Day: July 16, 2022

First of all I just would like to say the episodes we watched really had me thinking. How does my mind actual interact with my body? Are they separate entities that support each other? Can one really exist without the other? These are just the few questions that circulated my mind as I watched these episodes.

I started off watching the “Out of the Past” episode from Altered Carbon (I am definitely watching the rest of this show). The show takes place in the future so of course they have developed a way to live longer… however it’s a very interesting take. They literally take the consciousness or the mind and put it in a stack where essentially the body comes disposable after. I feel like this encompasses the concept of cybernetics because  essentially this stack is like computer software which can be transferred over to a new sleeve (body). Therefore the body is essential because the stack can’t continue without a new sleeve. This shows how the body is a necessity to the mind as it provides the necessary feedback for the mind to continue.

The scene above really shows this transfer from on sleeve to another. It’s really trippy. I feel this scene is like a computer going through an update. The mind which has just been placed into a new body and it is updating to adjust to this new body. I mean talk about a long update!

The “Return to Tomorrow” episode from Star Trek: The Original Series was next on my list. For me, it really reflected the thought of 4e cognition. But in particular embodied cognition was highlighted throughout the episode. In particular when the mind entity of Sargon transmitted into Captain Kirk’s body, it was almost as if Sargon felt euphoric to be in a body once again. He is so happy to finally feel all his sensorimotor capabilities and how desperately he needs it which is what embodied cognition represents.

We can’t have our mind and the emotions without a body to really feel all those emotions. Which is why Sargon so desperately needs help in order to regain his body again. To me it makes sense, I would not want to exist without actually being able to physically feel. It is a necessity.

The last stop for me was the Futurama episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.” Now first I feel like I went from very realistic and probably to very unrealistic and not possible. I mean after all it is Futurama. I feel like here we really see that common  concept of the “Brain in a Vat.” I mean after all the big brains say it all. The brain essentially is suspended in a vat as it is floating around in what appears to be liquid. Here the mind is separate from the body and is located only in the brain which is why the these big brains have immense power and able to take over.

Really though…this is Futurama so I can’t fully take it seriously.

I will say though all these episodes allow me to really explore the concepts of the mind and body and that relationship. It really does make me question which is more important or if they are equally important. I mean its a trip which I don’t think we will ever have a solid answer for.

The three episodes for this module, Altered Carbon, “Out of the Past,” Futurama, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” and Star Trek, “Return to Tomorrow,” are all centered around the brain and cognitive function both in and outside of the body.

In Altered Carbon, the body is considered a sleeve into which different individuals’ consciousness can be uploaded. The consciousness is not a physical brain but more like embedded cognition that comes in the form of a cortical stack (disc) inserted into the spinal column of an interchangeable sleeve (body). A person can stay alive for eternity moving from sleeve to sleeve, as long as the cortical stack remains intact; if it is destroyed, death is permanent. A short scene in this episode stuck out to me the most. A young girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and the government told the family they would receive a new sleeve for their deceased child. When this young girl received her sleeve, she was embedded into an old woman even though she was no older than 8. When the parents complained, they were told that she was lucky to have received any sleeve at all, and if they wanted an upgrade, they were welcome to pay for one; if not, just to shut up and go away. When the little girl heard this, she cried and said no, she did not want to go back into the dark. This scene made me realize that the show’s foundation was not about the physical body and the connection to its consciousness but the power of the consciousness as it correlates to any physical form.

I am a Futurama fan, though I haven’t watched it for quite some time this episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” was one of my favorite ones. This episode starts at a talent competition for the people in New New York after the talent show concludes, Leela is attacked and escapes floating brains bent on making people on Earth stupid. The brains achieve this, and everyone but Frye is turned stupid, and that is because Frye is already stupid, so it doesn’t work on him, which makes this episode hysterical. In this episode, there is no connection between a body and the brains that have attacked earth. According to the Niblonians, the brains hate all consciousness and want to make everything in the universe stupid. I feel like this episode would be considered extended cognition because the brains can create stupidity in any living being and do not possess bodies or need them to create destruction.

I am not a Trekkie. However, I have some family members that grew up loving Star Trek, and I do remember watching a few episodes at family get-togethers. In this episode, “Return to Tomorrow,” the USS Enterprise happens upon a new planet whose inhabitants are so powerful they direct the Enterprise to its location. According to the ship’s system, the planet has been dead for half a million years, but a voice that can read thoughts and communicate with or without words tells Captain Kirk and his crew that this is not true; life is on his planet. Captain Kirk is inhabited by an alien after being coerced to beam to the planet he and his crew were led too. This episode would define embodied cognition because once the alien inhabits Captain Kirk, he is so enamored with Captain Kirk’s body with the heartbeat and the air filling his lungs. These beings need bodies to survive; unlike the brains in the Futurama episode, their survival depends on physical form.

The episodes we watched this week all delve into the split between the mind and the body. Alva Noe said “you are not your brain” but these episodes all conceptualize the brain as independent consciousness, beyond the body.

Altered Carbon explicitly states, “Your body is not who you are, you shed it like a snake sheds it’s skin, leave it, forgotten, behind you.”  But the episode seems to grapple with this statement. On one hand there are very cybernetic theories at play. The mind, people’s consciousness are downloaded into other bodies(sleeves). While Bancroft explains his “murder” to Kovacs its all very analytical, like a computer he is backed up to an orbiting satellite feed, he is theoretically immortal as long as his backup remains intact.  This approach to consciousness appears to embrace the duality between mind and body, that the body is just imprisoning the mind and easily switched, because the consciousness is the core of the person not the body. However, there are many instances within the show that seems at odds with this thought, taking a more embodied approach to cognitions – that left me with so many questions. The most obvious variance from cybernetics is the conscious tie to the body as a form of the human identity. When Kovacs wakes up, he is told not to look at his reflection because he risks schism/a psychotic break. An Identity crisis seems like a logical assumption for someone suddenly inside a different body. So much of a person’s identity rests on their appearance, race, age, gender, perceptions. The consciousness is affected by the body’s production of hormones which fully displays this embodied conscious theory. When Ortega is speaking in the precinct, she states the envoys can “drop into any sleeve and be combat ready in minutes.. absorb local language culture and customs” This is where I have questions, were the languages and culture and customs a part of the sleeve’s knowledge, it seems like the envoy is merging their own consciousness with the remnants of the body’s conscious. For the first episode, I would need to see more of how this is explained but if that were the case, it would be interesting to see how the merged consciousness affects the stacked conscious.

What was interesting in the Futurama episode is the similarities between the brains race and the nibblonian race. These are 2 presumably far superior and ancient intellectual races.  While the nibblonians were intelligent and perceptive enough to send nibbler to earth in an effort to save the galaxy from the brains, they are driven to an almost compulsory need for food. Plato would consider them a slave to their bodily needs, even in the direst situation they are easily distracted and influenced by ham. The brains, however, claim to be so advanced they have evolved “far beyond asses” yet they are said to be driven by pure hate – Plato associates emotions within the confines of the body – so it doesn’t fit in with the cartesian dualist theory that they would be motivated by emotion rather than any reason/logic. It’s interesting that the 2 ancient intellectual races seem to be driven by more primal needs.

In the Star Trek episode, we are introduced to another superiorly intellectual race, they had transmitted their consciousness out of their bodies, however when Sargon takes over Captain kirk’s body he breathes in and feels, and exclaims “to be again” almost completely diverging from Descartes exclamation, for centuries Sargon has been thinking – however, only once he is in a body and can see and feel again, does he consider himself as “being”. Similarly Henoch goes against plato’s perception of the body as the mind’s prison. When he is trying to convince  Thalessa to steal the body, he calls the unfeeling bots they were creating a prison, trapping them out of a living/feeling body. I find these overt departures from the cartesian dualist theory important it denoting that humans/people are beyond just thoughts, we are a collection of our senses, our environment our bodies, our perceptions and our thoughts. This episode truly highlights what it means “to be”.

When analyzing the different viewpoints of the brain and the mind, it is easy to see that the brain is a pretty strong organ. The cognition of the power of our own brain may even be too hard to fully understand. The three episodes that we watched in this module may have given us a little bit of a clue of the power that the brain has when considering it through different perspectives.

Futurama

In the episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” we see, “The Brain in a Vat,” example throughout the episode. Since the brains and Big Brain have the power to not only exist on their own outside of a human body, but also make the humans in the episode stupid, it shows the power of the brain and how the brain is the mind and can survive on its own. This is shown when Big Brain says to Fry, “We have long since evolved beyond the need for asses.” Big Brain doesn’t have an ass or anything other part of the body for Fry to kick. Just like, “The Brain in a Vat,” example, the organ can survive, have its own mind, and live its own life without the need of a human body. In this scenario, it seems that the episode is suggesting that the mind is actually stronger than the brain. If the brain has the power to make other humans stupid, then it must be stronger than the human body itself, right? 4E Cognition wouldn’t agree though considering the brain is only part of cognition. I agree because I doubt we would be able to think the same without our brain in our body lol.

Altered Carbon

The next episode that I watched was, “Out of the Past,” which represented the idea of Cybernetics and how the mind is like a computer. It was interesting to see how the episode used the cortical stacks to represent one’s mind, and how although one’s body can die, if the cortical stack is ok, or the mind, then it can just be placed in another sleeve, or body, and still work the same way it used to. It’s kinda like if a car were to crash, but the engine remained in tact, then you could essentially take that engine and put it into another car, and the car would be able to drive as the old one did. This analogy shows that the mind and body can be viewed as separate. It also correlates with Cybernetics because the cortical stacks (mind) is like the hard drive of a computer, and if the hard drive of a computer remains in tact, you could take the hard drive from one computer and use it in another. At the beginning of the episode, the woman says, “your body is not who you are.” Basically she’s referring to one’s mind and cognition as a person’s identity. Therefore, you could pass your mind from one body to the other, and you would still be you–just like a computer’s hard drive. The body in, “Out of the Past,” are just referred to as sleeves or something that holds your mind.

Star Trek: The Original Series

In the episode, “Return to Tomorrow,” we are able to see an example of Embodied Cognition. Part of the Embodied Cognition idea is that, “cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities.” Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch, which are basically minds that were left without a body and are being held in spheres, need the bodies of Kirk, Mulhall, and Spock in order for them to basically construct their own bodies for their minds. Through the experiences of Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch while they were using the other’s bodies, we can see the idea that Embodied Cognition has in regards to how, “bodies and emotions are integrated into our cognitive systems, not separate from it.” While Thalassa was in Mulhall’s body, she states that she forgot, “what it felt like to even breathe again.” Simply put, these minds that were inside of these spheres without a body were not actually living without bodies, as they had forgotten what it felt like to be alive inside of a body. So, our bodies help our minds have cognition.

All of these ideas and theories were pretty crazy to consider when watching these episodes. Can’t wait for the rest of the course.