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Overview
The Posthuman Condition argues that such questions are difficult to tackle given the concepts of human existence that we have inherited from humanism, many of which can no longer be sustained.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781841508832 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 12/01/1995 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 218 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Posthuman Condition
Consciousness Beyond The Brain
By Robert Pepperell
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2003 Robert PepperellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-883-2
CHAPTER 1
CONSCIOUSNESS, HUMANS AND COMPLEXITY
Does consciousness reside in the brain? are human beings confined to the boundaries of their skin? These questions, which for so long might have had straightforward answers, are now becoming deeply problematic, partly as a consequence of developments in technology and partly because of shifts in our understanding of nature and the cosmos. this chapter will look again at these questions to see how our views about human nature may be changing, and why new philosophical ideas are needed to help us describe them.
Belief in brain determinism
In his book Minds, Brains and Sciencethe philosopher John Searle declares "Mental phenomena, all mental phenomena whether conscious or unconscious, visual or auditory, pains, tickles, itches, thoughts, indeed all our mental life, are caused by processes going on in the brain." (Searle 1984 p.18). It is a commonly held belief that the brain determines or causes mental phenomena, in particular the phenomena of consciousness, with the consequence that in much philosophical discussion of consciousness the body and the world beyond are largely neglected. I wish to argue this neglect can no longer be sustained if we are to make any progress in understanding the role of consciousness in our existence.
What is meant by consciousness?
Any discussion about 'consciousness' first requires some clarification of the term. As specialists in the field will quickly point out, the exact nature of consciousness is open to various interpretations, some more controversial than others. As used here the term consciousness refers to all those attributes we usually associate with a sentient human such as thought, emotion, memory, awareness, intelligence, self- knowledge, a sense of being, and so on. It turns out that within this range of attributes there are varying layers and densities of consciousness that can be more or less successfully distinguished. But for the purposes of this discussion we will consider these variations as homogeneous, while tacitly acknowledging the greater complexities of the subject.
The supreme organ
Roland Barthes, in his book Mythologies, speaks of 'The Brain of Einstein', which had been bequeathed by the great physicist to two hospitals upon his death.
A photograph shows him lying down, his head bristling with electric wires: the waves of his brain are being recorded, while he is requested to "think of relativity". (But for that matter, what does "to think of " mean exactly?) What this is meant to convey is probably that the seismograms will be all the more violent since "relativity" is an arduous subject. (Barthes 1972 p. 68)
Surely it would be absurd, grossly counter-intuitive, to place similar electrodes on the palms or feet and expect to get a "violent" reading? The brain is after all spectacularly described by Jonathan Cohen (2001) of the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior at Princeton as the "most complex device in the Universe" (this seems to imply a dubiously privileged knowledge of everything else in the universe). At the same time we are told that there are "more synapses in the brain than there are stars in the galaxy." Whatever the accuracy of these compelling facts, it seems we are to be left in no doubt as to the supremacy of this organ over all other objects.
Dead heads
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), who is often credited with inventing the comparatively rational and humane execution machine, is sometimes also accused of collecting severed heads in order to revive them and communicate with the after-life. Although both claims are erroneous, the latter story does accord with a widespread belief in the idea that the person, or their personality, is contained in the vessel of the head. During the French Revolution and its bloody aftermath Guillotin was actually a prominent advocate for, rather than inventor of, this well- established form of execution for the reason that it was less barbarous than other methods of execution being used. So progressive was it seen to be that it was utilised publicly in France up to the mid-twentieth century. There does exist, however, an account by a French physician, Dr Beaurieux, who in 1905 conducted a gruesome experiment with the decapitated head of a guillotined prisoner. As the prisoner, Languille, was executed at 5.30 on a summer morning, Dr Beaurieux shouted at the severed head. "I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions, I insist advisedly on this peculiarity, but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life with people awakened or torn from their thoughts", runs the doctor's commentary (Kershaw 1958). This testimony might be taken as apparently convincing proof that conscious reactions can persist, albeit briefly, without the presence of the body.
Counter interpretations
Rather than providing evidence of an autonomously conscious brain, an experiment such as the one just described could equally well be used as evidence to confirm the contrary view — that the brain has no chance of being conscious without complementary physical apparatus and some external stimuli. First, it is possible that the reflexes noted by Dr Beaurieux are automatic and involuntary. Cases of muscular movement after decapitation are seen in chickens and even, reportedly, in marching soldiers killed as they advance into the fire of their enemy. Second, the apparent response to the shouting is not absolute evidence of consciousness but merely the deduction of its presence. The presence or otherwise of consciousness can only be deduced from observable behaviour and not internally verified by any empirical or technical methods. So, in this case appearance and actuality may not necessarily accord. Third, without the ancillary apparatus of ears, eyes and facial muscles to convey sensation, no conscious response would be affected or detected, which re-asserts the necessity of sensory organs other than the brain, such as ears and eyes, in producing a conscious response (if that's what it is in this case). And finally, this case serves to confirm what we already know without having to do the experiment: that severing the brain from the spinal cord (the official cause of death in guillotining) terminates conscious activity, so far as we can tell from observation.
What am I?
If I were deeply concerned about my own mortality I might consider having myself cryogenically suspended. Foundations like Alcor (www.alcor.org) will perform the service on my whole body for about $120,000 at today's prices. If I believed that what essentially constituted 'me' was the brain in my head, however, then I might save money and opt for 'neurosuspension', a euphemism for having just my head or brain frozen, at the much lower cost of around $50,000. The reasoning goes that my body is dispensable, interchangeable and may well be diseased. Therefore, I (my brain) could be replanted in another body, or in one re-grown from my own DNA. In this way 'I' could be reconstituted, which presumably means having some sense of continuity with my pre-frozen self when I am revived.
Such reduction of individual humans to the specific organ of the brain seems economical until one considers how such a replanted brain might struggle to cope with an alien or inexperienced torso. We know from anatomy the deep extent to which the brain is closely bound to the autonomic nervous system of the body and certain highly responsive organs and glands (Thompson 1993). Will the implanted brain be able to simply restore those intimate conduits immediately, without itself first failing? How will the body, in whatever state, regain the slowly acquired motor skills the living person takes for granted and which are, to some extent, inherent in the muscles, nerves and organs of the body rather than just the brain itself?
These objections might rightly be regarded as medical problems to be overcome in the course of time. Yet a deeper philosophical problem remains — am 'I' no more than a specific arrangement of cerebral neural tissue, a compound of synaptic probabilities that can be inserted into any suitable carcass? Some would think this valid. Or am 'I' something of much greater complexity, which includes those synaptic probabilities, but many other things as well?
Physical intelligence
There seems to be little doubt in the minds of many cognitive scientists that modelling human intelligence means modelling the human brain. The study of neural nets is predicated on engineering techniques inspired by the brain's neuronal structure (Aleksander 2001). One would not wish to deny this assumption entirely; there can be little serious resistance to the belief that the incalculable intricacy of the brain, with its massively parallel interconnections of neurons, supports much of our intellectual activity. However, this belief does not preclude or negate the possibility that a similar capacity for intelligence might exist beyond the brain; for example, elsewhere in the nervous system or even across the body as a whole.
Consider our occasionally startlingly rapid reactions to dangerous or unexpected events, such as flinching from heat, catching a falling child, or the manual dexterity of an accomplished musician. Such reactions, of course, would rely to some extent on the processing capacity of the brain. But given the range of sensors, conductors and motors that enable the response to occur at all, as well as the relative 'slowness' of internal nervous signals (as was established by Hermann Helmholtz as far back as the 1850s), it does not seem sensible to ascribe our immediate reactions to brain activity alone. In other words, intelligence may be a quality recognisable in the overall behaviour of a person but normally attributed to only a single component of the body. A pertinent question might be, to what extent is intelligence possible in the human brain without the intervention and co-operation of the rest of the body? Without a precise answer, where can we say intelligence 'is'?
How to build a mind
Some years ago, when the first edition of The Post-Human Condition was published, I was invited to speak to students studying artificial intelligence at a well-known UK University. On arrival I was warmly received by a group of staff and taken to lunch where the conversation started amiably enough, until the subject of my lecture came up. With a certain confidence born of naïvety, I proceeded to set out my claim that the brain was not solely responsible for consciousness (and, by extension, intelligence) and that attempts to generate artificial thought by modelling brain structure alone were flawed. While the faces around me had initially shown polite interest they soon turned to polite derision and I realised I was intellectually isolated. I was, of course, aware at the time that the views I held were unorthodox but I wasn't prepared for the hostility they would induce in all the staff and in all but a couple of the students I spoke to. Today, of course, the situation is very different. The notion of 'embedded' or 'embodied' intelligence is certainly now a powerful, if not the dominant, paradigm in artificial intelligence research and human-machine interaction (Clark 1997, Dourish 2001) and recent research tends to support the idea that intelligence is as much a function of an organism's interaction with the environment as its brain processing capacity. Joseph Wakeling and Per Bak have conducted experiments with neural network 'minibrains' that are tasked with choosing simple options in competition with each other (Wakeling 2001). The minibrains perform poorly when endowed only with knowledge of their own behaviour, but perform much better when they are able to take into account information about other minibrains around them and the status of their environment. They conclude that intelligent behaviour requires more than just brain processing power: the bodily vehicle and awareness of activity in the surroundings are crucial to good overall performance. This seems to imply some deep unity between the active world and the active, functioning mind.
Sensory deprivation and the mind/body problem
Since the original research was done in the 1950s at McGill University, much has become known about the damaging effect upon human consciousness of sensory deprivation; that is, when the brain is left entirely to itself in the absence of bodily stimulation. In cases where the person is denied sensory stimuli for long periods of time the normal functioning of the mind breaks down, with an onset of hallucination and eventual severe trauma. Without the continuous flow of varied information it is used to receiving from the body and the world the mind cannot operate properly. In Out of Control Kevin Kelly cites examples of the detrimental effect of denying visual stimulation to sighted patients, and has this suggestion:
'Black patch psychosis' is something ophthalmologists watch for on the wards. I think the universities should keep an eye out for it too. Every philosophy department should hang a pair of black eye patches in a red fire alarm-like box that says "In case of argument about mind/body, break glass, put on." (Kelly 1994 p. 68)
Quantum holism and the mind/world problem
Support for the deep unity of mind and world, and by extension the unity of brain and body, comes from perhaps the 'hardest' science of all — physics. In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum reality the conventional boundary between the observer and the observed is brought into question, as is the boundary between mind and reality. The Copenhagen interpretation is a way of reading the results of sub-atomic research that holistically binds the observer and the observed in such a way as to make the outcome of an event dependent on the researcher. As David Peat reports in Einstein's Moon:
This holistic nature of the atomic world was the key to Bohr's Copehagen interpretation. It was something totally new to physics, although similar ideas had long been taught in the East. For more than two thousand years, Eastern philosophers had talked about the unity between the observer and that which is observed. They had pointed to the illusion of breaking apart a thought from the mind that thinks the thought. Now a similar holism was entering physics. (Peat 1990 p. 62)
My own feelings of consciousness
But need we rely on academics and scientists to advise us on the location of consciousness and the relationship between mind, body and world? Is the fact that are bodies are conscious not obvious? If by consciousness we mean a compound of feelings, emotions, and memories that are exhibited by the living being and not by the dead, then arguably these are as much a function of the whole body as of the brain: when I feel unhappiness it is in my chest and arms; when I am frightened it is in my bowels and legs that the sensation is strongest; if I am amused it is my mouth and cheeks that are significantly altered; when I am alert it is my muscles that are tense; when I am moved by music it is my whole body which tingles or dances; if I am bored my body starts to fidget. All these apparently 'mental' states seem more easily identified by their 'physical' attributes. It seems the distinction between mental and physical states might be increasingly dubious.
What is the matter?
If it is the case that the long-held separation between brain and body, or between the mental and the physical, is being eroded as the tide of contemporary ideas runs against it, then we might be gradually drawn to the conclusion that our minds, our bodies and the world are continuous. But this is a conclusion that for many runs counter to our habitual understanding of human existence. Furthermore, it is one thing to say the mind, the body and the world are continuous (and posthumans are not the first to say it) but another matter altogether to appreciate what practical implications this might have. We shall return to these later in the book.
What is a human?
Like the separation between mind and body already discussed, the separation between the body and the world is deeply embedded into our habitual conception of our own existence. Further to what has already been suggested, I wish to reinforce the claim that the apparent separation between the human and the environment is invalid in the posthuman era and, therefore, needs revision.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Posthuman Condition by Robert Pepperell. Copyright © 2003 Robert Pepperell. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface to the new edition,Foreword,
Introduction,
1. Consciousness, humans and complexity,
2. Science, knowledge and energy,
3. Order and disorder, continuity and discontinuity,
4. Being, language and thought,
5. Art, aesthetics and creativity,
6. Automating creativity,
7. Synthetic beings,
8. What is posthumanism?,
Appendices,
Postscript,
Bibliography,
Index,