Extension(s) of the Mind, and Hello

[Mescaline]

Please consider expanding your attention span beyond one minute.

[Patty Tanager]

Simplify it into bullet points please mate.

[purecyse]

to answer your basic question, no. we may be quickly approaching a time where there will be an increase in people that are, "we", as a race, are not.

our phones, ipods, pcs, etc. are outside devices. tools that we use no different than cavemen used sticks and stones. for the majority of the population, they are not a part of us.

a brain "enhancement" would be an example of them implanting a chip, like in your example, but, again, how many people have had that done?

cyborgs may be entirely possible in today's society but, until i am connected to this outside information the same way i am connected to things like my very own memory, i am going to agree with the poster that said these devices are making us "dumber."

[Mescaline]

Simplify it into bullet points please mate.

That's the first reply I can genuinely respect, so I'll try. However, mind you, this is philosophy (of science, in particular psychology), so leaving out important parts could make some difference in interpretation. What I did was actually just paraphrase the last 5-10 minutes of a lecture of a course I'm doing at university at the moment, extended with some additional thoughts of my own (at the very end).

Anyway here it goes, summarizing the summary (I put the most important question(s) of the relevant parts in itallics) :


- In how far do you think technology of all kinds is becoming part of the human Mind, or brain if you are a strict materialist, becoming part of who we are.

- I'll skip the third paragraph. It is not that important, but does aid in understanding the stream of thoughts presented here. So read it if you like

- If you are not convinced by technology outside the brain being/becoming pat of the brain, consider things like Deep Brain stimulation. These are implants that alter the functioning of the brain thereby having for example cured a man of depression, making him by his own report, finally feeling like himself. On the other hand a man who had been unable to move about for most part of his life, regained the ability to move due to a similar brain implant. Yet the first thing he does is jump off the balcony. Was he finally feeling like himself? Was his lifetime wish to die, is this who he really was?

- Next, the functioning of the human brain is being mapped in an ever increasing detail and accuracy. On the other hand Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining more and more human properties. Thus they are slowly becoming one and the same. Will they become the same? Are they already the same in some degree?

- Another thing is the idea that cavemen, or even ancient Greeks, might not have possessed consciousness. They might not have been aware of what they were doing but instead were just doing. They were what in modern day psychology is called a Zombie. So what makes them so different from an extremely advanced form of AI?

- Some academics claim the modern day human is a Zombie. I find this hard to believe, but it illustrates how strange things can get in philosophy of psychology (as if they weren't strange enough already ).

- Concluding questions:
- Is technology becoming part of who we are? (please read the second slightly long post I made in this thread; it is very important if you want to understand and answer this question properly)
- Is it ethical to implant such technology, to "evolve" in this sense, if some people apparently end their lives in turn? What is happening here?
- Are robots in their very early stages of some human engineered evolution, or are humans in the early stages of becoming cyborgs? Or both? Or neither?

Crazy thoughts of my own (you can ignore this if it is becoming too much for you):
- Before I state my crazy thought, I have to mention that I believe there is more to the experiences of psychedelic drugs than mere hallucinations. I believe that everything we experience is real to some extent. This follows from my belief that the experiential reality is the only reality, thus there being no objective "real" world out there, at least none that we can have any knowledge of. This last point of view is the Kantian world view philosophy, proposed by Immanuel Kant.
- When ingesting psychedelic drugs, particularly the drug DMT, people have reported seeing and interacting with alien en******, which supposedly operate on us and want us to "upload" information to them, in order for them to learn about us. Maybe they are to us, what we are to robots?


I kept it as short as I could.. Still pretty long, I'm sorry. I hope it is short enough though, and the bulletpoints will probably help as well.

[Mescaline]

to answer your basic question, no. we may be quickly approaching a time where there will be an increase in people that are, "we", as a race, are not.

our phones, ipods, pcs, etc. are outside devices. tools that we use no different than cavemen used sticks and stones. for the majority of the population, they are not a part of us.

a brain "enhancement" would be an example of them implanting a chip, like in your example, but, again, how many people have had that done?

cyborgs may be entirely possible in today's society but, until i am connected to this outside information the same way i am connected to things like my very own memory, i am going to agree with the poster that said these devices are making us "dumber."

Thanks for replying in a constructive manner. Fair response as well.

So do you think that just because they are outside the brain, thus not being physically connected to the brain, this is enough reason for them not being part of us yet? As you implied yourself, apparently for some people they are part of them. So would you say that for them these devices are part of their Mind, of who they are? And doesn't this mean that it is just a matter of time before the exact same devices can be implanted as nanotechnology, and thereby becoming part of every human being's brain, or Mind? And doesn't this just mean that some people are more prone to letting these devices become part of their Mind, in comparison to others? It not being a matter of them being or not being part of us from a general point of view, but just a matter of some kind of genetic predisposition being different for different people.

Also, what about a clock? Hasn't the clock become such an engrained part of all humans' life that it really has become part of our Mind, of who we are. Or did the clock "dumb us down" as in (most of) us not being able to judge time accurately by the sun's position. Isn't this exactly the kind of dumbing down that you propose the computer is bringing about in some of us? Without the clock most of us are very bad at knowing the time - Without the computer some of us are very bad at knowing X. In a way a computer is a highly advanced clock, with many more features. Yet most of us, I assume, would consider the clock to be an important asset that has allowed us to make significant leaps in humanity's "progress" or evolution if you like (in a broad sense of the word).

Concerning brain implants, they are becoming more advanced and thereby popular at an alarmingly fast pace. Do not underestimate the progress of science. Things are progressing very fast, and not at a steady rate. It is going faster and faster and faster. So DBS being a "normal thing" is something happening in the near future, I believe. Not only being used for the mentally disordered, but to enhance all kinds of aspects of the normal, "healthy" brain/Mind.

I agree that a cyborg in that sense of the word is not possible until we are connected to these devices physically, but this does not imply per se that these devices outside the brain are not part of the brain or Mind already. This being some lesser form, very unadvanced kind of cyborg.

[-PANDA-]

panda thinks our dependency on technology is mostly psychologically at this stage

bear in mind my knowledge of artificial intelligence is very limited and my opinion is based on current technological trends

it doesnt seem ethical to force mankind to evolve just to adapt to fads. for example if the majority of the western population would in fact submit themselves to brain implants just to become "better, stronger, smarter" human beings they would submit themselves to a certain degree of uncertainty. malfunctions, software update errors or power failures would render us inactive as lifeforms we're supposed to be rather than lifeforms we were meant to be

as for robots and their evolution, ofcourse its tangled in with human evolution as the prime benefit of mechanical innovation is to serve mankind. the only way robots would be able to serve us better would be for them to anticipate our needs...thus think for themselves. the obvious flipside to this being they would also be able to make their own decisions, which ultimately could result into a conflict of interests

[-PANDA-]

basically ure discussing whether "tools" are dumbing us down...thats a hard question to answer as the diversity of tools is largely increasing at this point. so comparing a clock to a gps system is almost like comparing apples to oranges, meaning we use them differently thus the degree of dependency also differs from individual to individual

[winky's right]

- Before I state my crazy thought, I have to mention that I believe there is more to the experiences of psychedelic drugs than mere hallucinations. I believe that everything we experience is real to some extent. This follows from my belief that the experiential reality is the only reality, thus there being no objective "real" world out there, at least none that we can have any knowledge of. This is the Kantian world view philosophy, proposed by Immanuel Kant.

It was Berkeley, and to a lesser extent Hume who held an extreme subjective perception of reality. Kant's world view was concerned certainly had an objective reality, hence his discussion on 'noumenon'. I only skimmed read through your essay but I found it to be pretty stupid. No offense.

[Konstantin]

Tools are not dumbing us down in any way. We are simply relocating the use of our brain from remembering directions to knowing how to use the IPhone to get directions.

Technology is potentially one of peoples greatest assets, however it can go wrong. But even when things do go wrong, we tend to learn pretty quickly and adapt/fix.

[Mescaline]

It was Berkeley, and to a lesser extent Hume who held an extreme subjective perception of reality. Kant's world view was concerned certainly had an objective reality, hence his discussion on 'noumenon'.

Kant claimed there would be no way in knowing if there is an objective reality, which he indeed called the noumenon. Hence him being the majour turning point in the history of philosophy, from an ontological to an epsitemological point of view. My own "belief" is , there is no objective reality (which is in no way a set belief.. if you bring forward arguments to change my belief, I will certainly do so). This might have been phrased a bit ambiguously, sorry.

but I found it to be pretty stupid. No offense.

No offense taken, as you are calling my professor, and many other respected academics in the field, stupid, not me. I just want to know what people think of this.
You, on the other hand, admit to not being capable of expanding your attention span beyond the one minute mark, and consequently are making judgements about a text you haven't even fully read. So, my friend, I will proceed in labeling the capacities of your brain as extremely limited. No offense.