Brain-Machine Interfacing for Just Peacemaking: examining embodied cognition and transformative communication

The ability to connect and exchange information facilitates the work of God. For many liberal theological traditions, this is the primary way God works in the world, through people and their relationships. The love of God is communicated through speech-acts among created beings. Consequently, in the postmodern conext of the Network Society and Information Age, theological interaction with technologies like brain-machine interfaces tends toward an affirmation of enhanced communication. Anything that may enhance our ability to connect honors our created nature as relational beings and the work of God in the world. Theologians generally recognize the importance of embodiment and the importance of embodied autonomy. Jeanine Thweatt, for example, suggests a contextual, compassionate somatic ethic that asks, “what can this body do? And what does this body need?”[1] Theologians affirm embodiment, but particularly in light of brain-machine interfacing, what matters about the particularities of embodied information and its flow?