclusive than the old Club of Humanity, would
boast some extremely illustrious members after the human species
had been eclipsed by its posthuman descendants.
There might nevertheless be a loss of Dignity as a Quality for
individual human beings. Those individuals who were previously at
the top of their fields would no longer occupy such a distinguished
position. If there is a special Dignity as a Quality (as opposed to
merely social status) in having a distinguished position, then this