ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains some key concepts in debates over posthumanism and the ethics of technological enhancement 'humanism', 'anthropocentrism', 'posthumanism' and 'transhumanism'. It addresses the conceptual problems of posthumanism described above by articulating a theory of human-posthuman difference in terms of the 'disconnection thesis'. The chapter develops a psychology-free account of agency that allows us to conceptualize posthuman agency without pre-empting the nature of posthuman minds. This historical-succession relation requires urgent clarification, given that the processes of descent relevant to SP may be unknown to current biology. The result is doubtless longer than it might have been, but hopefully more through-argued and accessible to cross-disciplinary audiences than it could otherwise have been. The creation of cybernetic hookups between organisms or between organisms and machines is just one example of a possible posthuman-maker.
