Meghan O'Gieblyn

From the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States, a strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence. Meghan O'Gieblyn deftly weaves anecdotes from her life as a formerly religious believer with a sharp analysis of the rapid rise of technology, its impact on our understanding of identity, and the claims for transhumanism that bear a striking resemblance to Christian prophecies of resurrection and immortality. For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness--i.e., souls--might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence--identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself--urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.

Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning

God, Human, Animal, Machine

Danny White

All the eternal questions have become engineering problems.

Then came the dawn of modern science, which turned the world into a subject of investigation. Nature was no longer a source of wonder but a force to be mastered.

james cao

I had read enough biology and cognitive science to know that I was basically a machine, albeit a mortal one, subject to the unstoppable drama of entropy. I turned then to the existentialists, who insisted that all meaning was subjective and must be forged by the individual. "Life has no meaning a priori," Sartre writes in Existentialism Is a Humanism, "...It is up to you to give it a meaning." But I didn't want to give life some private meaning. I wanted meaning to exist in the world.

Panpsychism essentially resurrects the Great Chain of Being or the scala naturae of medieval Christianity, which envisioned all of nature-plants, animals, humans, angels, and God himself-existing within a continuum of consciousness, each imbued with lesser or greater degrees of spirit. The leading panpsychists have not shied away from these mystical implications. “Panpsychism," writes Gof, "offers a way of re-enchanting' the universe. In the panpsychist view, the universe is like us; we belong in it."

"We need not live in the human realm, ever more diluted by globalization and capitalism," Goff argues. He imagines that we would behave more ethically toward the nonhuman world if we saw ourselves as one with the trees and oceans and glaciers. "Selfish conduct is rooted in the belief that we are wholly separate and distinct individuals," he writes. 

that all my preferences can be predicted and neatly reduced to type, that the soul is little more than a data set. I don't know exactly what to call this state of affairs, but it does not feel like the Kingdom of God.

 Satan had wagered that Job would renounce his faith if he suffered badly enough, and God, being a good sportsman, took the bet. It was this God-the deity who was willing to play games with his subjects, seemingly for his Own amusement-whom Calvin insisted we must obey "without asking a reason." At a certain point one was forced to wonder whether an intelligence so far removed from human nature could truly have our best interests in mind.

the theory of memes, a term Richard Dawkins devised to show that ideas and cultural phenomena spread across a population in much the same way genes do. iPods are memes, as are poodle skirts, communism, and the Protestant Reformation.

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