Klaartje Jaspers. Will artificial intelligence create a shared supermind? Interview with philosophical anthropologist Jos de Mul. Newsroom Erasmus University. June 11, 2018.

Will robots outsmart humans? Erasmus philosophical anthropologist Jos de Mul thinks such beliefs show a gross overestimation of the capacities of robots. Self-replicating robots could take over, he thinks, but they would be inferior to their human counterpart. Instead of robots taking over, De Mul believes humans might develop like bees: sharing their individual psyche to form a shared supermind.

‘Plato was scared of the ability to read and write. He thought script would be a dead memory without the ability to think creatively. In the same way people now are scared of computers. But script and computers are just means, extensions of ourselves, allowing us to do certain things better.’ No, Jos de Mul is not scared of robots and algorithms, but he is urging us to think carefully about how we use them.

Zillions of neurons united

The fear that robots could become autonomous is justified, but they will not be superior in their intellect for a long time to come, De Mul believes. ‘Perhaps they can beat us at chess but they have had trouble learning how to walk up stairs or recognise faces. That’s not so strange, if you realise the human brain has billions of neurons, and so far we haven’t even managed to simulate the complete network of a species with very few neurons, like the Caenorhabditis elegans – a roundworm.’

Imagine what would happen if we could put all our neurons together. We’re already heading towards such a ‘swarm mind’, De Mul emphasises. ‘It’s already happening when you buy a book online and the computer suggests titles that other buyers of that book have bought. Amazon recently got a patent on an algorithm that can predict what book is going to be sold where, so they can send it before you realise you want it. “Anticipatory shipping”, they call it.’

Human integrates computer

Such developments may not have had the intention of creating a global superbrain, but they can still function as the little steps that lead towards that future. And things are moving rapidly, with companies like Facebook working on a Brain Machine Interface (BMI)-project that implants the internet directly into your brain. ‘First we had a few mainframes per country, now every person has their own smartphone. It’s just a small step from where we are now to planting chips in people, like a built-in smartphone that does not require internet.’

Experiments with robots sharing sensor-data with humans have already proven that the human consciousness is not attached to its biological body. A mind could be anywhere, at any time - like in virtual reality. Once detached from its physical manifestation, can a post-individual consciousness develop, like it did in bees and termites?

Superintelligent, or superstupid?

‘If superintelligence will develop, it will develop as a combination of human and artificial intelligence,’ the philosophical anthropologist expects. And just like the script altered our ways of thinking, so will today’s new technological means. ‘Oral cultures were based on direct communication between its members. The development of script allowed us to communicate over larger distances and to think on a more abstract level, but it also led to estrangement. You might regret that, but it is not a path that can be changed.’

‘As an anthropologist, I see that the world around us is getting ever more complex. To deal with issues like the environmental problems we are facing we need to combine human intelligence in a network that allows us to manage these complexities. So I am not against the swarm mind, though personally I do have a problem with the way companies like Google and Facebook use it: to make more money, sell us more stuff we do not need. We may not be able to stop the supermind, but we may be able influence its development. I think we should listen to people like Jaron Lanier, who suggests Google pays us for our likes, instead of vice versa - stop the rich from getting richer, make the system work in a way that promotes equality.’

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 Floortje Scheepers,  Jos de Mul,  Frits Boer and  Witte Hoogendijk. Psychosis as an evolutionary adaptive mechanism to changing environments. Frontiers of Psychiatry, Volume  9,  June 2018.

Background: From an evolutionary perspective it is remarkable that psychotic disorders, mostly occurring during fertile age and decreasing fecundity, maintain in the human population.

Aim: To argue the hypothesis that psychotic symptoms may not be viewed as an illness but as an adaptation phenomenon, which can become out of control due to different underlying brain vulnerabilities and external stressors, leading to social exclusion.

Methods: A literature study and analysis.

Results: Until now, biomedical research has not unravelld the definitive etiology of psychotic disorders. Findings are inconsistent and show non-specific brain anomalies and genetic variation with small effect sizes. However, compelling evidence was found for a relation between psychosis and stressful environmental factors, particularly those influencing social interaction. Psychotic symptoms may be explained as a natural defense mechanism or protective response to stressful environments. This is in line with the fact that psychotic symptoms most often develop during adolescence. In this phase of life, leaving the familiar, and safe home environment and building new social networks is one of the main tasks. This could cause symptoms of “hyperconsciousness” and calls on the capacity for social adaptation.

Conclusions: Psychotic symptoms may be considered as an evolutionary maintained phenomenon.Research investigating psychotic disorders may benefit from a focus on underlying general brain vulnerabilities or prevention of social exclusion, instead of psychotic symptoms.

Keywords: psychosis, evolution, adaptation, social exclusion, defense mechanism

Jos de Mul. Einführung in das Denken Plessners. Keynote Konferenz Deutsche Theorie II: Helmuth Plessner. Universität Zürich, 2 Juli, 2018.

Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book The Levels of the Organic and Man [Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch], first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. In his lecture De Mull argues for Plessner’s relevance to contemporary discussions in a wide variety of fields in the humanities and sciences, such as biology, neurosciences, psychology, sociology, social geography, cultural anthropology, philosophy of mind, and technology studies.

Jos de Mul. Encyclopedias, hive minds and global brains.A cognitive evolutionary account of Wikipedia. In: Alberto Romele and Enrico Terrone (eds.) Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 103-119.

城市花园，回归还是走向自然 作者：约斯·德·穆尔，鹿特丹伊拉斯姆斯大学 译者：吴寒啸，武汉大学，城市设计学院，设计学硕士 女士们先生们, 346-350.

 首先，我要感谢主办方,特别是陈望衡教授能邀请我在“环境美学和美丽的中国”会议上发言。这些都是非常重要和具有挑战性的学科,美丽的环境,特别是中国的环境,正面临着严重的威胁。在工业化的西方世界和像中国这样快速发展的国家现代化造成了非常严重的环境问题。因为在过去十年间中国工业化的惊人速度增长，中国的环境问题在世界上属于最糟糕的了。如果我们做个比较，例如世界上主要空气污染的工业区——东亚、欧洲以及北美，将变得非常清楚的是环境问题属于当今中国面临的最大问题，武汉亦是如此。据中华医学协会前任会长钟南山表示,空气污染甚至可能在不久的将来成为中国最大的健康威胁。

在我今天的演讲中，我想提出一些艺术、哲学以及与美学相关学科的看法，这些看法可能会有助于解决这些严重的环境问题。当然，我充分意识到这样一个事实就是艺术家和哲学家不去减少工厂排放和汽车尾气的绘画和写作。然而,两者都可以通过灌输思想和激动人心的想象力去改变人们的态度和行为，并且最终都可能领导一个更加健康、更加美丽的世界。在我的演讲中，我希望通过结合一些源自东方和西方艺术和哲学中卓有成效的思想来为这一任务尽一份微薄之力。

让我对自己的演讲做一个简短的概述。第一部分包括一个在对比的方式上的简短冥想，景观已经在东方和西方的绘画传统中被代表和理想化了。我将尝试用一些引人注目的例子去表明在过去两个世纪里山水画的发展反映了人与自然关系的改变，导致无论是在东方还是西方怀旧的渴望回归自然的表达，亦或是在现代，技术的世界中消失的自然的一种阴郁的表达。I

在我演讲的第二部分，联系“和谐” 这一关键的东方美学概念，以及在西方哲学中自然与技术的关系的一些思考，我会请求不同的后怀旧的自然和自然美的概念，自然和技术不再被视为对立的类别，而是因为在一个共同进化的过程中相互交织的两极。因为这个原因，我们不应该努力去“回归自然”， 而是要去“面对自然”并且在人与非人类自然与技术之间建立新的和谐关系。

在第三部分和最后一个部分，我会给一些例子来说明这种后怀旧的自然观怎样在包括中国以及世界其他地区引导我们走向一个更健康和美丽的环境的。

Bruno Accarino, Jos de Mul und Hans-Peter Krüger (Hrsg.). Internationales Jahrbuch für Philosophische Anthropologie. Band 7 / International Yearbook for Philosophical Anthropology. Volume 7. Thomas Ebke und Alexy Zhavoronkov (Hrsg.). Nietzsche und die Anthropologie. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, 356 p.

Im Zentrum dieses Buches stehen die Fragen nach der systematischen Gestalt von  Friedrich Nietzsches Anthropologie und nach Nietzsches  Effekten  auf die philosophische Anthropologie. Im gegensatz zu der langen tonangebenden antrianthropologischen  Tradition der Nietzsche-Deutung soll der Band Impulse zu einer Lektüre von Nietzsche als einen anthropologisch sensiblen Denker setzen.

Jos de Mul. Encyclopedias, hive minds and global brains A cognitive evolutionary account of Wikipedia. 立命館言語文化研究29巻3号. Ritsumeikan Studies in Language and Culture. Volume 29, no.3 (2018), 143-153.

Abstract

Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced, hypermedial encyclopedia, available in more  than  290 languages and  consisting  of  no  less  than  40 million  lemmas,  is  often  hailed  as  a  successful  example  of  the ʻwisdom of  the  crowdsʼ.  However,  critics not only  point  at  the  lack  of  accuracy  and  reliability, uneven coverage of topics, and the poor quality of writing, but also at the under-representation of women and non-white ethnicities. Moreover, some critics regard Wikipedia as an example of the development of  a  hive  mind,  as  we  find  it  in  social insects, whose  ʻmindʼ rather than being a property of individuals is a ʻsocial phenomenonʼ, as it has to be located in the colony rather than in the individual bees. In this article an attempt is made to throw some light on this controversy by analyzing Wikipedia  from  the  perspective  of  the  cognitive  evolution  of  mankind.  Connecting  to Origins  of  the  Modern  Mind (1991) of neuropsychologist Merlin Donald, in which three stages in the cognitive evolution -  characterized by a  mimetic, an linguistic, and an external symbolic cognition  respectively  -  are  distinguished,  it  is  argued  that  the  development  of  the  internet,  and crowd-sourced  projects  like  Wikipedia  in  particular,  can be understood as a fourth, computer- mediated form of cognition. If we survey the cognitive evolution of hominids and the role played in this evolution by cultural and technical artefacts like writing, printing press, computers, and internet, we witness a process of increasing integration of individual minds. With outsourcing and virtualization  of  the  products  and  processes  of  thinking  to  external  memories,  and  the  fast development of implanted computer interfaces, we appear to be at the edge of the materialization of the  hive  mind  in a  ʻglobal brainʼ.  The article ends  with  some  speculative  predictions about the future of human cognition.

Keywords: encyclopedias, Wikipedia, wisdom of the crowds, cognitive evolution, hive mind, global brain

Jos de Mul. Athens, or the Fate of Europe. Journal of Philosophical Research. Special supplement: Selected Papers from the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy. 2015: 221–227.

ABSTRACT: In his essay ‘The Idea of Europe’ George Steiner claims that European culture derives from “a primordial duality, the twofold inheritance of Athens and Jerusalem”. For Steiner, the relationship between Greek rationalism and Jewish religion, which is at once conflictual and syncretic, has engaged the entire history of European philosophy, morality, and politics. However, given this definition, at present the United States of America seem to be more European that ‘the old Europe’ itself. Against Steiner, it will be argued that in order to fathom the distinctive characteristic of European culture, we have to take a third European tradition into account, which is inextricably bound up with Athens: the tradition of Greek tragedy. If we may call Europe a tragic continent, it is not only because its history is characterised by an abundance of real political tragedies, but also because it embodies, as an idea and an ideal, a tragic awareness of the fragility of human life. Instead of reducing the ‘idea of Europe’ to a financial and economic issue, Europe should remain faithful to this idea and ideal.

First of all I like to thank the organizers for their invitation to join this symposium on Art and Cultures. As a tribute to the magnificent city of Athens and its inhabitants, I will talk about the relationship between European culture and the art form that is inextricably tied to the city of Athens: Greek tragedy. The thesis I will defend is that European culture distinguishes itself from other world cultures, and in particular from North-American culture, with which it shares both its Christian and its scientific worldview, by its deeply tragic character. This claim, I will argue, is neither a pessimistic nor an optimistic one, because tragedy is beyond this simple dichotomy. If I claim that Europe is a tragic continent, I refer both to its grandeur and pitfalls.

My talk consists of two parts. First, in a critical discussion with George Steiner, I will address the question of the identity of European culture. In the second part I will relate this identity to Greek tragedy.

Jos de Mul, Polycentricity and poly(ex)centricity - next levels of positionality? On telepresence, social insects, craniopagus twins & global brains. Invited lecture at the conference 'Natürliche Künstlichkeit’. Plessners anthropologisches Grundgesetz: Logik und Deutungskraft. Heidelberg: FEST, February 16.-17, 2018. 

Unsere Gesellschaft steht in den nächsten Jahren vor gewaltigen Herausforderungen. Bis 2050 soll die Transformation zu einer zukunftsfähigen Wirtschaft gelingen. Effizienz und Suffizienz sind hier die Schlagworte. In der politischen und praktischen Diskussion stehen beide Begriffe für unterschiedliche konzeptionelle Ansätze. Die Tagung will einen Beitrag zur Aufklärung dieser Konzepte leisten und Gestaltungsideen diskutieren. 

Bei Effizienz geht es primär um einen möglichst verbesserten Energie- und Ressourceneinsatz sowie eine minimale Umweltbelastung durch Emissionen und Abfälle. Dieses Konzept wird von Politik, Wirtschaft und Allgemeinheit zumeist positiv bewertet. Man glaubt, mit Effizienz die bisherige Wirtschafts- und Lebens-weise, ja sogar das Wirtschaftswachstum fortsetzen zu können, wenn auch in „begrünter“ Form und ohne größere Einschnitte. Dem stehen allerdings vielfach so genannte Rebound-Effekte entgegen: Mögliche Effizienzgewinne werden zunichte gemacht, weil Effizienzsteigerungen durch erhöhte Nutzung und Güterproduktion kompensiert werden.

Das Konzept der Suffizienz dagegen stellt das vorherrschende „Immer weiter, immer schneller, immer mehr“ bewusst in Frage. Dabei kommt neben der Warenproduktion und Erwerbsarbeit der informelle Sektor neu in den Blick – also Eigenarbeit, Selbstversorgung, gemeinsame Nutzung und Tausch von Gütern.
In der öffentlichen Debatte werden Effizienz und Suffizienz oft als gegensätzliche, sich ausschließende Strategien aufgefasst. Effizienz gilt häufig als wachstumsfördernd, Suffizienz dagegen vom Prinzip her als wachstumsmindernd. Wie so oft wird aber das Entweder-Oder der komplexen Realität nicht gerecht.

In dieser Veranstaltung sollen verschiedene Aspekte der beiden Strategieansätze und ihr Zusammenwirken beleuchtet und analysiert werden. Denn Effizienz und Suffizienz sind nicht immer trennbar, insbesondere nicht im Zeitablauf. Anhand konkreter Beispiele werden im Rahmen dieser Veranstaltung die Zusammenhänge veranschaulicht.