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In Defence of the Hivemind Society

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Abstract

The idea that humans should abandon their individuality and use technology to bind themselves together into hivemind societies seems both farfetched and frightening – something that is redolent of the worst dystopias from science fiction. In this article, we argue that these common reactions to the ideal of a hivemind society are mistaken. The idea that humans could form hiveminds is sufficiently plausible for its axiological consequences to be taken seriously. Furthermore, far from being a dystopian nightmare, the hivemind society could be desirable and could enable a form of sentient flourishing. Consequently, we should not be so quick to deny it. We provide two arguments in support of this claim – the axiological openness argument and the desirability argument – and then defend it against three major objections.

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Notes

  1. For discussions of Star Trek’s utopian pretensions, see Segal, H Utopias (Wiley-Blackwell 2012), pp. 199 ff [1]; and Saadia, M. Trekonomics (San Francisco, SF: Pipertext 2016) [2].

  2. Almost: Star Trek is a fictional product of Hollywood and was never ideally progressive when it came to its celebration of human differences and diversities. Homosexual characters, for example, were absent until the series Star Trek Discovery.

  3. On this distinction, see the Orwell-Huxley exchange on dystopianism. Available at: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html

  4. In this sense, the article takes onboard the lesson of Owen Flanagan’s book The Geography of Morals (Oxford: OUP 2017), which is to appreciate how large the space of ‘moral possibility’ for humanity actually is.

  5. Many philosophers will be reminded of Ned Block’s [3] “Chinese Nation” thought experiment. In that case, though, the mental state of the whole is independent of the mental states of the citizens. Here we consider cases where the mental state of the whole is in some way composed of the mental states of the (former?) individuals.

  6. [5] argues that true largescale hiveminds (he doesn’t use this term) are quite rare in practice, but then tempers this by arguing that ‘minds’ come in degrees and that many group entities approximate or approach hivemind status.

  7. For an entertaining summary of the NeuraLink project and its motivations, see the Wait But Why? post at https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html.

  8. This is the Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment Project, which produced well over 100 publications over the course of its duration. A full list can be found at http://www.vereproject.eu/. A readable summary of some key results is available in Rothman ‘Are we already living in virtual reality?’, New Yorker 3rd February 2018.

  9. An interesting edge case is that of conjoined twins. Some historically documented cases of conjoined twins suggest that they can have high degrees of rational unity, and, due to some shared bodily limbs and functions, some degree of phenomenological unity. That said, some of the best documented cases of conjoined twins—such as the infamous Chang and Eng Bunker twins of the nineteenth century—suggest that they can have very different personalities. For a longer discussion see [14]. In addition to this, and as a general point, there are more metaphysical arguments in favour of the possibility of phenomenological unity that are worth considering. Eric Schwitzgebel [15] argues that, as his title goes, “if materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious”. If he is right—and if materialism is right—then just about all of us are already part of phenomenologically unified hiveminds.

  10. Already, for example, there are (ungainly) devices that can read subvocalizations fairly reliably; see https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/mit-alterego-communicates-with-a-computer-through-subvocalization.html. The internal audio receiver might work something like the cochlear implants of today.

  11. We pick these as examples of goals that might be deemed “good” and thus add value to life. Some people might disagree with this and think that other goals are good. This doesn’t really affect the point we are making which is simply that some level of goal achievement is part of the good life and many goals require collective action to achieve.

  12. It is possible that both forms of unity are required on some accounts of meaning but that only one is required on others. For example, on a purely consequentialist theory of meaning—that meaning depends on producing good consequences for the world—rational unity may be all that it is required. On subjectivist or hybridist accounts, phenomenological unity may also be necessary.

  13. To use more Parfittian language, the claim is that the only thing that determines personal survival is the relation between mental states — something that Parfit calls ‘Relation R’. This relation comes in degrees and it is possible for you to have relation R with a different physical body.

  14. Plausibly the Borg are bad guys because they do not seek consent. At least, this would make them bad guys from our current individualistic perspective!

  15. They are not perfectly identical of course. In the case of suicide, if you don’t believe in an everlasting soul, then the self, and every sub-component or part of the self (including its sentience) ceases to exist. In the hivemind case, some sub-components of the individual will continue to exist, including some aspects of its sentience—they will just be subsumed into the hivemind. If anything, however, this might speak in favour of the permissibility of joining a hivemind since it allows for the persistence of valuable sub-components of the self, and not their everlasting destruction.

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  1. School of Law, NUI Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland

    John Danaher

  2. Niagara University, Lewiston, NY, USA

    Steve Petersen

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Danaher, J., Petersen, S. In Defence of the Hivemind Society. Neuroethics 14, 253–267 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-020-09451-7

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