Paper short abstract:

Everyday cyborg gives us a way of understanding the different modes in which implanted devices and complex prostheses become incorporated into (the lives of) persons. This paper examines how they transgress and challenge conceptual, ethical, and legal boundaries and dichotomies.

Paper long abstract:

Everyday cyborgs are all around us (Haddow et al 2015). They are persons with replacements and augmentations ranging from the simple to the extraordinarily complex; for example, artificial joint replacements, implanted devices such as pacemakers and the total artificial heart, and limb prostheses. These parts and devices may be completely artificial, biological, or biohybrid in nature (a mixture of biological and synthetic components). Additionally, they may contain mechanical or electronic components and be capable of running software and storing data (Haddow, Harmon, & Gilman, 2015). The idea of the everyday cyborg is not simply an evocative metaphor. Implanted devices and complex prostheses represent occasions where external objects become a part of persons (and their bodies). As such, I make two main arguments in this paper.

First, I argue that the image of the everyday cyborg gives us a way of understanding the different modes in which such devices become incorporated into (the lives of) persons and, in so doing, transgress the usual boundary between subject and object. I identify (at least) four ways in which implanted devices and complex prosthetics become incorporated into (the lives of) persons: (1) physical internalisation, (2) functional integration, (3) psychological constitution, and (4) phenomenological assimilation. Secondly, I outline how the linking of the organic, biological person with synthetic, inorganic parts and devices raises questions which the law is ill-equipped to deal with, arguing that everyday cyborgs prompt a re-analysis of the conceptual and ethical terrain underpinning the law, as well as the law itself.