But most DNA in humans is not human at all. Most DNA in a human is microbial. And even of the DNA which produces human cells, extensive parts of it are from other organisms, and not either not unique to humans, or even expressed in humans.
No, again, you are trying to paraphrase me. To what extent I identify as anything, I would say that I am a sort of network node. A network of genes, cultures, ideas, relationships, events, etc. But,as I have said, I dispute the significance of trying to affix a static identity. I also dispute to what extent others are able to identify me as human, when they have even less complete definitions of what it means to be human even than I do. If a geneticist or cognitive scientist wants to comment upon what it means to be human, I am more likely to decide that they have done some requisite work than somebody who simply notice that I resemble a hairless ape, or use the English language.
I am not “presenting” as human, that is a concept which others choose to apply to me, an which they need to accept their own responsibility for so doing. Like it or not, if you ask a hundred different people in different disciplines what a “human” is, you will get a variety of different answers. But again, you seem to like to operate as if you have a universal definition which encompasses all.
That’s just the thing, I don’t always exist. Ten years ago I was different flesh with a similar pattern. Fifty years ago I was only potential in the flesh of other people. Decades from now I will be nutrients in the flesh of other organisms. Sometimes the personality this flesh constructs is not online, and this discursive mind ceases to function. Only to be replaced by another which perceives some vague continuity. There is flesh here now, but if there is anything which characterizes me, I would say it is flux.
If only! I can feel that my brain is, for better or worse, ageing along with the rest of me. But my so-called social experiments are not some mere conceptual exercise, they are the process of actually creating societies, just like all people do. No, as you say, it is not particularly special or unique. But I think that most people internalize mechanisms for doing this unconsciously.
How can anyone transcend the limits of a category which they do not first define? Many perspectives of what it means to be transhuman are some corny business! Simply embracing a superficial augmentation or two here or there does not fundamentally change what it means to be human. But part of the concept of transhumanism subverts people’s category of “human” as a static label. Whatever you think human means now, it has not always historically meant that. Much of the “extropian” style transhumanism of just a few decades ago was ignorant of the microbiome, and still posited the human as a single organism, and more interested in embedded obsolete hardware into bodies than conceiving of the organism as both hardware and software.
I can and do identify, at times, but identity is transitory. Sure, there is a human body involved, but how much of that is what defines me? Most people seem to accept that their identity is somewhat compartmentalized: I am a parent, an artist, a neighbor, a student. The trick is that they then make the leap of deciding that their memory and ego give these selves a cohesive central identity, while I think this is actually less accurate. And there is not a lot of consensus about this. In psychiatry, I am sure that it would be classified as a dissociative personality disorder. But in cognitive science, it would be a more accurate map of the mind. In any case, whoever a given person fancies themselves to be, it is both an incomplete model, as well as changing over time. There is the whole semantic/ontological layer, which is that whatever your identities may be, applied from without or within, those are simply labels or models of convenience. As one does not exist objectively as their identity.
