Mind-Body-Technology: 'Nosce te Ipsum' and a Theory of Prosthetic Trialism'

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Published conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    This chapter will discuss a profound and fundamental interrelationship between mind, body and technology in terms of what it means to be ‘human’, or, what ‘being’ human might mean. One historical, yet enduring, theory of the human subject is René Descartes’s philosophy of the mind distinct from the body – this is termed ‘Cartesian dualism’. Whilst this is a classical, if outmoded, model of conceiving of a philosophy of the subject, it also provides a useful conceptual framework through which to critique, and arrive at, a different concept of how the terms ‘mind’ and ‘body’ might operate. For example, the mind/body binary distinction can be interrogated and deconstructed to accommodate the role of technology as having an ontologically embedded position within the very definition of ‘humanity’. Indeed, ‘anthropogenesis’ – the very becoming of humanity – might instead incorporate the role of technological prosthesis to any mind/body dualism in defining the ‘human subject’. We will propose that this ‘dualism’ should be reconsidered for a fundamentally entangled mind-body-technology ‘trialism’ in the emergence of a distinct human being. However, at the same time, this interconnected relationship is also the object of power and control.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationAnthology - Anatomical Theatre
    EditorsPetrine Vinje
    Place of PublicationOslo, Norway
    PublisherUten Tittel
    Pages26-41
    Number of pages15
    ISBN (Print)978-82-93502-20-3
    Publication statusPublished - Nov 2018

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