[ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment

[Giulio Prisco]

I agree that intelligence must be "embodied" in the sense that it must
have sensors and actuators to act upon its environment (physical
reality, or whatever synthetic scape it inhabits) and to communicate
with other intelligences, but this sense is so weak that it is almost
tautological.

I don't think intelligence must be necessarily based on biology, and I
don't think it will remain uniquely based on biology for long.
Uploading technology to leave biology behind will be developed,
probably not as soon as I wish to see, but sooner than many people
think.

I like to think that those who want to stay in organic bodies will be
free to do so, those who want to upload to robotic bodies will be free
to do so, and those who want to migrate to synthetic scapes will be
free to do so (the flesher, gleaners and polices scenario in Egan's
Diaspora). But history shows that there are always fundamentalist
zealots, persuaded that their way is The Way, who want to force others
to follow them, and therefore I am afraid things will not be so clean
and simple.

2012/1/21  <natasha at natasha.cc>:
> What the heck is Hayles (How We Became Posthuman) talking about when she
> says that posthumans are disembodied?  I had thought that she meant
> that posthumans will forgo a body to be Moravecean robots.  That
> transhumanists don't give a rat's behind about having any body, not even a
> series of codes that might be interpreted as a platform or system.  But when
> I look at the concept of embodiment it is most definitely not Cartesian.
> Does it mean that our bodies form us?  That our minds are the product of the
> body?  Certainly this can't be -- unless one is more artistic and defends
> perceptions and sensorial interpretations of the world far above other
> cognitive processes performed by the brain.
>
> Embodiment is a big term in the area of human enhancement.  Can someone
> unpack it for me and give me a clear understanding of just what it is?
> Where did it originate?  Psychology or philosophy?
>
> Thanks, I am indebted to your cleverness, as I certainly don't have any on
> this.
>
> Natasha
>
>
>
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