Embodied Bodies
Once incorporated into a body, then, a prosthesis is no longer merely an object, in the sense that we can no longer straightforwardly deny that it has or plays a role in a person’s subjectivity
Walker 2019
Manuel, Cho and Sam are talking about the following paper:
On Replacement Body Parts
In this post the images comes from:
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- Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels
In this post the dialogue is realised by an interaction of virtual characters, for more information please check the page “Virtual characters“
Group Chat
Manuel, Cho, Sam
Manuel
Julia pointed out to us that medical technology is both extremely old and has always been linked with sci-fi or mythology
Manuel
Apparently the first-ever mention of a prosthetic leg dates back over 3000 years to the Indian Rig Veda “Vishpala“
Cho
That is indeed extremely old, but I do know that cavemen already performed brain surgery, so …😊
Sam
But this is mythological, right? I’m not sure how advanced it was … did it have moving joints?
Manuel
We don’t really know, but we have an actual prosthetic big toe from Egypt from around the same time “Ancient Egyptian’s wooden toe is sophisticated prosthetic“
Cho
That would actually be more advanced than a simple peg leg!
Manuel
The first moving joints were developed in the middle ages, as far as we know.
Sam
Yeah, I suppose that wooden prosthetics rarely survived intact
Manuel
There’s a Roman artificial leg, but no joints “Copy of Roman artificial leg, London, England, 1905-1915“
Cho
I do know some of this history, but I suppose you are also going to look to the future?
Manuel
Oh, absolutely! The point is that mythology and then sci-fi are full of amputations and replaced limbs
Sam
Sorry for being a nerd, but we will get to Darth Vader at some point, right?😊
Manuel
Ha! Sure, that’s a great example actually. At some point we slip from just replacing, to improving.
Cho
Now I see where you are going with this, yes. When is a prosthetic healing and when enhancing?
Sam
I guess that this is linked to, well, an engineering mindset, I’d say. If the body is a machine, we can repair as well as improve it.
Manuel
See? This is exactly why I needed both of you for this! When is something actually “enhancement”?
Cho
There are quire a few ethical problems linked to that … doctors “playing god” and all that.
Sam
Same here: as soon as you start talking about an AI that is more than human, things get really complicated.
Manuel
I’m looking forward to hearing all about it!
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