Shamans and Robots : On Ritual, the Placebo Effect, and Artificial Consciousness

A profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices

In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence.

Charting the extensive history of the placebo effect through medieval healing, shamanism, and early psychoanalytic practices, Bartra posits that consciousness is not simply the province of the mind but something equally shaped by external systems and objects. He finds evidence of this “exocerebrum”—the extension of our brains outside the body—in the shamanistic concept of the placebo, in which external objects heal our bodies, and in modern technical devices like prostheses or robots, whose development of a mechanical consciousness would have to mimic, and in turn elucidate, the processes involved in the creation of consciousness in humans. Through this radical concept, he analyzes digital media’s relationship to the functions of the human brain and probes the possibility of artificial consciousness.

Both a look at the human body’s potential to restore itself and a profound reflection on the curative power of symbolic structures, Shamans and Robots explores how our technologies increasingly serve as extensions of our cognitive selves.

Roger Bartra is an emeritus researcher at the Institute for Social Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico. His books translated into English include Anthropology of the Brain: Consciousness, Culture, and Free Will; Angels in Mourning: Sublime Madness, Ennui, and Melancholy in Modern Thought; and Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition.

Gusti Gould is an artist and translator in Colima, Mexico.