Will Humans Ever Live in Space?

 This is the cover story and question of Scientific American in October of 2023. 

The answer is no. SA treats this question as primarily technological, and secondarily psychological and physiological. But that really misses the important question, one raised by the current revolution in AI, and right behind it in robotics. What is a human? What does it mean to be human?

The conceit of the Enlightenment, which has deeply influenced contemporary culture in the West, is that humans are embodied brains, and that humanity/the self/the soul both arises from the brain-body complex and resides within the brain. This is why from the standpoint of medical science when a person is "brain dead" there is no more human person present and the body can be used for spare parts. On this basis a brain transplant would be a transplantation of human consciousness. And of course it can be imagined that a detailed map of the entire brain could be recreated in a silicone "brain" and still be the same human person.

Or, as presumed by many AI advocates, humaneness or human-like consciousness will emerge out of the interaction of a complex neural network with the vast amounts of human language data it receives. 

This view is beginning to be challenged as social scientists more fully grasp just how much human personhood resides, to use the title of a popular book, Between Us. Our emotions, in this cogently argued book, reside only apparently in the flux of hormones in individual brains. In reality they are enacted in social relationships, and without those social relationships cannot form and do not exist. 

From another perspective much of our humanity is part of, to use another popular book title, an Entangled Life that involves deep, intimate symbiotic relationships with organisms both inside and outside our bodies. Consider what is now referred to as our gut biom; that varied and vast collection of microorganisms without which we cannot turn food into fuel for our cells. That biom is itself part of the larger biosphere in which we live and constantly replenishes itself from that environment. Or consider our immune systems, which are nurtured by interactions with micro-organisms from that same biosphere. 

So will humans ever live in space? Certainly, if we do not destroy ourselves, then in time humans will begin the process of migrating off the earth and either into artificially constructed worlds or other planets suitable to sustain the biological body. However, both the social and biological environments will be so far different from anything that has existed on earth that what evolves as humans reproduce, and shape their lives to their environment, will certainly move further and further from what we currently consider to be human. 

It is useful to remember that in evolutionary theory distinctive new species arise in the process of mutation and adaptation to new environments. When these environments become sufficiently separated new species arise. Human history, perhaps better hominid history bears witness to this process, not least in our diversity of phenotypes and cultures. There is no reason to believe that the humans who first colonize the spaces beyond the earth will be less inclined toward evolution away from what we regard as human. Their societies will change dramatically, cultures will be shaped to novel environments, and even their biom will shift. Certainly their bodies will change, as have ours.

And the larger environment than the merely physical? The space beyond space which at the very least exists within the minds of all who are self-conscious? 

Somewhere in space our distant descendants, a plant from our roots, will live. But they will no longer be humans as we know our own humanity. . . .

"I've always wanted to see a Martian,' said Michael. "Where are they Dad? You promised."

"There they are," said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.

The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.

The Martians were there - in the canal-reflected in the water. Timothy and Micchael and Robert and Mom and Dad.

The Martians stared back at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water. . . 

(Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, "The Million Year Picnic." 1949)