Cogntive Enhancement can Integrate Man and Machine

Cognitive enhancement should be conceived as the philosophical issue of the greater subjectivation possibilities for man, as opposed to primarily a bioethical concern. The current world is one in which man and technology are increasingly interlinked. One high-stakes endeavor is cognitive enhancement, of which there are different working definitions. A precise account is that cognitive enhancement is the augmentation of human skills, attributes, and competencies through the use of technology, medicine, and therapy designed to increase human performance capability (Hildt). Another is that it is the amplification or extension of core capacities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external information processing systems (Bostrom). Another is it refers to any expanded or new capacity of a human being (Buchanan). The salient distillation is that cognitive enhancement is the targeted improvement of natural human cognitive abilities.

The motivation for cognitive enhancement could be twofold. First, there are the obvious practical benefits of improved perception and memory. However, beyond this, more profoundly the reason for seeking improved cognition is the implication that it can facilitate our own growth and development as humans, actualizing ourselves and our potential more rapidly and effectively. Cognitive enhancement is an important topic for investigation because it examines our existence and also the human-technology relation. Increasingly powerful science and technology tools are emerging that may have the potential to dramatically enhance human performance, and perhaps redefine what it is to be human. Technology advances at a much higher rate than man subjectivates, and man and technology are increasingly being integrated together, with technology no longer being seen as an external tool, but as an embedded presence, such that man and technology are co-evolving and subjectivating together. The rights kinds of cognitive enhancement applications might be of benefit for both humans and technology entities, and their potential integration.

References
Bostrom, N., and Sandberg, A. (2009). "Cognitive enhancement: methods, ethics, regulatory challenges." Sci. Eng. Ethics 15, 311–341.
Buchanan, A. (2013). Beyond Humanity: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.
Hildt, E. and Franke, A.G., Eds. (2013). Cognitive Enhancement: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Dordrecht DE: Springer.

Bergson, Free Will, and the Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement

Bergson claims that free will exists. It occurs in moments when a living being experiences duration, which is tuning into the internal sense of an experience, and a freely-determined action flows from this state. His reasoning is that “if duration is heterogeneous [if we are tuned into the internal sense of experience], the relation of the psychic state to act is unique, and the act is rightly judged free.” An act is free if it flows from an internal qualitative experience. He suggests we understand this by considering an example in our lives of having made a serious decision; where even searching for such an example already starts to evoke the qualitative aspects, unique psychic states, and then the free-action undertaken as a result. The crux is that “We should see that, if our action was pronounced by us to be free, it is because the relation of this action to the state from which it issued could not be expressed by a law, this psychic state being unique of its kind and unable to ever to occur again.” Turning inward to our unique experience causes freely undertaken action to flow as a result, even if this action is a formulation of our mental state.

Philosophy of Cognitive Enhancement
The reason that Bergson is useful for the philosophy of cognitive enhancement is that he provides a reasonable ontological explanation for free will with prescriptive recommendations for its achievement. He draws our attention to the qualitative and characterizes it in usable detail instead of dismissing it as inaccessible due to being subjective (as did Kierkegaard). This could help in developing a philosophy of cognitive enhancement by articulating some of the goals and experience of what it might mean for humans to engage in such practices. It is not necessary to agree with Bergson's claim in favor of free will to implement some of the underlying ideas. What is important to us in cognitive enhancement (the targeted improvement of natural human cognitive abilities) is not just better memories, but accelerated subjectivation - the ability to extend our capacity by becoming ‘more’ of who we are and can be more quickly.

Cognitive Enhancement Tools
One first cognitive enhancement application of Bergson might be in having greater activation of free will; catalyzing more ‘living now’ moments where free will could be realized. Our everyday acts are quantitative and undoubled but cognitive enhancement tools might be able to help with greater activation of the qualitative experience of life. Another application could be exploring the emergence of freedom as a property of internal experience. Bergson does not discuss whether we are free to perceive our inner states in different ways, or just one default way. It would seem that qualitative multiplicity could extend to having discretion over experience. This could inspire an ethics of perception, and an ethics of reality, as topics of cognitive enhancement philosophy. Another application area could be quantitative-qualitative transitions; tracing how the quantitative becomes the qualitative, as this might be a way into a richer, ongoing, free will-activated experience of life. There could be many applications trying to help improve our psychic states, both in their quality and accessibility, and in our awareness and perception of them.

Reference: Bergson, Henri. (2001, 1889). Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience). London UK: Dover Publications. Bergson, Free Will, and Cognitive Enhancement

Bergson-Deleuze: Incorporating Duration into Nanocognition

French philosophers Bergson and Deleuze bring to nanocognition and machine ethics interfaces the philosophical conceptualizations of image, movement, time, perception, memory, and reality that can be considered for implementation in tools for both cognitive enhancement and subjectivation (the greater actualization of human potential).

From the standpoint of an Ethics of Perception of Nanocognition, Bergson and Deleuze stress the need to see perception in itself, and machine ethics interfaces could possibly help us do this through the concept of Cinema 3: the perception-image. Having had only one default (undoubled) means of perception (taking the actualized perceptions of daily life as the only kind of perception, just as we have taken linear, spatialized, narrative time as the only form of time) has meant that we have not considered that there may be multiple ways to perceive, and that these might exist on a virtual plane of possible perceiving, and coalesce through difference into actual perception. At minimum, our nanocognitive prosthetics might be able to introduce and manage the notion of multiplicity in virtual and actual perception.

Bergson-Deleuze exhorts us to notice the doubled, internal, qualitative, subjective experience of lived phenomena like movement, time, perception, reality, and ourselves. In particular, nanocognition allows us to see the full doubling of perception, because there cannot be a doubling if there is only one unexamined mode, if perception in itself cannot be seen. It is only through duration - the doubled, subjective experience of perception (the experience of perception itself) that its virtuality and multiplicity (possibility) can be seen. Importantly, the consequence of seeing the doubled side of perception and reality is that it allows us to tune into the possibility of possibility itself. The real goal of Bergson-Deleuze is not just seeing different possibilities for ourselves, but seeing possibility itself; this is the ultimate implication for nanocognition – conceiving of nanocognition as pure possibility in and of itself.

Wearables-Mobile-IOT Tech creates Fourth Person Perspective

So far the individual has almost always existed in the context of a society of others. This could change in the farther future as individuals might be in the form of a variety of digital and physical copies in different stages of augmentation. It could become more difficult to find ‘like-others.’ My claim is that the function of alterity (an awareness of others that triggers subjectivation) would need to persist for individuals to fully become themselves, but it would not need to come from others that are like us.

All that is needed is some sort of external otherness that can show us ourselves in a new way to facilitate a moment of development. There is nothing in the function of alterity to suggest that it must be an ‘other’ that is like us. It is just that it has been this way historically, because other humans have been the ready form of ‘the other.’ It has been easiest and most noticeable when another human serves as a device like a mirror allowing us to see ourselves in a new way.

However, it is quite possible that the alterity function could be fulfilled in many other ways that do not involve a self-similar subject. One mechanism that is already allowing us to see ourselves in new ways is quantified self-tracking gadgetry. The ensemble of QS gadgets creates a fourth-person perspective, an objective means of seeing ourselves via exteriority and alterity that can trigger a moment of subjectivation. Now understanding the alterity function as such, there could be many alternative means of fulfilling it. 

Longer video on the topic: Posthuman Interpretation of Simondon's Individuation

Big Data: Reconfiguring and Empowering the Human-Data Relation

A strong new presence in contemporary life is big data (the collection and use of personal data by large institutions). As individuals, we can feel powerless in our relation with data.

At present, the human-data relation is one of fear, distance, powerlessness, lack of recourse, and diminished agency. There is an asymmetry of touch in the human-data relation where data can see and touch us without our noticing or being able to touch back. What is missing from the human-data relation is the capacity for humans to touch data in a meaningful way. The asymmetry of touch leads to an incomplete subjectivation of both the human and the data: big data creates a false composite in trying to model and understand the whole individual from just a few electronically-traceable activities, while humans have almost no sight or conceptualization of the entity that is big data.

There are at least two ways to humanize and improve the human-data relation. One is reconceptualizing subjectivation and personal identity as a malleable and dynamic association of elements and capacities, and the other is reconfiguring the power relation between humans and data. To balance the power relation so that humans are more empowered, non-profit institutions, watchdog organizations, and community groups could be created for the defense of personal data, and privacy could be overhauled as a practical impossibility and recast into a system of access rights and responsibilities conferred upon the data.

Presentation: The Philosophy of Big Data
Video (in French): La reconfiguration de la relation humaine-données par le toucher

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.

The Post-Human Biocitizen

We find ourselves in a world with a frenetic pace of life sciences bio-innovation emanating from institutional science, startups, and community biolabs. New possibilities abound in a wide range of areas including  personal genomics, regenerative medicine, cellular therapies, anti-aging, microfluidic chips, quantified self tracking devices and apps, Google Glass, Google diabetes monitoring contacts, brain fitness training, wearable computing, IoT, and cognitive enhancement techniques.

At a higher level, two main themes emerging from this bio-innovation are:
1) what is happening with ourselves as human subjects
2) what is happening regarding data

The human subject is in the process of evolving into a biocitzen, being at the center of health optimization action-taking with a layer of quantified self-tracking gadgetry as a first line of defense, then a layer of preventive medicine health intermediaries (like genomic counselors) and peer collaborators in health social networks and community biolabs, and finally traditional public health services as final line of defense. 

Data's role is transforming even more quickly than the emerging biocitizen where the possibility of collecting, integrating, and sharing huge volumes of health data streams is now possible and required for the destigmatization of health issues and realization of preventive medicine. There are four main data streams to integrate: all of the omics (e.g.; genomics, metaboliomics, etc.), traditional health, quantified self-tracking gadgetry (wearables), and personal internet-of-things (e.g.; smart car, smart home). There is an important need to extend the concept of privacy and rethink the attendant rights and responsibilities of data regimes, quick likely with the advent of protective data intermediary services.

YouTube Video: The Post-Human Biocitizen

Presentation (en français): The Post-Human Biocitizen
Video (en français): Les personnes futures comme biocitoyens