Prosthetic Consciousness: Neuroscience and the Making of the Cyborg Subject
Anoop Prabha Kesavan
The Creative Launcher April 30, 2026 DOI: 10.53032/tcl.2026.11.2.08 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Consciousness Identity music Subject documents Empathy Posthumanism Perception Interpretation philosophy Personhood Cognitive science Personal identity Embodied cognition Transhumanism Epistemology Communication Self Introspection |
| Key points | Argues that human identity is a process generated through interactions among brain, body, environment, and machine, resulting in a cyborg or prosthetic consciousness. |
Abstract
This article explores the evolution of human identity in an era marked by neuroscience, digitalization and cyborg embodiment. Starting at the most basic neuroscientific model of how memory, perception and empathy are innate to consciousness, it retraces the many steps that create ‘the self’. It contends that identity is not a biological fixed essence but rather a process, moulded by neuroplasticity, memory reconstruction, perceptual interpretation and affective response. It goes on to expand this with a discussion of Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s theory of extended cognition, giving the robust examples of smartphones, virtual reality, prosthetic devices and digital avatars as becoming extensions of human cognitive [and] bodily life. Theoretical concepts of the cyborg, introduced by Donna Haraway and to a large extent supported by N. Katherine Hayles in her posthuman theory, can be employed to examine the contemporary subject as simply one amalgamation of mixed matter consisting not only of neurons and bodies but also of technologies and codes. The “modern self” this article describes is neither organic nor technological, but a prosthetic consciousness that is ever ongoingly generated through the play between brain, body, environment and machine. Combining neuroscience with posthuman theory, the research provides a framework for what is now an empirical and philosophical reality of the twenty-first century; cyborg identity
Comparable studies
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| Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How do the brain's time and space mediate consciousness and its different dimensions? Temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC). | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |