Will we lose our humanity by trying to improve it?
On Monday, 29 January 2024, Elon Musk posted on X.com that “The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well. Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” The Neuralink project jumps off the pages of science fiction, right alongside the development of intelligence-simulating “artificial intelligence”, to create an interface directly between the brain and external non-bodily devices. On the one hand, there are patent beneficial applications to such a technology, such as circumventing bodily and neurological damage to restore functionality to an injured human being.
But you would have to be a fool not to see also the many risks. We understand the brain and its functions far less than we believe. Mediating its activities through a necessarily-narrowing technology may increase certain efficiencies and accelerate certain advances—but at what cost? We live already under the auspices of a mechanistic reductionism with respect to our humanity and its corporeal existence. If we gain unprecedented access to and control over the brain, how much narrower might our conception become?
Body Imagining Technology
The questions raised by such technological development are wide-ranging. For the sake of concision, however, we wish to focus upon one particular aspect: namely, the direct control over the body promised by such an innovation. If Neuralink can restore functions in broken bodies, why might it not be used to enhance functions in healthy ones? Could we use it to make our digestion more efficient? To regulate our calorie consumption? To allocate proteins to certain muscles?
A rare deviation into my personal life: in August of 2022, I experienced a severe gout flare-up. A gout flare-up can be pretty painful. It took approximately two weeks to regain normal function, to walk without hobbling. It also caused me to take a look at myself, the way that I was eating, and avoiding exercise. I stepped on the scale: 227.4 lbs at 36 years old, 6’0″ tall, 38″ waist. Though gout is a genetic condition, diet and inactivity exacerbate it.
I bought a jump rope (ok… a fake jump rope: I’m not very coordinated and if you’re just trying to burn calories…) and have since used it six days per week. I bought some weights and a power rack to put in my basement—I began lifting weights as a teenager and have always enjoyed it, but I have also for some years lived in an area without many nearby gyms, and I lack the time for adding that kind of commute to my day. Since March of 2023, I have been lifting weights four-times a week with a chest/triceps/shoulders & leg/back/biceps split (one light leg day per week, one heavy). I am now, in January of 2024, quite possibly in the best shape of my life: 183 lbs, 32″ waist, pushing respectably heavy weights.
If I could just press a few buttons on a Neuralink interface and never need to make such an effort… would I?
Cognition and Fitness
In his Nihilism & Technology, Nolen Gertz relates an observation from an iRobot advertisement: the promise of the automated Roomba vacuum, simply put, was that—by doing the drudgery work of caring for your house—you would be freed up from the human task of cleaning. Freedom! How can anyone thrive if he or she must sweep the floor? Perhaps we could add, “doing taxes” or “brushing his teeth”. What about staying fit? Ask most fitness enthusiasts and I am confident they would prefer doing the real thing to benefitting from an automated process. But why? Is it “not about the destination, but the journey”?
On the other side of this: what about cognitive improvements? If Neuralink could improve our memories—make the neurological patterns of recollection more efficient, make the process of encoding more reliable—would we accept this? Or, like the fitness enthusiast, would we see a certain merit in earning our recollective capacities? Does something unite the cognitive and the corporeal, here? Would someone prone to using technology for the one use it also for the other?
And if so… what would be left for us to accomplish as human beings—if robots not only do our sweeping and cleaning, but our exercise and our thinking?
Join us to Discuss Care for Body and Mind
This Wednesday (31 January 2024), join us to discuss these and other related questions concerning the relationship between physical and cognitive aptitude! We look forward to seeing you!
Philosophical Happy Hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
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