Abstract
The term “cyborg” is being used in a surprising variety of ways. Some authors argue that the human being as such is—and has always been—a cyborg (Clark, Sorgner). Others see the term as describing what is peculiar about humanity in the present era (Haraway, Case). Still others reserve it for some current forms of human existence (Moe and Sandler, Warwick). Lastly, Clynes and Kline, who originally introduced the term, use it as referring to possibilities of the future. In the present paper, I examine what is at stake in this disagreement. I highlight that the different uses of the term “cyborg” can be seen as being based on one and the same conception of the human being and its relationship to technology, namely, the idea that human-machine hybridization is a gradual, longstanding and ongoing process. I explain how, arising from this common idea, the existing uses of “cyborg” diverge. I then raise the question of which of these uses is the most plausible or useful.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The present paper arose from a review of this book, which appeared, in Spanish, in the journal Estudios Públicos (Totschnig, 2021).
The collection is a sequel of sorts to The Cyborg Handbook (Gray, Figueroa-Sarriera, and Mentor, 1995), which was edited twenty-five years ago by the same trio of scholars. Whereas that volume focused on theoretical and foundational issues surrounding the notion of cyborg (it contains, for instance, a reprint of the essay by Clynes and Kline), Modified is dedicated to “the actual lived experiences and personal interpretations of taking on a cyborg identity,” as the editors explain in their introduction (Gray, Figueroa-Sarriera, and Mentor, 2020b, 5).
A surprisingly early appearance of this idea can be found in Samuel Butler’s novel Erewhon of 1872. The novel features a thinker who argues that “machines”—by which the thinker means tools of any kind, for instance spades—are “to be regarded as a part of man’s own physical nature, being really nothing but extra-corporeal limbs” (Butler, 2002, ch. 25).
A corollary of this thesis is that the history of humanity began with the first use of tools. This view of the origins of human history was memorably staged by Stanley Kubrick in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
A similar argument has recently been put forward by Sorgner (2021).
Adams (2002) captured this phenomenon in three “rules that describe our reactions to technologies”: “1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” (Cited in Petersen, 2012, 287.)
Note that “merger” here does not mean “fusion.” As Lipp and Dickel (2022) highlight, organism and machine are usually linked by an interface that both connects and separates the two parts. (Lipp and Dickel reject the term “hybridity” for this reason, whereas I do not. That is, I believe that the kind of interfaced relationship that they describe can be denoted by this term.)
In their introduction to The Cyborg Handbook (1995, 6), Gray, Mentor, and Figueroa-Sarriera raise the question of whether “people [haven’t] always been cyborgs, at least back to the bicycle, eyeglasses, and stone hammers.” And they respond in the negative: “The answer is, in a word, no. […] In quantity, and quality, the [current relationship between human and machine] is new. Yes, it is a direct development out of [previous] human-tool and human-machine relationships, but it represents a fundamentally new stage, perhaps even culmination, of this history.” They do not explain, however, why our present relationship to machines would be “qualitatively” or “fundamentally” new. In fact, the term “culmination” suggests that the current stage of the development is not qualitatively new. At any rate, they appear to have changed their minds in the meantime: In the introduction to Modified (2020b), as noted earlier (see section 2), they use “cyborg” in a very broad manner, similar to Clark.
It is interesting to note that something of this sort is happening with the term “artificial intelligence.” As several authors have highlighted (Hofstadter, 1999, 601; Kurzweil, 2005, 265; Bostrom, 2014, 16), this label is often applied to the latest advances in computer technology, yet once these advances have become commonplace, they are not anymore considered manifestations of intelligence, but belittled as “mere calculation.”
Farquhar and Figueroa-Sarriera, by contrast, are less inclined to embrace the cyborg identity. In their essays, they surround the label with quotation or question marks and thus manifest that they are not completely comfortable with it. Indeed, in many people, as Haddow (2021) shows in great detail, the medically necessitated modification of their bodies with technology provokes an “identity crisis,” as it makes them feel not being completely human anymore. In other words, these people experience the cyborg identity not as the result of an empowering decision, but as thrust upon them by unchosen circumstances.
Incidentally, the editors of Modified, too, suggest such a narrow, identitarian understanding of “cyborg,” in tension with the broad understanding that they generally appear to favor, when they speak, in the quote given in footnote 2, of “taking on a cyborg identity.”
Lee relates that, when he once lost his smartphone, he also experienced sensations of this kind: He felt “lost,” “isolated,” “a sense of emptiness and anxiety” (Lee, 2020, 171).
See Wittes and Chong (2014) for a discussion along similar lines.
References
Adams, D. (2002). The salmon of doubt: Hitchhiking the galaxy one last time. London: Macmillan
Anonymous (2020). “Tanks, the shield of Achilles, and social cyborgs.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 46–49. New York: Routledge
Ayiter, E. (2020). “The avatars of alpha.tribe.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 34–45. New York: Routledge
Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, dangers, strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Butler, S. (2002). Erewhon. New York: Dover Publications
Case, A. (2010). “We are all cyborgs now.” Accessed December 22, 2021. https://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now
Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Clynes, M. E., & Kline, N. S. (1960). “Cyborgs and space.” Astronautics, 26–76
Farquhar, D. (2020). “‘Cyborg’ ‘mom.’” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 123–135. New York: Routledge
Figueroa-Sarriera, H. J. (2020). “Infusiones: Estampas itinerantes en mi tratamiento de cáncer.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 80–91. New York: Routledge
Gray, C. H., Figueroa-Sarriera, H. J., & Mentor, S. (Eds.). (1995). The cyborg handbook. New York: Routledge
Gray, C. H., Figueroa-Sarriera, H. J., & Mentor, S. (Eds.). (2020a). Modified: Living as a cyborg. New York: Routledge
Gray, C. H., Figueroa-Sarriera, H. J., & Mentor, S. (2020b). “‘You are a cyborg; deal with it!’: The overdetermination of cyborgization.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 1–21. New York: Routledge
Gray, C. H., Mentor, S., & Figueroa-Sarriera, H. J. (1995). “Cyborgology: Constructing the knowledge of cybernetic organisms.” In The cyborg handbook, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 1–14. New York: Routledge
Haddow, G. (2021). Embodiment and everyday cyborgs: Technologies that alter subjectivity. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Haraway, D. J. (1991). “A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century.” Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149–181). New York: Routledge
Hofstadter, D. R. (1999). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. 20th-anniversary edition with a new preface by the author. New York: Basic Books
Kubrick, S., director (1968). 2001: A space odyssey. United Kingdom/United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Penguin
Lee, H. (2020). “A mundane cyborg: The smartphone, the body, and the city.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 165–177. New York: Routledge
Lipp, B., & Dickel, S. (2022). “Interfacing the human/machine.” Distinktion, 1–19
Loughry, M. (2020). “To see with eyes unshielded: Perceiving life as a partible cyborg.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 92–100. New York: Routledge
Moe, M., & Sandler, K. (2020). “‘Don’t mess with my heart device, I’ll do it myself’: In which Karen and Marie interview each other.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 101–107. New York: Routledge
Petersen, S. (2012). “Designing people to serve.” In Robot ethics: The ethical and social implications of robotics, edited by Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George A. Bekey, 283–298. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press
Ribas, M. (2020). “Waiting for earthquakes.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 193–196. New York: Routledge
Şahinol, M. (2020). “My cyborg performance as a techno-cerebral subject.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 197–211. New York: Routledge
Sorgner, S. L. (2021). We have always been cyborgs: Digital data, gene technologies, and an ethics of transhumanism. Bristol: Bristol University Press
Totschnig, W. (2021). Reseña de Modified: Living as a Cyborg. Estudios Públicos no, 164, 155–161
Warwick, K. (2020). “Experiments with cyborg technology.” In Modified: Living as a cyborg, edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, 50–57. New York: Routledge
Wittes, B., & Chong, J. (2014). “Our cyborg future: Law and policy implications.” Accessed December 30, 2021. https://www.brookings.edu/research/our-cyborg-future-law-and-policy-implications/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Totschnig, W. Am I a Cyborg? Are You?. Philosophia 50, 2733–2742 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00573-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00573-1