Rereading of the Whiteheadian Understanding of Organism in a Trans-Human Age: A Critical Review of the “Extended Mind Theory”

Abstract

We live in a wired town, in which humans and machines mutually generate new forms of ‘beings.’ This is called a transhuman age, in which humans and machines are hybridized as digitally connected to each other. In fact, we humans entered into this transhuman realm a long time ago. Humans are the beings to use tools, with which humans extended bodily capacities and overcame predators. The paper traces the idea of transhumanism back to the notions of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who showed that being or all beings living and non-living are organisms. In his philosophy, the paper senses a scent of transhumanism. The mutual prehension is like a mutual hybridization. The theory of extended mind by Andy Clark and David Chalmers witnesses this hybridization of human and machine. The future orientation of this hybridized world is totally up to us in the present, depending on how we understand and take steps to prepare for the future. However, our commonsensical and dyadic understandings of nature/culture, human/ nonhuman and living/nonliving become significant stumbling blocks on the road. This paper just tries to show how we, humans and machines together, are after all one, to sink or swim together. However, Clark’s idea of human beings as natural-born cyborgs still contains a modern error of anthropocentrism. Thus, a trans-human philosophy for new beings needs to be a philosophy in which all beings, living and nonliving, are equally prehended. This article argues that this is Whitehead philosophy of organism.