|
A peer-reviewed
electronic journal published by the Institute
for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 19(1)
– September 2008 |
The Invention of Man: A Response to C. S. Lewis’s The
Abolition of Man
Gregory E. Jordan
University of South Florida
Journal of Evolution and Technology -
Vol. 19 Issue 1 – September 2008 - pgs 35-41
http://jetpress.org/v19/jordan.htm
Abstract
In his famous
essay, “The Abolition of Man,” C. S. Lewis argued that the use of science and
technology to modify the human mind would destroy humanity. Some of the
concerns Lewis raised are philosophically profound: Is it desirable for humans
to modify their minds, and if so, in what ways? By what principles should such
profound self-shaping be guided? Will “post-humanity” be freer or more
enslaved? Is manipulating the core nature of humanity even rational? Since this
essay was first written, it seems all the more likely that humans will someday
have the ability to modify motivation, not by Lewis’s “eugenics,” “pre-natal
conditioning,” and “education and propaganda based on a perfect applied
psychology,” but by applied neuroscience, drugs, computerized implants,
brain-machine interfaces, mind uploading, nanoscale devices, and other advanced
technologies. This essay examines the issue of modifying motivations and
answers some of Lewis’s concerns.
This above all: to thine own self be true.
William
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Act 1, Scene 3
In his essay, “The Abolition
of Man,” C. S. Lewis (Lewis 1943) wrote about the use of science and technology
to modify the human mind. In particular, he considered the possibility that
human beings in the future would be able to shape and modify their own minds
into any form they desired. He argued that humans who exercised such power
would destroy themselves and the rest of humanity. Since this essay was written
in 1943, it seems even more likely that humans will someday have the ability to
shape their own minds, not through “eugenics,” “pre-natal conditioning,” and
“education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology,” as Lewis
thought, but rather through an applied neuroscience, drugs, computerized
implants, brain-machine interfaces, mind uploading, nanoscale devices, or other
advanced technologies.
The issues that concerned C.
S. Lewis, then, are still of concern to us today. Is it desirable for humans to
develop and apply methods for altering their own minds, and if so, in what
ways? By what principles should such profound self-shaping be guided? Will
“post-humanity” be freer or more enslaved? Is manipulating the core nature of
humanity even rational? In order to think about this more clearly, let us
imagine that neuroscience has been perfected and the human mind is perfectly
understood in every detail. A technology has been developed which allows every
aspect of the mind to be modified in any way that is desired and physically
possible. Now human beings can remove, add, or change any aspect of their
minds, including their own motivations.
Motivations, in the
cognitive psychological sense, may be considered the physical mechanisms or
neural pathways by which instincts, drives, desires, wants, or needs predispose
an organism to certain thoughts or behaviors under the right circumstances.
(The terminology for these things must be loose because the biology underlying
these phenomena is still being investigated.) Motivations may be distinguished
from emotions, emotional states, moods, and beliefs, or cognitive perceptions
or conceptions about states of affairs.
Motivations are not
rationalizations for behavior; such rationalizations may arise alongside of, or
even after, behavior (Dennett 2003). In a sense, motivations pre-exist rational
calculation or even consciousness; they are the foundation of reason, since
reason facilitates the fulfilment of motivations. They are also the foundation
of our values, since feelings about what is valuable are related to our
motives. If the rational application of human instrumental power depends upon
pre-existing motivations, we discover a problem in trying to use those
pre-existing motivations to change themselves.
Upon what basis could we
judge the value of our own motivations when our value judgments depend upon
pre-existing motivations? Self-reference in determining values short-circuits
the process of evaluating modifications to one’s own motivations. The total
power to shape one’s own motivations exposes the lack of an independent
framework of purpose from which to do so.
The final stage
is come when Man . . . has obtained
full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to
surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have “taken the thread
of life out of the hand of Clotho” and be henceforth free to make our species
whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely
will have won it?. . . They are the motivators, the creators of motives. But
how are they going to be motivated? . . . However far they go back, or down,
they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at
once petitio. (Lewis 1943, n.p.)
Is it reasonable at all to
suppose that we would want to modify our motivations, even if we had the power?
Perhaps motivations would be blank with regard to themselves, just as the
brain, the seat of sensation, is unable to sense itself. Motivations might have
a sort of inertia so that those who come into the power to modify them will
nevertheless preserve them, continuing on the same trajectory as before.
However, in line with the
inertia analogy, objects continue on a straight path only if they are not acted
upon by another force. There are always other forces acting upon our
motivations. First of all, our motivations act upon each other. A single human
mind possesses many motivations, and these can obstruct or contradict or
compete with each other. Then there are the forces of other minds – society,
and the forces of the general environment of the mind, including everything
from the cosmos to the mind’s own embodiment.
Imagine a very
non-controversial example: a person who likes to eat chocolate. Suppose that he
wishes that he did not want to eat chocolate – a clash between two motivations
in one person. Or, suppose that his friends try to talk him into not eating
chocolate – that is, society attempts to mould his motivation. Or suppose that
the store shelves are empty of chocolate – that is, that the environment
decisively blocks the fulfilment of his motivation. For any of these reasons,
this person could in theory be convinced to modify his motivations so that he
did not like to eat chocolate any more. But would this be the right thing for
him to do? On what basis could he judge between his own motivations, or between
his own motivations, on the one hand, and what would be more conformable to
society or the environment, on the other hand?
This example is fairly
innocuous in comparison to the many other possible applications of
mind-modification. For example, if mind-modification were possible, some people
might eliminate their motivations to commit crimes and anti-social acts, which
we might regard as a welcome development. Or frighteningly, some people might
make themselves more lacking in compassion or concern for others’ welfare. And
yet in either case, our value judgments about these modifications to
motivations would draw upon our pre-existing motivations. Those pre-existing
motivations may be considered provisional, artificial constructions, because
they can be changed at will.
Lewis argued that there were
only two things which could possibly guide those who possessed the power to
change their own motivations: (1) temporary “survivals, in their own minds” of
the Tao, or (2) irrational impulses
and whims. By the Tao Lewis referred
vaguely to notions of natural law and universal morality which, he supposed,
should be self-evidently rational and valid.
In the Tao itself, as long as we remain
within it, we find the concrete reality in which to participate is to be truly
human: the real common will and common reason of humanity, alive, and growing
like a tree, and branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties
and dignities of application. While we speak from within the Tao we can speak of Man having power
over himself in a sense truly analogous to an individual's self-control. (Lewis
1943, n.p.)
Lewis described the Tao as “objective value” and conscience
apart from instinct. It was supposed to be the common heritage of humanity, but
nevertheless, as “the mystery of humanity,” it needed to be taught to children
by teachers who would encourage some motivations and weaken others. To
illustrate the Tao more concretely,
Lewis sketched a universal code of behavior, including such things as
benevolence, justice, veracity, mercy, and so on.
There are no doubt commonalities
among human cultures along those lines, but there are also many differences
among human cultures, and cultures can change over time. Lewis regarded the Tao as self-evidently real and decisive,
so he did not really claim to need to prove its existence or value. Because
Lewis provided no evidence for its existence and its specific values, it is
difficult for us to see the Tao as a
foundation for judging motivations.
Nevertheless, there is a
certain attraction in Lewis’s notion of looking outside ourselves for a
foundation, if no foundation seems to be present in our minds. Lewis’s solution
was to be “truly human” by participating in shared human values, the “mystery
of humanity.” If there is a discernible set of shared values among human
beings, these could serve to guide the modification, if any, of motivations.
But if these shared values arise from human nature and the natural environments
of human beings, then following them is arbitrary submission to nature. As
Lewis noted of those with the power to modify motivations, “If they accept [the Tao], then they are no longer the makers of
conscience but still its subjects, and their final conquest over Nature has not
really happened” (Lewis 1943, n.p.). In fact, Lewis regarded the preservation
of Tao in such a circumstance as
“confusion.”
The second possible guide to
modifying motivations, according to Lewis, would be pure impulsiveness. He
notes, for example, that “those who stand outside all judgments of value cannot
have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the
emotional strength of that impulse” (Lewis 1943, n.p.). The mind decides to act
by deciding among weighted inner motivations, so for Lewis, the motivation for
action of those who have the power to change their motivations, and who reject
the Tao, must rest in the
pre-rational selection of motivations by their “felt emotional weight at a
given moment.” However, the criteria for determining the emotional strength of
impulses come from pre-existing motivations. This ground for preferring one
impulse to another, then, cannot “stand outside all judgments of value.”
The motivations of an
individual’s mind are what they are because of all the factors that shaped that
individual’s mind, from the individual’s remotest ancestors and their
environments, down through that individual’s embodiment and experiences since
conception. When we look behind our natural motivations, we see an infinite
regress of deeply complex causations. So motivations have a history and a
reason for being the way they are, but this in itself is no help in evaluating
those motivations, because value judgments depend upon pre-existing
motivations. We do not even have grounds for judging our impulses “irrational”
since they could only be judged so by reference to purposeful action.
For Lewis, human
self-manipulation at the most intimate levels of mind would require the
reduction of all of humanity to “raw material.”
It is in Man's
power to treat himself as a mere “natural object” and his own judgements of value
as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will. The objection to
his doing so does not lie in the fact that this point of view (like one's first
day in a dissecting room) is painful and shocking till we grow used to it. The
pain and the shock are at most a warning and a symptom. The real objection is
that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be:
not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by
mere appetite, that is, mere Nature . . . (Lewis 1943, n.p.)
The phrase which vexed Lewis
at the beginning of his essay, man’s
conquest of nature, sets up a distinction between human beings and the rest
of nature, which is untenable for true naturalism. If we accept that human
beings are natural beings, arising from nature and part of it, then man’s conquest of nature is an
incoherent statement. Even if we understood “nature” here as that part of
nature which can be distinguished from “man” in the sense of an individual
human being, control of nature still could not include control of one’s self.
Control of one’s own mind would only make sense if there were parts of the mind
which could be distinguished as “man” from other parts of the mind, parts which
would be “not man” or “less man.” Thus it may be possible to suppose, according
to Lewis’s argument, that humans could possess impulses and motivations which
are less distinctively human, less worthy of humanity – impulses and
motivations contrary to the Tao.
It is clear, then, that
Lewis saw the possession of a particular set of values as an authentic and
indispensable criterion for humanness. For Lewis, accessing the power to modify
one’s own motivations was abandoning one’s own human nature. Those who would do
so
. . . have
sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote
themselves to the task of deciding what “Humanity” shall henceforth mean.
“Good” and “bad,” applied to them, are words without content; for it is from
them that the content of these words is henceforth to be derived. . . . It is not that they are bad men. They
are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void.
. . . Their subjects . . . are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final
conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man. (Lewis 1943, n.p.)
Ironically, according to
Lewis and his followers, it was by preserving natural human nature (and its
distinctive values and motivations) that human beings should fend off their
transformation by nature into undesirable forms and states.
In one sense, Lewis and his
followers were right that the power
to modify our minds, including our motivations, would not help us to make
decisions about what is authentic about us, whether we should like ourselves,
or if so, what parts, and what would constitute beneficial or maleficent
changes to ourselves. In fact, the power to modify our minds would only give us
the ability to change ourselves according to the terms by which we understand
ourselves and our qualities, either to modify ourselves (by changing our
dispensable features) or to destroy ourselves (by changing our indispensable
features). The terms by which we understand ourselves and our qualities arise
in turn from the nature of our minds at a particular point in time, since our
minds are complex systems and confluences of external influences.
The state of a mind is an
open, complex, dynamic system embedded in the rest of nature, and the sense of
self, including notions about what is indispensable about it, depends upon the
specific state of the mind. Thus, we are prepared to see our notions of what is
natural and what is human as contingent phenomena of nature,
arising in particular states of mind. There is no need for “seeing through
things for ever,” as Lewis writes, because when intention reaches instrumental
power over itself, it has indeed come to its foundation, or at least, its
source.
Control over one’s own mind
does not so much create a feedback loop as expose and tighten one that already
exists – the feedback loop between forces within the mind that give rise to a
state of that mind, including consciousness and a sense of self, and also the
feedback loop between that mind and everything outside of it, from its physical
embodiment to the most distant reaches in space and time of the cosmos. The
difference between a circuit and a short-circuit depends upon what sort of loop
one wants.
There are frames of
reference which do not depend upon irrational impulses, or a mystical Tao, and which do not necessarily lead
to self-destruction (in the way in which one understands one’s self).
Self-knowledge and world-knowledge could enable a state of mind to make wiser
and more coherent decisions about self-modification than it would make if it
took into account only momentary impulses or a limited subset of authentic
human nature. A knower of this sort could be “true to itself” and possess
integrity because it would draw upon an understanding of its whole self and its
context in the whole cosmos.
By applying human reasoning,
we are able to come to understand more of ourselves than a momentary impulse
and more of our environment than what is perceived immediately before us. We
can grasp a deeper sense of ourselves, extending in time and encompassing our
entire natures; we can also grasp a broader sense of the world around us and
our fellow human beings. Knowledge about the self and knowledge about the
cosmos, including that knowledge which we acquire by the assistance of our
fellow human beings, can extend the framework of our decisions about modifying
our own minds.
If we made our decisions
about modification in the context of understanding our entire minds, then we
would draw upon more than our momentary impulses. If we understood the mind as
all of its motivations and characteristics and components, not only in the
present moment, but also in the past (as in the remembering, narrative self)
and in the future (as in rational calculations of possibilities) – however we
may harmonize its disparate elements – then our decisions could draw upon a
wholeness of self. The same goes with an understanding of the world around us,
including the insights of other human beings.
Returning to the example of
the person who likes to eat chocolate – he could make a decision about changing
his motivation based on profound, comprehensive self-knowledge, about why he
likes chocolate, how he likes chocolate, what role this desire has played in
his past life, and what role it might play in his future life. Such a decision
could also be based on profound, comprehensive knowledge of the world,
including the nature of chocolate, how his desire for chocolate evolved, what
functions this desire has or might serve, what social meaning and consequences
his desire for chocolate may have, what effect it might have on the
environment, and so on. Equipped with such knowledge and self-knowledge, this
person could be better guided in deciding to modify his desire for chocolate.
Nevertheless, one thing
seems clear – that the precise state of mind at the moment a decision is made
about whether or not to modify one’s self and how to modify one’s self if so,
would be uniquely critical. Everything that would follow from a process of
self-modification would depend upon that initial condition. Technology might
allow one to restore some changes to their initial state, but whether or not
there would be motivation for doing so would depend upon the changes made. It
would be easy to imagine that such changes could have undesirable effects (from
the vantage point of the initial condition) if the initial state of mind
applied insufficient knowledge.
Perfect self-knowledge in
real-time, like omniscience about the rest of the universe, may be physically
impossible, but what better knowledge would allow one to do would be to make
more authentic, integral determinations of one’s own motivations and the
contexts of those motivations. It is precisely when our humanity is not a “mystery” that we can make
informed, appropriate judgments about ourselves and how to act with regard to
ourselves. Far from being “a basilisk
which kills what it sees and only sees by killing,” as Lewis described science,
scientific understanding of the human mind and the universe at large enables
human beings to better discern their own values and the context in which those
values have meaning, and applied science and technology provide humans the
opportunity to realize those values.
It should be possible for
human beings to modify their own minds in such a way as to increase whatever
motivations or characteristics they believe are distinctively “human” or
indispensable to themselves as they wish to be. In this sort of feedback loop,
one might expect amplification. Humans’
ability to modify their own minds might allow them to become more human, that is, possess to a more
notable degree whatever characteristics they consider distinctively human. The
term superhuman would be an apt
description of the result, not in the vainglorious sense, but in the precise
sense that the superhuman would be more deeply characterized by human motives
and human qualities. For example, if benevolence is an indispensable human
characteristic, as Lewis suggested, then a human who could modify himself could
make himself more benevolent, and thus more human.
There are no easy answers to
what humans should want to become or what humans should value about themselves.
Humans have been working on these questions for thousands of years. The
approach of mind-modification technologies does not give us a direction;
rather, it conveys the urgency for us to pick a direction, because a decision
can no longer be delayed, and the consequences may truly be everlasting.
In this essay, I have
deliberately avoided discussing Lewis’s dark vision of an elite group of
“Conditioners” who use a technology of modifying minds to enslave the rest of
humanity. I do not wish to mount here an extensive critique of Lewis’s point
that “man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men
over other men with Nature as its instrument.” However, I would observe that it
is precisely self-knowledge, made possible by sciences of the mind, that may
someday enable human beings to analyze their desire for power over one another.
Although it may be too
optimistic to presume that this knowledge will inevitably result in greater
mutual understanding and social harmony, surely this knowledge will affect the
dynamic play of motivations within human beings. Self-knowledge will be a
factor and it will be taken into consideration.
Humans may not be so anxious
to dominate each other if the origins of such desires are laid bare as
primitive, irrational survivals of innate tendencies to ruthless competition
over rank, tendencies which may once have served a useful evolutionary purpose,
but which may no longer serve our purposes. The overall trend of history, as FM-2030 (1970, 1973) illustrated, is
toward more nonviolence, peace, tolerance, mutual understanding, mutual
respect, and freedom. It may be that, ever since they acquired modern
intelligence, human beings have been moving ever closer to an accommodation of
one another, a rapprochement based on intelligently-realized mutual benefit. If
that is the case, more scientific analysis and applied technology could
accelerate this trend.
Is humans’ present, relative
inability to modify themselves their most human characteristic? Is the
reluctance by some today to modify themselves the highest human value? If human nature is to mean anything, it
must surely refer to the actual natures of human beings, who typically desire
to be free from many of their limitations so they can become happier. It is not
the sciences of the mind and technologies for modifying the mind that would
most likely lead to the extinction of the human nature that we value. Rather,
it is the relinquishment of progress in those sciences and technologies of the
mind that would more likely result in the extinction of human nature and all
its hopes and dreams, a true “abolition of man.”
The English word invent comes from a Latin word meaning find, and it is by finding ourselves,
that is, by discerning our natures for the very first time, that we can acquire
not only the power but also the wisdom to bring out the potential of what is
best in ourselves. We can choose to make a leap – not into a Void, but rather
into ourselves and into the fullness of the world unveiled by our
investigations. And we can make this leap together, holding each other’s hands.
References
Dennett, D. C. Freedom evolves. 2003. New York: Viking
Penguin.
FM-2030 (F. M. Esfandiary). 1970. Optimism one: The emerging radicalism.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
FM-2030 (F. M. Esfandiary). 1973. Up-wingers: A futurist manifesto. New
York: The John Day Company.
Lewis, C. S. 1943. The abolition of man. 1943.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm
(posted March 6, 2002).