I’ve spent years researching what it means to be alive. This is what I’ve learned | Melanie Challenger
To understand the experience of life, don’t look to the mind. Look to the body In a 1982 article, the American feminist scholar Elizabeth Spelman coined the term “ somatophobia ” to describe the strange human delusion that we are minds rather than bodies. Forty years later, artificial intelligence is everywhere, offering the most powerful illusion yet that intelligence can exist without flesh.…
Life cannot be fully understood by examining the mind alone; the body holds the key. Elizabeth Spelman’s term "somatophobia" reflects humanity’s peculiar belief that we are minds rather than bodies. However, recent studies reveal that two-thirds of people think AI tools like ChatGPT possess some level of consciousness and feeling. This age of somatophobia must be resisted.
Our drive for artificial intelligence is rooted in an ancient fear of the fragility of embodied life. Plato, Minsky, and Kurzweil have all contributed to this view, but science now shows that our bodies are essential to who we are. Our intelligence is not a separate entity, but rather the sum of minute processes occurring throughout our bodies.
Bodies generate and direct energy, preserving our organization. Cognitive science, neuroscience, and research on membrane bioenergetics all point to the unique qualities that enable biological beings to thrive in the cosmos. The brain constantly predicts and regulates signals from various parts of the body, demonstrating the importance of holistic processes like homeostasis.
In today's technologically mediated life, we are forgetting the importance of our bodies. Hyper-connectivity and sedentary lifestyles have led to increased rates of stroke, heart disease, and loneliness. The social hierarchy has also been encoded in a way that privileges minds over bodies, leading to discrimination based on race, gender, and class.
Being alive is fundamentally about being a body. Intelligence depends on the complete system of body and energy flow found only in biological organisms. AI and information devices may mimic certain patterns of thought, but they lack the essence of life and intelligence found in our biological selves. Denying the importance of the body is also a denial of life itself.
Written by urgent.news from Guardian Health's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
