Transhumanism is definitely more of a philosophy than an objective, though it is a political philosophy like feminism or libertarianism. There are specific goals, like extending life span, creating true A.I., and animal uplift, and then broad ethical goals, like ending suffering. If I had to come up with specific criteria, however, I’d suggest the following 3: 1. Medical modifications that permanently alter or replace a function of the human body become prolific. LASIK eye surgery, internal defibrillators, and prosthetic limbs are all examples. The key difference is that these modifications would either result in a return to initial quality (as in LASIK) or enhance/augment the original condition. Landmark moment: When a runner with prosthetic cheetah blades competes in the traditional Olympics and wins a medal. 2. Our social understanding of aging loses the “virtue of necessity” aspect and society begins to treat aging as a disease. Concepts like “aging well” and “golden years” would be as counter-intuitive as describing someone with cancer or MS as “diseasing well.” I have no idea what the consequences would be socially, but you can bet things like “midlife crises” and “adult learning” would take on entirely new meanings or become meaningless. When we have a generation of people expected to live to 150, that’ll be a good sign this is on the way to happening. 3. The recognition of an individual with citizenship and/or personhood and the criteria for that recognition would change dramatically from the status quo. Rights discourse would shift from who we include (i.e., should homosexuals have marriage rights?) to a system flexible enough to easily bring in sentient non-humans. A good litmus test for flexibility is: how would we incorporate an intelligent alien race into our rights/ethics system?

Concepts like “aging well” and “golden years” are as counter-intuitive as describing someone with cancer or MS as “diseasing well”.