“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives”. Anthony Robbins
Abstract
Our technologies have enabled us to change both the world and our perceptions of the world, as well as to change ourselves and to find new ways to fulfil the human desire for improvement and for having new capacities. The debate around using technology for human enhancement has already raised many ethical concerns, however little research has been done in how human enhancement can affect human communication. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether some human enhancements could change our shared lifeworld so radically that human communication as we know it would not be possible any longer. After exploring the kinds of communication problems we are concerned with as well as mentioning some possible enhancement interventions that could bring about such problems, we will address some of the ethical implications that follow from these potential communication problems. We argue that because of the role that communication plays in human society, this issue deserves attention.
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Notes
The term has been used widely by Habermas (1987) as the set of skills, competencies, knowledge and perceptions used by humans in order to negotiate their way through everyday life, that is to say by interacting with other people, understanding and manipulating their environments (physical and social) and themselves, differentiating distinct entities and events in the world, and ultimately creating and maintaining meaningful social relationships (Habermas 1987).
We can imagine what would be like for me to behave as a bat, but not what it is like for a bat to be a bat (Nagel 1974). In that sense we are restricted to our biological and historical resources, and as such it is beyond our ability to conceive what it is like to be a bat.
There would be of course still be private experiences that are accessible to only a particular individual, but we are concerned with the type of facts that we qua humans can have access to in general terms, and which are as such not limited to one’s own individual private experiences of the world.
We might have partial understanding of certain facts, but not the kind of understanding that would be needed for meaningful human communication. However, up to certain level of meaning we could try to develop concepts that could be used to explain the objective facts of the world we live in.
Wittgeinstein also uses the case of feeling pain as an experience in which in principle we can imagine someone else’s pain on the model of our own experience of pain. Although he also pointed out that this is already not an easy thing to do since “I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do feel” (1953: 101). So even though one can empathize with someone else’s pain one still would not be able to experience that person’s pain (we can think for instance that they might be more sensitive to pain than I am or a difference like that).
In this paper Jackson uses the case of Mary who knows everything about the science of colour but has never actually ‘experienced’ seeing colours because she is forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor.
For instance these people could lead nocturnal lifestyles without having to depend on special infrastructure.
If a few humans were enhanced with a new sense perhaps the situation would be more like this than like the blind in our society.
Humans have also external devices that enable them to processes sound information in an analogous form to bat’s echolocation (e.g. sonar technology).
Interestingly, Thaler and colleagues note that in early blind echolocation experts, the visual cortex is activated in response to auditory stimuli.
In addition, partial understanding might be necessary but not sufficient for the type of meaningful communication that is needed in certain spheres of human communication.
Some researchers have argued that epilectic individuals with seizures in certain areas of the brain can have intense, spiritual experiences and bursts of creativity (Ramachandran and Blakeslee 1999).
Sacks’s has already put them to the test about their understanding of simple calculations such as multiplication or division of which they seem to have none. However, they had divided spontaneously “a compound number into three equal parts”.
For instance, generally we believe that human beings see with their eyes; however, it does not matter which sense someone is using to gather data, rather it is how the brain interprets it what counts (“you don’t see with your eyes, you see with your brain” (Bach-y-Rita and Kercel 2003).
Neurostimulation have already been used beyond just improving mood and mental function in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders, into enhancing certain features in normal people (Snyder et al. 2003).
The computer game industry, for example funds many brain-computer interfaces designed to enable users to directly control their avatars in “virtual worlds” (Waters 2008). Other relevant non-medical arenas for the use of BCI are the automotive, telecommunication and robotics industries (F. Berger et al. 2008).
For a case portraying this view see http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovation/ethics-in-the-age-of-acceleration/2012/07/13/gJQAzVDUiW_story.html.
Presumably we can try to come up with ways to translate different experiences in order to communicate to others experiences that otherwise they cannot experience. But this takes us to Nagels point in which I might reach a partial understanding that is good enough to reach certain level of communication, but the more ones share lifeworld diverge from others the more likely meaningful communication would be impaired.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper received constructive comments from Dr. Kiran Donaghe and from participants attending the seminar in the Centre of Applied Ethics in Linkoping, as well as those attending the Darmstadt 2010 S.NET conference. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments which helped to considerably improve the quality of the manuscript.
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Cabrera, L., Weckert, J. Human Enhancement and Communication: On Meaning and Shared Understanding. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 1039–1056 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9395-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9395-2