The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness beyond the Brain (review)

This is a highly readable and thought-provoking book. Pepperell's research is extensive and covers many quite disparate disciplines such as art, technology, culture, history and religious politics. All these are relevant to the posthuman condition.

Just what is meant by posthuman? Briefly, three rather different notions apply to posthumanism. Firstly, it means the end or demise of "humanism." Secondly, it embraces a new way of understanding that which constitutes being human. Thirdly, it "refers to the general convergence of biology and technology to the point where they are becoming indistinguishable" (p. iv). The book expands and carefully investigates these definitions. The questions asked are profound, and the answers provided, in some cases speculative, delve into the deepest and most sacred beliefs of the waning humanist epoch.

The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness beyond the Brain is challenging, and for stalwart, recalcitrant humanists I think it will be most confronting. Pepperell is not a fanatic, nor is he a table-thumping techno-evangelist. In fact, his approach is gentle, perhaps somewhat understated. I was delighted in reading this book not to have to endure the over-enthusiastic, overly sensationalized techno-hype that is evident in quite a few books dealing with cyborgs, trans-humanism and Extropianism. The lack of techno-hype and pseudo-scientific jargon tends to belie the extreme importance and relevance of Pepperell's work.

This is not a manual for building intelligent robots nor a primer for creating a conscious (of self) artificial intelligent entity. I believe, however, that anyone who does not embrace the fundamental concepts outlined in this book will never create such entities. AI researchers generally have grossly underestimated the complexity, essential embodiment and interconnectedness with the environment of complex dynamical systems (ants, humans, plants). Hence the failure to produce anything except apparently smart machines. There are exceptions to this ignorance (and arrogance), such as the work of Brooks et al. at M.I.T. [1], whose work I have also drawn on and cited extensively in my own research [2].

The Moody Blues created an album in 1969 entitled On the Threshold of a Dream; Pepperell's book is about emerging from such a threshold into the reality of a new epoch—the posthuman. Elements of this dream are an understanding of existence without the fear and prejudice perpetrated by religious dogma, a holistic interconnectedness of all living things (including this planet), and the possibility of subsuming the life-destroying humanist worldview (humans as the measure and pinnacle of all things) that has brought us towards the brink of extinction. This book advocates nothing less than a major paradigmatic shift in our understanding of existence.

The book has an extensive bibliography and eight chapters; Appendix II contains "The Posthuman Manifesto." The chapter titles give the prospective reader a good idea of the scope of Pepperell's investigation: 1. Consciousness, Humans and Complexity; 2. Science, Knowledge and Energy; 3. Order and Disorder, Continuity and Discontinuity; 4. Being, Language and Thought; 5. Art, Aesthetics and Creativity; 6. Automating Creativity; 7. Synthetic Beings; 8. What Is Posthumanism?

Chapter 5, especially the section discussing good and bad art, seems somewhat ineffectual compared with the rest of the book. I found Pepperell's notion of "aesthetically stimulating" and "aesthetically neutral" art unconvincing (pp. 103-106). This section could perhaps have been replaced with an overview of Eastern philosophies that have had much of importance to say about consciousness and the nature of "the self," which is now being acknowledged within the fields of quantum mechanics and cultural studies (deconstruction). This is a minor criticism, though—maybe something to look forward to in a future edition.

Possibly the greatest contribution this book makes to our future is the extensive attempt to clarify the relationship between us (male and female humans) and the rest of the "stuff" of the universe, from rocks to plants to our technology. Computers and mobile (cell) phones are not devices foisted upon us by some alien visitors; they are created and...