{"id":5006,"date":"2016-03-15T02:04:41","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T06:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5006"},"modified":"2016-03-15T11:00:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T15:00:26","slug":"my-chapter-from-futurama-and-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5006","title":{"rendered":"My FUTURAMA AND PHILOSOPHY Chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"

This work originally appears as “Go Upgrade Yourself,” in the edited volume <\/em>Futurama and Philosophy<\/a>. It was originally titled<\/em><\/p>\n

The Upgrading of Hermes Conrad<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

So, you\u2019re tired of your squishy meatsack of a body, eh? Ready for the next level of sweet biomechanical upgrades? Well, you\u2019re in luck! The world of Futurama<\/em> has the finest in back-alley and mad-scientist-based bio-augmentation surgeons, ready and waiting to hear from you! From a fresh set of gills, to a brand new chest-harpoon, and beyond, Yuri the Shady Parts Dealer and Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth are here to supply all of your upgrading needs\u2014\u201cYou give lungs now; gills be here in two weeks!\u201d Just so long as, whatever you do, stay away from legitimate hospitals. The kinds of procedures you\u2019re looking to get done\u2026well, let\u2019s just say they\u2019re still frowned upon in the 31st<\/sup> century; and why shouldn\u2019t they be? As the woeful tale of Hermes Conrad illustrates exactly what\u2019s at stake if you choose to pursue your biomechanical dreams.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Six Million Dollar Mon<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Our tale begins with season seven\u2019s episode \u201cThe Six Million Dollar Mon,\u201d in which Hermes Conrad, Grade 36 Bureaucrat (Extraordinaire), comes to the conclusion that the he should be fired, since his bureaucratic performance reviews are the main drain on his beloved Planet Express Shipping Company. After being replaced with robo-bureaucrat Mark 7-G (Mark Sevengy?), Hermes enjoys some delicious spicy curried goat and goes out for an evening stroll with his lovely wife LaBarbara. While on their walk Roberto, the knife-wielding maniac, long of our acquaintance, confronts and demands the human couple\u2019s skin for his culinary delight! As Hermes cowers behind his wife in fear, suddenly a savior arrives! URL, the Robot Police Officer, reels Roberto in with his magnificent chest-harpoon! Watching the cops take Roberto to the electromagnetic chair, and lamenting his uselessness in a dangerous situation, Hermes makes a decision: he\u2019ll get Bender to take him to one of the many shady, underground surgeons he knows, so he can become \u201cless inferior to today\u2019s modern machinery.\u201d Enter: Yuri, Professional Shady-Deal-Maker.<\/p>\n

Hermes\u2019 first upgrade is to get a chest-harpoon, like the one URL has. With his new enhancement, he proves his worth to the crew by getting a box off of the top shelf, which is too high for Mark 7-G. With this fete he wins back his position with the company, but as soon as things get back to normal the Professor drops his false teeth down the Dispose-All. No big deal, right? Just get Scruffy to retrieve it. Unfortunately, Scruffy responds, that a sink, \u201ct\u2019ain\u2019t a berler nor a terlet,\u201d effectively refusing to retrieve the Professor\u2019s teeth. Hermes resigns himself to grabbing his hand tools, when Bender steps in, saying, \u201cHand tools? Why don\u2019t you just get an extendo-arm, like me?\u201d Whereupon, he reaches across the room and pulls the Professor\u2019s false teeth out of the drain\u2014and immediately drops them back in. Hermes objects, saying that he doesn\u2019t need any more upgrades\u2014after all, he doesn\u2019t want to end up a cold, emotionless robot, like Bender! Just then, Mark 7-G pipes up with, \u201cMaybe I should get an extendo-arm,\u201d and Hermes narrows his eyes in hatred. Re-enter: Yuri.<\/p>\n

New extendo-arm acquired, the Professor\u2019s teeth retrieved, and the old arm given to Zoidberg, who\u2019s been asking for all of Hermes\u2019s discarded parts, Hermes is, again, a hero to his coworkers. Later, as he lays in bed reading with his wife, LaBarbara questions his motives for his continual upgrades. He assures her that he\u2019s done getting upgrades. However, his promise is short-lived. After shattering his glasses with his new super-strong mechanical arm, he rushes out to get a new Cylon eye. LaBarbara is now extremely worried, but Hermes soothes her, and they settle in for some \u201cMarital Relations\u2026\u201d, at which point she finds that he\u2019s had something else upgraded, too. She yells at him, \u201cSome tings shouldn\u2019t be Cylon-ed!\u201d (which, in all honesty could be taken as the moral of the episode), and breaks off contact. What follows is a montage of Hermes encountering trivial difficulties in his daily life, and upgrading himself to overcome them. Rather than learning and working to improve himself, he continually replaces all of his parts, until he achieves a Full Body Upgrade. He still has a human brain, but that doesn\u2019t matter: he\u2019s changed. He doesn\u2019t relate to his friends and family in the same way, and they\u2019ve all noticed,especially Zoidberg.<\/p>\n

All this time, however, Dr. John Zoidberg saved the trimmings from his friend\u2019s constant upgrades, and has used them to make a meat-puppet, which he calls \u201cLi\u2019l Hermes.\u201d Oh, and they\u2019re a ventriloquist act. Anyway, after seeing their act, Hermes\u2014or Mecha-Hermes, as he now prefers\u2014is filled with loathing; loathing for the fact that his brain is still human, that is, until\u2026! Re-re-enter\u2026, no, not Yuri; because even Shady-Deals Yuri has his limits. He says that \u201cNo one in their right mind would do such a thing.\u201d Enter: The Professor, who is, of course, more than happy\u2014or perhaps, \u201cmaniacally gleeful\u201d\u2014to help. So, with Bender\u2019s assistance (because everything robot-related, in the Futurama<\/em> universe has to involve Bender, I guess), they set off to the Robot Cemetery to exhume the most recently buried robot they can find, and make off with its brain-chip. In their haste to have the deed done, they don\u2019t bother to check the name of whose grave it is they\u2019re desecrating. As you might have guessed, it\u2019s Roberto\u2014\u201c3001-3012: Beloved Killer and Maniac.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the course of the operation, LaBarbara makes an impassioned plea, and it causes the Professor to stop and rethink his actions\u2014because Hermes might have \u201clitigious survivors.\u201d Suddenly, to everyone\u2019s surprise, Zoidberg steps up and offers to perform this final operation, the one which will seemingly remove any traces of the Hermes he\u2019s known and loved! Agreeing with Mecha-Hermes that claws will be far too clumsy for this delicate brain surgery, Zoidberg dons Li\u2019l Hermes, and uses the puppet\u2019s hands to do the deed. While all of this is underway, Zoidberg sings to everyone the explanation for why he would help his friend lose himself this way, all to the slightly heavy-handed tune of \u201cMonster Mash.\u201d Finally, the human brain removed, the robot brain implanted, and Zoidberg\u2019s song coming to a close, the doctor reveals his final plan\u2026By putting Hermes\u2019s human brain into Li\u2019l Hermes, Hermes is back! Of course, the whole operation having been a success, so is Roberto, but that\u2019s somebody else\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n

We could spend the rest of our time discussing Zoidberg\u2019s self-harmonization, but I\u2019ll leave that for you to experiment with. Instead, let\u2019s look closer at human bio-enhancement. To do this we\u2019ll need to go back to the beginning. No, not the beginning of the episode, or even the Beginning of Futurama<\/em> itself; No, we need to go back to the beginning of bio-enhancement\u2014and specifically the field of cybernetics\u2014as a whole.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cMore Human Than Human\u201d Is Our Motto<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In 1960, at the outset of the Space Race, Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline wrote an article for the September issue of Aeronautics called \u201cCyborgs and Space.\u201d In this article, they coined the term \u201ccyborg\u201d as a portmanteau of the phrase \u201cCybernetic Organism,\u201d that is, a living creature with the ability to adapt its body to its environment. Clynes and Kline believed that if humans were ever going to go far out into space, they would have to become the kinds of creatures that could survive the vacuum of space as well as harsh, hostile planets. Now, for all its late-1990s Millennial fervor, Futurama<\/em> has a deep undercurrent of love for the dream and promise (and fashion) of space exploration, as it was presented in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. All you need to do in order to see this is remember Fry\u2019s wonder and joy at being on the actual moon and seeing the Apollo Lunar Lander. If this is the case, why, within Futurama<\/em>\u2019s 31st Century, is there such a deep distrust of anything approaching altered human physical features? Well, looking at it, we may find it has something to do with the fact that ever since we dreamed of augmenting humans, we\u2019ve had nightmares that any alterations would thereby make us less human.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Six Million Dollar Mon,\u201d episode seven of season seven, contains within it clear references to the history of science fiction, including one of the classic tales of human augmentation, and creating new life: Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>. In going to the Robot Cemetery in the dead of night for spare parts, accidentally obtaining a murderer\u2019s brain, and especially that bit with the skylight in the Professor\u2019s laboratory, the entire third act of this episode serves as homage to Shelley\u2019s book and its most memorable adaptations. In doing this, the Futurama<\/em> crew puts conceptual pressure on what many of us have long believed: that created life is somehow \u201cwrong\u201d and that augmenting humans will make them somehow \u201cless themselves.\u201d Something about the biological is linked in our minds to the idea of the self\u2014that is, it\u2019s the warm squishy bits that make us who we are.<\/p>\n

Think about it: If you build a person out of murderers, of course they\u2019re going to be a murderer. If you replace every biological part of a human, then of course they won\u2019t be their normal human selves, anymore; they\u2019ll have become something entirely different, by definition. If your body isn\u2019t yours, anymore, then how could you possibly be \u201cyou,\u201d anymore? This should be all the more true when what\u2019s being used to replace your bits is a different substance and material than you used to be. When that new \u201cyou\u201d is metal rather than flesh, it seems that what it used to mean to be \u201cyou\u201d is gone, and something new shall have appeared. This makes so much sense to us on a basic level that it seems silly to spell it out even this much, but what if we modify our scenario a little bit, and take another look?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Ship of Planet Express<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>What if, instead of feeling inferior to URL, Hermes had been injured and, in the course of his treatment, was given the choice between a brand new set of biological giblets (or a whole new body, as happened in the Bender\u2019s Big Score<\/em> storyline), or the chest-harpoon upgrade? Either way, we\u2019re replacing what was lost with something new, right? So, why do many of us see the biological replacement as \u201cmore real?\u201d Try this example: One day, on a routine delivery, the Planet Express Ship is damaged and repairs must be made. Specifically, the whole tail fin has to be replaced with a new, better fin. Once this is done, is it still the Planet Express ship? What if, next, we have to replace the dark matter engines with better engines? Is it still the Planet Express ship? Now, Leela\u2019s chair is busted up, so we need to get her a new one. It also needs new bolts, so, while we\u2019re at it, let\u2019s just replace all of the bolts in the ship. Then the walls get dented, and the bunks are rusty, and the floors are buckled, and Scruffy\u2019s mop\u2026 and so, over many years, the result is that no part of the Planet Express ship is \u201coriginal,\u201d oh, and we also have to get new, better paint, because the old paint is peeled away, plus, this all-new stuff needs painting. So, what do we think? Is this still the same Planet Express ship as it was in the first episode of Futurama<\/em>? And, if so, then why do we think of a repaired and augmented human as \u201cnot being themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this may sound a little far-fetched, but remember the conventional wisdom that at the end of every seven-year cycle, all of the cells in your body have died and been replaced. Now, this isn\u2019t quite true, as some cells don\u2019t die easily, and some of those don\u2019t regenerate when they do die, but as a useful shorthand, this gives something to think about. Ultimately, due to the metabolizing of elements and their distribution through your body it is ultimately more likely that you are currently made of astronomically many more new atoms than you are made of the atoms with which you were born. And really, that\u2019s just math. Are you the same size as you were when you were born? Where do you think that extra mass came from? So, you are made of more and new atomic stuff over your lifetime; are you still you? These questions belong to what is generally known as \u201cThe Ship of Theseus\u201d family of paradoxes, examples of which can be found pretty much everywhere.<\/p>\n

The ultimate question the Ship of Theseus poses is one of identity, and specifically, \u201cWhat makes a thing itself?\u201d and, \u201cAt what point or through what means of alteration is a thing no longer itself?\u201d Some schools of thought hold that it\u2019s not what a thing is made of, but what it does that determines what it is. These philosophical groups are known as the behaviorists and the functionalists, and the latter believes that if a body or a mind goes through the \u201cright kind\u201d of process, then it can be termed as being the same as the original. That is, if I get a mechanical heart and what it does is keep blood pumping through my body, then it is my heart. Maybe it isn\u2019t the heart I was born with, but it is my heart. And this seems to make sense to us, too. My new heart does the job my original cells were intending to do, but it does that job better than they could, and for longer; it works better, and I\u2019m better because of it. But there seems to be something about that \u201cBetter\u201d which throws us off, something about the line between therapeutic technology and voluntary augmentation.<\/p>\n

When we are faced with the necessity of a repair, we are willing to accept that our new parts will be different than our old ones. In fact, we accept it so readily that we don\u2019t even think about them as new parts. What Hermes does, however, is voluntary; he doesn\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d a chest-harpoon, but he wants one, and so he upgrades himself. And therein lies the crux of our dilemma: When we\u2019re acutely aware of the process of upgrading, or repairing, or augmenting ourselves past a baseline of \u201cHuman,\u201d we become uncomfortable, made to face the paradox of our connection to an idea of a permanent body that is in actuality constantly changing. Take for instance the question of steroidal injection. As a medical technology, there are times when we are more than happy to accept the use of steroids, as it will save a life, and allow people to live as \u201cnormal\u201d human beings. Sufferers of asthma and certain types of infection literally need steroids to live. In other instances, however, we find ourselves abhorring the use of steroids, as it gives the user an \u201cunfair advantage.\u201d Baseball, football, the Olympics: all of these arena in which we look to the use of \u201cenhancement technologies, and we draw a line and say, \u201cIf you achieved the peak of physical perfection through a process<\/em>, that is through hard work and sweat and training, then your achievement is valid. But if you skipped a step, if you make yourself something more<\/em> than human, then you\u2019ve cheated.\u201d<\/p>\n

This sense of \u201chaving cheated\u201d can even be seen in the case of humans who would otherwise be designated as \u201chandicapped.\u201d Aimee Mullins is a runner, model, and public speaker who has talked about how losing her legs has, in effect, given her super powers.[1]<\/a> By having the ability to change her height, her speed, or her physical appearance at will, she contends that she has a distinct advantage over anyone who does not have that capability. To this end, we can come to see that something about the nature of our selves actually is<\/em> contained within our physical form because we\u2019re literally incapable of being some things, until we can change who and what we are. And here, in one person, what started as a therapeutic replacement\u2014an assistive medical technology\u2014has seamlessly turned into an upgrade, but we seem to be okay with this. Why? Perhaps there is something inherent in the struggle of overcoming the loss of a limb or the suffering of an illness that allows us to feel as if the patient has paid their dues. Maybe if Hermes had been stabbed by Roberto, we wouldn\u2019t begrudge him a chest-harpoon.<\/p>\n

But this presents us with a serious problem, because now we can alter ourselves by altering our bodies, where previously we said that our bodies were not the \u201creal us.\u201d Now, we must consider what it is that we\u2019re changing when we swap out new and different pieces of ourselves. This line of thinking matches up with schools of thought such as physicalism, which says that when we make a fundamental change to our physical composition, then we have changed who we are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is Your Mind Just a Giant Brain<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Briefly, the doctrine of mind-body dualism (MBD) does pretty much what it says on the package, in that adherents believe that the mind and the body are two distinct types of stuff. How and why they interact (or whether they do at all) varies from interpretation to interpretation, but on what\u2019s known as Ren\u00e9 Descartes\u2019s \u201cInteractionist\u201d model, the mind is the real self, and the body is just there to do stuff. In this model, bodily events affect mental events, and vice versa, so what you think leads to what you do, and what you do can change how you think. This seems to make sense, until we begin to pick apart the questions of why we need two different types of thing, here. If the mind and the body affect each other, then how can the non-physical mind be the only real self? If it were the only real part of you, then nothing that happened to the physical shell should matter at all, because the mind? These questions and more very quickly cause us to question the validity of the mind as our \u201creal selves,\u201d leaving us trapped between the question of who we are, and the question of why we\u2019re made the way we\u2019re made. What can we do? Enter: Physicalism<\/p>\n

The physicalist picture says that mind-states are brain-states. There\u2019s none of this \u201ctwo kinds of stuff\u201d nonsense. It\u2019s all physical stuff, and it all interacts, because it\u2019s all physical. When the chemical pathways in your brain change, you change. When you think new thoughts, it\u2019s because something in your world and your environment has changed. All that you are is the physical components of your body and the world around you. Pretty simple, right? Well, not quite that simple. Because if this is the case, then why should we feel that anything emotional would be changed by upgrading ourselves? As long as we\u2019re pumping the same signals to the same receivers, and getting the same kinds of responses, everything we love should still be loved by us. So, why do the physicalists still believe that changing what we are will change who we are?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a deeper look at the implications of physicalism for our dear Mr. Conrad.<\/p>\n

According to this picture, with the alteration or loss of his biological components and systems, Hermes should begin to lose himself, until, with the removal of his brain, he would no longer be himself at all. But why should this be true? According to our previous discussion of the functionalist and behaviorist forms of physicalism, if Hermes\u2019s new parts are performing the same job, in the same way as his old parts, just with a few new extras, then he shouldn\u2019t be any different, at all. In order to understand this, we have to first know that I wasn\u2019t completely honest with you, because some physicalists believe that the integrity of the components and the systems that make up a thing are what makes that thing<\/em>. Thus, if we change the physical components of the thing we\u2019re studying, then we change the thing. So, perhaps this<\/em> picture is the right one, and the Futurama<\/em> universe is a purely physicalist universe, after all.<\/p>\n

On this view, what makes us who we are is precisely what we are. Our bits and pieces, cells, and chunks: these make us exactly the people we are, and so, if they change, then of course we will change. If our selves are dependent on our biology, then we are necessarily no longer ourselves when we remove that biology, regardless of whether the new technology does exactly the same job that the biology used to. And the argument seems to hold, even if it had been a new, diffferent<\/em> set of human parts, rather than robot parts. In this particular physicalist view, it\u2019s not just the stuff, but also the provenance of the individual parts that matter, and so changing the components changes us. As Hermes replaces part after part of his physical body, it becomes easier and easier for him to replace more parts, but he is still, in some sense, Hermes. He has the same motivations, the same thoughts, and the same memories, and so he is still Hermes, even if he\u2019s changed. Right up until he swaps his brain, that is. And this makes perfect sense, because the brain is where the memories, thoughts, and motivations all reside. But, then\u2026why aren\u2019t more people with pacemakers cold and emotionless? Why is it that people with organs donated from serial killers don\u2019t then turn into serial killers, themselves, despite what movies would have us believe? If this picture of physicalism is the right one, then why are so many people still themselves after transplants? Perhaps it\u2019s not any one of these views that holds the whole key; maybe it\u2019s a blending of three. This picture seems to suggest that while the bits and pieces of our physical body may change, and while that change may, in fact, change us, it is a combination of how, how quickly, and how m<\/em>any <\/em>changes take place that will culminate in any eventual massive change in our selves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Roswell That Ends Well<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In the end, the versions of physicalism presented in the universe of Futurama<\/em> seems to almost<\/em> jibe with the intuitions we have about the nature of our own identity, and so, for the sake of Hermes Conrad, it seems like we should make the attempt to find some kind of understanding. When we see Hermes\u2019s behaviour as he adds more and more new parts, we, as outside observers, have an urge to say \u201cHe\u2019s not himself anymore,\u201d but to Hermes, who has access to all of his reasoning and thought processes, his changes are merely who he is. It\u2019s only when he\u2019s shown himself from the outside via Zoidberg putting his physical brain back into his biological body, that he sees who and what he has allowed himself to become, and how that might be terrifying to those who love him. Perhaps it is this continuance of memory paired with the ability for empathy that makes us so susceptible to the twin traps of a permanent self and the terror of losing it.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, everything we are is always in flux, with each new idea, each new experience, each new pound, and each new scar we become more and different than we ever have been, but as we take our time and integrate these experiences into ourselves, they are not so alien to us, nor to those who love us. It is only when we make drastic changes to what we are that those around us are able to question who we have become.<\/p>\n

Oh, and one more thing: The \u201cShip of Theseus\u201d story has a variant which I forgot to mention. In it, someone, perhaps a member of the original crew, comes along in another ship and picks up all the discarded, worn out pieces of Theseus\u2019s ship, and uses them to build another, kind of decrepit ship. The stories don\u2019t say what happens if and when Theseus finds out about this, or whether he gives chase to the surreptitious ship builder, but if he did, you can bet the latter party escapes with a cry of \u201cWhooop-whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop!\u201d on his mouth tendrils.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

FOOTNOTES<\/h4>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cIt’s not fair having 12 pairs of legs.\u201d Mullins, Aimee. TED Talk 2009<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This work originally appears as “Go Upgrade Yourself,” in the edited volume Futurama and Philosophy. It was originally titled The Upgrading of Hermes Conrad So, you\u2019re tired of your squishy meatsack of a body, eh? Ready for the next level of sweet biomechanical upgrades? Well, you\u2019re in luck! The world of Futurama has the finest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1065,1070,1067,204,206,208,315,316,953,561,562,627,628,1066,1068,1069],"class_list":["post-5006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-future-worth","tag-assistive-technology","tag-cartesean-dualism","tag-cybernetics","tag-cyborg","tag-cyborgs","tag-futurama","tag-futurama-and-philosophy","tag-human-augmentation","tag-my-work","tag-my-writing","tag-philosophy","tag-philosophy-of-mind","tag-substance-dualism","tag-the-ship-of-theseus","tag-therapeutic-cloning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WByP-1iK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5738,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5738","url_meta":{"origin":5006,"position":0},"title":"Appendix A: An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about \u201cConsciousness\u201d and \u201cAI,\u201d Across Time","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"September 19, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Every so often, I think about the fact of one of the best things my advisor and committee members let me write and include in my actual doctoral dissertation, and I smile a bit, and since I keep wanting to share it out into the world, I figured I should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ableism\"","block_context":{"text":"ableism","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=ableism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5253,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5253","url_meta":{"origin":5006,"position":1},"title":"My Review of Ashley Shew\u2019s ANIMAL CONSTRUCTIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"February 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a review of Ashley Shew\u2019s Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge, over at the Social Epistemology Research and Reply Collective: \"Deleting the Human Clause.\" From the essay: Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge is Ashley Shew\u2019s debut monograph and in it she argues that we need to reassess and possibly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animal behaviour\"","block_context":{"text":"animal behaviour","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=animal-behaviour"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1879,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=1879","url_meta":{"origin":5006,"position":2},"title":"“A Future Worth Thinking About”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"January 31, 2015","format":"link","excerpt":"Good morning! Lots of new people around here, so I thought I\u2019d remind you that I have Patreon Project called \u201cA Future Worth Thinking About.\u201d It\u2019s a place where I talk a bit more formally about things like Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, Sociology, Magick, Technology, and the intersections of all of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5269,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5269","url_meta":{"origin":5006,"position":3},"title":"My Review of Shannon Vallor’s TECHNOLOGY AND THE VIRTUES","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"May 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"My piece \"Cultivating Technomoral Interrelations,\" a review of\u00a0Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting has been up over at the Social Epistemology Research and Reply Collective for a few months, now, so I figured I should post something about it, here. As you'll read, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/socialepistemologydotcom.files.wordpress.com\/2018\/02\/shannon-vallor-technology-virtues-cover.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5239,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5239","url_meta":{"origin":5006,"position":4},"title":"The Frankenbook Project","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"January 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"So, many of you may remember that back in June of 2016, I was invited to the Brocher Institute in Hermance, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, to take part in the Frankenstein's Shadow Symposium sponsored by Arizona State University\u2019s Center for Science and the Imagination as part of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"arizona state university\"","block_context":{"text":"arizona state university","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=arizona-state-university"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/web.archive.org\/web\/20230911045322im_\/https%3A\/\/gallery.tinyletterapp.com\/15ed533d99d868864bc68d95ddd746a57dfc048f\/images\/e5850a88-f00d-44c7-a809-c868019ea28f.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/web.archive.org\/web\/20230911045322im_\/https%3A\/\/gallery.tinyletterapp.com\/15ed533d99d868864bc68d95ddd746a57dfc048f\/images\/e5850a88-f00d-44c7-a809-c868019ea28f.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/web.archive.org\/web\/20230911045322im_\/https%3A\/\/gallery.tinyletterapp.com\/15ed533d99d868864bc68d95ddd746a57dfc048f\/images\/e5850a88-f00d-44c7-a809-c868019ea28f.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4804,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4804","url_meta":{"origin":5006,"position":5},"title":"Text and Audio of “The Quality of Life: The Implications of Augmented Personhood and Machine Intelligence in Science Fiction”","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"March 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"(Direct Link to the Mp3) Updated March 5, 2016 This is the audio and transcript of my presentation\u00a0\"The Quality of Life: The Implications of Augmented Personhood and Machine Intelligence in Science Fiction\" from the conference for The Work of Cognition and Neuroethics in Science Fiction. The abstract--part of which I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5006"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5014,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5006\/revisions\/5014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}