The Subject itself is the Subject of the Machine.
The Subject itself is the Subject of the Machine.
Astrophysics, Intelligence (ai) & semantics, Metaphysics
The Subject itself is the Subject of the Machine.
What does it mean to be human? We live in a technological age, where rapid advances in personal tech and the science of Artificial Intelligence are challenging us in ways never before imagined.
A book in two parts, The Universal Subject of Our Time begins with an exploration of 20th Century post-modernism's undermining of subjectivity with thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard and Althusser and continues with a description of the science wars, where physical realists challenged the post-modernists up to the 1990s when the intellectual conflict resulted in an uncompromising stand-off after the Sokal Hoax. In Part II the subject is resurrected by taking a look at arguments for machine intelligence and AI and also, from the perspective of physics, examines what subjectivity means, particularly in relation to black holes or black stars, and look to what lies ahead in the future, in terms of space exploration, Martian habitats and even the possibility of first contact with extra-terrestrials.
Click on the circles below to see more reviews
Nikbin's The Universal Subject of Our Time challenges the current discourse on human subjectivity and its difficult encounter with virtual technologies. Lucidly written and well argued, it is a concise philosophical-scientific primer for anybody who is concerned with the predicament of the human subject facing machine and its uncertain future—this is a necessary reading. ~ Nadir Lahiji
"This could be the Big Bang of philosophy..." ~ Slavoj Zizek
"In the last decades, the notion of human subject was undermined at two totally different levels: in deconstructionist theory which played with "the death of the subject", and in cognitive sciences which debunked the myth of unified conscious subject controlling its acts. Nikbin's book intervenes into this debates in a double way: it brings deconstructionism and cognitive sciences into a dialogue, plus it demonstrates how, out of this dialogue, a new universal subject can emerge. The Universal Subject of Our Time strikes at the very heart of our theoretical (and not only theoretical) traumas. It hurts, but all true healing begins with pain." ~ Slavoj Zizek
