Humanity’s In-Betweenness: Towards a Prehistory of Cyborg Life

Abstract

This chapter considers several dimensions of humanity’s “in-betweenness,” starting from the historical roots of the idea in Western theology, philosophy, and science. A fundamental distinction is highlighted between “human” as a continuous property and as a discrete entity. The former focuses on the human as a state of being into and out of which something might pass, whereas the latter focuses on being human as a state that something is or is not at a given moment. Both conceptualizations of the human bear on the construction and significance of the Turing Test, which aims to distinguish a human from a computer simply based on responses to questions posed by a human. Usually, the Turing Test is seen as selecting the computer as non-human, but it may be redeployed to select the computer as human. This latter prospect is dubbed “Turing Test 2.0” and explored in the rest of the chapter, especially in terms of the figure of the cyborg, which has passed from cybernetics through science fiction to the lived experience of an increasing number of beings. Implied in Turing Test 2.0 is “judgement” on how a candidate might count as human. Here, foundational questions about the ontology of art are applied to understand the requisite sense of judgement involved. In the modern period, these have tended to undermine any strong connection between a work’s origin and its value. In the spirit of Turing Test 2.0, they oppose “cishumanity,” namely, the notion that one must be born human to be human.

We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

Norbert Wiener [1, p. 96]

The author would like to thank the Käte Hamburger Kolleg in Aachen, Germany, where he spent academic year 2021/2022. Specifically, he wishes to thank Aleksandra Lukaszewicz, Ana Maria Guzman Olmos, Amanda Boetzkes, and Cheryce von Xylander for various provocations that influenced the shape of this piece. Sections 3 and 4 extend two blogposts related to a workshop I organized at the Kolleg in May 2022, entitled ‘Getting the Measure of Humanity’: https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/2022/01/17/2086/2086/ and https://khk.rwth-aachen.de/2022/05/10/3243/3243/. Section 4 also draws on Fuller [2].