Comments on: Contemplating Singularity http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/08/contemplating-singularity/ a project of the National Humanities Center Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:42:46 +0000 hourly 1 By: Bill Benzon http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/08/contemplating-singularity/comment-page-1/#comment-193 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:02:24 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/humannature/?p=290#comment-193 I’m curious about your rhetoric, which seems something of a bait-and-switch. Your first and second paragraphs read as though you’re going to consider arguments about a posthuman singularity in which intelligent machines eclipse us at some point in the future, a notion that’s been debated to death for quite awhile. But then you set that discussion aside at the beginning of paragraph three and just leave it there flopping beside the road. Instead you undertake a discussion of the extended mind.

OK. It’s not that I’m particularly interested in yet another discussion of the transhuman posthuman – without an analytically useful notion of intelligence such discussions are rather empty. But why bother even bringing up that particular notion of posthuman singularity at all if you’re not going to do anything but displace it by, in effect, redefining the human as always already cyborg and posthuman? Are you implying that the transhumanists are mistaken about the the object of their desire/anxiety? Or that we’re going to transcend ourselves independently of whether or not those superintelligent machines ooze up out of the silicon?

]]> By: Spaceweaver http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2009/08/contemplating-singularity/comment-page-1/#comment-192 Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:51:44 +0000 http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/humannature/?p=290#comment-192 This is an excellent exposition, thanks. The theory of the extended mind has also interesting roots in the works of Gregory Bateson and Humberto Maturana where cognition is being described in the context of cybernetics. Another interesting association that come to mind is John Searle’s work on intentionality reasoning and speech acts where he describes a mechanism by which speech acts constitutes abstract reasons for action which are in a sense semi-independent from the agent who create them, and are supported by a wider cultural or social consensus (in the forming of promises for one example).

Another interesting connection I have found has to do with understanding the contour of an individual mind as depending on the ratio between the volume of information transfer within the central nervous system compared to the volume of information between the nervous system and its environment via sensory/motor interaction. As soon as this ratio of volume will start to converge from a very large number to 1 (as result from various technological augmentations), the contour of the mind as residing in the brain will dissolve.
The idea is further developed here: http://spacecollective.org/Spaceweaver/3680/My-cranium-is-open-source

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