ON THE BASIC QUESTIONS
YVONNE FORESTER
THE SPIRIT OF THE MACHINE: MACHINE INTELLIGENCE AND THE PRINCIPLE OF THE LIVING PERCEPTION BEYOND THE HUMAN At first glance, the worldview of philosophy seems incompatible with that of shamanism. A rigorous concept of rationality must set itself apart from the spiritual, from empirically inexplicable, ensouled things and remote effects. Looking more closely, however, one soon finds philosophical positions which conceive of a mental dimension that transcends humankind and its rationality. Especially German idealism, with its famous protagonists Hegel, Schelling and Fichte, sees mind rather than matter as the ontological basis of being. David Chalmers1 argues similarly when he contends that the primary attribute of being is consciousness or, more specifically, a proto-consciousness of all fundamental physical entities. The notion that things are endowed with souls is accordingly not exclusive to shamanistic worldviews. In the film “The Shaman and his Apprentice”2, a shaman recounts how he observes the souls of cars during his visits in a nearby city. And he doesn’t mean the souls of the drivers or passengers, but the souls of the machines themselves. In shamanism, not only masks and other artefacts are conceived as animated, but actually every object. Today’s technological habitats confront us with questions that are closely related to concepts of ensoulment in shamanism. Scarcely visible, active and perceiving entities – sensors, cameras, microphones and a multitude of other intelligent and networked objects – are concealed behind the surfaces of our homes and cities. They comprise a network of sensitive, information-processing and active entities. Even if one might not really believe in the souls of stones, nowadays one cannot avoid paying attention to the cognitive activities of things or the “Internet of Things” (IoT).
1
Chalmers, David (2016): Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism. In: Godehard Brüntrup, Ludwig Jaskolla (ed.): Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 19-47.
2
Townsley, Graham, Reid, Howard (1989): The Shaman and his Apprentice. BBC: London.
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