It’s my first post in a long time, and I appreciate Dan giving me the opportunity to talk and to listen here again as a guest on the Lounge. Thanks, Dan!
I have been thinking a lot (not alot) lately about technological enhancement of human functioning, also known as human augmentation. In other words, I’ve been thinking about cyborgs. I hope to think out loud here about cyborgs for a little while, and to listen to reactions to the things that I’m thinking about. I call this my “We, Cyborg” project.
I’m undertaking this project because I think we need to consider the various questions that are likely to emerge as technology becomes embedded into our persons. This is true across the spectrum of issues, from the low hanging fruit of technological security – who will be liable when our memory enhanced brains are hacked and our memories are stolen and distributed on the Internet? – to the more discrete need to apply our existing laws to our new technological abilities – if I have a memory chip embedded in my skull and wired to my brain, a chip that records what my eyes see, for example, will I be making an illegal copy of a movie I’m watching in the movie theater? My purpose in undertaking this project is not to define what is human and what is not, but rather to start us on the path of thinking about how these technologies will be integrated into our lives, our societies, and our legal structures.
What do I mean by cyborgs? The cyborgs that I have been thinking about are those that are (or were) primarily and biologically human. These human beings – I’ll refer to them as people or persons, because that’s what they are – become cyborgs when some element of technology is grafted into or onto their persons. To be cyborg technology, it must be actively involved in variously allowing, enhancing, enabling or preventing certain actions or abilities of or by the attached person. For my purposes, I make a distinction between those technologies that are a physical part of the person and those that are not, and in so doing take the side of those who think that there is something important in the barrier between the person and the outside world. I draw the internal/external boundary at the skin. Technology that “breaks” the skin fits within my definition. Technology that does not break the skin does not.
This is a controversial position, but it is not one that I am going to defend here and now. I will take it up at a later point, as my thoughts and reading on this point are still developing. I admit that there are times that I myself have problems with this definition, even within the limited ambitions I have for this project. Where they function similarly, why do I include a memory chip implanted within the skull, but not sensors worn on a band on the head? These are questions with which I am still grappling.
Within this context, however, I want to carve out two things that I most certainly do not mean by cyborgs. First, when I speak of cyborgs, I am not speaking about those things that are primarily machines imbued with some elements of biological functioning. I am not referring to a robot with human skin, for example, even if that human skin is living and grows. The Terminator is not my cyborg.
I am also not arguing, nor will I argue, that the technology we use that is not embedded within us, that does not “break the skin,” also makes us cyborgs. I find this argument fascinating, and it has been thoroughly made and defended by Andy Clark and others, and even the Supreme Court has playfully hinted that there may be something to this argument (Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “ . . . modern cell phones, which are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” Riley v. California, p. 9 (2013)). But I do not adopt this argument because it is a fight I do not need to fight to investigate the questions that I want to investigate. This is because many of us are and for long periods of time have been cyborgs within my more limited definition. I do not need cell phones to be cyborg technology to make a convincing argument that cyborgs exist, and that they will increase in number with each passing year. I do not need to expand the definition to make my arguments about embedded technologies and cybersecurity, intellectual property, autonomy, privacy, and other areas of the law because “real” cyborgs are more than just science fiction or theory.
“Where are these cyborgs,” you ask? All around us.
Pacemakers are cyborg technology. People who have pacemakers in their bodies are cyborgs. Insulin pumps are cyborg technology. People who have insulin pumps connected to their bodies are cyborgs. Bionic eyes (or artificial retinas) are cyborg technology. People who rely on artificial (or non-biological, if you prefer) eyes are cyborgs. I will give additional examples of functioning cyborg technology as the project moves on, and I will focus on those technologies that actively interact with us and our bodies. More interesting in the context of this project are technologies with computer processors (and perhaps network connectivity), rather than those “set it and leave it” technologies. But a processor is not required for technology to be cyborg technology.
I have one final note as a preface to the posts to come. There are potentially important questions to ask about what embedding technology into our bodies will do to us. Will we still be human? Is there a point where the technology becomes “too much of us” and we become machines? Will the answer depend on whether we augment ourselves by choice, because we want to improve our abilities or change who we are, or whether that decision is made based on medical need? Will we need laws to protect those who choose to or need to embed technologies into their bodies?
As I’ve said, these questions are beyond the scope of what I hope to accomplish here, but that does not mean they are not important. They are. But for now I leave them to others and focus on the day-to-day practicalities of the coming cyborg revolution. I hope only to point to and think about areas of existing legal doctrine that will be challenged by the further development of technologies embedded in human bodies. This is something that we did (and are still doing) post hoc in relation to the Internet, mobile technologies, and to a large extent drones. I’m hoping we can get ourselves in front of this next development. At least a little.
So, this is a non-standard definition of "cyborg" insofar as it does NOT refer to "a fictional or hypothetical person." And thus I'm curious as to why we should not use the term "bionic" here, an existing concept that fits the bill without resort to a stipulative definition that goes against the standard meaning of "cyborg." I'm also curious as to whether or not you will provide us with a definition of what a "person" or human being is (distinct from non-human animals on the one hand, and a robot or 'cyborg' on the other hand).*
* I'm thinking here, for example, of the sorts of conceptions filled out in works such as these:
• Gillett, Grant. Subjectivity and Being Somebody: Human Identity and Neuroethics (Imprint Academic, 2008).
• Hacker, P.M.S. Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007).
• Hacker, P.M.S. The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature (Wiley Blackwell, 2013).
• Smith, Christian. What is a Person? (Chicago University Press, 2010).
• Tallis, Raymond. The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being (Edinburgh University Press, 2003).
• Tallis, Raymond. I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being (Edinburgh University Press, 2004).
• Tallis, Raymond. The Knowing Animal: A Philosophical Inquiry into Knowledge and Truth. (Edinburgh University Press, 2004).
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | July 31, 2015 at 05:30 PM
To pose the question, “who will be liable when our memory enhanced brains are hacked and our memories are stolen and distributed on the Internet?,” presumably implies that science is getting close to implanting “memory chips” (or ‘memory in a dish’) or some such technology by way of aiding or enhancing one’s memory. But that remains firmly ensconced in the realm of science fiction, despite some breathless neuroscientific article titles and popular science headlines. Indeed, I think it is based on an egregious failure to understand precisely what “memory” is for human beings: see, for example, the discussion in Gillett [referenced in the first comment above]; the treatment in Raymond Tallis’ Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (Acumen, 2011): 123-32; the relevant sections in M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003); and here and there in Michael S. Pardo and Dennis Patterson’s Minds, Brains, and Law: The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Incidentally, you state that your “purpose in undertaking this project is not to define what is human and what is not,” yet some--if not the most important--questions you are asking presuppose or assume an understanding of what is human or not, to wit:
“There are potentially important questions to ask about what embedding technology into our bodies will do to us. Will we still be human? Is there a point where the technology becomes ‘too much of us’ and we become machines?”
So perhaps it should at least be a subsidiary or ancillary purpose of this project to define “what is human and what is not.”
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | July 31, 2015 at 06:27 PM
Your breaking the skin definition bothers me. We have had non-invasive technology for quite a while that can “read” the electronic signals of the brain by placing detectors on the head outside of the skin. The skin is never broken. What has been missing to date is the understanding/technology to translate these brain waves into usable signals. With the work that has been done at Duke with monkeys (I acknowledge that those experiments broke the skin as it involved brain-invasive technology), the day when externally detected brain waves can be captured and made to operate technology may soon be here. As a slightly farfetched example, if I have a cap that I can put on that would then allow an external computer to grade my exams for me by consulting with my biological brain about whether a particular answer is correct, haven’t I become a grading cyborg?
I am also somewhat troubled by the breadth of what you are willing to consider as being the enabling technology in a cyborg. You have clearly captured the interactive nature of the human-machine connection, but you may have gone a bit too far. There are many examples of things that are “actively involved in variously allowing, enhancing, enabling or preventing certain actions or abilities of or by the attached person” that may not be cyborg-like.
How about a medicine such as Lipitor. It actively interacts with the body, or at least the liver, and enhances its ability to generate the enzymes needed to block LDL cholesterol. Another medical example that seems to fit your definition even more would be a vaccine that allows the immune response in the body to be “enhanced,” thus “enabling” the person to remain healthy.
To me, the transition from human to cyborg to robot has to include the degree of autonomous conduct that the technology can trigger. With drugs and vaccines, there is no autonomous conduct by the drug; instead, it is causing a reaction within the human. At the other end, a robot would be a super-Watson-like computer, but would also be able to make its own autonomous decisions without any human intervention. If there are two autonomous beings, one animal and one “machine,” that are operating in some form of partnership, you’ve reached the possibility of a cyborg. As you point out in your post, the collaboration needs to be more or less permanent.
Posted by: Ralph Clifford | July 31, 2015 at 08:25 PM
Thanks for the really good questions/comments, Patrick and Ralph. To start with Patrick's two comments, the "human" questions are critical questions in the overall scheme of things. Yes, I'm assuming them away, because if I don't, I'll never get to the doctrinal questions that we'll need to answer once this technology becomes more prevalent. Even as subsidiary questions, they are too dense and too weighty to be part of another project. There are people continuing to talk about, think about, and work on these questions (Brett Frischman at Cardozo Law, for example, is working on a book entitled, "Humans in the Twenty-First Century: How Social and Technological Tools are Reshaping Humanity" : http://www.brettfrischmann.com/), but that's not my interest right now.
My point is to try to focus on "easy" examples to avoid these debates, because even though they are important debates, I don't see us making any real progress on them before we start running into doctrinal problems such as "how much access should the government have to communications that arise directly from brain activity made available through brain connected technologies," or those "who is liable" questions that continue to intrigue me. I prefer to stick to these pragmatic, doctrinal questions and let others take up the more philosophical issues, at least at this point.
On the state of the technology, my next post will detail some of what I’ve found, and while I used the example of hacking our memories, how about hacking our insulin pumps? Or our pacemakers? There are viable technologies that allow for stimulation of the brain to help counteract the effects of Parkinson's Disease; if networks are used in that system, hacking arises again. There are experts working on neuroprosthetics that could raise a host of problems like those I'm worried about (see here: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41324/title/Neuroprosthetics/); you can argue those are outliers or science fiction, but I wouldn't want to say that to Gerwin Shalk the next time he and I have coffee. I think the science may be moving very quickly beyond the limits you see. And if it is, we should be thinking about where it's going now, not later after it gets there.
As for the use of the term cyborg, I'm quite happy to argue that we are moving the cyborg from myth to reality. Haraway laid out an ironic mythology of the cyborg to argue that boundaries are not what we think they are; that's not my point. My point is that the fiction of the cyborg is quickly becoming reality.
On Ralph’s first point, the “break in the skin” requirement of my definition is a real concern to me. I’ve chosen it to a degree to do the same thing that I’ve done by simply asserting that some people are human and some robots are robots. I don’t want to play at the margins. I want to use the clear, nearly inarguable case, and then see where that leads us. I don’t want to get into a debate with people who want to extend the external brain harness reasoning to the cell phone (Andy Clark hasn’t convinced me that using a cell phone makes me a cyborg). I’d rather say, “People who use a harness to grade papers may be cyborgs, but I’m not saying they are and I don’t need to prove that they are to show that privacy concerns will be significant as embedded cyborg technology becomes more widely used.” Those same concerns may arise for non-embedded technologies, but that’s a much easier jump to make once I’ve established the basic concerns for embedded technologies.
Finally, I think Ralph has hit on something important on the overbreadth of what can be cyborg by my definition. I really like this sentence: “To me, the transition from human to cyborg to robot has to include the degree of autonomous conduct that the technology can trigger.” It’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to come across in posting this work to the Lounge.
Thanks to both of you for commenting, I really appreciate you taking the time to do so, and hope we can continue the conversation.
Posted by: Rob Heverly | July 31, 2015 at 09:26 PM