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The Posthuman Condition Consciousness beyond the brain Robert Pepperell THE POSTHUMAN CONDITION The Posthuman Condition Consciousness beyond the brain Robert Pepperell First published in hardback in 2003 in Great Britain by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK. First published in hardback in 2003 in USA by Intellect Books, ISBS, 5804 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA. The Post-Human Condition was first published in 1995, and reprinted in 1997. Images and text copyright © 2003 Robert Pepperell. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. Consulting Editor: Copy Editor: Masoud Yazdani Holly Spradling A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Electronic ISBN 1-84150-883-7 / ISBN 1-84150-048-8 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire. Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors: 1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz. a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call’d Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True: 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3. Energy is Eternal Delight. ALL William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793 Humanists saw themselves as distinct beings, in an antagonistic relationship with their surroundings. Posthumans, on the other hand, regard their own being as embodied in an extended technological world. The Posthuman Manifesto CONTENTS Preface to the new edition Foreword i iii 00 Introduction 1 1. Consciousness, humans and complexity 13 2. Science, knowledge and energy 35 3. Order and disorder, continuity and discontinuity 0 4. Being, language and thought 0 5. Art, aesthetics and creativity 53 00 00 0 77 101 0 6. Automating creativity 0 7. Synthetic beings 117 139 8. What is posthumanism? 155 Appendices 173 Postscript 188 Bibliography 189 Index 194 Preface to the new edition Without wishing to claim any credit, I have detected a subtle shift in favour of the ideas offered in The Post-Human Condition since it was first published. In the mid1990s, when I asked an audience the question “Is consciousness something confined to the human brain?” the almost universal response was “yes”. Now I ask undergraduates the same question and a significant proportion say “no”, or at least look uncertain. I have also noted a shift in the positions adopted by some highprofile brain scientists and philosophers who are starting to accept that, perhaps, the body has a significant role in the production of higher mental functions. Meanwhile, the increasing respect given to what is broadly called eastern philosophy has made the continuity between object and subject more readily acceptable, along with the idea of consciousness as a phenomenon that pervades all reality. At the same time a large number of technical developments, especially in genetics and cloning, have further confused the distinctions between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’. As I write, controversy is growing about the Italian researcher, Severino Antinori, who claims the first successful human clone is imminent; it may well have already been born (Sunday Times, October 20th, 2002). Elsewhere the subjects of cultural and literary studies and social science are starting to pay attention to the emerging field of ‘posthuman studies’, with several recently published books and articles staking their claims to the rapidly expanding ground. Books such as How We Became Posthuman (Hayles 1999) have attempted to negotiate the synthesis of science fiction, cybernetics and artificial intelligence from within the tradition of literary criticism. Others, like Our Posthuman Future (Fukuyama 2002), attend to increasing uncertainty about human nature in the age of genetic manipulation and pharmaceutical engineering, and give consideration to the political and ethical implications of these technologies. But perhaps the most significant change to have occurred in the intellectual landscape since the mid-1990s is the growth of interest in consciousness studies, and particularly the consolidation of multi-disciplinary approaches to the question of human existence, drawing on areas such as philosophy, neurology, quantum physics, art theory and spiritual traditions. In this new version I have added a subtitle, ‘Consciousness beyond the brain’, which I hope conveys the essential thesis of the book and positions it within this wider field of consciousness studies. i