Book Proposal: AI, the Psyche, and the Meaning of Repair

Proposed Title: "Cyborg Repair: AI, the Psyche, and the Ethics of Care"

Overview

This book project brings together the natural sciences and humanities to explore the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a supplement to human creativity, therapeutic care, and self-understanding. Building on interdisciplinary insights from neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and AI studies, the book seeks to reframe how we think about AI’s potential—not as a replacement for human activities but as a tool that amplifies and reflects humanity’s capacities for meaning-making, relationality, and repair.

Rooted in Freud’s model of the psyche, Derrida’s concept of the supplement, and Gödel’s recursive incompleteness theorems, the book will examine how AI’s incompleteness mirrors and complements human incompleteness, fostering a hybrid, cyborgian ethics of care. By exploring AI’s role in the most profoundly human activities—artistic creation and the care of the traumatized psyche—the book argues that AI helps us better understand what it means to be human.

This project also positions the cyborg—a hybrid entity that Donna Haraway describes as transcending the binaries of human and machine—as an ethical figure uniquely equipped to reflect on humanity and its entanglements with technology.

Goals of the Book

1. Reframe AI’s Role in Human Activities: Move beyond simplistic debates about whether AI “thinks” or is “conscious” to examine how AI transforms the definitions of thinking, creativity, and care.

2. Develop a Cyborgian Ethics of Care: Explore how AI, as a tool, can augment human relationality, creativity, and therapeutic practices while remaining grounded in the embodied, empathetic, and ethical dimensions of human life.

3. Bridge the Humanities and Sciences: Integrate neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and philosophical frameworks to develop practical insights into AI’s role in artistic and therapeutic contexts.

4. Foster Cultural and Therapeutic Repair: Investigate how AI, as a cultural supplement and extension of the archive, can participate in repairing historical and psychological traumas.

Key Themes and Questions

1. AI and Artistic Creativity:

   • How does AI, as a tool for generative creativity, reflect the unique dimensions of human artistry?

   • What does collaboration between human artists and AI reveal about the recursive and relational nature of creativity?

   • How does AI’s inability to replace human emotional and cultural depth highlight the irreplaceable aspects of human creativity?

2. AI and the Care of the Psyche:

   • How can AI supplement therapeutic practices, particularly in the treatment of moral injury and complex trauma?

   • How do transference and relationality, central to psychoanalytic care, intersect with AI’s analytical and generative capacities?

   • What ethical considerations arise when integrating AI into deeply relational forms of care?

3. Incompleteness as a Human and Cyborgian Trait:

   • How does Gödel’s recursive incompleteness theorem echo the limits of human and AI systems?

   • How can the shared incompleteness of humans and AI foster a deeper understanding of meaning, creativity, and relationality?

   • How does Haraway’s cyborg serve as a model for embracing hybridity and incompleteness as sources of ethical engagement?

4. AI as a Cultural Ego and Archive:

   • In what ways does AI function as a cultural ego, extending and amplifying collective memory while introducing biases and distortions?

   • How can AI participate in the repair of cultural archives, addressing silences, exclusions, and historical traumas?

5. Cyborg Repair and Self-Understanding:

   • How does the integration of AI into artistic and therapeutic contexts deepen our understanding of what it means to be human?

   • How does the cyborgian interplay of human and machine systems foster new possibilities for repair, connection, and transformation?

Structure of the Book

Introduction: AI, Incompleteness, and the Ethics of Care

• Overview of the project’s key themes and goals.

• Introduce Freud’s model of the psyche, Derrida’s supplement, and Gödel’s recursive incompleteness as foundational frameworks.

Part I: AI and Artistic Creativity

1. Art and the Cyborgian Creator

   • Explore AI’s role in collaborative artistic creation as depicted in The Authors of Silence.

   • Highlight how AI’s generative capabilities expand human creativity while reflecting its unique dimensions.

2. Recursive Creativity and the Unconscious

   • Examine the role of unconscious processes in human creativity and how AI mirrors these dynamics through recursion and pattern recognition.

Part II: AI and the Care of the Psyche3. Moral Injury and Meaning-Based Care

• Discuss the limitations of symptom-based modalities like CBT and the importance of meaning-based approaches in treating trauma.

• Investigate how AI can supplement meaning-based care without replacing the relational and embodied presence of human caregivers.

• AI, Transference, and Relational Dynamics

  • Analyze how AI’s involvement in therapeutic contexts intersects with transference and relational complexity.

Part III: Incompleteness, Cyborgs, and the Ethics of Care5. The Shared Incompleteness of Humans and AI

• Connect Gödel’s recursive theorems, Freud’s unconscious, and Derrida’s supplement to argue for incompleteness as a foundation for care.

• The Cyborg as a Reflective Ethical Figure

  • Explore Haraway’s cyborg as a model for relational, incomplete, and ethical engagement in a technologically mediated world.

Conclusion: Toward a Cyborgian Ethics of Care

• Synthesize the book’s insights into a framework for care that honors the complexity and hybridity of human and machine systems.

Why This Book Matters

This project addresses urgent philosophical, ethical, and practical questions about AI’s role in human life:

• It challenges reductive views of AI as either a threat or a panacea, offering a nuanced exploration of its role as a tool that supplements and reflects humanity.

• It bridges the sciences and humanities, integrating insights from neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and philosophy to deepen our understanding of human-machine interaction.

• It offers practical frameworks for integrating AI into artistic and therapeutic contexts, fostering creativity, care, and cultural repair.

References and Influences

This book draws on foundational works in AI, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, including:

• Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: Explores recursion, self-reference, and emergent complexity as foundations for creativity and consciousness.

• Sigmund Freud’s Structural Model of the Psyche: Provides a framework for understanding the unconscious and relational dynamics in care.

• Jacques Derrida’s Concept of the Supplement: Illuminates how systems depend on external elements to function while exposing their incompleteness.

• Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto: Positions the cyborg as an ethical and relational figure that transcends human-machine binaries.

• Selected works on ethics and AI: Including Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen’s Moral Machines and Safiya Umoja Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression.

Conclusion

This book seeks to redefine the role of AI in human creativity and care, offering a vision of the cyborg as a figure of ethical and relational engagement. By embracing incompleteness as a source of meaning and transformation, it argues for a hybrid ethics that honors the complexity of human and machine systems. This project represents a unique collaboration between the humanities and sciences, with the potential to make significant contributions to our understanding of AI, the psyche, and the future of care.