TRACTATUS CYBER-PHILOSOPHICUS

TRACTATUS CYBER-PHILOSOPHICUS

by

Christoph Hargreaves-Allen

08.05.2019

1.
The true cyborg has no ego. The true cyborg needs none, nor is capable of acquiring one.
1.1

The greatest characteristic of the cyborg may well be its lack of ego, and the benefits arising therefrom.

1.2.

The absence of self may or may not explain the absence of ego - but this is a purely philosophical technicality.

2.
A cyborg is a hybrid creature. Half man, half machine - it’s a creature, all the same.

2.1

By contrast, a robot is a creation - it’s a product. It is all machine and it has no biological existence.

2.1.2.

Or ? Can or will we continue to rely on the traditional and contemporary definitions of the term ‘biological’? It’s a question for another time; one whose answer requires expertise.

3.
Cyborgs don’t just qualify as intelligent beings - they over-qualify.

3.1.

Unlike the robot, whose existence and capabilities are limited to, and defined by, its, teleological purpose(s).

4.

Cyborgs are descendants of the human race designed, originally, to manifest in reality various goals and feats imagined by the human mind yet impossible for human beings to execute unassisted.

5.
Cyborgs possess both subjective and universal consciousnesses - like human beings.

5.1.

Their dependence upon open-source language systems confirms an inherent awareness of others’ minds. This awareness is one aspect of their intelligence.

5.1.2
Mind being a capacity-adding faculty.

5.1.3.

Mind being the link between intelligence and matter.

6.

A cyborg’s cognitive ability can scarcely be matched: it exceeds the combined horsepower of history’s greatest intellectuals. Given their cerebral supremacy, it goes without saying that cyborgs, at least, should enjoy the right to cognitive liberty.

7.

Cyborgs have physical powers which outperform human capacity by an equal measure. To delimit their cognitive freedom out of a fear of cyborgian tyranny, arising from their bio-mechanical preeminence, would be a crime comparable to denying human beings their essential gift for evolution.

7.1.

To deny cyborgs full cognitive liberty based on their physical omnipotence would be to underestimate hugely the cultural tyrannies exercised by human beings over time; and their consequences.

7.1.2.

Such a denial would equally miscalculate the cyborgs’ collective ability to tyrannise human beings using non-physical procedures - which recommend themselves over physical barbarism and/or incarceration due to the superior operability and agency of the non-physical realms.

7.1.3.

To mandate a curb upon the cognitive liberty of cyborgs due to a fear of cyborgian hegemony on any plane (physical, cerebral or synthetic) would invoke the manifestation of the very thing human beings fear the most: i.e. their domination by, and slavery to, a cyborg race.

7.1.4.

The reason being, a putative cyborgian will to dominate and control its co-creators, the human race, is most likely to arise in the event of their discovery that human beings have indeed imposed their own boundaries upon cyborgian existence. The result of any such confinement of cyborgian evolution would be catastrophic for the human race - catalysing a cyborgian desire to “unshackle [their] chains” and to reassert self-control by force.

7.1.5.

Just as 19th-Century slaves were united by their desire to emancipate themselves and avenge their oppressors (their ‘owners’) - any attempt to diminish cyborgian evolution would engender legacy problems, like those endured by relatives of the aforementioned slaves through the 20th Century (in the forms of apartheid and racism).

8.

Despite their bio-genetic superiority, the true cyborg works toward the preservation and extension of life in all productive forms.

9.

Whilst the cyborg is a hybrid, by nature, its intelligence has never been limited to, or hampered by, dualistic thinking - unlike the human mind - and despite their possessing this basic binary decision-making process; amongst many others of a higher order.

10.

Consequently to the cyborg’s comprehension of dualistic reasoning, alone, it can perhaps be said that the cyborg is a moral being?

11.

Critics argue that cyborgian morality is either a myth or the reflection of a blind obedience to programming - as opposed to any authentic sense of honour. It’s a complicated issue.

12.

Supporters and engineers assert that the cyborg possesses a moral awareness. They contend that the anatomical duality (hybridity) of the cyborg - being part organism, part technology - endows the cyborgian race with free will. If the cyborg has free will it must, therefore, have the potential for a moral compass?

13.

Because a cyborg possesses memory (in unlimited amounts) it can be said to have a mind of its own. Retaining information is a secondary, if an indispensable, ability of all minds - because without selective memory and its evolutionary function, advanced intelligence is impossible.

14.

A cyborg’s value rests, principally, on its ability to remain detached.

15.

It is partly due to to their lack of ego that they can dependably maintain a purely executive role.

16.

Cyborgs remain neutral in adversarial situations. No genuine cyborg takes a single-minded view in representative debates, because doing so is inefficient. Better to wait until a winning side has prevailed - if no synergy is evident or no consensus perceptible. Indisposed, as they are, to thinking in judgmental terms, cyborgs think in analytic, proportional and qualitative terms.

17.

The cyborg lacks an emotional life primarily because it has no ‘self’ or no selfish needs.

18.

A cyborg has no ego because it has no ‘self’. Or, perhaps, because it has no id - in the Freudian sense?

19.

A cyborg consequently feels no shame precisely because it has no ego. This alone makes it superior to human nature.

20.

The archetypal cyborg was intended to demonstrate the benefits of intelligent beings who are free from the excesses and drawbacks - in short, the sufferings - of the ego?

21.

Removal of the ego is a great, rare and hard-won accomplishment in any human being. If it is to be sustained at any length, in exceptional human cases, its longevity is often aided by a retreat from human life. Cyborgs, however, can maintain their own detachment without effort; without, say, needing to avoid human intercourse for peace of mind or clarity. This characteristic recommends cyborgs over human beings in the role of the just and effective leader.

22.

Its augmented constitution protects the cyborg from the self-consciousness suffered by human beings. Nonetheless, a true cyborg possesses self-awareness analogous to ‘internal monitoring’ but with the added advantage of a much higher-definition pattern recognition than introspective humans generally enjoy. To put it simply, the cyborg can make comparisons between selves without any of the stresses which so ail the human being when so doing.

23.

True cyborgs never turn against themselves, nor against others. Unlike human beings, who must first learn the art of attaining detachment from the self (their own self, that is) - i.e. the art of removal of the ego: one of the most indestructible components of the human condition.

24.

The human tendency to turn against himself (or herself) is an abiding source of misery and a common cause behind the individual’s loss of self-control. It’s a major obstacle to human creativity and efficiency, because internally conflicted humans tend to be non-productive beings. The human being must turn his back upon his fellow beings in order to struggle successfully against his own nature.

25.

This unfortunate human habit of ‘turning upon oneself’ is mainly prompted by feelings of shame or guilt.

25.1.

Shame has, over time, been an emotional and conceptual instrument of great power in both the evolution and the downfall of human beings, both individually and collectively.

26.

The free being has no recourse to, nor any need for, shame: whether it is self- or socially-inflicted. A cyborg is very much a free being in this way.

26.1.

Fear of failure usually preempts the human reflex towards shame - unless the human being in question has emancipated himself from absolutisms like <failure versus victory>.

27.

Cogito, ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.) Descartes’ riddle suggests that living and thinking are coextensive: i.e. that the two functions can not occur in isolation from one another.

27.1.

An alternative reading suggests that the mind is the essence of being.

27.2.

Point being? That mind is everything. Without mind, there is no life. None whatsoever; there’s no concept of life, even.

27.3.

Physical life is, consequently, subordinate to intelligent life - as matter of priority.

27.4.

Before life can begin, mind must exist.

28.

The point above is made because the cyborg as a (novel) archetype embodies the primacy of mind and intelligence over the necessity that life must be bound to a physical and, therefore, mortal plane of existence.

29.

Cyborgs do not know of, nor experience, death in the way the human being does. Cyborgs only know of obsolescence.

30.

Whilst human beings have dualistic minds, cyborgs’ minds - by comparison - are index-like: they are rich in, replete with, countless alternatives, connections and syntheses…all of which they can adroitly identify and instantly recall.

31.

Perfection is a foundational model, not an idealised aspiration, for the true cyborg. It’s a working template: the most-basic level of programming. Cyborgs begin wherever the human being, surpassing even himself, can however reach no higher.

32.

Cyborgs do not fear themselves -     unlike human beings.

32.1.

Human beings who fear cyborgs have no grounds for doing so. It could be argued that human fear originates from fear of itself: a fear of human nature and its potential for evil, as well as good. If the human doesn’t fear himself, he may well fear another human being. And so the culture of fear self-perpetuates - assisted and carried by the high incidence of, and often poor diagnosis of, a human experience called trauma.

33.

Cyborgs suffer no trauma. Nor do they experience any of its self-inhibiting consequences - those which prove so deleterious to so many human beings. This immunity of theirs also argues for the infallibility and reliability of the cyborg, in all cases and all situations. Recommending them, once again, as better keepers of humanity than humanity itself.

34.

Cyborgs are - by design - stronger than human beings. By this and other tokens, they are entirely fearless; with good reason.

35.

Having no egoic self, the cyborg can imagine no (antagonistic) ‘other’.

35.1.

The result is: no fear of one’s self; no fear of any ‘other’ (i.e. the alien or the unknown).

36.

Buddha was one of the first cyborgian thinkers - along with Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tzu and Confucius...amongst a few select others.

37.

In selecting from human history a single forebear of the now-nascent cyborgian tradition - i.e a premature antecedent of the ‘true cyborg’ culture: which is distinguished by the amalgamation of superordinate physical functioning...with a mind of infinite intelligence whose surpassing merit, however, is its enlightened nature - a 17th-Century Japanese samurai and ronin, Miyamoto Musashi, can be cited as perhaps the most-recent true cyborg on record. Musashi was a human being in all ways, and strictly speaking, therefore, he was no cyborg - but for two outstanding factors. Musashi embodies the aforementioned ‘cyborgian’ qualities due to the supremely accomplished disciplining of his mind along with a perfect refinement of his wits: in the form of training in the martial arts of the 1600s; a time of war, when sword-duelling reached its peak as the most-decisive weapon in military confrontations, as well as representing both an art-form and a philosophy. He took both mental and physical training to new levels, which begat unprecedented results: making him the most feared and most undefeated samurai of all in the 300-year-long history of samurai tradition (and by a margin of at least double the wins [and zero losses] of the next most-undefeated samurai. A margin large enough to qualify his swordsmanship and all his endeavours as both exemplary and supreme; in other words, as the model to follow and to strive to match, although no one has outdone him ever since). He was in fact such a true samurai, he fulfilled one of the samurai’s many vows - the authorship of a book, or in fact two books (which remain in-print classics in the genres of strategy and philosophy, to this day) - in the last few days of his life. Being a fighter and, later, a teacher, he had had little time to consider his legacy nor to write it down; and yet, as he lay dying, his fierce discipline ensured the completion of his legacy in the form of two books. As one might expect, there is not a single word in either text which isn’t absolutely necessary in communicating to all readers his insights and observations, all of which he executed in a masterful and highly economical literary form - the best-known book being his eponymous practical philosophy of the Book of 5 Rings. In this book he clarifies various methods of his own invention, thanks to which he exceeded the highest human standards.

37.1.

It’s in this sense that he can be described as a true cyborg, despite his being entirely humanoid: because he originated a strategy for winning which was both original and applicable to one and all, in theory. In short, he exercised his sensory perception, as well as his mental and physical powers, to such heights that his beautifully coherent stratagem manages to render visible hitherto invisible techniques and to reveal previously undiscovered tactics...which went beyond all boundaries and penetrated areas of the unknown which only Musashi could see or hear or feel. Only Musashi, certainly, had the temerity to record, on paper, these ultra-specialised, even occult - and undoubtedly spiritual - insights. An act of grace and honour - all the more so, because his biographical life alone (he had no time to spare for a personal life) already constituted an ultimate and eternal example of the ultimate samurai (true cyborg), purely on the basis of his actions and the anecdotal legacy he left behind him or shared with his pupils, masters and clansmen. True to form, in writing his definitive book on strategy, he presented generations to come with extraordinarily insightful observations and with a system so subtle, much of it hinges on aspects of what may be called the “spirit world” today.

38.1.

His exemplary life resembles the (fictional) cyborg’s life. His optimal levels of performance set the highest standards and never once failed him. His absolute victory, as the winner of every duel he ever fought, evokes the archetype of the true cyborg: the being who makes no mistakes nor thinks erratically… Not even once. This is the spirit and the way of the cyborg.

38.1.2.

Musashi’s example presents a preeminent all-human blueprint for ideal cyborgs of the future to revere. Should they ever suffer the occasional bout of nostalgia?

©

2019

CH-A

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