Cognitive Enhancement and Anthropotechnological Change: Towards an Organology and Pharmacology of Cognitive Enhancement Technologies

This article focuses on cognitive enhancement technologies (CET) and their possible anthropological implications, and argues for a reconsideration of the human-technology relation so as to be able to better understand and assess these implications. Current debates on cognitive enhancement (CE) often start from an instrumental and anthropocentric view of technology and a (neo-)Darwinist account of the human, consistently disregarding the intimate intertwinement of the human and technology as well as the fundamentally technogenic nature of the process of anthropogenesis. Yet, an adequate assessment of CET requires an in-depth and up-to-date conceptualization of the human-technology relationship as well as the technogenesis of the anthropos. Employing Bernard Stiegler’s recently devised philosophico-anthropological framework of general organology as well as his theory of technology as a pharmakon, this article proposes to develop an organology and pharmacology of cognitive enhancement. What is typical about new cognitive enhancement technologies is their interiorizing (instead of the traditionally exteriorizing) nature, which can be expected to totally reshape current organological configurations. Starting from the premise that CE is a phenomenon that should be understood fundamentally from its unfolding within the current conjuncture of cognitive capitalism, I will present the issue of cognitive proletarianization as being of crucial importance for considering CE. I conclude by providing some methodological guidelines for the development of a positive pharmacology of CET, focused on deproletarianization and specifically related to the improvement of attention, suggesting that CET should be considered in this respect as technologies of the self à la Michel Foucault.