The Ethics of Boosting Animals from Sentience to Self-Aware Consciousness

The Ethics of Boosting Animals from Sentience to Self-Aware Consciousness: "The question of boosting the intelligence of animals other than humans, to the level of self-awareness and consciousness, is one that cannot be considered in isolation from the general process at work in the social and speculative movement known as Transhumanism. Transhumanism is partly about augmentation of the human body, for example by molecular computational nanotechnology (cell repair and DNA repair molecular machines, and rod logic molecular supercomputers for enhanced memory). More generally is is the movement to ‘self-directed’ evolution (replacing evolution by random mutation and natural selection). This was pointed out by myself in 1996 and by Damien Broderick in his book The Spike, which was the first popular book on the idea of the ‘technological Singularity’ (a time when technology surges forward based on accelerating computing)."