Personification of Machines - Automatization of Persons: From Cognitive Science to Transhumanism

Jerzy BOBRYK

Pracownia Psycholingwistyki i Psychologii Poznawczej, Instytut Psychologii, Polska Akademia Nauk, ul. Jaracza 1, 00-379 Warsaw, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Computers and computer sets are new tools rapidly developing into a complex product, namely, new means of mass communication. The paper argues that it is possible to discover causal laws describing the relations between electronic technology and the human mind. The first part of the paper presents the ways in which external social and cultural institutions determine the mental processes taking place in the human mind. Human mental activity, which essentially consists in the use of signs, does not depend only on the internal (mental, or brain) processes, but it is also dependent on external artefacts (i.e. material vehicles of cultural symbols) and on human practical actions. The second part of the paper presents transhumanism as an intellectual consequence of certain problems remaining unsolved by cognitive science.

Keywords:

digital technology, human mind, technological determinism, cognitive science, transhumanism