Personhood Beyond the Human: the Subjectivation Scale of Future Persons

Philosophical concepts are useful for considering a potentially diverse landscape of future persons.

One important question is subjectivation – how individuals form and what constitutes an individual. The less helpful approach is focusing on classification and definition which is discriminatory and doomed to death by detail. A more fruitful approach is Simondon’s theory of individuation.

For Simondon, the current and future world is an environment of dynamic processes like individuation. Individuals participate in but do not cause individuation. Most importantly, individuals exist on a spectrum of capacity for action with other living beings including animals, human persons, and possibly a variety of future persons.

‘Capacity for action’ (a Spinoza-inspired concept) is crucial because it focuses on degrees of capability (related to a particular quality or skill) as opposed to underlying nature. Capacity for action has all of the possibility and mobility of a future-looking frame, and none of the fixity and discrimination of classification.

AAAI 2014: Connecting Machine Learning and Human Intelligence

The AAAI Spring Symposia are a place for worldwide artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other computer scientists to present and discuss innovative theoretical research in a workshop-like environment. In 2013, some of the topics included: learning, autonomous systems, wellness, crowd computing, behavior change, and creativity.

Proposals are underway for 2014. Please indicate your opinion by voting at the poll at the top right for these potential topics:

• My data identity: personal, social, universal 
• Big data becomes personal: knowledge into meaning 
• Wearable computing and digital affect: wellness, bioidentity, and intentionality 
• Big data, wearable computing, and identity construction: knowledge becomes meaning 
• Personalized knowledge generation: identity, intentionality, action, and wellness

Consumer vs. Producer

Identity is an interesting and evolving topic and theme, both in the real world and the online worlds. This post explores two conflicting societal influences on identity: consumer not producer mentality on the one hand while at the same time a bias for activity not passivity.

The consumer vs. producer mentality distinction drawn by JBS Haldane in his 1963 essay, "Biological Possibilities for the Human Species in the Next Ten Thousand Years" is especially true today. In America, our whole country and identity are built around the mighty consumer. As a barometer of national health, we look to how much the consumer is spending and two thirds of the US GDP is personal consumption. Some examples of this are the "Buy American" campaigns and the US flag with shopping bag handles as the iconic response to 9/11. The first problem is the economy being the most important (and only?) element of national well-being and second that spending is the most important aspect of the economy.

The deeper issue is that consuming is about being passive and responsive while producing is about being active and creating which is much higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We are happier and more fulfilled when we are active, creating and self-actualizing. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on Flow Experiences further documents that we feel most happy when we are engaged in a flow experience - an experience where we lose track of time and what's around us, being completely engaged in the activity at hand. A flow activity is one that you perceive to be a worthwhile endeavor and that is challenging but not overwhelmingly stretching for you.

But how can we understand the passivity of consuming together with the bias towards action, the social hypnosis that we have to be DOING something to feel good about ourselves, instead of feeling good about ourselves because of who we are being. When asked who they are, people will usually relate labels corresponding to the different activities of their life, "I work in product management at Company X, I am a parent, I am a skier," as opposed to the broader qualities of who they are as a person, "I am a compassionate inquisitive person."

The problem is that we are driven to action even when the action is purposeless, just acting for the sake of action itself because we believe action is better than non-action. Action is not examined in the broader picture of goals or how it relates to being. Consuming is an action but producing is a higher order action. Being is a higher order behavior than uninformed acting. Action is more fulfilling when it is examined and contemplated in the broader sense of its contribution to our being and when we are fully present to and engaged in it. Contemplation also leads to the appropriate individual balances between producing and consuming and between being and acting.