S. ŽIŽEK E M. NICOLELIS

FILOSOFIA, NEUROCIÊNCIA E HOMEM-MÁQUINA

Abstract

The article intends to analyze, based on philosophical and neuroscientific parallaxes, a recurring contemporary theme, namely: the man-machine, the becoming-machine and the human. A current narrative of technology has spread in the contemporary world in the face of specific areas of knowledge such as philosophy and neuroscience. The paths of this narrative emerge from the confluence of cognitive sciences and analytical sciences in the 20th century. The crux of the issue between man, machine and man-machine gives rise to a technical and scientific tale around an idea that heralds the era of artificial intelligences and the machine revolution with a certain unease: man-machine already cohabits among us and will dominate us - that is, the machine model will reach singularity and surpass us. On the other hand, philosophy and neuroscience point to a flood of parallaxes on this subject. In Slavoj Žižek, the machine is the representation of the autonomy of human subjectivity and the maximization of cognition based on technological apparatuses in the becoming-machine. In Miguel Nicolelis, the machine is not only a fundamental part of the biological evolutionary process, it is also part of what is human in the sense of the attributes that the relationship between mind and brain produces. While the narrative of the overcoming and annihilation of man is spreading, this article aims to scrutinize the role of philosophy and neuroscience in Žižek and Nicolelis in order to grasp the dexterity of coupling external machines to the human body not as an end, but as a small step for a robot and a giant step for a primate.