The notion of isolating and ‘downloading’ the human consciousness in order to be digitally stored, ‘emailed’ across the globe and possibly imprinted onto a blank human clone at some far away destination, (Frayn, 2006, pp. 12-22) is the root of what is currently one of the most contentious concepts in biotechnology, and philosophy. The wider implications of this is that our consciousness may also be loaded into a synthetic mechanical body, into a simulated reality system or any combination of the above, resulting in countless ‘immortal’ versions of ourselves. While by no means an original concept it remains a fascinating one nonetheless.

If we suppose that technology will develop sufficiently to provide us with the ability to inhabit a simulated artificial reality, and human beings become capable of directly interfacing with computer systems via neurological implants, the body-mind problem raises serious issues regarding our sense of identity, and what it is that makes us capable of independent self-perpetuating thought and action. The body mind problem has confounded thinkers for generations – can body and mind be separated, is the mind a part of the physical brain or is the human consciousness the ‘ghost in the machine’? If we find ourselves able to isolate, digitize, and download the human consciousness, this ‘ghost’ could inhabit a different kind of machine altogether.

How might this disembodied consciousness function in a simulated artificial world? Do we even understand how the consciousness functions in relation to other people and the world as it currently exists? One must confront the philosophical concerns regarding a possible post-human future in equal measure as the technological aspects if we are to comprehend the requirements of a post-human future, and indeed the likelihood of a virtual-humanity.

What is posthumanism?

In the introduction to his book ‘The Post-Human Condition’, Robert Pepperell attempts to clarify the often-confusing concept of post-humanism. Many of the difficulties encountered by the uninitiated can in some part be attributed to the fact that post-humanism as a concept has associations with many differing fields of study. The links to contemporary art, science fiction, futurology, technology, neuroscience and philosophy can, at first, lead one to wonder where it’s roots lie, resulting in the possible dilution of the subject. Many commentators within this field tend to be of the opinion that we are not at the point of post-human yet; rather that it is a hypothetical or ideal future state of being that the human race is inevitably moving toward. This being the case, the term ‘trans-human’ is used in relation to our current state of being as we develop and experiment with technology and biology with a view to evolving into an augmented, improved being, popularly referred to as a cyborg. (Pepperell,1995, pp. i-xi).

In ‘The Post-human Condition’ Pepperell gives one of the most concise definitions of the term post-humanism and its implications:

…I have employed the term post-human to mean a number of things at once. Firstly, it is used to mark the end of that period of social development known as Humanism; in this sense it means ‘after Humanism’. Secondly, it is used to refer to the fact that our own view of what constitutes a human being is now undergoing a profound transformation. We no longer think about what it is to be a human in the same way that we used to. Thirdly, the term refers to the general convergence of organisms and technology to the point where they become indistinguishable. Taken collectively, these could be said to represent a new era in human development – the Post-Human era. The term is starting to gain wider currency and may be used in a number of different senses. (1995, p. i)

Philosophy and the ‘Question Concerning Technology’

There are of course concerns that technology may overpower and ‘enslave’ humanity, this is not a new concern, but a question that philosophers such as Martin Heidegger have sought to explain. In his 1954 essay on the ‘Question Concerning Technology’, Heidegger observes that forces external to the self, such as technology, increasingly compromise the free will of the modern human being. What Heidegger calls technology’s ‘Gestell’, or enframing, is the process whereby technology, rather than the individual comes to define the purpose of and motivations for human existence. As Heidegger remarks ‘we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it [technology] as something neutral’. (Heidegger, p. 4) This would suggest that machines may no longer be regarded as neutral tools utilized by human beings to control their own environment and carry out tasks. Gestell suggests that humans are no longer seperate from their surroundings, rather that while technology may be a resource used by humans, so too can humans become a resource to be used and manipulated by technology.

A generation ago, noted author and philosopher Ihab Hassan reflected on posthumanism with the following:

We need to first understand that the human form – including human desire and all its external representations – may be changing radically, and thus must be re-visioned. We need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end, as humanism transforms itself into something that we must helplessly call posthumanism (Hassan, 1982 p. 212)

Reality, Truth, and Knowledge

One must attempt to understand the nature of the realities that we are attempting to simulate. The word 'reality', to paraphrase the Collins English Dictionary means 'the state of things as they are, or appear to be as they actually exist, rather than how we would wish them to be', (Butterfield, ed. 2001, p. 645) that is, whether it is observable, comprehensible and subject to analysis. This dictionary definition is not altogether satisfactory but it is perfectly acceptable for everyday usage. We may consider the concept of ‘truth’ in a different manner. When two or more individuals agree upon the interpretation and experience of an event, a consensus begins to be formed. This consensus becomes common to a larger group and then becomes the 'truth' as seen and agreed upon by a majority. This is well expressed by author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), who said in his book ’A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers‘, ‘It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak and another to hear’ (Thoreau, 1849, p. 173)

Rene Descartes ‘Meditations’, of 1640, deals primarily with the subject of ‘epistemology’, or the study of knowledge. To put it in very broad terms, Descartes is attempting to establish what it is possible to know. The first stage in his quest for attaining solid, unshakable knowledge was to reject his existing beliefs and opinions and subject them to rigorous testing through analysis and argument, this extreme re-evaluation of one’s beliefs has come to be known as Cartesian Doubt. (Warburton, 2001, pp. 47- 48)

Descartes argues that something should only be believed if one is absolutely certain that it is true, if there is the slightest doubt about it’s truth then it should be rejected, although this rejection does not prove the belief to be false, it renders it unsuitable as a basis for that which is knowable. Descartes realised that this form of doubt is not practical as a day-to-day practice and intended it as a one off experience that would allow the discovery of beliefs that are free from doubt or alternatively show that everything could be doubted. (Warburton, 2001, p. 48)

It seems reasonable to believe in the need for this kind of reasoning and doubt, yet one may put forward the following observation:

An individual may know that they have never met Napoleon Bonaparte, nor do they know anyone that has, further, there is not a person alive today that has met Napoleon Bonaparte, yet one is sure that he existed. Is historical documentation and evidence, or the widely held beliefs of others, actual proof of a thing being true?

As Nigel Warburton states in his book Philosophy: The Classics:

A benevolent God would not, however, have created us in such a way that we were systematically deceived about the existence of objects. Moreover, he has certainly provided us with the means to make accurate judgements about the nature of the world. But it does not follow that the objects in the world are exactly like our ideas of them…Ultimately if we want to understand what the world is really like we need to resort to a mathematical and geometrical analysis of it. (2001, p. 54)

Descartes method of doubt seems both logical and necessary, even if carried out only once or twice in a lifetime.

Phenomenology and perception.

The philosopher Plato (428BC-348BC) uses the ‘Allegory of the cave’1 to illustrate the fact that our perception of reality and existence is just that – a perception. Phenomenology is the theory that, an individual's perception of the world can differ greatly to another's personal interpretation of the same environment. Information and events that go to make up our surroundings are interpreted almost uniquely from person to person, depending on their experiences, beliefs, and personal references, leading the individual to see only that which he or she is equipped to experience subjectively within the framework of their surroundings. (Warburton, 2001, pp. 5 - 6)

In the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, Immanuelle Kant proposed a radical re-evaluation in the way in which we perceive the world around us, that it’s qualities depend on the perceiver’s mind rather than simply existing independently of us. ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ challenges the notion that we can understand the nature of reality by reason alone. The conclusion being that knowledge is based upon sensory input that we receive as well as the conditions and concepts that we impose upon the world – effectively that we partially create our own reality from within ourselves. Pure scientific reason alone is not enough to explain the nature of reality. (Warburton, 2001, p. 131)

Earlier philosophers such as David Hume, described two types of knowledge: relations of ideas and matters of fact. Relations of ideas prove knowledge to be true by definition, i.e. the statement ‘all dogs are animals’; we know to be true by definition. The other type of knowledge, matters of fact could be explained thus: ‘some men drive cars’ this would be substantiated by observing and is not true by definition. Hume believed that there were only these two types of knowledge, empirical or analytical, (Warburton, 2001, p. 132) however Kant, who greatly respected Hume, proposed a third kind that he called the synthetic a priori. A priori is a Latin term, (the opposite of a posteriori which means ‘gained from experience’) and was used by Kant to describe any knowledge that is known to be true independently of experience, (Paton, 2005, p. 4) such as the notion of there being no experience behind the belief in the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte as discussed previously.

Kant describes the differences between the world as we see and experience it (phenomena) and the currently unknowable reality that lies beyond our perception and comprehension (noumena). Therefore it is useful, according to Kant, to realise that our perception of the world around us is reliant on phenomena. (Coole, 2000, p. 27) The experiences and concepts that we can reasonably know to be true not only depend upon information that we passively receive through our senses, but are subject to our rationalisations of the data which in turn inform our perceptions of the world around us, effectively rendering the observable dependent upon the observer.

Biologist, Professor Richard Dawkins explains that we as human beings have evolved a perception of our surroundings as reality, when in fact, this view is not shared by any other species due to, among other things, the narrow spectrum of visible light that humans view the world through. Further, anything smaller than a pinhead or larger than a mountain for example, seems 'unreal' or disconnected from us. To paraphrase Dawkins, in his book 'The God Delusion' (2006, pp.363-374) he states that science has taught us, against all evolved intuition, that apparently solid things are actually composed almost entirely of empty space. He compares the nucleus of an atom to a fly in the middle of a sports stadium. The hardest, most solid, densest rock, then, is 'really' almost entirely empty space, broken only by tiny particles so far apart that they shouldn't be solid at all.

Surely then, any artificial, digital environment would not be a simulation of actual substance, but a re-creation of our perception of reality.

Semiotics and understanding reality

In 1953, Ludwig Wittgenstein famously observed ‘If a lion could talk, we would not understand him’, (Philosophical Investigations, p. 190) meaning that since we as human beings would have such a specific set of cultural and social references that only relate to us, and since the same would be true of the lion, we would be unable to communicate even if we spoke a common language. Therefore, in order to communicate effectively we need a comparable framework of knowledge, information and experience to mutually refer to. To expand on Henry David Thoreau’s observation, we might say that ‘It takes two to speak of the ocean – one to speak and another to comprehend the concept of the ocean and reciprocate’.

For the most part, the majority of human existence is made up of the familiar. We need to understand and experience our surroundings through familiarity. In everyday conversation with friends and colleagues we refer to shared cultural signs and symbols, we may remark to an acquaintance ‘My car has broken down’, one automatically assumes that our companion knows what a ‘car’ is and understands the concept of what ‘broken down’ means, and is able to link the concepts together correctly so as not to arrive at the conclusion that a motorcar has ‘broken down in tears’.

This familiarity must be accounted for if we are to attempt to digitally simulate any kind of reality, our world is full of objects that we have seen before, and even if we are seeing something for the first time, we are able to grasp some kind of meaning through associations with an object that we have seen before. One may believe that the world does not care whether we understand it or not, challenging Kant’s theory that the relationship between observer and observed is interdependent and symbiotic. This of course is not entirely the truth, the world provides ample feedback depending on the actions of its residents. The redness of an apple is ‘designed’ through natural selection to make the fruit conspicuous, so that it may be selected and propagated by wildlife, and indeed human beings. In the same way, a cereal packet is designed to stand out upon the shelf, be easily identifiable, the signifier of the concept of ‘breakfast’ and the associations we have with it. Manufacturers understand the value of recognisability, just as well as nature. To return to the concept of the motorcar, we must ask ourselves why it is that all cars look like cars – so much like each other? Of course they all have four wheels, all contain an engine and other essential equipment, but most importantly a car looks like a car because manufacturers know that we expect it to. Obviously the automobile, along with most things including humanity, evolves so slowly that we do not perceive the changes. If, in 1909, the Model T Ford motorcar suddenly developed overnight into a 2009 luxury sedan, we would most likely reject it. Familiarity and shared references may be the key to a smooth transition to a human mind accepting a simulated reality, or what would most likely be a phenomenological reflection of reality.

Psychology of an online persona

Many of us currently utilize online environments for substantial amount of time, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, as well as online multiplayer experiences like ‘World of Warcraft’ or ‘Second Life’. We refer to these as a virtual community, and although primitive, these communities are forming an ever more important part of many people’s social lives. Some interesting sociological and psychological behaviours are apparent in the use of these communities.

The dawn of the 'information age' found groups communicating electronically rather than face to face, primarily to share information technology. These groups were sometimes called 'development communities' and they brought about significant socio-technological change due to the sharing of open source software, hence, from the very beginning, on-line communities have been shaped and created almost organically by the very people using or inhabiting them.

This concept of knowledge sharing appears to be a prime motivation for contributing to virtual communities. Volunteer moderators and vote-takers contribute to the system’s maintenance, which raises the interesting point that most contributors and users of virtual communities give up huge amounts of their own time for no material or monetary gain, simply to belong and often to provide advice or support to members of the group. This apparently selfless contributing is the subject of Peter Kollock's 1999 book ‘Communities in cyberspace’ in which he outlines three main motivations for this altruistic behaviour:

Anticipated Reciprocity

An individual contributes valuable information to the group in the expectation that they will receive useful help in return. The mutual 'back-scratching' that is the basis for all commerce and barter systems.

Increased Recognition

Reputation and recognition is important to on-line contributors and this desire for attention or validation became referred to as Egoboo (from ego boost) by the open source programming movement. Howard Rheingold in his book ‘Virtual Reality’ cites the desire for prestige among a peer group as the prime motivator in virtual community contributors, and one can draw the comparison of 'alpha male' and 'alpha female', or dominant group member within traditional human and animal social groups spanning many thousands of years. So important is the on-line persona or profile to the individual, that computer hackers who obviously need to protect their real identities with pseudonyms, are reluctant to relinquish their nickname and thus avoid detection, in order to retain the status and notoriety associated with their on-line 'self'. This behaviour often results in prosecution because the hacker would not relinquish his Internet identity.

Sense of Efficacy

Individuals may contribute valuable information because this results in a sense of efficacy, that is, a sense that they had a positive effect on their environment. Making regular, high quality contributions to the group reinforces a positive self image as a useful member of society. (Kollock, 1999, pp. 227- 229)

This apparently harmless pass-time of online socialising, interfacing via a screen and keyboard will almost certainly lead to a more direct link between human and machine, at least according to some.

Dr. Ian Pearson, head of futurology at British Telecom claims that it is increasingly likely that we will solve the problem of interfacing with machines directly using the brain within the next generation or so, and from this one may venture the opinion that should the isolation and digitisation of the human consciousness become reality, then true post-humanism will be upon us.

As with many new technologies, it’s mass consumption by the public is dictated by an individual’s wealth. Reported in The Guardian, among many other publications, Dr. Pearson claims that:

…the wealthy will be able to download their consciousness into computers by 2050 – the not so well off by about 2075... If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem (Pearson, 2005).

Dr. Pearson’s background is in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, he believes that today’s younger generation will benefit from the advances in technology to the point that death will be effectively eliminated. Pearson continues:

The new Playstation is one percent as powerful as a human brain, it is at supercomputer status compared to ten or fifteen years ago. The Playstation 5 will probably be much more powerful than the human brain, which begs the question – will it find humans too boring to play with? (Pearson, 2005)

Several experts, including Dr. Pearson believe a sentient computer with human levels of intelligence will exist by 2020, and that we will store our consciousness in digital format shortly thereafter.

Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?

There are those that believe that we may already exist within a simulation, philosopher Nick Bostrom, currently the director of The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, has put forward an interesting, if fanciful theory that claims our reality actually is a computer simulation, in a 2003 paper entitled ‘Are you living in a computer simulation?’ that appeared in the Philosophical Quarterly, (pp. 243-255) Bostrom volunteers three propositions, one of which he claims must be true:

The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid becoming extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small.

Almost no technologically mature civilizations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours.

You are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. (Bostrom, pp. 243-255)

Of course we have only our own civilization as a reference point to consider the first two propositions. Humans are more than just interested in creating computer simulations of a human mind - we are attempting to do just that right now, not only in the quest for a better understanding of what goes on in our own heads, but hoping to create something beyond us. So, according to Bostrom, using humanity as an example, proposition two is certainly false. As for proposition one, he calculates that if we can continue to exist for just a few more generations, we will have the sort of computer processing power and hardware necessary to simulate a mind and place it in a virtual environment sufficiently complex so that the simulated mind would consider it ‘real’. If we can make it through the next fifty years we stand a very good chance of proving the first proposition false. Therefore, according to Bostrom's paper ‘Are you living in a computer simulation?’ proposition three must be true. (2003, pp. 1 – 11)

An interesting theory, however, one would be wise to assume that Bostrom is merely attempting to highlight the subject for wider discourse, rather than presenting his theory as scientific fact.

Conclusion

Microchip processing power doubles every eighteen months, this startling exponential growth, known as Moore's Law, suggests that by the year 2020, a microchip with today's capabilities will be disposable, at a cost of roughly one penny, so certainly from a technological perspective it seems likely that we will be able to create believable simulated environments. This inevitable advancement of computer technology appears to be drawing us ever closer to posthumanism and the downloading of the consciousness to simulated environments. However, we must find a satisfactory solution to the ‘Body Mind problem’ if we are to truly inhabit this simulated ‘reality’.

As we pollute and destroy our planet, could a new, simulated ‘world’ be the answer? Obviously we can only speculate how the human condition may change if we assume that at some future time we can exist in a simulated environment as if it were solid, and physical, and real (no matter how unsuitable the word 'real' is). Ultimately, since humans are (currently) fundamentally flawed creatures, we will likely encounter issues of territory, politics, and taxation to name only a few, not to mention the possible creation of a sub-class of human beings that are ‘left behind’, unable to experience posthumanism and virtuality due to economic, cultural, or religious restrictions. One would hope that by the time we are technologically advanced enough to exist in a computer simulation, then we will have significantly advanced culturally, philosophically, and morally, to be able to ensure that this new civilization is actually civilized, and that we are able to co-exist with each other as well as with computers.

Finally, it is of the utmost importance that human beings, both as a society, and individually, understand the links and differences between the concepts of truth, knowledge, phenomenology, and reality in order to progress to ‘Posthumanism’, and further, to ‘Virtualhumanism’.

top

References

Butterfield, j. 2001. Collins English Dictionary. UK: HarperCollins Publishers.

BOSTROM, N. 2003. Are you living in a computer simulation? Philosophical Quarterly. 53 (211) pp. 243 – 255.

COOLE, D. H. 2000. Negativity and politics: Dionysus and dialectics from Kant to poststructuralism. UK: Routledge.

DAWKINS, R. 2006. The God Delusion. UK: Bantam.

FRAYN, M. 2006. The Human Touch – Our Part in The Creation of A Universe. UK: Faber and Faber Limited.

HASSAM, H. H. 1982. The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. USA: University of Wisconsin Press.

HEIDEGGER, M. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. UK: Harper & Row.

KOLLOCK, P. and SMITH, M. A. 1999. Communities in cyberspace. USA: Routledge.

PATON, H.J. ed. 2005. The moral law: groundwork of the metaphysic of morals. UK: Routledge.

PEPPERELL, R. 1995 The Post-Human Condition. UK: Intellect Books.

THOREAU, H. D. 1849. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Reprint: 2001. USA: Courier Dover Publications.

WARBURTON, N. 2001. Philosophy: The Classics. UK: Routledge.

Wittgenstein, L. 2001. Philosophical Investigations: The German Text with a revised English translation. USA: Wiley-Blackwell.

top

Bibliography

BADMINGTON, N. 2003. Posthumanism. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

CLINE, A. 2009. Humanism & the Universe - Metaphysics of Humanist Philosophy. [WWW] http://atheism.about.com/od/abouthumanism/a/universe.htm (21 March 2009)

DESCARTES, R., COTTINGHAM, J., WILLIAMS, B.A.O. 1996. Meditations on first philosophy: with selections from the Objections and replies. 2^nd edn. UK: Cambridge University Press.

FUKUYAMA, F. 2003. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. UK: Picador.

KANT, I., MEIKLEJOHN, J.M.D. 1855. Critique of pure reason. Germany: Henry G. Bohn.

KURTZ, P. 2000. Humanist Manifesto 2000 A Call for a New Planetary Humanism. [WWW] http://www.secularhumanism.org /index.php?section=main&page=manifesto (21 March 2009).

WARWICK, K. 2004. I, Cyborg. USA: University of Illinois Press.

top

Appendices

In the beginning of the Allegory of the Cave, Plato represents man’s condition as being ‘chained in a cave’, with only a fire behind him. He perceives the world by watching the shadows on the wall. He sits in darkness with the false light of the fire and does not realize that this existence is wrong or lacking. It merely is his existence — he knows no other nor offers any complaint.

Plato next imagines in the Allegory of the Cave what would occur if the chained man were suddenly released from his bondage and let out into the world. Plato describes how some people would immediately be frightened and want to return to the cave and the familiar dark existence. Others would look at the sun and finally see the world as it truly is.

They would know their previous existence was farce, a shadow of truth, and they would come to understand that their lives had been one of deception. A few would embrace the sun, and the true life and have a far better understanding of ‘truth.’ They would also want to return to the cave to free the others in bondage, and would be puzzled by people still in the cave who would not believe the now ‘enlightened’ truth bearer. Many would refuse to acknowledge any truth beyond their current existence in the cave.

Allegories are subject to numerous interpretations and the Allegory of the Cave is no exception. Some interpret Plato’s work as related to Socrates’ life. Socrates as interpreted by Plato spent his life trying to unchain others by helping them arrive at ‘truth.’ That he was dismissed and ultimately sentenced to death suggests that ‘telling’ someone the truth is inadequate.

Language is the barest shadow of reality. People who are firmly committed to a religious view often echo this statement. Faith can’t be given to other people, but must be experienced.

The Allegory of the Cave also represents an extended metaphor for the state of human existence, and for the transformation that occurs during philosophical enlightenment. When the light of the sun shines on the freed man, this is allegory for enlightenment and perception of the truth. The minor concerns of the world as he has viewed it previously are now seen as falsely held perception and he is eager to share enlightenment with others.

Thematic elements from the Allegory of the Cave continue to influence Western thought. In fact, one can view the first Matrix film as an interpretation of Plato’s work. The reality of the matrix is that it is “a construct” meant to keep people enslaved. When Morpheus asks Neo: “What is real? How do you define real?” He is echoing Platonic thought. Further he tells Neo: “No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” This definitely is in direct relationship to Plato’s views on the inability of language to convey truth or to free people from mental bondage.

Thus it is easy to see that Plato’s rather simple Allegory of the Cave continues to be reinterpreted and relevant to present day. Whether or not a person agrees with Plato’s definition of truth or enlightenment, knowledge of his argument can inform interpretation of art, film, and literature since references to it are still in common and quite popular use.

top