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The aim of this thesis is to provide an argument that enhancement technologies are a form of enablement more significant than their physical effects; rather, that enhancement might be a fundamental element of humanity. This allows a refutation of the standard bioconservative position, that to increase capacity beyond that of a "normal" Homo sapiens necessarily defeats humanity, or at least nebulous aspects of it. I here argue instead that humanity is affirmed, and furthermore that enhancements are in fact inherently good, valuable, and worthwhile pursuits; on the assumption that it is, as critics of enhancements and transhumanism say, inherently good, valuable, and worthy of preservation to be human. I suggest thus that to enhance is the essence of, and the key to, the continuum of humanity. In the introduction, I set out the reasons why this type of research is increasingly necessary, namely that it is important to rationally consider the effects which new enhancement and related technologies will have on our persons and on our society. Secondly, it presents my rationales for taking liberal stances on questions such as the scope and definition of enhancement, the supposed therapy- enhancement divide, and on access to enhancement technology; in order to provide a reasoned base from which to build the core themes of the thesis. It goes on to address a number of the archetypical critical arguments against enhancement, in support of these core themes. Part II of the thesis contains the papers and delivers the main arguments in sequence- firstly, the need for the application of rationality in policymaking and commentary on bioethical concerns, and secondly the importance of considering motivation when attempting to divine the best course of action to regulate beings and technologies that we have not yet experienced, and the manner of which we cannot entirely predict. This is followed by an argument as to whether it is reasonable to treat enhanced or other purported novel beings that could result from these technologies as different from ourselves, and thus warranting such policy considerations. To accomplish this, the thesis delivers a fresh angle on the relationship between Homo sapiens sapiens, the human, and whatever is posited to supersede it, the posthuman. A central theme is the idea that humanity is a "matter of sufficiency"- an end-state for moral status, not a stepping-stone which one can be 'post'. These arguments culminate in a contention that it is enhancement that acts as the unifying factor in our evolution and existence, and that there is therefore unlikely to be any good reason to see beings that follow the humans of today as being different in any significant way. The thesis concludes with an exploration of the progression of these themes, as well as identifying the place of my work amongst the wider academic literature around enhancement and the nature of the human. Finally, the most promising avenues for future research are explored.

The sensorimotor theory is an influential, non-mainstream account of perception and perceptual consciousness intended to improve in various ways on orthodox theories. It is often taken to be a variety of enactivism, and in common with enactivist cognitive science more generally, it de-emphasises the theoretical role played by internal representation and other purely neural processes, giving theoretical pride of place instead to interactive engagements between the brain, non-neural body and outside environment. In addition to offering a distinctive account of the processing that underlies perceptual consciousness, the sensorimotor theory aims to offer a new and improved account the logical and phenomenological character of perceptual experience, and the relation between physical and phenomenal states. Since its inception in a 2001 paper by O'Regan and Noë, the theory has prompted a good deal of increasingly prominent theoretical and practical work in cognitive science, as well as a large body of secondary literature in philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of perception. In spite of its influential character, many of the theory's most basic tenets are incompletely or ambiguously defined, and it has attracted a number of prominent objections. This thesis aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of the sensorimotor theory, including the key theoretical concepts of sensorimotor contingency, sensorimotor mastery, and presence-as-access, and defends a particular understanding of the respective theoretical roles of internal representation and behavioural capacities. In so doing, the thesis aims to highlight the sensorimotor theory's virtues and defend it from some leading criticisms, with particular attention to a response by Clark which claims that perception and perceptual experience plausibly depend on the activation of representations which are not intimately involved in bodily engagements between the agent and environment. A final part of the thesis offers a sensorimotor account of the experience of temporally extended events, and shows how with reference to this we can better understand object experience.