The Rise and Fall of Human Domination - ethical links between non-humans, humans, and post-humans

Our hive culture has established a hierarchical pyramid where we, the greatest of the great apes, have crowned ourselves on top of a conceptual food chain that is confused / mixed with a superiority chain…

A human brain is a piece of biological marvel. An organic expression of semantic intricacy, a functional chaos of self-aware architecture. I’m willing to assert, without fear of error, that the human brain is the most sophisticated cognitive technology on Earth to date.

To most observers, sophistication brings fascination. Sophistication, particularly when the analysis of a system remains blurred by a relative lack of comprehension, often awakens the pleasure derived from mystery. To the author of this essay, there’s no brain as fascinating as the network of microguys mysteriously working together inside a human skull. Yet, I find it not to be the only significant exhibition of physicalized consciousness.

From ants to mice to dogs to apes. Every sample of cognition sets itself up as a result of the conquest of matter pursued by our ancient precursors known as chemical replicators, which at some point derived into the creation of useful vessels that began to feel, slowly but increasingly, alive. Gone are the days when conscious experience was assumed to be a human exclusivity. Even a mathematician, metaphysicist and philosopher as relevant as Descartes relegated all non-human living beings to the category of mere organic machines deprived of reason, volition, sentience and consciousness. Eventually, scientific evidence, along with a boost from intuition, once and for all carved the conscious nature of non-human animals into our human cultural base. Rabbits, spiders, humans, aphids, pigs, frogs and trouts share, in different ways, the will to live.

Among the many unanswered questions with regards to non-human sentience, after unicellular beings, plants still pose as the greatest unknown. We are far from having found a clear answer about the extent to which plants have developed conscious desires to approach pleasure and to avoid pain (a typical duality found in the animal kingdom), as well as anything equivalent to psychological awareness, which is unlikely due to the absence of a centralized control zone. Plants have shown, however, complex communication systems based on the release of chemical signals allowing the formation of “talking communities”, and surprisingly fast adaptation strategies by changing their metabolism and morphology in order to fight predators or to adjust to sudden environmental changes, which could suggest they must have some kind of perception of their surroundings.

Stefano Mancuso, professor at the University of Florence and founder of the study of plant neurobiology, offers an interesting insight into the astounding similarities observed in plants and animals. Similar circadian rhythms can be observed in both kingdoms through rhythmic regulation of genetic expression, alternating between sleep and waking periods. Animals and plants manipulate other species to meet their reproductive goals and both show signs of intelligence, movement, acquisition of information (*source in spanish) and memory. In addition, plants also exhibit synaptic communications involved in the transportation of auxin, a neurotransmitter-like molecule. The difference in intelligence, according to Mancuso, is not qualitative but quantitative. When compared to animals, plants seem to be far less intelligent.

In spite of my efforts to highlight the virtuous sentience of plants, I’m not going to advocate an “organic equality” ethical stance, as the anthropocentric tone of this essay should have suggested from the beginning. But I’m not exactly an anthropocentrist either. At the root of my point of view, there’s actually a “consciouscentrist” philosophical approach. This implies that, if facing a philosophical contingency in which not all the lives -consciousnesses- could be saved in a given situation, the individuals with greater degrees of consciousness should become a priority. First a human, then a gorilla, then a cow, then a snail, then a chrysanthemum, then a cyanobacteria. Since it is impossible to have all the necessary data and semantic resources to define an accurate priority list of species from higher to lower forms of consciousness (in part because human consciousness is the only one we really know through the empirism which our own existence entails), logic alone is not enough. We need intuition to fill in the gaps, which leads us to the development of our own biased criteria based on our diverse types and degrees of need, empathy, information, environmental conditions and desires.

Nevertheless, building a priority list is not within the purpose of this writting. For now, let’s just remember the fact that, irrespective of the different degrees and types of consciousness found in different species, every living organism is a sentience owner.

But regardless of what our isolated opinions might be, our hive culture popularly establishes a simplified hierarchical pyramid implicitly encompassing each and every earthling where we, the greatests of the great apes, have crowned ourselves on top of a conceptual food chain that is often confused / mixed with a superiority chain, with plants in the bottom, and non-human animals in the middle. Even though we still have lots of natural predators, most of them dwelling in the microscale, there’s a macroscopic generality that cannot be ignored.

This self-certification of ours has its roots in two very powerful motives. One, the emotio-intellectual understanding of the superior sophistication of the human brain which, in theory, offers the potential to have richer, deeper and more valuable experiences through our lifespans when compared with any other known being. Two, as a species (still) competing in a scarcity-based eco-model, we want to make sure we won’t lose our throne. We fear death and physical and psychological pain as any other conscious being (pluricellular animals at least), so the establishment and perpetuation of the notion of superiority within a food chain is a relieving meme that makes us feel we are still on track in the endless continuity of the path to survival and evolution.

Wait, did I say “food chain”? Please, let me correct. A more appropriate way to define our current relationship with the rest of the species would be “utility chain”. We use animals and plants to satisfy primary needs and a variety of secondary needs, desires and hobbies as well.  Even though most humans more or less agree on the theoretical moral value in having respect for life whenever possible, due to the ubiquitous struggle between morality and desire (parallel to our intrinsic pain/pleasure duality) and also to the conflict of interests between individuals and/or species, our group and individual behaviours doesn’t always reflect this stance. Our understanding of the universe and everything that is, results from the self-recognition of our emotions, our feelings, our intellects, and our direct tangible experiences arising from the simple fact of being sentient and alive. So real, so high is our understanding of the value of this human life we are feeling from a first-person view, and so absent is our ability to feel how individuals from other species feel, that we end up acting in some circumstances as if human existence, the ultimate cognitive collage, is the only one that really matters.

In addition, the anthropocentric cultural paradigm (established by the sum of the parts) reinforces our individual notions about human superiority through memetic influence, creating a magnifying bidirectional feedback between hive and individual perception of superior existence which, in turn, is heavily reflected in our behaviour toward non-human beings. As a result, we have given birth to the tandem “brain supremacy” and “the right to use as we please”. This link, even though it doesn’t obey a devoted mathematical unconditionality and the limits of its application greatly vary depending on the species the used individual belongs to, it indeed succeeds in nourishing a high degree of frequency.

If my brain is better than yours, then I have the right to use you as I please

As humans, this view is very convenient to us precisely because there’s no single brain at sight that surpasses our neural sophistication and complexity. The only things we see around us are inferior beings. We are the highest peak we know and we know it empirically, therefore we establish a set of values from our cognition levels as the default benchmark. We can leisurely and fearlessly reign from the comfort of supremacy. Not only we give priority to our primary needs (which is a reasonable act), but we also weigh all sorts of human desires and whims against the primary needs of all sorts of sentient beings even when it doesnít have anything to do, neither directly nor indirectly, with our survival.

But a storm is coming. A reshaping tide that is going to force us to question the soundness of the present anthropocentric morality. It is no secret that we are already climbing up the steps towards the ripening of a number of convergent technologies that will, at some point, flow into the creation of artificial beings and into the augmentation of humans as well, who then will keep ascending an endless spiral staircase of mental and physical improvement. Either by considering advanced A.I.s or artificially augmented humans, and depending on the point in time among the infinite set of undefined futures ahead we might be looking at, thereíll be intelligences (and probably degrees of consciousness) with an improvement of hundreds, thousands, millions of orders of magnitude when compared to the most sophisticated human brains existing at present.

Advanced beings are also going to have their senses increased in number, intensity, functionality and upgradability, expanding their awareness of the universe by means of a far greater ability to mentally detect and interpret energy, matter and space-time to limits we can’t even start to imagine right now.

In a hypothetical time clash between non-augmented humans and those colossal future minds, our current consciousnesses and lives may seem to them as trivial and expendable as the consciousness and life of a fly seem to humans now.

But irrespective of how those superbeings may feel about their richer, deeper and more sophisticated existences when compared to ours, we feel completely sentient about how important the preservation of our current animal consciousnesses and life is to us right now. Likewise, non-human animals in general are utterly sentient about their desire to preserve their lives, no matter how superior we feel when compared to them.

I’m far from matching the dystopian type and in fact, as a friend of high-tech and as an advocate of transhumanism, I have great expectations for a better equilibrium between pros and cons in the future. But any possibility is a potential apparition, and irrespective of what may happen in the future, what I’m actually going to suggest here is not a prediction, but rather a philosophical issue by placing us in a hypothetical or perhaps fictitious scenario where we find ourselves among the ones at disadvantage.

Be it because of personal choice or because of social inequality, some of us might remain as unchanged humans and eventually we might end up absorbed into the category of inferior beings along with the rest of the animals and plants, dependent on A.I.s and post-humans choices. Our hot bodies are tempting thermoelectrical batteries. Incidentally, we are close to salvage electricity from our glucose and use it for practical applications (here is a paper on the research), and future methods are going to be more and more efficient. Our DNAs could be rewritten and key parts of our bodies could be cybernetized against our will to increase our efficiency as energy generators. But these methods wouldnít make sense in a post-human society with much more advanced technology, and Iím aware about the fact that the depicted scenario would be absurd. If human biology proved to have any specific feature that made it suitable for competitive energy production, it shouldnít be that difficult to build a human-based biobattery using only the basic chemical principles involved without having to replicate an entire body including the brain, or using already existing humans. It is just that most of you have probably watched “The Matrix” film, which provides a convenient visual illustration to serve the purpose of this philosophical exercise.

Still, even if they didn’t detect any potential use in our bodies, we could find lots of cases where their vast activities could chemically or physically harm our integrity one way or the other. They might be working with massive energy fluxes within the Milky Way to meet their goals, shifting the environmental conditions on our planet out of human tolerance levels in the process. Or, they might just need the matter of our planet to build a massive planet-sized supercomputer. They might grab the sun and suck its energetic resources, leaving us in a perennial night. They might need to create a supermassive black hole next to our planet for scientific purposes. Would they make the effort to carefully move our bodies to a safe location considering we are just humans with inferior levels of consciousness and communicative evolution? We rarely do that with inferior beings when we want to build a new structure, or deforest an area without taking care of the beings inhabiting it, pluricellular animals included. Why should they care about us? Our interest to preserve our lives and wellbeing could be easily ignored in favor of their needs when no alternatives where possible to adopt (again, an understandable act), but also in favor of their desires, caprices and hobbies. So,

are we putting enough effort to pause and reflect about how valuable it is for a given individual to preserve his/her own life, even if he/she doesn’t have the most sophisticated brain? Are we acting accordingly? And what does “to be someone” mean?

Depending on how the coming events unfold, these may be the questions some humans may be hoping that post-humans or advanced A.I.s do to themselves one day. Now that a rapid and nonstop augmentation of the mind is in the horizon and traditional humans will cease to be the living avant-garde, weíll need to radically rethink the value of consciousness and the value of life, not only by means of the traditional relativistic valuation (which is still essential), but also through a complementary understanding of what “absolute value of life” means.

But to which extent can we reconcile theory with practice? These are indeed extremely complex issues. If we were to unconditionally apply a moral perfection to our daily practical life in order to avoid any kind of harm we would restrain ourselves from doing most of what we usually do, even the fulfillment of our primary needs. It would be utterly impractical. Driving a car, building a house, purchasing any kind of product or even taking a walk, can cause direct or indirect harm to living sentient beings. Therefore, the purpose of this text is neither to present a definition of an accurate moral frontier between wrong and right nor a suggestion of a generic set of moral commandments, nor a prefabricated list of specific things you shouldnít do. The real purpose of these words is an invitation to a private self-reflection about the sentience and life of others, and about your individual possibilities to improve your relationship with everybody else, human or non-human.

A little difference in choice, a small sacrifice of one of our little desires, a tiny variation in one of our daily routines can sometimes mark the difference between innocuity and suffering; even between life and death, of other beings. Every human constitutes a very different case, with his/her own particular needs, environmental conditions, empathetic orientations, access to resources and desires. Since a flawless morality is a practical impossibility, we must accept the fact that right now our existence will unavoidably cause harm to others. But this acknowledgement of the inevitability of our damaging existence, far from becoming a tool for freeing ourselves from moral accountability and excusing us from anything we do, is an opportunity to begin to closely analyze what we could do better, as well as to stop paying so much attention to what others are doing worse.

Then, what do we need to improve the interspecies relationship? First, at group level we need to keep advancing our technology. No care of others is possible if our individual basic needs arenít guaranteed first. Technology is the only road to abundance, which improves our chances of survival, wellbeing, education and healthcare, decreases the need for violence and also provides alternative means to satisfy needs and desires reducing as much as possible the use of other beings or the harm caused on them.

Second, on the individual level we need the ability to empathize. Empathy is a vital emotion without which we are unable to understand why the respect to other beings is significant. Without empathy, moral agency cannot exist.

But is empathy the only necessary virtue we should be coding into A.I.s along with the strengthening of our biological mirror neurons? Could there be anything else as vital and indispensable as empathy?

Today we are masters of subjugation. Tomorrow, A.I.s and post-humans attitude toward inferior non-augmented humans and non-humans may become the reflection of the way we start to rethink what does humility mean to us now.

“I feel that intelligence is a property of life. Even the simplest unicellular organism has to be intelligent” - Stefano Mancuso