This essay touches upon, though not explicitly, the issue of corporate personhood... "persons" embodied on paper. As such, however, these entities enjoy considerable advantages over flesh & blood embodied persons; having, for all intents, an unlimited "life"-span, while being accorded certain constitutional protections in conjunction with impunity from real punishment, even when such 'persons' commit acts with disastrous consequences upon vast numbers of flesh & blood people and their environment.
(I must say here that I am quite incensed this morning, thinking about one such 'person' - Northfolk Southern - to which, in a just world, the death penalty ought to be applied, over the most devastating train derailment and accompanying toxic plume ruining E. Palestine, Ohio, earlier this year, consequential to the negligence and greed of this company.... This 'person' this morning is instead celebrating, because the voters of my city, Cincinnati, have by a slight majority -which I however question- sold out the city owned rail yard into its clutches...)
But I digress... I just wanted to get on here to relate something I heard over the airwaves a while back, a shortwave radio preacher - "Redneck Billy" - a subscriber the the school of sovereign citizens I suppose. He provided a definition of "corporation" as such: CORPSE-ORATION... the talking dead.
Ah, no, thanks for the reference. I know there's some recent philosophical literature out there that addresses these issues, and I'll plunge into it if I ever take this topic on in any sustained way. I'll start with Stokes and Schechtman.
Spiritualism flourished on the technophilic-secularized-capitalist plateau of late nineteenth-century Anglo-American culture, and the messages delivered by that AI-VR resemble those typically received through a medium -- a software-aided upgrade to the accuracy of ectoplasmic effigies and mimicked speech. For all my skepticism about ChatGPT & Co., I do think they could do a better "Oscar Wilde" than Hester Dowden managed.
I will never celebrate my birthday the same way again.
Really enjoy when you’re in this mode, talking about the way what we take for granted is actually socially and historically determined. I’m reminded of a book I read when I was a student that was pretty transformative: “The Reenchantment of the World” by Morris Berman. It’s the first book in what he calls his trilogy on “the evolution of human consciousness.” I’d recommend it to anyone who takes these questions seriously.
1) While like most of its oeuvre it was overproduced, overcrammed, overplotted, and overcute, Disney's "Coco" forever changed my understanding of the Dia de los Muertos and of the recently dead themselves and our relations with them.
2) Being widowed for almost 13 years now, I have had the thought that the dead actually biologically live on in us, in the sense that our selves have overlapped and interpenetrated, and we've reproduced or integrated some of their brain patterns ("engrams" as Ron Hubbard would have it) into our own brains. We often feel we are living for them, that they're looking through our eyes, tasting their favorite foods with our mouths, hearing through our ears. It was my husband who converted me to jazz, and I listen to it with his heart.
Loved this piece, made me think of the waves of birth and death constantly happening. What would happen if the death side of the cycle stopped? And as you pointed out, it would probably be only the people with the means to "stay alive" who would be able to. And with the slow poisoning of deep rooted meaningful rituals, in life or death, my mind wanders: what if these immortals become sources of meaning as time rolls along? Perhaps I'm being a little cynical but it definitely worries me a bit. Very compelling writing though thank you for posting.
"This is an arbitrary limit, and if technology can facilitate it, perhaps the next great horizon of politics will be the fight for universal suffrage for the deceased. "
I can also imagine how after one's death, a 'personalized chatbot' might intervene in inheritance disputes, clearing up conflicts between a second wife and the offspring for instance. 'I told you that painting belonged to me' etc.
Not sure I get you when you write, "...downstream effect of administrative practices." Morality is derivative?
Like what you say about names. Think the task is to match our individual life with our name with God (Stringfellow says, our biography with Revelation). Ibn Arabi was out riding one day when he fell off his horse. His friend found him just sitting on the ground, bemused. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Yes," Ibn Arabi replied, "I was just wondering where in the Qur'an that was written."
I'm saying there's a complicated feedback system between practices and values, and one way values can change is if practices change (echoes of Pascal's Wager here). For example, I think that if law were to change such that we had to fill out a ton of paperwork every time a dog died, there would be a corresponding transformation in the (perceived) moral status of dogs. The difference in moral status between pets and livestock already, in fact, has at least something to do with differences in the social practices of recognition, or non-recognition, of their status as social others.
I try to pay attention to my dreams, yes, but I suspect I forget most of them.
Fair point. I guess what troubles me is the "largely" in the sentence (wouldn't one have to keep a lot of other things-religion, culture, social life-constant for such a statement?)
Don't know about dogs but I guess you mourned the death of your grandfather in a similar way to some distant ancestors would theirs. No? A sigh is still a sigh, as time goes by (in fact, didn't Hans Jonas say that art, tool-making and graves were a fundamental sign of what it is to be human?). Agree, the forms and practices can change but I still believe: water takes on the shape of the container but remains water.
When my beloved father died a few years back (during Covid) I remember sitting under a tree with my cousins and saying, "you know what, these simple rituals -sitting under a tree, telling stories about the one who has left, sharing of food etc. - probably haven't changed for a long, long time. It was also comforting to know-I don't know why- that the exact same (Arabic) words were said at his funeral that would have been said 1,400 years ago.
Never was one for dreams (Wahabi/Puritan roots, and all that) but my views did change. All kicked off with Carolyn Forche and a poem...but I won't bore you!
I think about the project of making interactive VR versions of Survivors at the Holocaust Museum to go on “witnessing” after their deaths. This project pre-dated chat GPT technology but I wouldn’t surprised if their digitized testimonies are one day augmented by LLMs, fed with other testimonies and texts, to give more dynamic and perhaps affective responses.
I am glad you mentioned Orthodox Christianity, as the communion of the saints is a persistent idea in the practice of the faith. Orthodox worship spaces are filled with icons of departed saints, which convey the idea that those present are participating with saints in heavenly worship. And the idea of people in this life acting in cooperation with and in some sense in the name of earlier saints has grounding in biblical narratives, such as John the Baptist coming in the spirit of Elijah. Of course, the church itself is portrayed as the body of Christ on earth. At any rate, very thought-provoking post.
This essay touches upon, though not explicitly, the issue of corporate personhood... "persons" embodied on paper. As such, however, these entities enjoy considerable advantages over flesh & blood embodied persons; having, for all intents, an unlimited "life"-span, while being accorded certain constitutional protections in conjunction with impunity from real punishment, even when such 'persons' commit acts with disastrous consequences upon vast numbers of flesh & blood people and their environment.
(I must say here that I am quite incensed this morning, thinking about one such 'person' - Northfolk Southern - to which, in a just world, the death penalty ought to be applied, over the most devastating train derailment and accompanying toxic plume ruining E. Palestine, Ohio, earlier this year, consequential to the negligence and greed of this company.... This 'person' this morning is instead celebrating, because the voters of my city, Cincinnati, have by a slight majority -which I however question- sold out the city owned rail yard into its clutches...)
But I digress... I just wanted to get on here to relate something I heard over the airwaves a while back, a shortwave radio preacher - "Redneck Billy" - a subscriber the the school of sovereign citizens I suppose. He provided a definition of "corporation" as such: CORPSE-ORATION... the talking dead.
this is a real contribution (& not a little scary)
Lovely piece, justin
Have you read Patrick Stokkes’s paper on dead people, drawing on Marya Schechtman’s view. It’s in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Ah, no, thanks for the reference. I know there's some recent philosophical literature out there that addresses these issues, and I'll plunge into it if I ever take this topic on in any sustained way. I'll start with Stokes and Schechtman.
*Stokes.
He also has a book on digital death
Spiritualism flourished on the technophilic-secularized-capitalist plateau of late nineteenth-century Anglo-American culture, and the messages delivered by that AI-VR resemble those typically received through a medium -- a software-aided upgrade to the accuracy of ectoplasmic effigies and mimicked speech. For all my skepticism about ChatGPT & Co., I do think they could do a better "Oscar Wilde" than Hester Dowden managed.
I will never celebrate my birthday the same way again.
Really enjoy when you’re in this mode, talking about the way what we take for granted is actually socially and historically determined. I’m reminded of a book I read when I was a student that was pretty transformative: “The Reenchantment of the World” by Morris Berman. It’s the first book in what he calls his trilogy on “the evolution of human consciousness.” I’d recommend it to anyone who takes these questions seriously.
1) While like most of its oeuvre it was overproduced, overcrammed, overplotted, and overcute, Disney's "Coco" forever changed my understanding of the Dia de los Muertos and of the recently dead themselves and our relations with them.
2) Being widowed for almost 13 years now, I have had the thought that the dead actually biologically live on in us, in the sense that our selves have overlapped and interpenetrated, and we've reproduced or integrated some of their brain patterns ("engrams" as Ron Hubbard would have it) into our own brains. We often feel we are living for them, that they're looking through our eyes, tasting their favorite foods with our mouths, hearing through our ears. It was my husband who converted me to jazz, and I listen to it with his heart.
Loved this piece, made me think of the waves of birth and death constantly happening. What would happen if the death side of the cycle stopped? And as you pointed out, it would probably be only the people with the means to "stay alive" who would be able to. And with the slow poisoning of deep rooted meaningful rituals, in life or death, my mind wanders: what if these immortals become sources of meaning as time rolls along? Perhaps I'm being a little cynical but it definitely worries me a bit. Very compelling writing though thank you for posting.
"This is an arbitrary limit, and if technology can facilitate it, perhaps the next great horizon of politics will be the fight for universal suffrage for the deceased. "
This is a truly horrifying thought.
I can also imagine how after one's death, a 'personalized chatbot' might intervene in inheritance disputes, clearing up conflicts between a second wife and the offspring for instance. 'I told you that painting belonged to me' etc.
As a lawyer, this is a very unsettling prospect and I don't think courts would stand for it until it was shown to have a certain level of rigor.
Lovely meditation, Justin.
Not sure I get you when you write, "...downstream effect of administrative practices." Morality is derivative?
Like what you say about names. Think the task is to match our individual life with our name with God (Stringfellow says, our biography with Revelation). Ibn Arabi was out riding one day when he fell off his horse. His friend found him just sitting on the ground, bemused. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Yes," Ibn Arabi replied, "I was just wondering where in the Qur'an that was written."
Do you now pay much attention to your dreams?
Thanks Khalid.
I'm saying there's a complicated feedback system between practices and values, and one way values can change is if practices change (echoes of Pascal's Wager here). For example, I think that if law were to change such that we had to fill out a ton of paperwork every time a dog died, there would be a corresponding transformation in the (perceived) moral status of dogs. The difference in moral status between pets and livestock already, in fact, has at least something to do with differences in the social practices of recognition, or non-recognition, of their status as social others.
I try to pay attention to my dreams, yes, but I suspect I forget most of them.
Fair point. I guess what troubles me is the "largely" in the sentence (wouldn't one have to keep a lot of other things-religion, culture, social life-constant for such a statement?)
Don't know about dogs but I guess you mourned the death of your grandfather in a similar way to some distant ancestors would theirs. No? A sigh is still a sigh, as time goes by (in fact, didn't Hans Jonas say that art, tool-making and graves were a fundamental sign of what it is to be human?). Agree, the forms and practices can change but I still believe: water takes on the shape of the container but remains water.
When my beloved father died a few years back (during Covid) I remember sitting under a tree with my cousins and saying, "you know what, these simple rituals -sitting under a tree, telling stories about the one who has left, sharing of food etc. - probably haven't changed for a long, long time. It was also comforting to know-I don't know why- that the exact same (Arabic) words were said at his funeral that would have been said 1,400 years ago.
Never was one for dreams (Wahabi/Puritan roots, and all that) but my views did change. All kicked off with Carolyn Forche and a poem...but I won't bore you!
Salams.
I think about the project of making interactive VR versions of Survivors at the Holocaust Museum to go on “witnessing” after their deaths. This project pre-dated chat GPT technology but I wouldn’t surprised if their digitized testimonies are one day augmented by LLMs, fed with other testimonies and texts, to give more dynamic and perhaps affective responses.
I am glad you mentioned Orthodox Christianity, as the communion of the saints is a persistent idea in the practice of the faith. Orthodox worship spaces are filled with icons of departed saints, which convey the idea that those present are participating with saints in heavenly worship. And the idea of people in this life acting in cooperation with and in some sense in the name of earlier saints has grounding in biblical narratives, such as John the Baptist coming in the spirit of Elijah. Of course, the church itself is portrayed as the body of Christ on earth. At any rate, very thought-provoking post.