Humans, Animals, Machines

Glen A. Mazis is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Penn State at Harrisburg and the author of Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses, also published by SUNY Press.

• Acknowledgments1. Approaching Humans, Animals, and MachinesBlurred BoundariesWhere Are the Machines?Are Humans Not Animals?Are We Not Confused about Definitions?Doing Away with Hierarchy Can Preserve UniquenessAmbiguity, Openness to Experience, Phenomenology, and NondualismEmbodiment as Cooperation with the SurroundMeaning-Bearing Matter2. The Common Ground between Animals and Humans: Prolonged Bodies in Dwelling PlacesThe Elusive Boundaries among Humans, Animals, and MachinesAvoiding Reductive Senses of Overlaps of Humans, Animals, and MachinesNew Ways to See Overlaps and Differences: Living Space and "Understanding" One’s PlaceAnimal and Human Worlds and False Boundaries: Heideggerand von UexküllThe Lack of an Expanded Sense of Embodiment and Animality in HeideggerHow Another Sense of Embodiment Opens These DimensionsDiffering Spaces, Bodies, and Differing Worlds, but Open to Each Other3. Machines Finding Their Place: Humans and Animals Already Live ThereIf Bodies Are Relations to Surrounds, Are Artificially Intelligent Machines Gaining Bodies?Embodied Understanding, Movement, and Meaning: Robots and Embodied Artificial IntelligenceEnmeshed Worlds: Cochlear Implants and Michael Chorost’s Sense of Being a CyborgMaking a Cochlear Implant Work and Perceptual Faith, Attention Flow, and Emotional ConnectionIndeterminacy Is Openness to the OverlapPlain Machines and How We Are All in This World Together: Humans, Animals, and MachinesDangers of Imploded Boundaries and the Need for Ambiguity4. Drawing the Boundary of Humans with Animals and Machines: Greater Area and DepthCan We Even Draw Boundary Lines?"The Rational Animal" Using Tools, Speaking, and Passing the Turing TestThinking "Substance" and How It Feels to Meet a Thinker with a FaceHuman Thought Extended by MachinesHumans Locate and Direct Themselves in Mood, Emotion, Feeling, and Thought"We Feel" and the Emotional ValenceNeural and Material Plasticity and Open SystemsBrains as Process, Emotions as Integrating, and Selves both Inside and Out5. Drawing the Boundary of Humans with Animals and Machines: Reconsidering Knowing and RealityJuxtapositions, Brain Hemispheres, Brains as Observer/Observed, and the Logic of Yin/YangQuantum Minds and Nondualistic RealityNonlocal Quantum Reality, "Phenomenality," and Magic in Emotion            Imagination, Being Moved, and the Virtual Dimension of Human LifeThe Storytelling Communal Animal, Integrated Brains/Selves, and Human ExcellenceAmbiguity and Boundaries among NetworksInside and Outside Ourselves Simultaneously, Freedom, InterbeingHumans Witness the World’s Depth in Multivalent Apprehension6. Animals: Excellences and Boundary MarkersThe Problem of Understanding Animals’ Perspectives from WithinThe Thickness of Animal Perception versus a Reductive Mechanical ModelAnimals and Prereflective, Perceptually Grounded SelvesAnimal Perceptual Sensitivity Meshes with Ecological Niches, Not Human EnclosuresInstinct as the Life of the DreamThe Expressive Spontaneity of Animals as Embodied DialogueAnimals in the Slower Time We Call Nature7. Machines: Excellences and Boundary MarkersMachines and Solid, Impervious MaterialityMachines, Consistency, and the Time of the EarthMachines, Power, Precision, and Machine BeautyMachines, Speed, and the Lack of Place for Deeper TimeMachines, the Arbitrary, and Dissonant, Arrhythmic TimeMachines as Woven into the Fabric of the SurroundConclusion: Toward the Community of Humans, Animals, and MachinesIs There Personhood for Animals and Machines?Obligations to Sacrificing Animals and Helping Machines, Good and Bad Persons, and GuardianshipAn Ecospirituality of Humans, Animals, and MachinesNotesIndex

"…[Mazis] discusses and combines insights from a remarkably wide range of sources such as Buddhist philosophy, cognitive science, ethology, theoretical biology, and more recent AI research." — Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences"…what most sets Mazis' work apart from the majority of thought on the shared and distinct capacities of humans, non-human animals, and machines … is his intense interest in the present and potential future of these capacities as opposed to their transhistorical or traditional forms." — JAC"This is a book of powerful ideas … it does provoke. That, perhaps, is ultimately its strength." — Metapsychology"…this book manages to relate a wealth of initially disparate-seeming material in a thought-provoking way." — CHOICE"One of the great virtues of this book is its ability to draw upon different domains—philosophy, artificial intelligence, ethology, psychology, anthropology, and art—and to do so in a rigorous and creative manner." — Edward S. Casey, author of The World at a Glance