Were this to be realized we would be able to simultaneously share our thoughts without recourse to verbalisation perhaps. It would be interesting to think of this space - if we may call it that in the structure of multiple personal computers with each of them plugged into a common hardrive where they store their files, hence becoming accessible to each, with each having their own local storage. This being perhaps a limited form of the ‘divine like global space of shared awareness’.
The question which is begged by this situation, where amidst social media platforms, cloud computing and the ubiquity of cellular devices that can transfer data - is how will Singularity effect capitalism as we know it? Will we be taken over by the machines - plugged into them like some kind of renewable resource, amongst whose interactions the infrastructure which enables them remains the only thing which concretely develops? Or will our affective relations be able to overcome the schism and pass through to perhaps create new communities where we will be brave enough to speak in our proper name?
On the face of it this seems a suicidal act for the architecture in question, much like Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon is designed to generate a surplus value while simultaneously reinforcing class relations within already existing society. Indeed, even our very acts of resistance to this - such as the courts enforcing rights of privacy, as well as features designed to further protect ourselves from the gaze of the Other becoming essential measures in the conduct of ourselves in our digital lives, do little more than reinforce temporally inscribed logics within deterministic relations which are presided over by the accountant and the human resources managers of companies. A retreat into an ever heightened sense of privacy - while protecting our individuality will not be able to circumvent either our subjection to deterministic structures such as class relations - even if they are in so called creative industries or universities for example, who in their enmeshment with the reproduction of a discipline forget occasionally as to what a discipline was an inquiry into in the first place. Nor would they effectively permit for a traversal of the fantasy to use Zizek’s idiom, of a means of confronting the fact that the way we encounter each other in our everyday lives is effectively not in some prelapsarian space but a terrain inscribed within the coordinates that are a product of capitalist relations of production reproduced by class society - even as aspects of it turn degenerate.
Like Shoshana Zuboff, Zizek sees that - “We, the watched are not just material we are also exploited, involved in an unequal exchange which is why the term behavioural surplus (to play the role of surplus value) is fully justified here.” When we are surfing the web, buying commodities and watching TV, we get what we want but we give more, we lay ourselves bare; we make the details of our life and habits transparent to the digital big Other.”
Neuralink, the brain machine interface proposed by Elon Musk intends to effectively bypass the development of additional layers of mediation in our communication - from the spoken word, to writing, telegraph, and cellular technology, by bringing in place a system where our very thought can be transmitted without its initial inscription into linguistic signs, hence infinitely increasing not only their speed but also their accuracy, also avoiding the brutal simplification of meaning which this entails.
This is a position which Zizek does present criticism for: -
The first criticism of the wired brain hypothesis is that our experiences and thoughts are not merely functions of our brains but have meaning only as bodily experiences and that it is within this horizon that information becomes tangible at all in any cognizable sense. In other words the wired brain hypothesis still cannot bypass our reality as bodily creatures even if it may facilitate the transfer of informational exchanges, memories, and credit between us.
The second and far more serious criticism concerns the question about the possibility of thought being expressed in extra-linguistic terms or forms. What if, language - instead of getting in the way of our ability to communicate, by way of it being merely a medium, was itself generative of the complexity of our ability to share meaningful experiences? I think we may even present a psychoanalytic reading of this phenomena. If we subtract language from thought - what we get is not some pure essence of intentionality which perhaps a crude reading of Husserl may lead us to, but simply a kind of mute surface effect that loses its ability to communicate and engage meaningfully with the field in question. I am here drawn even to the Hiedeggerian hypothesis of an infinite mute pain permeating through nature which finds the form of its expression in the logos of the word. I think the British philosopher Gillian Rose most markedly brings this dimension into contemporary thought in her conception of the ‘pathos’ of the concept.
Here, I think we would be well served to try and incorporate a kind of expressionism in philosophy. An expressionism which should yet be engaged with, formed, taught and disciplined - so as it does not become into some hysteric oral drive in a permanent cycle of transference seeking to voice trauma, but one which can reflect on the phenomena as such and find means to change the situation at hand. Hegel may have referred to this as self-consciousness, and I suppose certain subaltern theorists these days have termed it ‘reflexivity’.
Zizek however goes further - and I think it is important to recognize this as it is also the clue as to why a trauma initially does not find expression in established forms of articulation. For he asserts that a thought is nothing in itself, in other words we learn what it is that we think or want to say, by our act of saying it, or writing for that matter. Indeed, language is today as a facet of our being human - an essential aspect of our sexuality.
However, let us say for a moment that a brain computer interface could potentially transmit our thoughts without any linguistic mediation, we should mark how this would come to be. Were such a machine to be able to transmit our very neuronal processes themselves, which is what it would effectively be doing to be able to transmit them without linguistic mediation, these would not necessarily be our thoughts per se. In fact, when we are thinking we are more often than not - simply not aware of our own neuronal processes. If this is so how would we realize if we were plugged into a BCI or not?
Remember that Musk himself maintains that a human would have to have a certain distance from this machine. In the sense that we would still have to be able to offer our consent to such an interface before another starts reading our thoughts. It remains a product of our will.
How far are we actually away from such a minimal degree of ethicality actually being bypassed however? Zizek points out that in May 2002 in New York University scientists had already found a way to attach a computer chip to the brain of a mouse which would allow the team to control the rodent as it travels through a maze. Are we, in a world of targeted advertisements to say nothing about the rules and regulations which civil society integrates into itself - to say nothing of their constituent violations, really very far from some sort of determinism perhaps in a richer world than the mouse but determined nonetheless?
We should also explore this hypothesis from the other direction. Is what Ray Kurzweil calls - Singularity, the sharing of our very thoughts directly with others, really very different from some sort of religious experience, with perhaps new age cults being representative of what sort of collectivity this may be? It would be useful here to spell out the difference between such a conception of singularity and how the German Idealists understood God.
Spirit may be thought of as the appropriation of inert material reality by consciousness transforming it into a form which helps actualise its immanent spiritual potential. Initially spirit’s recognition of itself happens when it alienates itself in the encounter with external material reality, returning to itself and hence gaining the sense of an identity. At this stage it is yet opposed to reality - so to speak. When does spirit than recognize itself as the spiritual inner life of material reality? And how does this happen? Well I would still recommend that you read the Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel, but Zizek’s account of those steps would have to suffice here.
He posits an overlapping of a person’s self-consciousness with self-consciousness of reality. In this sense a subject’s comprehension of God is not as some outside observer or agent who shapes the course of affairs, be this entity technological or bureaucratic, rather an individual’s self-awareness of God is simultaneously the self-awareness of God. Here God and reality are not two separate ontological planes. Reality is a movement which takes place in God himself, or overlaps with the becoming of God.
For theorists of Singularity, us finite humans cannot actualise the unity of Spirit and reality. Our separate individual awareness presents too strong an obstacle for them. Zizek’s position here is clear. When our self-consciousness grasps reality and experiences itself as the self-awareness of reality then we have entered Singularity. It requires in other words a casting aside of our individuality and becoming one with Spirit that permeates reality.
There remain criticisms of this Hegelian position however. And principally they entail the point of view that he was ahead of his time, or was perhaps ‘too early’ in the identification of that which was to come to be in its fruition - so as to properly appreciate what was happening.
Three principle objectors are again present here:
Gyorgy Lukacs for whom Hegel in his idealist vision of the reconciliation of subject with substance merely prefigures the proletarian revolution when the proletariat would actually seize or appropriate its alienated historical substance and reconcile itself.
We then have Francis Fukuyama for whom the reconciliation or dare I say redemption which Hegel dreamt of, the reconciliation of individual freedom with organic social order could not be accomplished in a rational monarchy but only within contemporary liberal democracy.
Finally we have the transhumanists for whom only our enmeshment in Singularity of perhaps some technological kind may open up the reconciliation of spirit with reality.
Of these the most interesting and engaged in our contemporary moment would indeed be the Singularity of the transhumanists. Georg Cantor revolutionized mathematical thinking by demonstrating that infinity itself need not be some unified or homogenous concept, that there indeed can be infinities of different sizes, even if each in principle were uncountable.
Similarly, Zizek posits that perhaps the time has come for theorists of Singularity to recognize this not being one singularity but to recognize it as potentially multiple and heterogeneous. Unlike the homogenous medium of cyberspace for example.
What would be the effect of Singularity for us in our private or inner lives however? That is to say phenomenologically? We are presented with an example of how a BCI may allow us to experience the effect of our sexual activity on our partner as it is happening. Would this not be also an example of the coincidence of subject-object identity? Yet this mechanism would also enable far more sinister applications. Let us say a sadist who could experience the pain of their victim as they torture them, which like some forbidden surplus functions to add to the pleasure which the torturer experiences in their act of inflicting pain.
The coincidence of such two perspectives leads us to ask whether they would be comprehendible by the same subject or would their coincidence break down the sense of identity which such a subject may have? This has been likened to quantum superposition though I am not sure I follow that argument.
One could argue however, at least from a psychoanalytic perspective that the integrity of an ego would be harder to maintain were there to be far too many contradictory experiences that were registering there.
An alternative perspective is inserted here with singularity being not necessarily the coincidence of such multiple perspectives, in a common container let us say - like the common drive of an office, but rather that it is a fragmentary space open to a plurality of even contradictory experiences. Would this not be more representative of what people in a world are actually like?
At the personal level however - would Singularity be able to register not merely hate and love, let us say of an adolescent towards their father to stick with Zizek’s example, but also their conflict? Also presented here is the example of the inherence of pleasure in pain, like for instance when we are able to successfully accomplish a difficult task.
To move out of the fray for a moment, it is well possible to imagine an alternative form of freedom or power which can arise in such conditions of singularity where just being able to plug ourselves out from it’s surveillance mechanisms may be experienced as freedom.
The new form of freedom or power referred to here, the ability to isolate oneself from the singularity appears to be not unlike Zizek’s earlier plea for more alienation, which in the way he uses it appears to prefigure the calls for autonomy. In terms of how he uses this provocative phrase however it becomes apparent that it presents an individual with the mediatory distance necessary to make properly reasoned and considered decisions, much like the issue of privacy raised by courts recently. And yet, does this very distance from each other as basically animals - allow us to appreciate the forms in which we express ourselves - that is our works, and perhaps even identify, as Zizek does possible homologies between them and from this - deducing reasons or a hypothesis as to what makes a certain characteristic or development favourable - or rather even who it may be reaching out to?
Also, was not a key facet which we gathered from Covid at least - if not before was that civilisation requires or rather presents itself to us when we assume the proper distance from each other in it - in other words social distancing may be regressive as a form of social policing - however its intent was triggered in a situation where a contagion’s transmission required a degree of circumspection with which we approach others - and perhaps such measures would lead us to place a greater premium on trust and the depth of understanding that may be required to harbour it.
And does not this backdrop - permit for the formation of what Freud referred to as the unconscious? A place which can harbour our psychic intents which are generative of dreams - as opposed to a Jungian reading of archetypes? Zizek observes that the Lacanian unconscious is neither a facet of being nor of non-being, rather it is a pure virtual point, or to quote - ‘a virtual other scene which accompanies the subjects conscious content.’
It is important to note that any mediatory moment - that is the identification of the aspect of deed as a phenomena that exists independently of the agent allows for us to gauge and perhaps even engage with the result rather than forming some essentialist and what ultimately becomes a hysterical position, even if a subject can find some joy in it. It should also be noted that as far as I know, in psychoanalysis - even orthodox Lacanian psychoanalysis: transference in the analytic experience between the analysand and the analysee is strictly to be avoided as it leads to projections about the persona of the analyst and perhaps more importantly displacements in the psyche of the analysee… Is Slavoj Zizek perhaps making a position which is distinct from such orthodoxy? When for instance he states that transference is the mechanism via which ‘pure potentiality is actualised’ it appears that he may be referring to a transference from the unconscious into the free association which the analysee narrates to the analyst.
And, if I may add - This ushering forth of reality as it were, if that is how we are to interpret the actualisation of the virtual appears to be comparable to Heidegger’s notion of truth as the unhiddeness of being or disclosure rather than simply the correctness of proposition.
I think a far more pertinent and indeed deeper insight is made by Slavoj when he asks whether neuralink would be able to capture this dimension of the unconscious, that is which is not a substantial base but rather a pure virtual presence, or ‘an absent point of reference for its effects’ - and as such a hypothesis which becomes a concept with a topological dimension as it were.
This is a matter which is of some interest to me however I am less sure whether it helps to consider its presence, or mode of appearing if you prefer - as a retroactive positing or construction. Indeed this is a question which none less than Althusser struggled with in trying to account for structural causality as that absent point which is discernible only in its effects - hence posited retroactively. It would help to unpack this dimension - and perhaps to be able to think of it really as a philosopher’s account of a mode of appearing, for irrespective of how something, let us say a book or a building were made, the way we encounter it is entirely independent of its conception.
Consider a character in a novel whose frustration with his workplace and anxiety at home makes it difficult for him to form meaningful and reciprocal relations with others. The point of view from where we see this character, whether as his boss, his father/family, or acquaintances - changes what it is we may view him as because the real of his desire and the background of his struggles would not appear the same to each of these positions. Here, for the sake of unicity I think it is best that we follow Badiou and Jameson on insisting on the nameability of not merely the person himself, but also on emotions and feelings etc. which when left ambiguous can lead to ill expressed thoughts.
Examples from cinema are cited as well with a scenario where aliens arrive and set up something resembling a bureaucratic rule not unlike our corporate government which is operated out of closed zones. His question here is whether neuralink can sustain this dimension? Not the fantastic production of cinema nor the grim reality of how we conceive of it - but their very likeness as such, or what could be described as the metaphoricity of perception?
In another place, a lecture I believe - Zizek mentions the difference between coffee without milk and coffee without cream. Both empirically being the same coffee. The difference however persists in the subjects who have them, in their very index of loss which is subtracted from the stupid coffee on the table - forming hence another variation of the sense of virtuality invoked. Can a computer think of this?
The position which is reiterated here is indeed the psychoanalytic one of the obstacle to desire creating the very desire which it is an obstacle to, and here we will have to recognize that even were neuralink to create a world which operates in the interface of a universal shared consciousness - we would still have to live within the coordinates of mortality and sexuality. How this is navigated would retroactively frame who we are to the big Other.
It should also be noted as to how similar the notion of Singularity presented is to that of the psychoanalytic traversal of the fantasy. And here we should specify, at the forefront before anything else the realisation of a fantasy is probably that which would most effectively end desire. Why? because it is fantasy which allows us to maintain a certain distance from the Real. In his words - directly getting what we want desublimates what we want hence rendering it worthless. Or that it is possible to get the desired thing itself, but without the network of mediations which make it desirable.
The prospect of what is to become of the subject in singularity is what is at stake here, and we would be well reminded that this is a matter of mediatory redistribution which has always been at work in institutions. The subject in other words is an act, deed, or creation which is directed in appeal to another. It is only this dimension which sustains its inherence. One can well imagine how institutional responsibilities have changed over the years due to a question of interpretation as to what actually constitutes the role and responsibilities of a body. The police in England for instance were once also tasked with responsibilities pertaining to the polis that is of political economy directly - such as the regulation of the price of bread. Such aspects have changed or have been altered over the years due to how civil society interprets the function of such a state apparatus.
The hypothesis of the subject that will survive the entry into singularity may hence be something which is no longer bound to an embodied form, or to a nameable addressee - but may persist as perhaps a message, not unlike a postcard from a world that has changed to an address that has been resettled - a remainder which may perhaps be found in the post-office of the future - whatever that may be.
What is the unconscious here, not of this vanishing subject per se but the background which may for instance prohibit us from a proper reconstruction of the narrative and inquiry we are pursuing? What in other words is the unconscious which is strictly immanent to a subject? This is where I think the crucial position of the Ljubljana School ought to be recognized for what it is. They achieve the reactivation of Hegelian philosophy via a recognition that contemporary anti-philosophy which often dons philosophical garbs begins by attacking the Cogito of Descartes on the grounds that it abstracts reason from the body. Here we must insist, following the troika that there is in our social enmeshment in the lifeworld, our registry as citizen and our terms of engagement in professional structures - realities which simply cannot be reduced to our bodily person and as such form something of an unconscious of our person, an unconscious which is not exhaustive by any means and this is the crucial part - for it is here that we also encounter other subjectivities, and from where displaced drives and partial object make their presence known to us via their surfacing as symptoms.
What must be recognized however is that the ego which regulates such libidinal symptoms works with them via a mediation with injunctions that operate at the level of the symbolic order - forming what is, what Freud may have called the superego, and as such are strictly injunctions, even if made in a field of contesting desires. This is why the unconscious, were we have to choose between representing it as a thick mesh of the lifeworld in the background, or as abstract rational structure - which may permit for the cooperation between departments for example, to say nothing of individuals; are inclined to opt for the latter categorically.
The subject as such, to survive singularity will be split not merely between itself and its other but split in itself - so as to hold a minimal distance which may allow it to reflect on its acts and hence on their consequences. As such, we may hear in this position a reiteration of Zizek’s plea for more alienation - and this may be a suffering that is borne by this subject, but also - through its traversals, a new hope. It is Zizek’s wager - that even if we were to be excluded from singularity, this minimal distance is what would allow us to perhaps recognize the inconsistent terrain that will present itself, and hence recognize and play with different facets of the multifaceted Singularity.
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