David Bates (Rhetoric) offers a new history of human intelligence, arguing that humans know themselves by knowing their machines.

We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies — autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to Bates, emerged in the 17th century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how technological developments repeatedly offered new ways to imagine how the body’s automaticity worked alongside the mind’s autonomy. Tracing these evolving lines of thought, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence (Chicago, 2024) offers a new theorization of the human as a being that is dependent on technology and produces itself as an artificial automaton without a natural, outside origin.

Bates is joined by Victoria Khan (English). After a brief discussion, they respond to questions from the audience.