The Concept Of The Post-Human - Essay Example

?What is meant by the concept of the “post-human”? Introduction For many years a human has been considered as “a (generally assumed male) whois at the center of his world…; is defined by his supreme; utterly rational intelligence; does not depend …upon a divine authority to make his way through the world but instead manipulates it in accord with his own wishes; and is a historically independent agent whose thought and action produce history.” (Seaman 2007: p.246). But, the outstanding development of sciences, especially such as genetics, biotechnology, informatics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, astrophysics, cosmology and others, led to significant changes in the customary understanding of the relationship between humans and nature. Pepperell (1997) argues that new findings in the modern scientific researches pose today more questions than answers about the universe, nature and humans; moreover, “the tendency towards the developments of artificial life, synthesised intelligence, instant telecommunications and virtual reality means that we are now aware of a disappearing barrier between ‘natural’ and ‘human-made’ phenomena” (p.165). As a consequence of the shifts in the understanding of human power and beliefs in human’s superiority, an idea of “post-humanism” was born in 1940s and nowadays it has become quite popular, especially within “science-fiction-minded” circles (Clark 2010). This paper is aimed to explore the meaning of the concept of the “post-human” and to discuss major assumed hazards for humans related to the concept, with the references to two famous movies – Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and the Terminator series (James Cameron, 1984; 1991). The films not only help to realise the possible threats to humanity from uncontrolled development of technologies, but, importantly, they “raise even more probing questions about the consequences of our definitions of the human” (Pyle 2000: p.124). What is the “post-human”? The early definitions of a post-human society are connected with the cybernetic movement started by Norbert Weiner in the 1940s, then ideas of the post-humanism have been popularised by American futurists (such as Stephen Hawking, Alvin Toffler and others) (Clark 2010). Gradually the concept of the “post-human” has been developing, inspiring many of natural scientists and philosophers, as well as science-fiction writers, artists and film-makers. Generally speaking, a post-human is a conceptual imaging of “biotechnological or cybernetic systemic couplings” (Cobley 2010: p.294). Currently this concept is used in several meanings. Pepperell (1997) suggests three cases of the term’s using: (1) it is used to indicate the end of the Humanism period in the historical process of the world social development; (2) it is used to emphasise the transformation of a human being’s concept, mentioned above; (3) it refers to the current persistent convergence of technologies and human organisms, leading to “a future state of humanity in which biology is merged with technology” (p.174). The latter meaning draws the most attention in the world research society and causes heat debates, especially between the so called transhumanists and their opponents. According to the definition of Marx More: “Posthumans will be persons of unprecedented physical, intellectual and psychological ability, self-programming and self-defining, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals. Posthumans have overcome the biological, neurological, and psychological constraints evolved into humans. …Our personalities having been transferred “into” more durable, modifiable, and faster, and more powerful bodies and thinking hardware” (cited in Pepperell 1997: p.175). Bostrom (2003) explains what advantages the posthuman persons will have in comparing with the current state of human beings. Among them there are: a higher level of intellectuality and consciousness; resistance to many diseases and nonsusceptibility to aging; prolonged, if non-limited youth; a possibility to control their moods and mental states, to enjoy pleasure and love purposely. They will be able to shape themselves and environment according to their needs and wishes. For example, they “may find it advantageous to jettison their bodies altogether and live as information patterns on vast super-fast computer networks” (Bostrom 2003: p.6). They may share knowledge, experience and memories directly between each other, erasing boundaries between their minds. Their minds also may be able to construct complicated cognitive architectures and to process new sensory modalities, allowing them to live in rich virtual reality. Hayles (1999) also makes a significant contribution into characterisation of a post-human, offering the following distinctive features of the posthuman view (pp.2-3): 1. It privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. 2. It considers consciousness …as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. 3. It thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. 4. It configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals. Thus, it is evidently that in order to reach the posthuman state it is not sufficient just to change the conception of a human – radical technological innovations and transformations of a human body are needed as well. Many of scholars agree that today we are not even able to imagine what it means to be a post-human. As Clarke (2008) emphasises, today the post-human indicates only that “the human form is as unknown to us as the nonhuman” (p.3), and that the formal coupling of human and nonhuman forms will result in something absolutely new, but undoubtedly beyond the human in its modern comprehension. Although the ideas of transhumanism and posthumanism are generally recognised across the world, they are much criticised, especially by bio-conservators, who consider that human enhancement will lead to the dehumanisation. For example, Fukuyama (2002) argues that the post-human is nothing more than the “biotechnologically mutated non-human — a creature that remains biologically encased but divorced from its natural biological origin” (cited in Pepperell 1997: p.176). Such opponents tend to see a post-human as a post-biological, technologically equipped, superhuman cyborg-entity with an artificially-generated consciousness and without of common human values; so it is not surprising that objections against the post-humanism are being expressed constantly. Post-humans in the Terminator and Blade Runner Post-humans and major fears, connected with the future post-humanistic society, are revealed in a number of science-fiction stories and films, including famous the Terminator series of James Cameron (T1 and T2) and the Blade Runner of Ridley Scott, which is based upon the story “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” of Phillip Dick (1996). Through the concept of the “cyborg” these films indicate how the possible merging of human organism and computing machine is understood today. According to Haraway (1991), “a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism” (p.149), hence it is some kind of a post-human. Cyborgs in these films are robots (or androids) with computing consciousness but with human appearance - “part machine and part man, but reassuringly humanoid in form” (Lister et al. 2009: p.282). They relate with humans with different purposes and by different means, so that viewers see how unsteady and vague can be borders between the human and the non-human. What is also important, the films teach viewers that most often hazards are caused by harmful activities of humans themselves, rather than of cyborgs, which are created and programmed by humans, so the possible danger risks related to the post-human era can be and should be mitigated if people will keep morality and humanistic principles. The first major fear, demonstrated in the films, is “that the state of being posthuman might in itself be degrading, so that by becoming posthuman we might be harming ourselves” (Bostrom 2005: p.204). Pyle (2000) says brilliantly that “when we make cyborgs – at least when we make them in movies – we make and, on occasion, unmake our conceptions of ourselves” (p.124). This is actually the case, because what we do and think in our everyday activity shape our knowledge, insights, expertise, preferences, creativity, consciousness; moreover, it shapes our body and mind. So, it shapes our identity – our internal sense of self and our positioning within society (Lister et al. 2009). Transformation or destruction of our identity (or conceptions of ourselves, or our human essence) are closely connected with the fear of loss of the human being’s freedom and spirituality, as Graham (2002) emphasizes. In the Blade Runner we see that Rachel (Sean Young) and other replicants (advanced robots) are not aware that they are replicants, so they are not aware about their real identity; what helps the Tyrell Corporation’s heads have a better control over them – they are used as slaves and treated just as commodity, while arguing “We are not computers, we are physical” (Roy - Rutger Hauer). Moreover, the big question of the film is whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) is also a replicant or a human? Whether does he realise his own identity properly or not? Thus, the film poses a question about the value of recognition of difference between “real and simulation, between authentic and prosthetic memory – and the value of the distinction between human and replicant” (Landsberg 2000: p. 199). Regarding to the identity issues it is useful to add that films also illustrate the Haraway’s concept of dualism in the modern high-tech culture. Haraway (1985) describes this concept as follows: “It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body in machines that resolve into coding practices. …Biological organisms have become biotic systems, communication devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic.” (p.178) Indeed, in final scenes of the T2 (when the Terminator saves John) and of the Blade Runner (when Batty saves Deckard) both cyborgs become real humans, because they realise that their lives were worth living and they made their choice for the sake of the future of humanity. At the same time, some humans (e.g. Miles Dyson in T2, the creator of Skynet, a computing program that leads to the future cyborg revolution) seem to be more machine-minded with their ideas of automated programmed world. Another important feature of the Haraway’s cyborg concept relates to socialist feminism; it is well shown in the Blade Runner, where gendered cyborgs are used to explore complex issues of dynamics of gender in our modern and post-modern societies. It is remarkable that there are no female humans in the film - all women are replicants, and all of them are physically attractive. So, evidently they exist to play a role of a sexual object for surrounded men, and as we see in the course of the film, it is a true – each of them, regardless of their skills and experience, is forced to serve as an object of pleasure for men. The second important fear demonstrated in films is that posthumans might become dangerous to “ordinary” humans. Bostrom (2005) asserts: “The new species, or “posthuman,” will likely view the old “normal” humans as inferior, even savages, and fit for slavery or slaughter. The normals … may see the posthumans as a threat and if they can, may engage in a preemptive strike by killing the posthumans before they themselves are killed or enslaved by them” (p.207). There are clear evidences of such confrontation between humans and cyborgs in both films, yet at the same time viewers can fully appreciate that dangerous cyborgs are nothing more than outcomes of inhuman or unreasoned actions of people. For example, while in the T1 the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is undoubtedly a “bad” cyborg, performing the task to kill Sarah Connor, in the T2 viewers realise gradually that he is a “good” cyborg, whose mission is to protect John – a future leader of a human rebellion against the cyborgs. The T-1000 (Robert Patrick) is a “bad” cyborg - he arrived from the future to kill John and to guarantee the cyborg reign. So, a viewer is suggested to judge which cyborgs are “good” and which are “bad”, forcing to forget that “the cyborg itself is a contested location” (Mason, 1995: p.226). But actually, the real confrontation in the film is not between cyborgs, but between humans, namely – between Miles Dyson, the father of the Skynet, and Sarah Connor, the John’s mother, who at first, strives to save life of her son, but at the end of the film has become a protector of humanity on the Earth. Thus, the theme of threat from post-humans has become an issue of threat from humans themselves. Conclusion In spite of described fears and other concerns of bio-conservators, an advent of a post-human (in its contemporary understanding) seems to be inevitable. Current advances in technology and science ensure with a great likelihood that the evolutionary vector can be extended beyond the concept of “a human”, as transhumanists consider (Cobley 2010). But one can agree with Pepperell (1997) that the posthumanism should not be considered as the “End of Man”, connected with erasure of humans; rather, according to modern posthumanism’s advocates, it should be regarded as a hybridisation of humans that enables their adaptation to new environmental conditions and ensures continuation of humans within post-humans (Bostrom 2005, Clarke 2008, Seaman 2007). Moreover, posthumanity can be always in the future, because since the ancient time what it means to be human has been determined to a great extent by the development of tools and technologies which allow people doing and being more than they were enabled by their natural biology: “Posthuman” technologies are disruptive and frightening (or tempting) precisely because they’re not here, and remain off in the distance. …But as they become more plausible, as they become more real, they will lose that luster. For the people living in a future surrounded by altered genomes, implanted machinery, and vastly extended lifespans, it will all be boringly normal …and very, very human ” (Cascio 2010: paragraphs 8-9). In such context, the discussed films – the Terminator and the Blade Runner are not about the “apocalyptic posthumans” (Seaman 2007: p.259) and related techno-posthuman future nightmares. These films are about what does it mean to be human from the ethic and moral perspectives, as well as about persons – both humans and post-humans - “who understand themselves through a variety of alienated experiences and narratives which they take to be their own, and which they subsequently make their own through use” (Landsberg 2000: p. 199). In the final scenes of these films there is an image of a mechanical hand making a human gesture, and as Pyle (2000) emphasises, “each gesture points towards a humanism that the films may hope to affirm, but only by way of the insistence of mechanical hands which bind the human deeply to its other, even in termination” (p.132). References Bostrom, N. (2003) The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction. Version 2.1. World Transhumanist Association. [Online] Available from: http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf [Accessed 08 January 2011]. Bostrom, N. (2005) In Defence of Posthuman Dignity. Bioethics, 19 (3), 202-214. Cascio, J. (2010) Your Posthuman Is Boring Me. [Online] Available from: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/cascio20100512 [Accessed 08 January 2011]. Cobley, P. (2010) The Routledge companion to semiotics. Oxon, Routledge. Clark, A.C.R. (2010) Transhumanism and Posthumanism: Lifting Man Up or Pulling Him Down? Ignatius Insight, March 12. 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