Interview with Albert Borgmann

Recent research programs in computer science, cognitive sciences, artificial life and artificial intelligence have argued for a view of the human so different from that which emerged from the Enlightenment that it can appropriately be called "posthuman." Whereas the human has traditionally been associated with consciousness, rationality, free will, autonomous agency, and the right of the subject to possess himself, the posthuman sees human behavior as the result of a number of autonomous agents running their programs more or less independently of one another. Complex behavior in this view is an emergent property that arises when these programs, each fairly simple in itself, begin reacting with one another. Consciousness, long regarded as the seat of identity, in this model is relegated to an "epiphenomenon."

-- Scott (hma5_5@hotmail.com), January 27, 2000