According to philosopher Francesca Ferrando, founder-member of the Global Posthumanism Network and the Indian Posthumanism Network, Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term with at least seven definitions:

1. Antihumanism: any theory that is critical of traditional humanism and traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition.
2. Cultural posthumanism: a branch of cultural theory critical of the foundational assumptions of humanism and its legacy that examines and questions the historical notions of "human" and "human nature", often challenging typical notions of human subjectivity and embodiment and strives to move beyond archaic concepts of "human nature" to develop ones which constantly adapt to contemporary technoscientific knowledge.
3. Philosophical posthumanism: a philosophical direction which draws on cultural posthumanism, the philosophical strand examines the ethical implications of expanding the circle of moral concern and extending subjectivities beyond the human species.
4. Critical posthumanism: the deconstruction of the human condition by critical theorists.
5. Posthuman transhumanism: a transhuman ideology and movement which seeks to develop and make available technologies that eliminate aging, enable immortality and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, in order to achieve a "posthuman future".
6. AI takeover: A variant of transhumanism in which humans will not be enhanced, but rather eventually replaced by artificial intelligences. Some philosophers, including Nick Land, promote the view that humans should embrace and accept their eventual demise. This is related to the view of "cosmism", which supports the building of strong artificial intelligence even if it may entail the end of humanity, as in their view it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".
7. Voluntary Human Extinction, which seeks a "posthuman future" that in this case is a future without humans.

One sees from these definitions that there is no consensus on what is Posthumanism. This is in the fitness of things, because if there is one thing that unites all these definitions of posthumanism, it is that there is no fixed definition of the human. The human is a self-reflexive construct that is subject to choice, contestation and change. The Indian Posthumanism Network leans towards Cultural Posthumanism, Critical Posthumanism and Philosophical Posthumanism as they pertain to India, its mutating traditions, their engagement with globalization and postmodernity and their futures.

1. Is the human a definable essence or is it a "transient species?"
2. Are there definable boundaries between the human and the animal? the human and the plant? the human and the non-living earth? the human and the machine? the human and God?
3. Or does the human include these categories? Or is the human in a mutating relationship with these categories?
4. Are there categoric assumptions in modernity which make the rational human more human than the emotional or imaginative or divine human?
5. Are there categoric assumptions in modernity which make the adult male more human than the female, the transgender or the child?
6. Are there categoric assumptions in modernity which make the white "civilized" man more human than non-western and/or premodern humans?
7. Are there categoric assumptions in modernity which make the technologically advanced human more human than the pre or primitive technological human?
8. Are such categoric assumptions coded into our unwritten social behaviors? How do we behave towards the "lesser than human" of the above pairs?
9. Are such categoric assumptions coded into our written constitution and legal structures?
10. Is there one standard definition of the human or many cultural and individual understandings of the human?
11. If the human is a transient species, what is the posthuman? Is there one answer or necessarily plural answers? with a vanishing point or with no convergence?
12. If the human is a transient species what is the Indian imagination of the posthuman? Is there one answer or necessarily plural answers?
13. What are some of these plural answers?
14. What are the social conditions, ethics and politics of living in a posthuman world in which we accept plural transient destinations of the human?