Speaking of Heidegger...
Hubert Dreyfus co-authored a column in the New York Times in which he says (and I agree), "The greatest danger of Watson’s victory is not that it proves machines could be better versions of us, but that it tempts us to misunderstand ourselves as poorer versions of them." However, he also quotes John Haugeland as saying, "The problem with computers is that they just don’t give a damn." The implication is that human caring is what distinguishes us from computers. I think that is not quite right.
Now, in the source material, i.e., Heidegger, Da-sein cares because Da-sein is being-towards-death. Da-sein cares because Da-sein dies. However, what Kubrick and others present is the possibility of an artificial intelligence that cares but does not die (A.I. is like animals in this sense; animals also do not die, in the Heideggerian sense). This is possible without self-consciousness. It is conceivable to me (and perhaps this is because I know nothing about computers) that a program can be written with a primary directive to "do" whatever is necessary so as to be able to continue doing whatever it is that programs do. If you can make a program capable of self-preservation, then you have made it capable of "caring." But for all that, you will not have made it capable of loving. Heidegger focuses his analysis of "care" upon the things that "concern" us. For Heidegger, that is the primary reason we pay attention to anything; that is the source of meaning and significance. Heidegger does not speak of care as love, of the attention we pay to things simply because we love them. Not by coincidence, Heidegger never speaks of joy, of the joy we feel partaking in an activity that we love. Joy, for Heidegger, must be founded upon a more fundamental care, a care that is not joyful. I am skeptical that you can get to love from Heideggerian care. The problem with "the machines" is not that they don't care; we can make them care easily enough; the problem is that they don't love. I once read an Isaac Aasimov novel where a robot had two primary directives: first was to protect the protagonist; second was to love the protagonist. I am suggesting that the second directive cannot be made intelligible to an AI. Nor, for that matter, to Heidegger (as the women in Heidegger's life could perhaps attest?).
Now, in the source material, i.e., Heidegger, Da-sein cares because Da-sein is being-towards-death. Da-sein cares because Da-sein dies. However, what Kubrick and others present is the possibility of an artificial intelligence that cares but does not die (A.I. is like animals in this sense; animals also do not die, in the Heideggerian sense). This is possible without self-consciousness. It is conceivable to me (and perhaps this is because I know nothing about computers) that a program can be written with a primary directive to "do" whatever is necessary so as to be able to continue doing whatever it is that programs do. If you can make a program capable of self-preservation, then you have made it capable of "caring." But for all that, you will not have made it capable of loving. Heidegger focuses his analysis of "care" upon the things that "concern" us. For Heidegger, that is the primary reason we pay attention to anything; that is the source of meaning and significance. Heidegger does not speak of care as love, of the attention we pay to things simply because we love them. Not by coincidence, Heidegger never speaks of joy, of the joy we feel partaking in an activity that we love. Joy, for Heidegger, must be founded upon a more fundamental care, a care that is not joyful. I am skeptical that you can get to love from Heideggerian care. The problem with "the machines" is not that they don't care; we can make them care easily enough; the problem is that they don't love. I once read an Isaac Aasimov novel where a robot had two primary directives: first was to protect the protagonist; second was to love the protagonist. I am suggesting that the second directive cannot be made intelligible to an AI. Nor, for that matter, to Heidegger (as the women in Heidegger's life could perhaps attest?).
"Heidegger never speaks of joy, of the joy we feel partaking in an activity that we love. Joy, for Heidegger, must be founded upon a more fundamental care, a care that is not joyful."
ReplyDeleteA shrewd observation.
Re. Dreyfus' remark that we may come to understand ourselves as poor computers, Jaron Lanier says in several places that a machine may pass the Turing test in two different ways: by its getting smarter and more human-like, or by us getting more machine-like. Sherry Turkle in her new book Alone Together interviews a number of people who say (e.g.) they'd gladly put up with a robot boyfriend despite knowing full well the robot cannot love them, just in order to have a considerate mate who can have "kind" conversation and do their share of the housework. This sort of response can only have come about after prolonged exposure to the idea of "intelligent" machines. Perhaps we too are slowly losing the capacity for joy.
Yes, Heidegger certainly leans more towards the tragic side. Although, the post-war poetry thingee can be taken to be pointing at something beyond tragedy. But one can make anything one wants out of poetry. (One suspects that is why philosophers turn to it.)
ReplyDeleteI think humans are becoming more machine-like (I think we mean passive when we say this) because of the violent and ever-changing nature of late-modernity. We now all know that whatever you count on (whether lovers, friends, or investments and retirement plans) will likely not be there when you need them. Look at the recent recession and divorce rates!
When things are predictable we ache for the new; when things are unpredictable we yearn for stability.
'Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again'
I wonder if care equates with meaning. And meaning, with value. Value with investment, engagement and commitment.
ReplyDeleteSelf-awareness creates the kinds of ironic detachment which bracket the phenomenal experience of caring, making experience just another form of objective of inquiry. Care, in my wonky and no doubt mistranslated understanding of Heidgegger, clashes with the scientific, rational mind. Or rather, reason plunges back into ourselves, alienated from the world of care, meaning and value.
Perhaps philosophy actually ended with Kierkegaard, and Heidegger (later versions) is the semaphore taking us back to him?
The problem with Dreyfus is that he is a cautious reader of Heidegger. Heidegger is not suggestive when he discusses technics. He means quite directly that Gestell is the inverse of Gelassenheit and that we are, in fact, becoming machines and that save a little Andenken here and there this is our Schicksal (the thread leading from SZ part II to the later work). No bones about it in the work of the 50s.
ReplyDeleteAs for joy it is absent in Heidegger because in so much as care (or its localized phenomena) exist in Heidegger’s diction it is in order to buttress his case for the historical progression of Sein and little else besides. To dwell too much in the first section of SZ always seemed to be to miss the entire thrust, the thrownness as it were, of the entire Heideggerian ethos which is showing that extreme moments within care point toward the deeper, withdrawn structure (as discussed in section II of SZ).
Here I think Joe is on the ball. What is the poetry in Heidegger if not a futile attempt to plug the black hole of our becoming-machine (as Deleuze would out it)?
It is also where I disagree with Neil although I see how he got there…Heidegger’s path is marked by a precise opposition to neo-Kantian value-philosophy – to all emphases on meaning as what sparks existence. It is a much darker vision than that and much darker even that Kierkegaard – Heidegger really thinks the world is empty sans Sein and that Dasein' has failed in its task of sustaining it.
I don't know what you mean by "the historical progression of Sein." But insofar as you want to minimize or downplay the absence of joy in Heidegger as an unimportant secondary consequence of the analysis of temporality, then we have a difference of opinion as to the significance of the omission. Because the flip side of Heidegger's preoccupation with temporality and care-as-concern is his losing sight of eternity and love, just as the flip side of his preoccupation with being is his losing sight of the Good. Heideggerians may object that I am being flip. I will merely say that while Heidegger has provided an exquisite analysis of temporality as a ("the," according to Heidegger) trascendental condition for the possibility of understanding being, he has neglected the distinction between conditions of and sources for. He thereby forgets eternity no less tellingly than he accuses others of forgetting the question of being.
ReplyDelete