Literature Review

 

The starting point to my research and ideation has been a cluster of topics surrounding personification and self-identification. On the internal side this can manifest in the question of how alternative digital avatars can be created, how empathy can be encouraged or more broadly be an aspect of embodiment and engagement. On the external side, what interests me is how certain aspects of personification or even pareidolia can be moulded onto less humanoid robots for instance. Personification is relevant to ascribing agency to beings, systems, and phenomena.  Historically this can be seen in the emergence of polytheistic or animalistic belief systems, which engaged in personified manifestations of natural phenomena to gain an understanding of one’s natural surroundings. In a more contemporary, technological sense, this has potentially been seen to resurface when concerning technological systems and networks. When is it appropriate to tap into the innate will to ascribe human aspects or even personhood to understand or communicate abstract systems? If we develop robotics and AI based solutions disconnected to our idea of physically humanoid bipedal structure, do we need require a human aspect to counterbalance? Or could this even be a possibility to further our understanding of what agency or even consciousness entails?

 

What Is It Like To Be A Bat 

Thomas Nagel 

The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974)

The paper explores the mind-body problem and how consciousness seems to be widespread but hard to prove and questions to which degree the subjective experience can be described or assumed.

 

The Ego and It’s Own –Chapter II- 2- Die Alten
Max Stirner, 1844

The Ego and it’s own is polemic philosophical text in which Max Stirner presents his philosophy of Egoism. It is often viewed as a precursor to Anarchism. He postulates religious and social conventions as spooks.

He begins his analysis of how society overcomes religion with an admittedly extremely biased discourse of how the world used to be truth and then under Christianity mind or spirit became truth. Relevant for me is the thought of gaining freedom by seeking behind the object for an essence.

Designing for identity in game-based learning 
Matthew J. Gaydos
in Mind, Culture and Activity, Feb.2018

The article explores how Games tend to invite players to engage with an altered sense of identity in form oft he protagonist, for instance educational games projecting the player into the identity of a scientist or engineer. It suggests approaches of more nested identities, closer to the actual player.

 

Who owns the future?
Jaron Lanier
Simon & Schuster, 2013

Ths book explores how data agglomeration leads to central power structures and explores ways to even out the playing field. For one an interesting topic in itself, his characterisation of so called Siren Servers, massive servers which basically require services to revolve around them can be seen as an example of humanising systems. Interestingly in this book, the negative sides portrayed are explained in a personified way, while potential solutions go into a more abstract network direction.

 

The Social Perception of Humanoid and Non-Humanoid Robots: Effects of Gendered and Machinelike Features
Steven J. Stroessner, Jonathan Benitez 
International Journal of Social Robotics 11, 2019

This paper is research into how masculine vs. feminine and machinelike traits influence the social reception of robots.

 

Reactive Movements of Non-humanoid Robots Cause Intention Attribution in Humans
Kazunori Terada, Takashi Shamoto, Haiying Mei, and Akira Ito
IEEE, 2007

Presented here is research into application of theory of mind in non humanoid robotics. Specifically this entails goal attribution and reactive movement.

 

Consciousness : confessions of a romantic reductionist – Chapter 8: In which I argue that consciousness is a fundamental property of complex things... 
Christof Koch

The MIT Press, 2012

Christof Koch argues from an neuroscientific, though fairly speculative position that, as the title says, consciousness is a property of complexity. He explores how information and the connection thereof contributes to this.

Does avatar identification make unjustified video game violence more morally consequential?
Jonie J Allen & Craig A. Anderson
Media Psychology, 2019

This study researched the links between identification and guilt concerning justified and unjustified violence. One interesting point is how violence can be a access to seeing to which extent we identify with an avatar.

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