#bodyminds

Every so often, I think about the fact of one of the best things my advisor and committee members let me write and include in my actual doctoral dissertation, and I smile a bit, and since I keep wanting to share it out into the world, I figured I should put it somewhere more accessible.

So with all of that said, we now rejoin An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time, already (still, seemingly unendingly) in progress:

René Descartes (1637): The physical and the mental have nothing to do with each other. Mind/soul is the only real part of a person.

Norbert Wiener (1948): I don’t know about that “only real part” business, but the mind is absolutely the seat of the command and control architecture of information and the ability to reflexively reverse entropy based on context, and input/output feedback loops.

Alan Turing (1952): Huh. I wonder if what computing machines do can reasonably be considered thinking?

Wiener: I dunno about “thinking,” but if you mean “pockets of decreasing entropy in a framework in which the larger mass of entropy tends to increase,” then oh for sure, dude.

John Von Neumann (1958): Wow things sure are changing fast in science and technology; we should maybe slow down and think about this before that change hits a point beyond our ability to meaningfully direct and shape it— a singularity, if you will.

Clynes & Klines (1960): You know, it’s funny you should mention how fast things are changing because one day we’re gonna be able to have automatic tech in our bodies that lets us pump ourselves full of chemicals to deal with the rigors of space; btw, have we told you about this new thing we’re working on called “antidepressants?”

Gordon Moore (1965): Right now an integrated circuit has 64 transistors, and they keep getting smaller, so if things keep going the way they’re going, in ten years they’ll have 65 THOUSAND. :-O

Donna Haraway (1991): We’re all already cyborgs bound up in assemblages of the social, biological, and techonological, in relational reinforcing systems with each other. Also do you like dogs?

Ray Kurzweil (1999): Holy Shit, did you hear that?! Because of the pace of technological change, we’re going to have a singularity where digital electronics will be indistinguishable from the very fabric of reality! They’ll be part of our bodies! Our minds will be digitally uploaded immortal cyborg AI Gods!

Tech Bros: Wow, so true, dude; that makes a lot of sense when you think about it; I mean maybe not “Gods” so much as “artificial super intelligences,” but yeah.

90’s TechnoPagans: I mean… Yeah? It’s all just a recapitulation of The Art in multiple technoscientific forms across time. I mean (*takes another hit of salvia*) if you think about the timeless nature of multidimensional spiritual architectures, we’re already—

DARPA: Wait, did that guy just say something about “Uploading” and “Cyborg/AI Gods?” We got anybody working on that?? Well GET TO IT!

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women: Wait, so our prosthetics, medications, and relational reciprocal entanglements with technosocial systems of this world in order to survive makes us cyborgs?! :-O

[Simultaneously:]

Kurzweil/90’s TechnoPagans/Tech Bros/DARPA: Not like that. Wiener/Clynes & Kline: Yes, exactly.

Haraway: I mean it’s really interesting to consider, right?

Tech Bros: Actually, if you think about the bidirectional nature of time, and the likelihood of simulationism, it’s almost certain that there’s already an Artificial Super Intelligence, and it HATES YOU; you should probably try to build it/never think about it, just in case.

90’s TechnoPagans: …That’s what we JUST SAID.

Philosophers of Religion (To Each Other): …Did they just Pascal’s Wager Anselm’s Ontological Argument, but computers?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists: Hey, y’all? There’s a LOT of really messed up stuff in these models you started building.

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women: Right?

Anthony Levandowski: I’m gonna make an AI god right now! And a CHURCH!

The General Public: Wait, do you people actually believe this?

Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook: …Which answer will make you give us more money?

Timnit Gebru and other “AI” Ethicists: …We’re pretty sure there might be some problems with the design architectures, too…

Some STS Theorists: Honestly this is all a little eugenics-y— like, both the technoscientific and the religious bits; have you all sought out any marginalized people who work on any of this stuff? Like, at all??

Disabled People, Trans Folx, BIPOC Populations, Women: Hahahahah! …Oh you’re serious?

Anthony Levandowski: Wait, no, nevermind about the church.

Some “AI” Engineers: I think the things we’re working on might be conscious, or even have souls.

“AI” Ethicists/Some STS Theorists: Anybody? These prejudices???

Wiener/Tech Bros/DARPA/Microsoft/Google/IBM/Facebook: “Souls?” Pfffft. Look at these whackjobs, over here. “Souls.” We’re talking about the technological singularity, mind uploading into an eternal digital universal superstructure, and the inevitability of timeless artificial super intelligences; who said anything about “Souls?”

René Descartes/90’s TechnoPagans/Philosophers of Religion/Some STS Theorists/Some “AI” Engineers: …

[Scene]

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Read Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time at A Future Worth Thinking About

When I received the Paperback Graphic Novel of Kindred in the mail, I told myself I’d read half of the book and then set it down to, you know, pace myself, and launch into the 2 days worth of Biology Homework that I’d missed. I nestled into my pseudo-comfortable leather reclining chair, eyes tired, mind foggy… 

And then the book was done. The entire book. I couldn’t put it down. I loved Kindred for the same reasons that I hated it (but I did not love that she was with no white ma–). It was raw, grossly uncomfortable (as these topics always, always are), and forced a deeper looking into myself. 

Whenever I ask my grandfather why he loves The Color Purple so much, he always responds, “because you really feel like you just know the characters, and you could sit down on the porch with them and have a conversation with them.” This is exactly how I felt about Kindred. Of course, I wouldn’t call myself marching up to Tom, Margaret or Rufus Weylin and having a conversation about them, but they felt palpably, uncomfortably real. This is definitely in part because it was graphically rendered. I felt a distant coldness emanating off of the page whenever the Weylins entered a panel. 

Around Miss Sarah, Nigel, Carrie, Alice and Tess, I felt a sense of safeness and community. I felt as though they were real, in a down to earth, “got your back” type of way that the whites in the story could never achieve. I felt as though they knew something… “more” about life.  Interestingly, this could tie back to the Toni Morrison reading of what blackness symbolizes in novels. 

A character I loved in particular was Alice. I hated what happened to her, but gosh, I loved her. Alice’s case would be a good, interesting case to discuss on the terms of the Bodyminds Reimagined reading. Alice went through a bone-crushing, life altering event and had not only her agency and body, but the love of her life taken from her. She was left in such a dazed state of shock that she regressed back into childhood. It was in this state that Rufus felt the most comfortable with her. Because when she had a childlike, innocent, impressionable mindset, he could fully “””“protect”””” (in his sick mind) her, he could do whatever he wanted with her. She was easy to control. He was able to have his idealized version of her in the flesh. This mental anguish, shock, and trauma led to this disability for her.

Rufus’ favor soon dissolved when she was no longer in this state, on came the beatings, the r*pings, the threatenings, and ultimately the taking of their children which led to her suicide. This relationship actually perfectly, in my opinion, describes the general feeling of white people towards black people during this time period, or even beyond. In their eyes, childlike innocence such as this was a disability, shown in how they thought they were less intelligent and incapable of complex emotions, but it was a desirable disability for those enslaved. Whites wanted to keep them in this state, in a state of what they believed to be “unknowing”, so that they would be easier to morph and control, and as soon as they started showing themselves, they became dangerous, worthy of beatings and otherwise. Thrown into the field. 

Another layer to add on to this is exemplified by an enslaved individual at the beginning of the novel saying, “He don’t want no n*ggers round here talking better than him. Putting freedom ideas in our heads. Like we so dumb we need some stranger to make us think about freedom.” The whites thought the enslaved individuals were inherently disabled in this way, but they actually weren’t. The circumstances they were forced to be in, constantly choosing between life and death could make it appear to the whites that they were. The whites then came up with a patriarchal way of justifying themselves, constantly saying the slaves needed to be protected, and taken care of and that they would die without them. Rufus showed this thinking when he convinced himself that Alice couldn’t pick her own husband. Interestingly, Alice wasn’t even enslaved, showing this was a general thought about black people back then (and today!) 

So yeah. Alice and Rufus’s situation, to me, seemed like a physical example of the abstract thinkings of slavery. This approach to disability as outlined in Bodyminds Reimagined allows for a deeper analysis into the minds and concepts of this time period.

I’d like to end off talking about Dana. Her injuries that she got in the past and brought with her to the present were, to me, a deep way of showing that the scars from back then still affect us to this day. If we don’t actively fix them, then they will still linger on. Her relationship with Rufus showcases the true peculiarities of what is known as the “Peculiar Institution.” A jumble between love, hope, hatred, disillusionment, darkness, and light. She saw glimpses of innocent humanity within him, and believed that, if she influenced him enough, he could escape the environment and times he was in, much like her. Escape it by changing and being a better man than he was expected to be in that time. However, ultimately, he wasn’t able to, and turned into a freaking terrible human being just like his daddy. 

Anyways, yeah! Here’s a song I thought of when I was reading this, check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3Fx41Jpl4&ab_channel=chachomg . 

Thanks for reading! :) 

by Damien

Late last month, I was at Theorizing the Web, in NYC, to moderate Panel B3, “Bot Phenomenology,” in which I was very grateful to moderate a panel of people I was very lucky to be able to bring together. Johnathan Flowers, Emma Stamm, and Robin Zebrowski were my interlocutors in a discussion about the potential nature of nonbiological phenomenology. Machine consciousness. What robots might feel.

I led them through with questions like “What do you take phenomenology to mean?” and “what do you think of the possibility of a machine having a phenomenology of its own?” We discussed different definitions of “language” and “communication” and “body,” and unfortunately didn’t have a conversation about how certain definitions of those terms mean that what would be considered language between cats would be a cat communicating via signalling to humans.

It was a really great conversation and the Live Stream video for this is here, and linked below (for now, but it may go away at some point, to be replaced by a static youtube link; when I know that that’s happened, I will update links and embeds, here).

Read the rest of Nonhuman and Nonbiological Phenomenology at A Future Worth Thinking About

Additionally,  I have another quote about the philosophical and sociopolitical implications of machine intelligence in this extremely well-written piece by K.G. Orphanides at WIRED UK. From the Article:

Williams, a specialist in the ethics and philosophy of nonhuman consciousness, argues that such systems need to be built differently to avoid a a corporate race for the best threat analysis and response algorithms which [will be] likely to [see the world as] a “zero-sum game” where only one side wins. “This is not a perspective suited to devise, for instance, a thriving flourishing life for everything on this planet, or a minimisation of violence and warfare,” he adds.

Much more about this, from many others, at the link.

Until Next Time.

Much of my research deals with the ways in which bodies are disciplined and how they go about resisting that discipline. In this piece, adapted from one of the answers to my PhD preliminary exams written and defended two months ago, I "name the disciplinary strategies that are used to control bodies and discuss the ways that bodies resist those strategies." Additionally, I address how strategies of embodied control and resistance have changed over time, and how identifying and existing as a cyborg and/or an artificial intelligence can be understood as a strategy of control, resistance, or both. In Jan Golinski’s Making Natural Knowledge, he spends some time discussing the different understandings of the word “discipline” and the role their transformations have played in the definition and transmission of knowledge as both artifacts and culture. In particular, he uses the space in section three of chapter two to discuss the role Foucault has played in historical understandings of knowledge, categorization, and disciplinarity. Using Foucault’s work in Discipline and Punish, we can draw an explicit connection between the various meanings “discipline” and ways that bodies are individually, culturally, and socially conditioned to fit particular modes of behavior, and the specific ways marginalized peoples are disciplined, relating to their various embodiments. This will demonstrate how modes of observation and surveillance lead to certain types of embodiments being deemed “illegal” or otherwise unacceptable and thus further believed to be in need of methodologies of entrainment, correction, or reform in the form of psychological and physical torture, carceral punishment, and other means of institutionalization.

[(Locust, "Master and Servant (Depeche Mode Cover)"]

[This is a in-process pre-print of an as-yet-published paper, a version of which was presented at the Gender, Bodies, and Technology 2019 Conference.]

INTRODUCTION

The history of biotechnological intervention on the human body has always been tied to conceptual frameworks of disability and mental health, but certain biases and assumptions have forcibly altered and erased the public awareness of that understanding. As humans move into a future of climate catastrophe, space travel, and constantly shifting understanding s of our place in the world, we will be increasingly confronted with concerns over who will be used as research subjects, concerns over whose stakeholder positions will be acknowledged and preferenced, and concerns over the kinds of changes that human bodies will necessarily undergo as they adapt to their changing environments, be they terrestrial or interstellar. Who will be tested, and how, so that we can better understand what kinds of bodyminds will be “suitable” for our future modes of existence?[1] How will we test the effects of conditions like pregnancy and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in space, and what will happen to our bodies and minds after extended exposure to low light, zero gravity, high-radiation environments, or the increasing warmth and wetness of our home planet?

During the June 2018 “Decolonizing Mars” event at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, several attendees discussed the fact that the bodyminds of disabled folx might be better suited to space life, already being oriented to pushing off of surfaces and orienting themselves to the world in different ways, and that the integration of body and technology wouldn’t be anything new for many people with disabilities. In that context, I submit that cyborgs and space travel are, always have been, and will continue to be about disability and marginalization, but that Western society’s relationship to disabled people has created a situation in which many people do everything they can to conceal that fact from the popular historical narratives about what it means for humans to live and explore. In order to survive and thrive, into the future, humanity will have to carefully and intentionally take this history up, again, and consider the present-day lived experience of those beings—human and otherwise—whose lives are and have been most impacted by the socioethical contexts in which we talk about technology and space.

This paper explores some history and theories about cyborgs—humans with biotechnological interventions which allow them to regulate their own internal bodily process—and how those compare to the realities of how we treat and consider currently-living people who are physically enmeshed with technology. I’ll explore several ways in which the above-listed considerations have been alternately overlooked and taken up by various theorists, and some of the many different strategies and formulations for integrating these theories into what will likely become everyday concerns in the future. In fact, by exploring responses from disabilities studies scholars and artists who have interrogated and problematized the popular vision of cyborgs, the future, and life in space, I will demonstrate that our clearest path toward the future of living with biotechnologies is a reengagement with the everyday lives of disabled and other marginalized persons, today.

Late last month, I was at Theorizing the Web, in NYC, to moderate Panel B3, "Bot Phenomenology," in which I was very grateful to moderate a panel of people I was very lucky to be able to bring together. Johnathan Flowers, Emma Stamm, and Robin Zebrowski were my interlocutors in a discussion about the potential nature of nonbiological phenomenology. Machine consciousness. What robots might feel.

I led them through with questions like "What do you take phenomenology to mean?" and "what do you think of the possibility of a machine having a phenomenology of its own?" We discussed different definitions of "language" and "communication" and "body," and unfortunately didn't have a conversation about how certain definitions of those terms mean that what would be considered language between cats would be a cat communicating via signalling to humans.

It was a really great conversation and the Live Stream video for this is here, and linked below (for now, but it may go away at some point, to be replaced by a static youtube link; when I know that that's happened, I will update links and embeds, here).