Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring Boundaries

Examines the overlap and blurring of boundaries among humans, animals, and machines.

In the twenty-first century, the boundaries between both humans and machines and humans and animals are hotly contested and debated. In Humans, Animals, Machines, Glen A. Mazis examines the increasingly blurring boundaries among the three and argues that despite their violating collisions, there are ways for the three realms to work together for mutual thriving. Examining Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Haraway; artificial intelligence that includes ＂MIT Embodied AI＂; newer holistic brain research; animal studies; the attachment theory of psychologist Daniel Siegel; literary examples; aesthetic theory; technology research; contemporary theology; physics; poetry; machine art; Taoism; and firsthand accounts of cyborg experience, the book reconsiders and dares to propose a new type of ethics and ecospirituality that would do justice to the overlapping relationships among humans, animals, and machines.

Glen A. Mazis is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Penn State at Harrisburg and the author of Earthbodies: Rediscovering Our Planetary Senses, also published by SUNY Press.