Furries: Intellectual Wankery!

"That's intellectual wankery."

"Yeah, but it's my kind of intellectual wankery."

On The Moral Status of Humanized Chimeras and the Concept of Human Dignity

Our cultural history shows a great fascination for imaginary creatures that transgress supposed species boundaries. The mythologies, legends and arts of ancient and modern cultures are abundant with imagery of fantasy beasts, a great number of which contain features of both nonhuman animals (hereafter animals) and humans. More often than not, particularly within the western traditions, human/animal composites represent evil or at least misconduct. Current-day science fiction narratives of human/animal combinations often rehearse the logic that intermixing human and animal characteristics is sinister. With H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Moreau as a classic prototype, some of the most horrifying science fiction tales today sketch the gruesome effects of suppressing or altering an animals nature by raising it to a level more proximate to that of humans. Recent works draw upon the topicality of genetic engineering and cloning to recount the emergence of aggressive, rebellious freaks, or oppressed, suffering subhumans. Their dreadful destiny is depicted as the backlash of attempting to reconcile bestial instinct with human intelligence or as the side-effect of purposely enhancing a species for refined slave labor.

We now possess the potential to transgress the biological boundaries between humans and other animals. Recent advances in technology have brought fears surrounding the creation of enhanced animals to the forefront of current policy debates. At centre of controversy is the anticipation that the blending of animal and human material will be so profound that the resulting chimeras will verge on what it means to be human. It is this concern, and in particular the difficulty of construing what is included in the notion of humanness, that we address in this paper.