Shamans and Robots
On Ritual, the Placebo Effect, and Artificial Consciousness
Examining the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness, Roger Bartra analyzes digital media’s relationship to the functions of the human brain and probes the possibility of artificial consciousness. Both a look at the human body’s potential to restore itself and a profound reflection on the curative power of symbolic structures, Shamans and Robots explores how our technologies increasingly serve as extensions of our cognitive selves.
Can computational devices like Large Language Models ever become truly intelligent and conscious? In this book, Roger Bartra argues that, for machines as for humans, it is not just a matter of what's inside but of outer surroundings as well. Minds only arise when they are coupled with suitable environments; every cerebrum needs an exocerebrum.
Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University
In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence.
Charting the extensive history of the placebo effect through medieval healing, shamanism, and early psychoanalytic practices, Bartra posits that consciousness is not simply the province of the mind but something equally shaped by external systems and objects. He finds evidence of this “exocerebrum”—the extension of our brains outside the body—in the shamanistic concept of the placebo, in which external objects heal our bodies, and in modern technical devices like prostheses or robots, whose development of a mechanical consciousness would have to mimic, and in turn elucidate, the processes involved in the creation of consciousness in humans. Through this radical concept, he analyzes digital media’s relationship to the functions of the human brain and probes the possibility of artificial consciousness.
Both a look at the human body’s potential to restore itself and a profound reflection on the curative power of symbolic structures, Shamans and Robots explores how our technologies increasingly serve as extensions of our cognitive selves.
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Can computational devices like Large Language Models ever become truly intelligent and conscious? In this book, Roger Bartra argues that, for machines as for humans, it is not just a matter of what's inside but of outer surroundings as well. Minds only arise when they are coupled with suitable environments; every cerebrum needs an exocerebrum.
Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University
Contents
Prologue
Part I. The Rituals of Pleasure and the Word: Anthropology of the Placebo Effect
1. The Placebo
2. The Ligatures of Qusta ibn Luqa
3. The Magical Powers
4. A Shamanic Journey in Search of the Lost Soul
5. Neurology of the Placebo Effect
6. On Electronic Amulets and Catharsis
7. Zombies and Transhumanists
Part II. The Construction of an Artificial Consciousness: Anthropology of the Robotic Effect
8. The Mystery of Thinking Machines
9. The Robotic Effect
10. How Do You Educate a Robot?
11. Panpsychism
12. A Mechanical Consciousness
13. Robotic Culture
14. Prostheses and Symbols
15. Robotic Experiences
16. Emancipation of the Exocerebrums
17. Sentimental Machines
18. Proof of the Placebo
Notes
