IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015 - 28

LP: The idea of stimulating various parts of the brain or body as
medical treatments sounds very
good. It is being used for Parkinson's Disease and clinical depression as well as experiments in
neurological areas. Neuroscientists
are trying to figure out the locus of
human consciousness, and whatever else one can discover with the
use of probes that are implanted
into the brain. Overstimulation is
a possible problem with some of
them. Allow me to speculate that
we could create psychiatric illnesses in people using these or similar
devices because one can artificially stimulate parts of the brain that
are not normally stimulated in this
manner. This could surely become
a dependency after a while. I do
not see how this could continue in
the brain like that without having
unforeseen side-effects. Part of the
experiment is to discover to what
degree one could actually control
the brains of human beings. All
of these brain stimulation devices
work on brain chemistry and electrical circuits. We have little idea,
and only guesses as to what experiments are taking place behind
the scenes. You have people with
clandestine interest seeking how
such developments can be used in
national intelligence services and
interrogation, of those who are simply interested in to what degree one
can control the human brain. That
is part of the issue; what else will
these things be used for? Well we
have enough experience throughout history that we know they'll be
used for nefarious things as well
as for positive. No technological
device will ever be used exclusively
for good. Evil can be very subtle
and, to borrow Hanna Arendt's pithy
expression, quite banal. So electrostimulation for pain, say in damaged
nerves in the spine, has been devel-

oping and is at stages where we can
do considerable benefit, and this
beneficial use is increasing. These
devices will become so commonplace. If we can catalogue reasons
to use them, we may, for instance,
be able to interject into the depression and despair loop in the Brodmann 25 area of the brain, or use
stimulators on so many other medical ways. Perhaps we will be able
to change or level off dopamine
when it causes problems, or activate the medial prefrontal cortex
in sociopaths and elicit empathy or
an active conscience, who knows?
That is why in the short-term we can
use these things for medical and
prosthetic uses, but we might also
be able to create mental illnesses, or forms of schizophrenia so
people start hearing voices, or they
are overstimulated in ways that can
resemble bipolar syndrome. They
[the mentally ill] could, perhaps,
be controlled like Sergeant Shaw in
The Manchurian Candidate. Others
might simply like to develop robots
to carry out their will.

change will test our humanity and
moral concepts to the limit. Think
of these crises taking place in a
world where the human in the pursuit of the fulfilment of the passions is thought to be the best
possible mode of existence... The
loss of the concept of a moral
conscience and the idea that the
passion of the moment is the ultimate reality is surely a definition
of a hell on earth.
KM: Can you tell us about your
forthcoming book?
LP: I call it "The Ethics of the
Inevitable." I hope to explore the
ethical aspects of those developments that are surely coming, that
we might consider best left undone.
What are the ethical implications
of developments such as artificial
intelligence, robotics, life extension
methods, avatarism, etc. Most of
these developments take place in
the military-industrial complex, and
most of them have a primary function in more sanitized and less public killing. We need to look at the
ethics regarding all these matters;
they are all inevitable.

KM: Do you have a personal
human fear of the future you might
live in?
LP: I won't be around much longer but the concern I have is this
idea that the fallen human nature is
the best form of the human nature.
Remember that it is "through fear
of death" that mankind is held in
bondage... Transhumanism is, in
many ways, motivated by fear and
a desire to conquer death through
technology. That is just a reality. But for the future, if we continue in such a way that the fallen
human nature is seen as a kind
of perfection then the world can
only become less livable. That is
my real concern about the future,
since food and water shortages
and other aspects of global climate

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

KM: When will the book come
out?
LP: I hope to finish it by January
of 2016.
KM: So I deduce from that that
there can never really be a spirit in
machinery. There can never be a
God-breathed spirit in a machine.
LP: There can never be any kind
of spirit in such devices. No matter what we do with artificial intelligence, they will always do what we
program them to do and what we
tell them to do. We want mechanical slaves, so we would not want
them to be sentient, have emotions
or a soul.

∕

september 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015