In Defence of the Hivemind Society
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ORIGINAL PAPER
In Defence of the Hivemind Society John Danaher
&
Steve Petersen
Received: 8 February 2020 / Accepted: 16 September 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The idea that humans should abandon their individuality and use technology to bind themselves together into hivemind societies seems both farfetched and frightening – something that is redolent of the worst dystopias from science fiction. In this article, we argue that these common reactions to the ideal of a hivemind society are mistaken. The idea that humans could form hiveminds is sufficiently plausible for its axiological consequences to be taken seriously. Furthermore, far from being a dystopian nightmare, the hivemind society could be desirable and could enable a form of sentient flourishing. Consequently, we should not be so quick to deny it. We provide two arguments in support of this claim – the axiological openness argument and the desirability argument – and then defend it against three major objections. Keywords Hiveminds . Individualism . Axiology . Mind . Personhood . Identity . Value . Flourishing . Meaning . AI Ethics
J. Danaher (*) School of Law, NUI Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland e-mail: [email protected]
“We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.” (Star Trek, First Contact 1996)
Introduction Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek presents a utopian vision of the future.1 The vision is one in which Enlightenment humanism is in the ascendance: individuals are the primary units of moral concern; their differences and diversities are celebrated2; and the technologically advanced world allows them to flourish. The Borg — an enemy ‘species’ introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation — are the ultimate affront to that ideology. They are a hivemind society, one in which individual differences are suppressed and undermined, and in which the social collective is the unit of moral concern, not the individual. Viewers of the Star Trek universe are supposed to fear the Borg, to see them as the most insidious and terrifying threat to Roddenberry’s utopia. They are not simply an enemy that kills and destroys. They are an 1
e-mail: [email protected] S. Petersen Niagara University, Lewiston, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]
For discussions of Star Trek’s utopian pretensions, see Segal, H Utopias (Wiley-Blackwell 2012), pp. 199 ff [1]; and Saadia, M. Trekonomics (San Francisco, SF: Pipertext 2016) [2]. 2 Almost: Star Trek is a fictional product of Hollywood and was never ideally progressive when it came to its celebration of human differences and diversities. Homosexual characters, for example, were absent until the series Star Trek Discovery.
J. Danaher, S. Petersen
enemy that brainwashes and subverts: an enemy that turns you into one of them (or, more correctly, ‘part of them’).3 But should we be so fearful? In this article we argue that we should not.
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