I'm at 'my' limit.

In the debates over transhumanism there are a few terms that require clarity. The first is post-humyn. One definition of this term suggests that we are no longer modern in the sense of being nondualistic. Dualism, if you’ll recall, was a metaphysical thesis concerning the mind-body problem that was invented by Descartes, of course, not without medieval trajectories. In general, dualism was not present in the minds of medievals because theirs was an Aristotleanism. There is a relation between mind and body, well, to be precise, for Aristotle, there was the active intellect which could become identical with the being of a given form when it thinks that which it perceives. In De Anima we read that the active intellect could become the form of anything impressed upon the passive intellect. Epistemologies in the middle ages would take us way off course, but I want to briefly mention Duns Scotus on the formal distinction. Ockham’s question, inter alia, was how something could both be universal and particular; if particular, then not universal; if universal then not particular. According to Ockham, this was basic to the idea of ontological distinction: the proposition that Socrates is a man simply indexes Socrates, noting, nearly trivially, that the set of men includes the individual Socrates. What then was the mind? Surely not something distinct from the persyn that is Socrates. We could say that Scotus posited a flooded ontology whereby anything necessary was supposited, to use Ockham’s term. In a very precise (and brilliant) argument, Scotus says that humyn substances are <formally distinct formalities>. (If anyone wants to read up on this stuff, I would recommend Peter King, from PIMS). This means that minds do not occur outside of bodies, while Ockham argued that the interior distinction is not necessary. Well, for Scotus, the real (formally distinct, not really distinct) posit was necessary, in the very least to save our intuitions concerning the correspondence theory of truth.

The question of immortality, uploading minds into computers, et cetera, has already been critiqued by the Critical Art Ensemble (Flesh Machine); and there is a really good stab taken by N. Katherine Hayles (How We Became Posthuman), which I will trace later. And this latter text brings me to the discussion that I want to have concerning the fuzziness of Scotus on the mind-body problem (if there is one). For Halyes, and Pickering, for instance, the idea that there is a distinct mind from the body is already confused. The various capacities of mind, as Aquinas would say, are not separable from the body, the least not by any fallible humyn actor, to say nothing of the miraculous agency of Divine Being. Most Aristotleans get this; and so, the question of immortality instantly becomes interesting in the medieval (largely Christian) framework. In Descartes, and it’s tricky, the idea is that humyn substance, a severely disenchanted posit, is already trapped in the body. This Platonic claim boils to the claim, again, a claim, that the mind doesn’t necessary rely on a body. For it is conceivable that the mind could be distinguished from the body: everything can be doubted, he said, except the idea that we are doubting, when we are. Therefore, there is something necessary at root; at least one constitutive predicate that doesn’t belong to world. This, he says, is the non-extended point, the mind. If consciousness can somehow fall into this point, that is to say, constitute it, whatever it might be—and if we could somehow hold it—the transfer into a material robot body, or a series of networks in a computer system, is possible (as in Transcendence or LawnMower Man) and as such, Descartes flesh machine body is replaceable. Here, the counter-argument that immortality, or living in any sense, is not a matter of immateriality is beside the point. Being trapped in a material body of some kind is not the issue for some transhumanists; the issue might be construed simply as the problem that our bodies are aging, that certain material functions require fresh reality, or will so, necessarily, at some point. Whether this living duration can carry on indefinitely, for some transhumanists is irrelevant, to say nothing of the foolish prediction that affirms that such could happen. With Kant we might say that countability or numerable infinity, is a process, an adding programme that never returns actual infinity, grasped once and for all. As LaTorra notes: “No one can know with certainty how long he or she will live”.[1] Hence to say that one can live more than 90 is dubitable; to say that one could, if the appropriate transference has been carried out, doesn’t seem impossible; to say, however, that one could then live forever, making transfers into new cyborgs seems ridiculous.

But it seems that there is still a problem, despite LaTorra’s insistence that what is reproduced in the next state, given transhumanist hope, is not consciousness but brain emulation (207). LaTorra glosses over this trouble by “maintain[ing] that a self pattern could even manifest in a sufficiently complex body  (or machine) that is not human at all” (209). Then we could say that continuity is purchased by maintaining a high degree of similarity, presumably a self-referential similarity, at best, and certainly one that would be sufficiently indistinguishable by third parties.

Some formalists like thinking about the term ‘continuous’ in this way:

1. At time1 we can say ‘here is a humyn, mind body and all’

2. After uploading we might say that something of the humyn at t1 is present in the materiality at time2.

But what?

To ascribe de dicto states to the same thought process is necessary at both times because consciousness is purported to be continuous between t1 and t2. What is discontinuous is this or that body. Hence, de re states ought to be ascribable to this or that, in the exclusive sense of ‘or’. In other words, there is an overlapping relationship between body1 and body2; but ex hypothesis it is nonmaterial. In How We Became Posthuman, we might say that Hayles (redescribed), hit the nail on the head at this philosophical issue. That which is immaterial is a ruse because nothing is outside of the material. Moreover, there need not be a distinction. We are not even yet fully embodied. 

What would it mean for something to be immaterial? 
How could I rule out that it isn’t plainly fully dependent on this brain state? The true mysteries of the universe are closer than we think! And how can I pretend to suppose that if brain is severed, or if we somehow catch consciousness, such would still function? If there are no parts of materiality that belong both to b1 and b2, transhumanism can be dismissed as ridiculous.

A response from a ‘transhumanist’ to this point might be that these are extreme thought experiments that are unlikely in practice. Such is a philosophers’ test: irrelevant. What is not being discussed, they might insist (perhaps) is whether we can isolate an entire body at one time and say nothing of its material belongs to another body while maintaining conscious continuity between them. Like the ship of Thesus, the program is “simply” a matter of addition, with the eventual overcoming of quantitative existence as defining qualitative humyn life. If I have everything replaced, ad infinitum, I’m still out living my fleshy body. So the liminal immortality issue may be a strawman. Or is it??

Against Pickering, LaTorra is arguing that what makes one humyn is not the body but some sufficient patterning process over t1 and t2. But a clone of me, while self-aware, is not keyed to my life-story. Or is it? And if we branch out at that point ‘separately’, like a forked road, it seems there would be two of me because two materialities would be exemplifying my patterning, at least in the initial stages. Which one would then be not me? Presumably, the one that has a lesser capacity to cohere with my previous states, prior to forking. But what if such processes of synthesis and repetition were simply built into the emulation? Well this doesn’t seem impossible. After the fork, would the clone then be more like me than I am? What a nightmare!!

Make no mistake, while prosthetic life, a claimed union between nature and culture, is the rhetoric of LaTorra’s transhumanism, it is also assumed that brain emulation and pattern similarity—so long as we cannot differentiate these two—is what is in play for psychological continuity. So if it is assumed that LaTorra would propose that my existence in a material other than humyn is just as good as those experiences in a humyn body, we might miss his point; his at least is that the two might be indistinguishable. In Transcendence Johnny Depp’s character plays this ‘continuity’ brilliantly, showing technological transcendence in a positive light (ultimately) rather than its opposite. And the main characters are not certain that he is Johnny, precisely because the emulation seems suspect. (Of course, to critique Transcendence, that technology may be good presupposes that technology is neutral; and without acknowledging the continuous displacement of community and autonomy (its origin as a racist raping), evidently by way of a thin consequence based analysis, this claim mixes truth with falsity, if there is any truth present at all. Technology is not rejected in this story; it is left open; optional; a completely concealed origin, sort of like the way in which Johnny is disclosed). So then what of emulation? Is it as good as continuity?

I have two propositions.

1. Possible, viz., that one could be uploaded must be considered in the trivial light that houses it. That it doesn’t imply a contradiction is all that we have. Its practical applications are, as Critical Art Ensemble pointed out long ago, a product of military  capitalism. Only a liberal without a class analysis would be foolish enough to suppose that this is good for anyone but those that seek to extract surplus.

2. Emulation implies that we are simulated. Is this the real deal? Perhaps our loved ones couldn’t tell the difference between characteristics housed by a cyborg and those that were once mine; but isn’t all of this irrelevant? What we want is the capacity to feel, think, reason, and be aware, which is importantly, to be self-referential. Not in the sense of having any perceptions of memories that may be mine; but memories that were actually once mine. Given (1), there is a high degree of reasonable skepticism, that our memories would be doctored according to space saving platforms, to start. But the idea here is that machine-functioning could emulate our present, qualitative, brain functioning. Again: how? And, indeed: ‘does not imply a contradiction’, doesn’t mean ‘highly likely’.  This is the stuff of technological nightmares.

Progress depends on the capacity to transfer wild beings into technological structures. Technological progress, then, reaches its limit when there is no nature present left to shift. But only if we suppose that nature is of a certain sort, say pristine “virgin” wilderness, are we stuck thinking that technology can reach this limit. It is not trivial therefore to make a point of showing, perhaps not conclusively, how far we are away from living like raccoons, or pigeons, hawks, ravens, or wolves; and in particular, those domesticates that live almost as far as we can away from technology.

When consciousness has been uploaded into machines, progress implies mere efficiency, the solution of problems, glitches. It has been pointed out on numerous occasions that this position is completely naïve. In giving up the capacity to be wild one is giving up the capacity to resist in an uncompromising way. To resist in a compromising way implies that one doesn’t control the capacity to completely ‘close’ oneself; one thereby remains open to the workings of something external. And hopefully here trust with oneself as controlled by another is warranted. But obviously we ought to be skeptical: why should it be? Critical Art Ensemble made this critique a while ago. Whose Second Self? What sort of movement do others make possible? And is this freedom?—If the means cannot be claimed (only) for oneself, how less the ends?

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[1] LaTorra, Michael. ‘Transhumanism: Threat or Menace? A response to Andrew Pickering” in Transhumanism & Its Critics edited by Hansell, Gregoy R. and William Grassie. (USA: Metanexus), 2012. p. 208.