The Computer as a Person

2009

The prevailing computer technologies, having inevitably shaped our activity and surroundings, have also pervaded human thoughts, feelings, language and self-perception. The interaction between the human being and the computer has become so close and all-embracing, that the difference between human and machine is hard to pinpoint and in some cases ceases to exist. This interrelation is well reflected in language, which demonstrates the diffusion of computing terms applied to human thoughts, processes and interactions – and vice versa. A person with exceptional memory or calculation skills has “a computer in his/her brain” or forgetting unimportant things is “deleting unnecessary files” in one’s mind. On the other hand, a computer’s central processing unit is its “brain”, a computer can put itself to “sleep” and computers interchanging data are “talking to” each other. The crossed meanings result from metaphorical mappings, which, in the tradition of Cognitive Metaphor Theory, are def...

Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2010

Verba Vitae, 2024

The meaning of personhood in the context of AI and AI-driven systems is a topic attracting huge amounts of attention from philosophers, social scientists and legal scholars. The current discussions tend in not one, but two implicit directions regarding AI and personhood. On the one hand is the question of whether we should assign personhood to AI systems, and if so, how and when should we do this. The other direction has to do with our notion of personhood, specifically as human nature and being and its implications in a world of AI systems. I will briefly lay out some of the positions taken on this complex topic and show that a Christian theological perspective using the concept of imago dei can shed fruitful insights in this important area.

AI & Society (Springer), 2019

Since the emergence of the innovative field of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 1960s, the late Hubert Dreyfus insisted on the ontological distinction between man and machine, human and artificial intelligence. In the different editions of his classic and influential book What computers can't do (1972), he posits that an algorithmic machine can never fully simulate the complex functioning of the human mind—not now, nor in the future. Dreyfus' categorical distinctions between man and machine are still relevant today, but their relation has become more complex in our increasingly data-driven society. We, humans, are continuously immersed within a technological universe, while at the same time ubiquitous computing, in the words of computer scientist Mark Weiser, " forces computers to live out here in the world with people " (De Souza e Silva, 2006, p 20). Dreyfus' ideas are therefore challenged by thinkers such as Weiser, Kevin Kelly, Bruno Latour, Philip Agre, and Peter Paul Verbeek, who all argue that humans are much more intrinsically linked to machines than the original dichotomy suggests—they have evolved in concert. Through a discussion of the classical concepts of individuum and 'authenticity' within Western civilization, this paper argues that within the ever-expanding data-sphere of the twenty-first century, a new concept of man as 'aggregate of data' has emerged, which further erodes and undermines the categorical distinction between man and machine. This raises political and ethical questions beyond the confines of technology and artificial intelligence. Moreover, this seemingly never-ending debate on what computers should (or should not) do provokes the philosophical necessity to once again define the concept of what it is to be 'human.' Keywords Hubert Dreyfus · Artificial intelligence (AI) · Man as 'aggregate of data' · Individuality · Authenticity · Philosophy and ethics

2012

As technology continues to progress beyond the limits of what was once thought impossible, questions concerning the state of the human dominate Western thought. However, while the lines between 'human' and 'nonhuman' are perpetually disintegrating, the human seems reluctant to move beyond humanist paradigms that deploy notions of 'essence' as both a unique human quality, and the justification of immobilising the value of nonhuman species in a dichotomous hierarchical structure. How can the human reconcile their position at the top of any hierarchy when the species-boundaries are blurred in the wake of posthuman technologies that seek to enhance and alter the mythos of the pure human form? This article argues that a recalibration of contemporary conceptions of the human is required in order to account for posthuman technologies. Deploying the notion of the contemporary human as cyborgic in nature, this article examines the role played by technologies of body modification in the disruption to hegemonic narratives of the human, specifically regarding disability, gender, sexuality and subjectivity. Article The term 'human' has been constantly defined and questioned, examined and reexamined by philosophers and scholars since Socrates and Plato established early critical thinking. Despite this, there has nonetheless never been an accurate definition-or explanation-of what it is, exactly, to be human. Of course, there have been significant attempts-notably Martin Heidegger, who examined the human in relation to what it was/is not, and relentlessly pursued the notion that the human exists atop a hierarchy of life as a result of the human's possession of 'essence'. Heidegger examines the concept of essence mostly in relation the human, and also technology. This in itself problematises the uniqueness of the human based on essence. Heidegger's preoccupation regarding essence is tracing the roots of the word. According to the translation of Martin Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology by William Lovitt, "'[e]ssence' is the traditional translation of the German noun Wesen" (1977:3, emphasis in original). In the same essay, Heidegger seeks to reveal Wesen as a verb, "with its meaning 'to dwell', provides one integral component in the meaning of the verb sein (to be)" (1977: 4, emphasis in original). Ultimately, his definition of essence equates to the German word Dasein; as just established, sein means 'to be' and Da in German translates into 'there'. "The title Dasein taken literally, therefore, means to be there, there being" (Fuller 1990: 51,