Advancing the Human Self. Ewa Nowak

³⁷ Wilber’s inclination to spiritualism and esoterism made serious reception of his developmental model impossible. But reading the developmental manifestos of the theorists of posthumanism, their esoteric character can be noted, too: “the human desire to acquire new capacities (…), to expand the boundaries of our existence”³⁸ is rooted in a religious “quest to transcend our natural confines…:”³⁹

Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have We made thee. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honorable, art the molder and maker of thyself; thou mayest sculpt thyself into whatever shape thou dost prefer. Thou canst grow downward into the lower natures which are brutes. Thou canst again grow upward from thy soul’s reason into the higher natures which are divine⁴⁰.

But the following book (with some critical exceptions such as Agamben’s and Lingis’ adoption of the “glorious” approach) does not explore esoteric and eschatological explanations⁴¹ of the human self’s posthumanist evolution (with its related perturbances). Instead, it draws on developmental and phenomenological psychology, the philosophy of biology, and philosophy of mind to examine posthumanism’s cognitive and experiential –and thus naturalist – foundations, including the new materialism theory as a posthumanist extension of the Embodied Self Theory. Developmentalism belongs to them, and its rise is parallel to the rise of the phenomenological theory of intercorporeality with its most recent, posthumanist ontologies.

Kegan’s construction of the evolving self concerns human growth in connection with the understanding of reality. Over time, across five developmental stages, a transformative learning process occurs. This process changes the way we know ←23 | 24→and understand things,⁴² in terms of objective reality and our relations with objects. “We have object; we are subject,”⁴³ he claims. Objects are “those elements of our knowing or organizing that we can reflect on, handle, look at, be responsible for, relate to each other, take control of, internalize, assimilate, or otherwise operate upon,”⁴⁴ e.g., identify with them, and, finally transform the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. In particular, we cannot reflect upon the subject and the self without focusing on self-complexity, and the focus itself must coordinate different perspectives of consciousness. As Kegan’s perspectivism theory shows affinities with that of Kohlberg and Selman, and all these theories are well known, it would be sufficient to refer to the fifth-order consciousness, which Kegan describes as the most integrative – i.e., integrating the self and the other – and, therefore, as “self-transformational.” It is the other and the otherness that reorients one’s feeling of self from particular, ego-centered identity. The cognitive-structuralist approach to self-development corresponds with the phenomenological and the narrative approach of the self that is experienced or storied from the first-person perspective, and which needs to be complemented with the third-person perspective (the so-called objective perspective). However, integrating the self and the other, which was explored by Kegan at the level of conscious and subconscious (deep level) cognitive operations, found its “partner” in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the experience of one’s self as always already embedded in the world and not even related to the world. Contemporary phenomenological and cognitive concepts of the self, i.e., post-egocentric and thus extended, shared, allocentric and ecological, including the embodied self, seem to be extrapolations of the classic, self-developmental theory proposed by Kegan, especially because of the balance between egocentric and allocentric aspects of self-identity, which involves realism; meaning realism of the physical/material, social, or epistemic environment⁴⁵ with which one has relations.⁴⁶

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Developmental cognitive models of consciousness and embodied consciousness, and cognitivist models of mind and embodied mind inspired by Francisco Varela’s et al. The Embodied Mind,⁴⁷ seem to be equally supportive, as long as one is considering self and identity in terms of human beings. As the title of this book claims (as does the core thesis of the related research project), posthumanism and transhumanism emerge from the very foundations of humanism, such as a human being’ self-transcendence, human growth, development (evolution) of their identity, and even from their embodied self. Confirming that thesis through the suitable arguments is one of the aims of this book. Phenomenological and hermeneutic theories demonstrate this argumentative potential, as they do argue there are indissoluble interrelations between mind (conscious and unconscious) and body. They also support the concept of the experiential and cognitive horizon (field), which allows one to conceptualize those kinds of trans- and post-human agents that distinguish themselves by phenomenal features such as extended, ecological, intercorporeal, and crosscorporeal self-identity. Here, these features will be defined as representative for the posthumanist “stage” of human development. Agents exhibiting these features are to be defined as autopoietic or techno-autopoietic systems that are extended, ecological, intercorporeal, etc., in as much, as our ‘extensions’ may be artificial, not only natural (environmental). “Relational holism”⁴⁸ and inclusive, high-complexity, autopoietic dynamical systems are thinkable as one of the implications of these features which originate from the embodied self. Because these implications may involve not only interpersonal (social) relations but also certain relations with realities such as animals, artificial devices (prostheses, implants), allografts, virtual realities and a variety of techniques called ‘enhancements’ or ‘enhancers,’ sharp boundaries between the “human” and “posthuman” have yet to be specified.

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2. The Embodied Self

The embodied self and the embodied mind belong to the most influential concepts for thinking about the human being beyond the body/mind dualism, and to adapt the embodiment as a precondition of experiential and cognitive processes. At the same time, both concepts refer to the interplay (interrelations) between cognition and its natural (physical, biological), social, artificial, symbolic, digital, etc. environments. As will be shown in the chapter “The Kinds of the Body,” the embodied self concept applies to a wide spectrum of entities, including micro– and macro-organisms, living and artificial beings. The concept is rooted in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s double thesis, according to which ‘I am by body’ and ‘I have my body.’ Asking provocatively, “Is our body our self?,”⁴⁹ Varela et al. try to show that our bodily reality, our embodied self – thus, natural, sensing, functional – is not less dynamic than our mind. In fact, body and mind are, to a great extent, engaged in the same, unitary, complex, and dynamic psychophysical system: one reality with a multitude and variety of aspects distinguishable for researchers. There can no longer be “an abstract, disembodied observer who (….) encounters matter as a separate and independent category.”⁵⁰ Asking “Is our body our self?,” Varela et al. suggest our actual embodiment is even not the only materialization of ourselves. Its temporality and spatiality, related instruments and techniques, activities and interactions, changes and exchanges, nutrition, atmosphere, information – also belong to one’s embodiment. The entire experiential horizon and the entire experiential and perceptual pattern are centered on the body. It is subjective, but also objective; it is