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Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 1988
Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-biological age, Part 2 - Theory. , 2013
I outline how neuroengineering may enhance human cognition, and why this is worth doing.
2017
The academic debate surrounding “cognitive enhancement” is now into its third decade. Simply put, the debate concerns attempts, actual and speculative, to amplify and extend “core capacities of the mind through improvement or augmentation of internal or external information processing systems” (Bostrom and Sanberg 2009). Some definitions of cognitive enhancement have sought to constrain the debate by limiting the types of augmenting or extending interventions to contemporary bio- and information technologies. Take for example the definition of cognitive enhancement provided on the website of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, one of the central institutional protagonists in the debate: “to extend the abilities of the human mind and to modulate affective and hedonic states through genetic, neuropharmaceutical, computer or direct neural interventions.”1 The epistemological coherence of limiting the definition to contemporary technologies, while discounting other now normalized and ubiquitous ones, for example writing implements, as these definitions do, is certainly suspect and has been heavily criticized (e.g. Buchanan 2011a, b). Elsewhere, I have referred to approaches to enhancement that don’t try to limit the concept of enhancement to the use of contemporary bio- or information technologies as “inflationary” (Meacham 2015). An enhancement in the inflationary sense can be defined in the fashion that Buchanan does as “an intervention—a human action of any kind—that improves some capacity (or characteristics) that normal human beings ordinarily have, or more radically that produces a new one” (Buchanan 2011b, p.5). The inflationary approach does not acknowledge an epistemologically or normatively salient difference in kind between novel technologies (e.g. neuropharmaceuticals, genetic engineering, or neural intervention) and existing, normalized, ubiquitous ones (e.g. pen and paper). This approach, if pushed, seems not only to call into question distinctions between different kinds of technological interventions, but also the distinction between “natural” and technologically mediated or augmented cognitive engagements between and organism and its environment.
2015 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cybernetics (CYBCONF), 2015
Abstract—Use of the information technology increases chances of adapting to changing environments. This applies to wild jungle as it applies to the urban information jungle. Modern wearable devices will allow to improve physical and augmented mental capabilities of humans. An interdisciplinary approach aimed at improving human mental processes is cognitive enhancement. There are many diverse methods in this approach, like: neuropharmacology, genetics, natural, social prevention, informatics. In this paper we aconsider opportunities of cognitive enhancement delivered by computer devices (cognitive technologies). Three systems proposals are provided and described, including an enhaced P3-speller.
Symphony of Matter and Mind. Part Five., 2021
The brain is the source of sensations, emotions, desires, thoughts, memories, movement and behavior control. All these are aspects of the process we call the Mind. Despite a vast amount of data on the nervous system functioning down to the molecular level, no concept has yet uncovered the physical mechanism and the technology of this process. With this aim in sight, the author continues to develop the Teleological Transduction Theory. The book contains hypotheses about the physical nature of the Mind and provides examples of how physics manifests in the nervous system physiology. It also shows how the Mind’s algorithm produces a reality model with constant updating based on incoming data and performs the self-learning functions. The theory encompasses the physical processes that create the enormous capacity, speed and multi-level complexity of our memory. It solves the riddle of how the brain forms and reproduces a vast number of representations almost instantly. A significant part of the book is devoted to the teleology of all these technological solutions. Building a model of reality is not an end to itself. The final goal is to act based on this model. The nervous system specializes in controlling the body and organizing purposeful movement. But how does it perform the function? The book contains hypotheses about the technology and physical mechanism that create the observed speed and efficiency of motion control. Taking all these aspects together, the proposed theory claims to finally cover the explanatory gap about the physical nature of the Mind.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
Will cognitive mind enhancement become necessary to stave off brain regression resulting from brain offloading technologies? Are we, through the creation of the "cognitive commons", becoming Borg? Is to become Borg to be most human?
Reformed theology in Africa series, 2022
Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical & Clinical Research, 2020
Revista Encontros Teológicos
Sriwijaya Journal of Medicine, 2023
North East Linguistics Society, 1987
Iraqi Journal of Oil and Gas Research (IJOGR)
International Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, 2021
Clinical Chemistry
Zeitschrift für Naturforschung B, 2008
Physical Review Letters, 2000