LA DELEUZIANA – ONLINE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY –ISSN 2421-3098 N. 14 / 2022 – THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: DELEUZE AND GUATTARI BEYOND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM 35 This is Your Brain on Algorithms: Thinking the Movement of the Mind with Deleuze by CHANTELLE GRAY Abstract After a consideration of technological metaphors for the mind/brain – specifically computer- related metaphors that came of age with the Turing machine and the development of cybernetics – I argue that first-order cybernetics dramatically changed the metaphors by which we think the brain/mind, although they remained embedded in humanist dualisms. Second-order cybernetics, on the other hand, gave to us the idea of the brain as an autopoietic system that can account for both autonomy and emergence. Of special importance in second-order cybernetics is the injunc- tion against flows of information across self-referential system boundaries, emphasizing two as- pects: operational closure and operational recursion. It is particularly these two concepts that in- terest me in thinking about what happens when algorithmic reason and the human brain start to function as a single autopoietic system. That is, I ask questions about the isomorphism between digital and biological systems. My argument is that the computer is no longer merely a metaphor for the brain because the brain is the computer. In other words, a real cybernetic movement in thought has occurred, similar to the real movement in the image brought about by cinema, as Deleuze argues in his two Cinema books. In closing, I argue that operational closure can be un- derstood both in terms of what the neuroscientists Mark Solms and Karl Friston call ‘Markov blankets’ and in terms of Deleuze’s theory of the logic of sensation, and that this can help us grapple with what algorithmic reason is doing to thought. This is your brain on information: First-order cybernetics and information meta- phors of the brain/mind If you are of a certain age, you are likely to have some memories of the “This is your brain on drugs” commercials. Especially memorable is the eggy-brain advertisement. In the ad — available on YouTube (Kalamut 2010) — a serious looking man takes an egg out of a carton. Looking at the camera he says: “This is your brain”. Maintaining the so- lemnity, he points to a pan on a stove. “This is drugs”, he says. If you have seen the ad, you know what is about to follow. If you have not, I am sure by now you can guess what is go- ing to happen next. Yes, cracking the egg into the pan, the man exclaims: “This is your brain on drugs”. Your brain, apparently, is an egg ready to be had for breakfast. Yum!?