Space Race Consciousness, or a Brief Response to Mind Uploading

Edward Burtynsky. China Recycling # 2, Cutter, Fengjiang, Zhejiang Province, China 2004.

Science and technonlogy writer Michael Anissimov recently outlined the many potential benefits of widespread 'mind uploading', the hypothetical transfer of a human mind from the brain/body to another, presumably artificial, form of hardware. SpaceCollective member LED mentioned the article and how it made her feel hopeful that through mind uploading she might achieve “greater subjective well-being”, to use Anissimov's words. Paul Raven responded to the article on Futurismic, saying, “Personally, I’m first in the queue for upload (assuming it becomes possible within my lifetime), as I find corporeal existence to be massively distracting – I could get so much more done if I didn’t have this bag of meat to worry about…” Doubtless, many members of SpaceCollective would regard the possibility of mind uploading with cautious optimism. Anissimov gives us plenty of reasons for hope, as he argues that the process would result in massive economic growth, intelligence enhancement, complete environmental recovery, escape from direct governance by the laws of physics, closer connections with other human beings, indefinite lifespans, and the aforementioned promise of greater subjective well-being. If these advantages do not excite you, the wiki entry offers still more.

If we asked Anissimov or Raymond Kurzweil, they would assure us that mind uploading is not merely possible but inevitable, there remains only the question of how long before we begin to make copies of our minds. The process will generate many philosophical and ethical debates: if we transfer multiple copies of our mind to a single piece of hardware, for example, do we at once occupy separate consciousnesses? I have a more basic question, however, which requires only that we recognize the desire for mind uploading and not its likelihood or consequences: From where and whom does this desire come? Why do we wish to eject the body in favor of the mind? The answer to this question pivots on identifying the “we”— who do “we” really mean when “we” say that “we” privilege the mind over the body?

With the risk of some generalization: though it is by no means the only source of this concept, the Age of Enlightenment nevertheless made prominent the notion of mind/body dualism (as well as nature/nurture, general/particular, and so on). These contrasting principles form the basis of the Western philosophical tradition, and few ever regarded them as either equal or neutral. René Descartes, arguably the first Enlightenment philosopher, famously set the terms: “I think therefore I am” and not “I meat therefore I am”. Western civilization itself came to adopt reason, abstraction, intelligence, culture, and the mind as its distinguishing characteristics. And as Europe expands beyond its borders yet again during the period and comes into contact with alien cultures, it ascribes to them obverse characteristics as passionate, particular, natural, bestial, and of the body. These dualisms become a justification of colonial expansion and the economic exploitation of the 'third-world' which has never really ended. Philosopher Crispin Sartwell explains, “This axiomatics is simultaneously ethical and economic, abstract and brutalizing, and it calls into play the grounding assumptions of Western thought about what it means to be human, which at the deepest strata include ideas such as this: that the body entraps the soul (the person), and hence that the body is the other which must be dominated. Thus, among other things, in this racial schema black people are beastialized, which has the economic consequences we white folks want (we constrain them to perform cheaply the labor we find degrading)” (14-15).

Anissimov observes somewhat reflexively at the beginning of his article that mind uploading “will eventually become universally adopted by all who can afford it, similar to the adoption of modern agriculture, hygiene, or living in houses.” But my concern is not just that non-whites in the 'third world' will provide parts and labor for the process but not enjoy its possible benefits. I am not a Luddite, nor do I believe that the body will always remain necessary in order for the mind to thrive, though at the moment its supposed literal and metaphysical independence seems false to me. I do not want my first post here at SpaceCollective to be an exercise in guilt, either. I only wish to caution us (and myself) against regarding the supremacy of the mind over the body as universal or take it for granted, and note that this idea has a particular historical origin and has been employed in order to marginalize and subjugate, and that individuals and groups remain coded by it even today.

Fri, Feb 6, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: mind uploading, race, mind/body dualism

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