WHAT ANCIENT GREEKS WOULD SAY ABOUT CYBORGS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Abstract

How can technologies affect human nature? If the nature of human beings changes, one wonders: in which direction? These problems are actively discussed today by philosophers, sociologists and political scientists, representatives of religious denominations, etc. One of the points of view, which can be conditionally called "anthropomorphic", boils down to the fact that the combination of man and machine is unacceptable, as this leads to anti-humanism, and one must follow the path of improving the Human Body. "Transhumanists" or "post-humanists", on the other hand, say that everything that can be done must be done and progress cannot be stopped. The point of compromise is to comply with the "red line": to prohibit reproductive cloning, but to allow the use of biotechnologies, for example, to treat people. The article also tried to implement a kind of mental experiment and to evaluate the technological trends indicated from the position of the ancient philosophers, mainly Socrates and Plato. The authors suggest that ancient philosophers could give ambiguous assessments.