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Chapter 1
WHY USE THE TERM ‘CYBERNEUROETHICS’?
In order to examine why the term ‘cyberneuroethics’ was developed in this book, it may be useful to present a brief overview of the manner in which each component of the cyberneuroethics triad is used in order to provide clarity before exploring how they interact together. For example, it is easy to talk about connecting a computer to a nervous system without emphasising whether the point of contact will be the brain, the spinal cord or the peripheral nerves. Indeed, each would have quite different implications.
In this regard, the prefix ‘cyber’ and ‘neuro’ will first be studied before examining the manner in which ‘neuroethics’ is presently defined in bioethics and why the term ‘cyberneuroethics’ was finally chosen.
The ‘Cyber’ Prefix
It was the French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) who first mentioned the word ‘cybernétique’ in his 1834 Essai sur la philosophie des sciences to describe the science of civil government.1 However, the original term of cybernetics came from Ancient Greek, where it reflected the notion of a ‘steersman, governor, pilot or rudder’, while including notions of information, control and communication.
The term ‘cybernetic’ was also borrowed by the American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) and colleagues, who examined how communication and control could be examined in animals, including humans, and machines.2 Wiener published a book in 1948 foretelling a new future entitled Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, which gave an intellectual and practical foundation to the idea of highly capable interconnected calculating machines.
In his introduction to this volume, Wiener describes a situation in which it is difficult to make progress without a pooling and mixing of knowledge and skills between the various established disciplinary fields. This is because:
Since Leibniz there has perhaps been no man who has had a full command of all the intellectual activity of his day. Since that time, science has been increasingly the task of specialists, in fields which show a tendency to grow progressively narrower … Today there are few scholars who can call themselves mathematicians or physicists or biologists without restriction … more frequently than not he will regard the next subject as something belonging to his colleague three doors down the corridor, and will consider any interest in it on his own part as an unwarrantable breach of privacy.3
For Wiener, the loss incurred by this restriction of knowledge was tragic, since the most fruitful areas of enquiry lay at the boundaries of different disciplines, which could only be explored by enabling two or more different sets of expertise to come together.
Eventually, the Second World War created an impetus and funding stream that enabled Wiener to draw together specialists who normally would not have interacted, enabling them to share their skills. But it was not long before the team realised that it was creating a new world that needed a new name. In this Wiener indicated that he had already become aware of ‘the essential unity of the set of problems centering about communication, control, and statistical mechanics, whether in the machine or in living tissue … We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the same “Cybernetics”’.4 The interdisciplinary technology of cybernetics was thus born, which included the study of information feedback loops and derived concepts.
Wiener was actually convinced that these feedback loops were necessary for the successful functioning of both living biological organisms and machines. This was because they enabled self-regulating and self-organising activities through a continuous updating of information given to the machine or organism with respect to variables such as their environment. In addition, he suggested that since both machines and living organisms equally relied on such feedback processes, they could actually be combined to create a new entity or creature.5
Cybernetics also focused on the manner in which anything (digital, mechanical or biological) processed information and reacted to this information, as well as the changes that were necessary to improve these tasks.6
The power of this control and communication theory was immense and, over the years, the term ‘cyber’ began to extend to all things representing a combination or interchange between humans and technology. In this way, the term started to evolve in many different settings where interactions were possible with electronic applications. This included everything from cybercafés to cyberdogs and from cyberwarfare to cybersex. How far Wiener could see into the future is difficult to say, but it would have been an adventurous mind that could envision the present concept of cyberspace.
Cyborg
With the concept of cybernetics being defined, as already noted, by Wiener and his colleagues, the term ‘cyborg’ was originally coined, as its close cousin, by the Austrian research scientist Manfred Clynes and the American research physician Nathan Kline (1916–1983) in 1960 as a combination of ‘cybernetic and organism’. This included an enhanced individual with both human and technological characteristics.7 Thus, any living being which was merged with neuronal interfaces was considered to be a cyborg.
In this regard, the notion of humanity being enhanced by technology has stimulated the imagination of the public since the 1920s. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television science-fiction drama series Doctor Who, which is one of the oldest in the world, was quick to pick up on the theme when, in 1963, the ‘Daleks’ were conceived. These were genetically modified humanoids from another planet, who had been integrated into a robotic shell while being modified to no longer experience pity, compassion or remorse.
From the 1970s onwards, cyborgs became popular in many other films, where they figured as invincible humanoid machines demonstrating no emotion. Some were visibly indistinguishable from humans, though others were more mechanical than human, such as with ‘Darth Vader’ from the 1977 film Star Wars created by George Lucas. Other examples are the ‘Cybermen’ introduced in the 1966 Doctor Who series. This brand of super-villains was created by degenerating humanoid beings, whose body parts were replaced with plastic and steel as a means of self-preservation. But because their humanoid brains were retained, ‘emotional inhibitors’ had to be inserted so that the new Cybermen could cope with the trauma and distress of their transformation. Yet at the same time, this meant that they could no longer understand the concepts of love, hate and fear.
Interestingly, cyborgs are often portrayed in popular culture as representing hybrid figures who overlap boundaries where existing familiar, traditional categories no longer exist. As such, they are often used to create narratives of apprehension about possible future technological developments, while raising questions about what human nature, identity and dignity actually mean. On this account, the cyborg expresses both the unease resulting from the perceived negative consequences of technology, and the sense of bewilderment and wonder before the extent and dominance of human technological achievement.8
One example of some of these anxieties may be considered when cyborgs are portrayed as being controlled by their technology to the detriment of their humanity and dignity. They are then presented as a kind of solitary monster, bringing disorder between the clear existing boundaries of what is human and what is machine. In fact, the Latin root of the word ‘monster’ is made up of monstrare (to show) or monere (to warn or give advice). As the American theologian Brian Edgar explains: ‘Cyborgs – human-machines – are thus seen, perhaps more intuitively than anything, as both dehumanising and a threat to the order of the world. The idea produces existential feelings of insecurity and disorder as though the structure and fabric of society was under threat.’9
As such, cyborgs may play a similar role to the human-nonhuman mythological monsters of antiquity, such as the Chimera and the Minotaur, which were also considered as bringing disorder between the human and nonhuman boundaries. Because of this, these monsters were even considered dangerous and malign, necessitating destruction.10
But this kind of thinking did not stop in ancient history, since even during the Enlightenment, a number of scholars believed that the concept of monstrosity served as a moral boundary-marker. As the British social scientist and theologian Elaine Graham indicates: ‘Monsters stand at the entrance of the unknown, acting as gatekeepers to the acceptable … the horror of monsters may be sufficient to deter their audience from encroaching upon their repellent territory.’11 More generally, she argues that monsters serve a special function, which is neither totally beyond the bounds of the human nor conforming completely to the norms of humanity. In this way, they characterise but also subvert the boundary limits of humanity. She notes:
Their otherness to the norm of the human, the natural and the moral, is as that which must be repressed in order to secure the boundaries of the same. Yet at the same time, by showing forth the fault-line of binary opposition – between human/non-human, natural/unnatural, virtue/vice – monsters bear the trace of difference that destabilizes the distinction.12
The American science and technology scholar Donna Haraway wrote an essay entitled A Cyborg Manifesto in 1983. This was prepared to encourage women to move the boundaries that appeared to be limiting their autonomy and as a response to the American politics of the day that explored and criticised traditional ideas about feminism. In this respect, Haraway explains that the breakdown in boundaries since the twentieth century enabling the concept of a cyborg to be explored included a disruption of the borders between: (1) human and animal; (2) machine and human; and (3) physical and nonphysical. In this, she uses the concept of the cyborg to illustrate the possibility that no real distinction exists between human beings and human-made machines.13
Therefore, the prospect is for humanity to increasingly question what it means to be human when the traditional boundaries are challenged. As the British philosopher Andy Clark explains, in the future ‘we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial ...
