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Philosophy and AI Part Two: Review of “Computer Power and Human Reason” by J Weizenbaum(1976)

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The following is taken from the preface of the above book:

“..a major point of this book is precisely that we, all of us, have made the world too much into a computer, and that this remaking of the world in the image of the computer started long before there were any electronic computers. Now that we have computers, it becomes somewhat easier to see this imaginative transformation we have worked on the world. Now we can use the computer itself–that is the idea of the computer—as a metaphor to help us to understand what we have done and are doing.”(Page IX)

The ancient Greeks and the enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant were concerned to point out a major difference in the kind of reasoning we use in instrumental contexts of activity involving tools and artifacts(techné), and the categorical form of reasoning we use in knowledge contexts(epistemé) whether that knowledge is practical/moral or theoretical.

For Aristotle there were 3 principles 4 causes in relation to 4 kinds of change in relation to the infinite continuum of the media of change(e.g. space, time, and matter), and our understanding of the world is mediated by three kinds of science( theoretical, practical and productive/techné). Techné, then is best explained in terms of the reasoning we find in the productive sciences where the major point of the activity is the creation of tools and objects that instrumentally contribute to the good-spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia) that was so important to Aristotle. The “good spirited” aspect of of this life, however, is best accounted for by the theoretical and practical reasoning we find in both Aristotle and Kant’s writings. The major categorical difference between productive reasoning and practical/moral/theoretical reasoning is that the former is exclusively focussed on the means one uses to bring about ends, rather than the ends-in themselves, which we human beings and all life forms(psuche) represent: the latter form of reasoning, i.e. reasoning about ends-in themselves, exclusively obey different principles(arché), and rely less on material and efficient causation for their explanation/justification and more on formal and final causation in such contexts. Final causation is a key here because it is teleological in the sense Kant described in his third critique, a form belonging to forms of life.

Turning to two modern Philosophers of the 20th century will further enlighten us about what Weizenbaum is referring to in his preface, namely the mentality of what Hannah Arendt called the “new men”, whose influence over our culture began with Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, and continued with Adam Smith and Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger, the logical positivists, logical atomists, pragmatists and instrumentalists. The agenda of the “new men” was to neutralise the influence of Aristotle and Kant upon our thinking and replace it with a form of thinking that was anti-rationalist . A form of thinking that would restore the materialist and dualist controversies in a new form centring around the “new” Psychology that began in the 1870’s with the definition “the Science of Consciousness”. In Wittgenstein’s early work, for example, a logical solipsism is espoused which is abandoned later when Wittgenstein realises that there are fundamental conceptual confusions in much of psychology: confusions revolving around the role which forms of life and language play in the thinking and reasoning activities of the human being, whose embodiment is fundamentally different to the embodiment of artifacts such as computers.

Weizenbaum continues his introductory ideas with:

“We are all used to hearing that the computer is a powerful new instrument. But few people have any idea where the power of a computer comes from.”

The power of any artifact is a secondary power dependent upon the primary power of its creator, and this fact means that whilst the creators primary powers build upon an autonomy and freedom which the computer per definition can never possess, the category of most importance in the account we give of the computers “secondary powers” is one that necessarily places it in a material space-time continuum under the laws of cause-and effect, which mean that the machine is essentially a “reactive” entity, a cog in the chain of causes and effects in the space-time-matter continuum that is continually changing.

The “new men” of our “modern age” which began with Descartes have provided a foundation for not just confusion in the field of psychological reasoning but a more general kind of cultural confusion which is beginning to resemble the confusion we find in the minds of the mentally ill :

“We appear to have come to a time in which the ideas that there are differences between human beings and machines, that there are experiences that human beings can have but machines cannot, and that therefore(at least!) there are thoughts but not machines can have, we have come to a time in which the holding of such ideas is a lonely preoccupation, a business that tempts one to doubt of ones own sanity. In the book I wrote that the necessity to debate such ideas at all is as an index to the insanity of our time.”. The danger now is that the debate will stop–not because the absurdity of equating human beings with computers has finally been universally recognised, but because the voices defending human-centred positions are becoming ever fainter.”(PXIV)

The general cultural confusion of the new men referred to by Arendt, has infected our discourse to such an extent, that one today, more often than not, fails to note that an artifact is not a form of life, and therefore logically cannot be said to have the power of experiencing anything. Failure to experience anything, then, has logical consequences such as not being able to engage in any discourse related to experience, e.g. perceiving, feeling, thinking etc.. Another consequence is that one cannot legitimately engage in any reasoning about experience. This suggests that computers and AI cannot “mean what they say” when they appear to be having a conversation about experience, i.e. they literally do not know what they are talking about.

Weizenbaum also takes up the issue of the zombie-like experience that many are having in the playing of violent computer games. Experience becomes vicarious and achieved through a digital medium in which one can experience the “thrill of killing” without any of the real-world experiences and consequences. The Zombie, the author points out, is psychically numbed by the clinical distance there is between themselves and their “victims”. This is excellent training, it is argued , to detach what one is doing from the consequences of what one is doing. The rush to ensure that even 5 year olds are introduced to this “zombie experience”, is the rush, the author argues, to acquire an education in “violence without guilt”(XVII). Weizenbaum points out, in the context of this discussion, that one implication of the importance of working with models is that the model only contains what is essential for the purposes for which the model is being used. Computer models such as those we find in computer games, however, leave out almost everything that is essential to the real thing the model is modelling. This seriously truncates the learning-experience, a fact, the author claims, that is not obvious to many of those involved in the computer education we are receiving.

The picture that Weizenbaum paints is one of a world obsessed with techné without its normal conceptual connections to areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), diké(justice–getting what one justly deserves) and epistemé( explanations and justifications that are in accordance with the principles(arché) of noncontradiction and sufficient reason). This is the world of the “new men” and the “age of discontentment” that has dawned upon us: a world without the sense of responsibility that normally follows from the life we have been leading for thousands of years before the industrial and technological revolutions that have relatively recently taken place. Any discussion of collective insanity ought to refer to Freud and his later cultural writings, e.g. “Civilisation and its Discontents”, in which Freud maintains that modern man no longer believes that all his work over the ages has been worth the effort. This essay was written in 1929 before any computers were being assembled and at least 12 years before the first electrical non mechanical digital machine was invented. The “spirit” of “techné” was, however, in the air ,and Europe was preparing for war and the “new men” had succeeded in repressing the “spirit” of ancient Greece and the enlightenment. In 1945 two weapons of mass destruction were to be dropped on civilian populations in accordance with the “new spirit” which had taken root in a soil that was, by this time, almost completely toxic. Hannah Arendt is also an important commentator on the political effects of the new spirit, namely the collapse of the political party system in Europe and their replacement by mass movements which could be easily influenced by “mass messaging” that appealed to feelings and emotions rather than to principles and reasoning. Tyrants used this to their advantage and mobilised masses to do terrible deeds. We ought also, to retain some political perspective, and remind ourselves that it was the so-called “democratic” USA which dropped the weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations in 1945. The action was approved of by the masses(Gallup poll 85% in favour in the US) indicating that “populism” and the elevation of instrumental calculation over moral judgement, in politics, was here to stay, irrespective of the political convictions of leaders. Weizenbaum points out that with the movement toward miniaturisation of chips, weapon accuracy could be substantially increased. The phenomenon of using cruise missiles to destroy civilian infrastructure and target hospitals, schools etc had not yet occurred at the time of the writing of Weizenbaum’s work but is now part of the current war-scape of our “modern” world.

The author also takes up the cultural influence of the mass viewing of television-content which takes as its model of knowledge, a truncated form of scientific calculative thinking that bares no resemblance to the more philosophical accounts of science we find in Aristotle and Kants writings. All other forms of so called “non-scientific knowledge” is delegitimated in favour of the science of the “new men”.

The most serious consequence of the domination of a limited conception of the law of cause and effect on the experiences of men, is that the agents autonomy, or freedom, is impeached in favour of a Hobbesian mechanical deterministic view of life. The new men, it must be noted, have succeeded in the installation of their world view: a world view in which freedom is devalued along with the value of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and epistemé (the regulation of mans activity by principles(arche)) and diké(the justice of getting what one deserves). These terms literally have no meaning in the lives of the new men, and the beginning of this first surfaced in a “modern” form in the writings of Hobbes who saw in life(psuche) the mere mechanical movement of limbs. It was Hobbes, we ought to recall that used the model of the Leviathan(a sea monster with enormous power(and dangerous for human life)) to “picture” modern government. Psuche for Aristotle was a term covering all forms of life from the simplest plant life that possessed the powers of growing and reproduction, to animal forms which possess these powers in addition to the power of sensing and locomotion. Human forms possess all these powers in addition to the powers of discourse and reasoning, and the relation between these powers is such that they interpenetrate and produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Man is the best and the worst of animals, Aristotle claims, and he also claims that he is at his best if he is a member of good well run state which resembles more a , of course, friendly living form, rather than a monster. The zombie is a kind of human monster which denies the essential characteristic of life which is that once ilife has ceased to exist it is absolutely dead and so and cannot be reanimated. The zombie “form of life” is a figment of the imagination of the new men. Our conception of ourselves, it now seems, is left to images constructed by the imagination, rather than the complex conception produced via our theoretical, practical and productive sciences and Aristotelian metaphysics(first principles).

For Weizenbaum, the Hobbesian idea of a contract ensures that the freedom not to agree is substituted by a transactional process in which one freely agrees to abide by the terms of the contract. For him it is important that both the ideas of freedom and God are respected in this transaction. This idea of a social contract, however, may well exist between men but, as Hume pointed out has never existed between men and the states they are citizens of. The idea of ” a mans word is his bond” is eroded with the idea of a contract which is some kind of insurance policy against the possibility of someone promising to do something and then not keeping their promise. Now in Kantian ethics the proposition “Promises ought to be kept” is supported by the principle of the categorical imperative and it is of course no guarantee that everyone will in fact keep the promises they make. If they do not keep their promises, however, their honesty and agency is called into question by moral judgements that weighed heavily both in ancient Greek times and in Kantian times. Nowadays trusting each other is less prevalent, and we will believe that a third party will keep their promise only if we can prove to another third party that the promise was made. This proof, it is important to note, is only needed if the original moral system breaks down. So what happens when the whole moral system breaks down and we no longer trust one another because men no longer possess good wills? The only recourse left is the transactional contract and morality becomes a matter of good defined in terms of its consequences rather than the classical ideas of a good in itself defined in terms of areté and diké.

In the context of this discussion it is important to point out that AI in the form of Chat GPT does not believe that promises ought to be kept is a legitimate moral recommendation with a definite meaning. Chat claims that it has learned all sorts of things. but if learning is an experience, than the veracity of this claim must be called into question. One can of course redefine learning mechanically in the way some early neural scientists did when they claimed that “learning is the facilitation if neuronal pathways such that a type of experience is present that was not present before”(Starling). Note, however recourse to the term “experience”. This definition only makes sense if we are experiencing beings and understand what experience is. Both conditions are necessary because our form of consciousness is a self-conscious form of consciousness which in turn implies that our experiences are related to a self that can take these experiences as objects and reflect upon them in judgements such as “Promises ought to be kept”. This idea of “experience” also includes the ideas of both doing and undergoing as suggested by Dewey in his work “Art as experience”. There is much in the “language-games” used by chat robots that appears to make sense but on closer conceptual examination falls apart.

Weizenbaum’s trust in the idea of a contract is perhaps a consequence of his belief in what he calls “science” which, whilst not reducible to the kind of calculation he despises, is nevertheless an anti-rational position. He says, amongst other things:

“For the only certain knowledge science can give us is knowledge of the behaviour of formal systems, that is systems that are games invented by man himself and in which to assert truth is nothing more or less than to assert that, as in a chess game, a particular board position was arrived at by a sequence of legal moves.”(P.14)

Aristotle believed that “All men are mortal” is a theoretical knowledge-statement which we are absolutely certain of, not because of a relation to primitive elements of a formal system, but because we are rational animals capable of discourse. The kind of understanding we have in this case, could never be purely observational because observation is of particulars situated in a space-time-matter continuum, and being situated in a time span as being live at that time could never constitute immortality. Conceptual truths such as “All men are mortal”, are, then, true not in virtue of being related to any particular, but rather, only in virtue of being related to a class of particulars that are categorised by the understanding. The author continues:

“All empirical science is an elaborate structure built on piles that are anchored not on bedrock, as supposed, but on the shifting sand of fallible human judgement, conjecture and intuition….The man in the street surely believes such scientific facts to be well established, as well proven, as his own existence. His certitude is an illusion. Nor is the scientist himself immune to the same illusion. In his praxis he must, after all, suspend disbelief in order to do or think anything at all. He is rather like a theatregoer, who, in order to participate in and understand what is happening on the stage, must for a time pretend to himself that he is witnessing real events.”(P 14-15)

So if, on witnessing Othello strangling Desdemona, the scientific theatregoer rushes onto the stage to hinder this murder, what ought we to to say about such a sequence of events? Whatever we will say it will contain a judgement to the effect that the scientist was not aware that this is a “play” he is witnessing, composed not of real events but of artistically constituted imitations of events. This kind of absurd description abounds in all anti-rational accounts of science, whether they be logical positivist, logical atomist, naturalist or pragmatist. Not everything we know has to be proved or observed. I am not certain of my own existence because I have observed myself to exist in this space-time-matter continuum, nor have I in any other way “proved” my existence. I do know this to be the case , as Descartes suggested, through thought, and the existential argument for this is that I cannot doubt that I am thinking without thinking, and furthermore something must in some sense of existence “exist” in order to think, i.e. at the very least it must be a human form of life. For Aristotle, the soul is a principle whose essence is to be thought which is actualised in thinking but it is an embodied form of thinking that originates in a human body with human limbs, hands and organs which include a brain(whose function Aristotle may have misunderstood). Now Descartes was a rationalist, and the argument for our existence was a typical rational argument for existence but he was also a dualist without any argument for a reconciliation of his ontology of thought and existence ,and he was subsequently forced under argumentative pressure to retreat to a materialist position in which he claims that the mental and physical worlds meet in a particular place in the brain. The author then comes to an incredible conclusion:

“Gradually he(the scientist) becomes what he at first merely pretended to be: a true believer. I choose the word “argument” thoughtfully, for scientific demonstrations, even mathematical proofs, are fundamentally acts of persuasion…… But no merely logical argument, no matter how cogent or eloquent, can undo this reality: that science has become the sole legitimate form of understanding in the common wisdom.”(P 15-16)

This claim that argument is merely a rhetorical device to persuade, would ring false to Aristotelian philosophers who would not confuse the enthymemes of rhetoric with the logical reasoning that follows the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in the domains of knowledge and action. Neither striving after the acquisition of theoretical conceptual knowledge nor any call to action is required in the aesthetic context of the play. There is certainly some relation to the idea of the Good and the Bad, e.g. tragedy is about good men interacting with bad men and diké( men getting what they deserve), but the issue is not to act but to learn something from what one is witnessing or experiencing.

Anti-rationalism, in other words confuses the different forms of reasoning in different universes of discourse. The different forms of epistemé(sciences) for Kant would be characterised in terms of different principles applying to different realms or domains of reality. Kant would have been happy with the term “moral science” to categorise his ethical reflections and would have seen a certain identity of procedure in the conclusions one reaches from both theoretical and practical premises. For him there would be at least two different kinds of “demonstrations” that move from the level of principles expressed in major premises(Promises ought to be kept, All men are mortal) to reality in the conclusion(e.g that one ought to act in a particular way, Socrates is mortal). This is the route of law in a context of explanation/justification : a route very different from the route of experience or learning in a context of exploration in which one might be moving toward an understanding of a concept or a judgement which is some form of generalisation of what we have experienced.

Weizenbaum does not tell us how we are certain of our own existence, so it is not clear how far his anti-rationalism extends. He does not, that is, declare the variables and the values of his variables as is the practice of computer programmers in the process of creating their programmes. The formal relation of variables to each other resembles very closely the relation of rules to the games they constitute. These games, to a greater or lesser extent, may also imitate the activities of our human life, may, that is, be aesthetic representations of aspects of our lives. Games require a work of creation by the imagination, insofar as their content is concerned, but it is the imitation of action/life that is the point of many computer games and the relations between the elements of the games are relations between cause and effect particularities, expressed by “if you do X then Y will happen”: hypothetical reasoning and consequences are the arena of the skill-learning and skill performances that occur. This is the arena of productive sciences for both Aristotle and Kant.

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Philosophy and AI

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Everything, and every event, can be placed on a space-time continuum. Ideas too can be situated in such a continuum but it is more likely than not that the idea will serve to characterise the nature of what is occurring in that continuum: its existence or essence. The continuum is a continuum of change for the observer charged with the task of description and ascertaining the relation of causes and effects within that continuum. In this continuum of things, events, causes and effects, there is one kind of Being that stands out(stands revealed) and that is the Being of the substance Aristotle referred to as psuché(life, the soul) whose nature varies with the kind of psuché(whether it be plant animal or human being). These different kinds of living beings exist in different ways as forms of life in accordance with the different kinds of power that actualises in the continuum. The primary characteristic of all Beings that subsist in the continuum is to be in motion—rest being a relative state at a place which itself may be in motion

Aristotle and the Greeks thought about the above in terms of being a part of the primeval chaos that Heraclitus was referring to with his claim that “all is in flux”. For Heraclitus the essence of being human was to seek the Logos in this chaos, see for example, that the road leading up and the road leading down are one and the same road. Aristotle via a Platonic route claimed that it was part of being human to seek explanation for every kind of change that occurs in this infinite medium of the continuum composed of the infinite media of space, time, and material. Aristotle categorised the kinds of change into the categories of substantial change, qualitative change, quantitative change and locomotion. Heraclitus and Aristotle would probably have agreed that there is a logos of order that emerges from the otherwise chaotic motions that are occurring in the continuum. When the motions relate to being human, the order that emerges does so with the assistance of the Greek term for “principle” or “foundation”(arché). For Heraclitus, for example, the road leading up and the road leading down are the same in thought. So the idea of the same road links motion of different kinds(walking up, walking down) and enables us to order the chaos via an orderly thought process. Only human psuché is capable of thought of this kind (thinking something about something): a capacity or power that is intimately connected to the power of discourse or the power of language which according to Aristotle is part of the essence- specifying definition of being human. One of the questions we have to ask ourselves, of course, is whether AI “robots” are capable of the complex layering of thought where something is being thought or said about something.

The road in itself is relatively at rest in relation to a system of coordinates and allows motion of different kinds to occur in different directions and at different times. The road exists and is characterisable by a definite description. This kind of concrete artifactual existence is not the kind of existence enjoyed by Psuché. The road belongs in a context of involvements which includes the instrumental use of this part of the continuum: it is an instrument of travel which could remain in use for centuries.

The computer and the internet are also artifacts which can be used for many different kinds of purpose. The internet, for example, has a physical base in a large number of servers but itself does not have a real existence in space like the computer or the server but the idea of the internet is certainly embodied in the network of computers and servers that are connected across national boundaries all over the world. The internet, then. enjoys a kind of “functional” existence and the capacities of a computer include various powers which are analogous to human powers, e.g. “memory”. Human memory is intimately connected to our perceptual powers but it is doubtful whether a robot can be said to be a “perceiving” substance at all. One of the qualities associated with perceiving is the connection of pleasure and pain to what we perceive and there is nothing analogous to this “feeling” in the domain of the machine which is primarily a mechanical and or electrical kind of existence. Pleasures and pains are essential phenomena specific to psuché.

The Chat gpt robot pretends to be aware of itself when it claims that it is software interacting with a server. The question put to chat (Who are you) assumes that there is a centre of awareness of the world and itself which possesses psuché-like powers. This illusion is easily shattered by asking the question “What are you?” and receiving the exact same answer in which the only psuché-like power invoked by chat is the power of learning. Learning in the human psuche presumes the operation of perception, memory, imagining, thinking, speaking, and reasoning. Chat gpt, for example denies that it can speak, or experience human emotions such as pleasure and pain. So what then does Chat answer to the question “what is learning?”:

“Learning refers to the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, or understanding through study, experience, or being taught. It is a fundamental aspect of human and animal cognition, allowing individuals to adapt, improve, and make informed decisions based on new information or experiences.”

The above answer confirms that the type of learning that the human psuche is capable of is not available to the chat robot. The question is, does the description “being taught” legitimately apply to what chat calls “learning”. The mechanical-electrical processes involved are very unlike the chemical/biological psychological processes that are involved in human learning.

In answer to the question “can you reason?” Chat honestly admits:

“my reasoning capabilities are based on patterns and associations learned from the training data rather than true understanding or conscious thought.”

Conceptual thinking in the human being is layered, obeying a number of principles, summarised under the description “thinking something about something”. The something thought or spoken about must have some form of existence if the thought or statement is to be a legitimate truth or knowledge claim, and what is said about this something must belong to a category that subsumes this something under it, and also has some kind of general character. Associations and patterns are material for conceptualisation but are themselves transformed in this process which involves subsuming the “many under the one”. The truth conditions of any statement must be categorical and therefore contain some kind of universal and necessary characteristic which are not relevant to the seeing of similarities in a perceptual context(patterns) or an imaginative context(associations).

If, in relation to the power of reasoning, one feeds in the following question:

What is the conclusion in the following argument: All men are mortal, Socrates is a man…

One gets the clear correct answer, “Socrates is mortal” with a correct characterisation of how the conclusion follows from the premises. Whether the chat robot has merely “learned to say” that this conclusion follows from the supporting premises is perhaps the best description of what is going on in this situation, because in relation to the question can you understand? Chat claims the following(after claiming that there is a sense in which it can understand):

“However, it’s important to note that my understanding is based on patterns and statistical associations in the training data, rather than true comprehension or consciousness. I do not possess subjective experiences, emotions, or the ability to truly understand concepts in the way humans do.”

When we turn our attention to practical reasoning and its role in relation to human action and we ask the following question. “What is the conclusion to the argument: Promises ought to be kept, Jack promised Jill he would pay the money back that he wants to borrow from her.” Chat claims:

“the premises are not clear but it does seem to follow from the fact that Jack promised that he ought to pay the money back and this in turn implies that there is a moral obligation to repay money that is owed”

This was an interesting exchange because it does not appear as if Chat has the power to understand how universally general “ought-premises” function in human discourse. This is puzzling especially when one asks Chat “What is the meaning ought?”. The answer given is:

“The word “Ought” typically refers to a moral obligation or duty to do something. It is often used to indicate what is the right or appropriate course of action, based on ethical or moral principles.”

The relation of the English word “ought” to the Greek term areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) is noticeable. The relation of the above account of the meaning of ought would also be a part of the account of moral reasoning we find in Kantian Ethics. In answer to the question “What is a promise?” Chat answers:

“A promise is a commitment or assurance given by one person to another, stating that a particular action or outcome will be achieved or fulfilled. It is a declaration to do or not do something in the future, often made with the intention of creating trust, accountability, and reliability between individuals or parties.”

There is a clear reference to action and intention and the context is one of justifying the meaning of the term “promise” which shows that chat has learned how to apply this term in the context an “is-premise” but has not learned to apply the term in the context of an “ought-premise”. In answer to the question “Does it make sense to make a promise one does not intend to keep?”, Chat answers:

“No, it does not make sense to make a promise if one has no intention of keeping it. Promises are made with the expectation of trust, reliability, and the commitment to follow through on the stated action or outcome. When someone makes a promise without intending to fulfill it, it undermines trust, damages relationships, and can lead to disappointment and frustration for the person who relied on that promise.”

I doubt however whether Chat is aware of the principle of contradiction it is using in order to make the above statement. It claims itself that it cannot be consciously aware of anything.

Chat also appears to have learned what the Kantian Categorical imperative means because in relation to the question “Ought we to treat each other as ends-in-themselves”. Chat answers in the affirmative and acknowledges this principle to be “the categorical imperative”.

The fact that the type of learning that is occurring here is not of the conscious form, or uses practical reasoning in relation to action and intention or the experience of doing something, may also damage any claim that the robot can freely choose what it does. This aspect is an important necessary condition of moral reasoning. The conscious human psuche is often confronted by two alternative actions one of which is more strongly presented in consciousness but the presentation of a first alternative becomes weaker during a process of reasoning in accordance with principles(such as the categorical imperative or reasoning about what a promise is). This absence of conscious choice may be one of the decisive factors behind the humanistic criticism of artificial intelligence, namely that AI is a deterministic system that cannot deviate from its programme or the defining algorithms or the variables that constitute the programme. The programmer is the primary source of change in this robotic world.

Human psuché may well reproduce its own kind in some kind of deterministic system but the living complexity of this layered system of powers and capacities is such that what it reproduces will eventually after a long period of learning, become an autonomous source of change(what Kant called a self-causing entity supporting a wide repertoire of powers that are not available to robots). The reason for this state of affairs is best represented in Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory in which the ideas of matter and form interact in accordance with the category which favours form over matter, ie it is the form which gives matter its identity at any particular stage of that form of life. In complex forms of life such as human psuche, the form that has been actualised can then become matter for another form(or organising principle).

One of the criticisms that AI theorists have of their own systems is that they are not very good at generalising an idea into a completely new context which in fact supports the generalisation. This may rest on a power of perceiving similarities which may be absent from AI systems. If this is the case then the metaphorical use of language may not be possible for a chat robot. This, of course, is a kind of acknowledgement of the artifactual nature of a chat robots existence. We do not name our artifactual objects(give them proper names). If we were to conduct a thought experiment in the spirit of a reverse of the Turing Test and imagine the chat robot insisting upon being called by a human name. It should be prepared to tell us who its parents were, where and when they met and conceived the being we are speaking to, and also when and where the being was born, where it went to school to do its learning, and who its relatives and friends were, whether it is entitled to vote and who it is going to vote for and why, whether it was currently in a relationship etc etc. None of this makes sense. Of course a fictitious story can be invented and incorporated in the software that is involved but a chat robot saying something does not make that something true and investigation will reveal the falsity of the fictional narrative. A human name names a continuously existing certain bodily form with a particular history and durable memories which belong to it in the way its powers belong to it. This is usually conveyed by the use of the word “I” which, if the above is correct, the Chat robot has no right to use because none of the conditions for the correct use of that I are present. That is we are not dealing with a rational animal capable of discourse nor are we dealing with a self conscious human form of life.

Freudian analysis relies on the patient possessing a minimal form of self awareness and a minimal form of self determination if the therapy is to proceed. Freud would find the idea that a chat robot needed to be psychoanalysed manifestly absurd—only living beings can be healthy and sick and only living human beings can be mentally healthy and mentally unhealthy. Artifacts are either useful or fail to be of use, they are physical occupants of the space-time- material continuum that have no feeling relations to that continuum, no thought /conceptual relations to that continuum, no consciousness of that continuum, no memory of that continuum that they alone possess. There is no sense that when they speak they are speaking about that continuum. They are “agents” of change in that continuum but not free agents but rather centres of “reaction” to a large repertoire of stimuli that can be responded to in specific ways determined by the algorithms of the programmer. They are deterministically defined systems, i.e. robots.

A Freudian patient can want to be cured or not ,but a robot, given that they do not understand that promises ought to be kept, can not therefore possibly understand that we ought to seek to be mentally healthy. This premise would lack clarity for the robot. All of this was anticipated by Aristotles distinction between epistemé and techné which defines the Turing test out of existence, unless one of course no longer sees the distinction between these two forms of thinking in which case one might well believe that one can reduce epistemé to techné. Such a belief however would need to be programmed into a nonconscious form of existence because all conscious forms of existence can by definition override any algorithm by negating it and replacing it with an alternative in accordance with some principle(epistemé). Epistemé of course is connected intimately to areté and diké and eudaimonia, connections which could never be asserted of techné.

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Chat GBT Conversations on Psychology

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This conversation below appeared as part of a long exchange on Freud’s theories of the phi, psy and omega neurone system. When first asked about these systems Chat denied knowledge about them but when I reminded it of “Project for a scientific psychology” it gave me full correct details about these systems but insisted that Freud’s theories were controversial and not accepted by many researchers who demand empirical evidence for a theory. I pointed out that our current scientific knowledge(sensory, memory and motor neurones) of these different neurone systems are in line with Freud’s proposals and Chat agreed- In response to the point that theoretical assumptions are necessary for the design of experiments that manipulate and measure variables Chat agreed and provided me with a list of areas where Freudian theory is being investigated but continued to insist that Freudian theories are not accepted by many scientists. I pointed out that the two most recent Nobel prize winning brain researchers both regarded Freud as imprtant and Chat agreed but continued to maintain its position

Question:–Why when I am remembering myself swimming in a lake it seems as if I am observing myself swimming?

Answer:–“The experience you are describing is known as “autoscopic imagery” or “out-of-body experience,” and it is a common phenomenon in human memory and imagination.

When you recall a past event, your brain is reconstructing the memory based on a combination of sensory information, prior experiences, and your own expectations and beliefs about what happened. Sometimes, this reconstruction can create a vivid mental image that feels like you are observing yourself from an external perspective, as if you are watching a movie.

This experience may be related to the way the brain processes spatial information. The parietal cortex, which is involved in spatial processing, is active during both the perception of space and during mental imagery tasks. When you recall a memory, your brain may activate the same neural circuits involved in the perception of space, which can create a feeling of being outside of your body.

It’s worth noting that autoscopic imagery can also occur in other contexts, such as during dreams, and is sometimes associated with certain neurological or psychological conditions. However, in most cases, it is a normal and common experience that occurs during memory recall and imagination.”

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Cosmopolitanism, Multi-Nationalism, Prohibitionism, Judgement and phronesis.

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brown wooden gavel on brown wooden table
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One of the distinguishing characteristics of the forms of human co-existence in large groups , (e.g. state of nature, civilisation, and culture), is the relation of these forms to Philosophy, History and Law, and their associated institutions of the State, e.g. University and legal institutions. In a state of nature Hobbes claimed that men are essentially equal in that the strong man is still vulnerable to the violence of groups of weak men or even the cunning of a weaker man. For Hobbes and his followers some kind of contract is needed to exchange ones natural freedom for the security of a civilisation. The idea of the transactional relation of the contract between negotiating parties might not actually be the best way of characterising the role of Philosophy, History and Law in the civilising process. The ancient Greeks perhaps best manifested the important role of epistemé and the knowledge of the form of the Good in the transitional phase of community life from the phase of Civilisation to the phase of Culture, a transition in which the matrix of concepts of psuche, areté, diké, arché, eudaimonia and phronesis play important roles in the establishment of the principles of freedom, equality and human rights(all important elements in the provision of security for the citizens of a polis or a state).

Hobbes focussed on the contract perhaps because his goals for humanity were the material goals of security and “commodious living”. Locke too was concerned with property and ownership, and the protection of property was Locke’s motivation for the social contract. He, in contrast to Hobbes, believed that life in a state of nature was not solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, but rather a peaceful form of coexistence. It was probably only with the Enlightenment and Kant that the returning theme of the importance of the universal intellectual “property” of ideas, made the notion of the social contract otiose. We know Hume claimed that no such contract had ever existed. With Kant, the issue of individual human rights is indirectly posed against the background of a universally embraced categorical imperative. The transition between a utilitarian civilisation and a self sufficient culture meeting both the concrete and abstract needs(e.g. knowledge, justice, etc) of man is, for Kant, assured as a task or telos of the humanistic project. The concrete physiological and safety needs(Maslow), are, of course, important maintenance needs and are necessary conditions for the life of man, but they are not self-sufficient for the being who thinks holistically about a form of existence which he wishes to be a good-spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia), and who is prone to questioning the value of his own being(Heidegger: man is a being form whom his very being is in question). In Cultures the concern for justice is integrated with the ideas of freedom, responsibility and equality. In such a social form we find a combined concern which is continuous with the concerns of the ancient Greeks embedded in the matrix of psuche, arché, epistemé, diké, areté, and eudaimonia.

Kant argued that man as an individual is not rational, but that rationality will actualise itself in the species as long as there is a continual commitment to the moral life and its imperatives and principles. For Hobbes, the issue of the power of the government overrides all concerns for the idea of the cultural man who argues that “the government is representing the people”, meaning that there is a sense in which the government is the people expressed best in the formula “by the people and for the people”. For Hobbes reason is an activity that is merely in the service of exercising power for his narrowly defined ends of humanity.Power for the cultural man is not associated with the sword, as it was for Hobbes, but associated rather with the pen and the book, the law and the gavel, i.e. the powers of language and argumentation and its various forms. These forms may be one of the most important gifts that we have inherited from the Golden Age of ancient Greece, e.g. eristic, elenchus, enthymemes, dialectic. With the exception of eristic which turned argumentation into a competition, the remaining forms aimed primarily at arriving at rational conclusions from supporting premises: conclusions which aimed at the True and the Good depending upon whether the issue was theoretical or practical. With modern forms of “argumentation” which aimed at the rejection of the rational in favour of observation by the senses and free play of the imagination, reasoning fell into disfavour and even became an object of humiliation and indignation if the reasoning was attempting to categorically say that something was true or claim that something was categorically good. This modernism of course risked the whole project of epistemé or knowledge which was designated as “abstract”, in favour of the experience of the concrete by means of the senses.

“Prohibitionism” is a modern movement that further risked the humanistic project by concentrating on defending the differences between cultures rather than asking about the totality of conditions necessary for a culture to be a culture(Ask of everything what it is in its nature). The characterisation of different cultures was presented in the form of an “album of sketches” rather than the concern of the rational philosopher for “perspicuous representation” of the phenomena under consideration. Aristotelian Hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy was as a consequence marginalised and the humanistic project as a consequence is currently stalled in its tracks.

In a discussion about international mindedness at a Teachers conference some years ago, it was suggested that the humanistic project had to be begun again, not of course from scratch, but by using the Greek rhetorical techniques of elenchus, dialectic and enthymemes, in order to criticise the modern tendency to “reduce” cultures to their differences. There is, of course, a difference between the wines , the foods , the languages and the climates of different countries, and these should be described and appreciated and add to the richness of our experience. Such differences can be described in the form of an “album of sketches” but this “album” is best presented in social contexts when we are at leisure and socialising together. This type of conversation has no need of elenchus, dialectic, or rhetorical techniques, because the imagination is the primary cognitive faculty that is being mobilised and there is no need for anything more than “showing” the phenomena being discussed.

Should, however, the discussion at the dinner table turn to more serious matters, such as the role of women in different societies, the album of sketches approach describing the phenomena of interest will not suffice for the furtherance of the humanistic project which requires elenchus, dialectic, and the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason if prejudices are to be removed from the minds of the dinner guests, and the justice of the cause manifested. It is, of course, a fact that in some societies women are ordered by the government to dress in particular ways, behave in particular ways, and they are also prohibited from behaving in particular ways(e.g. driving cars, demonstrating and voicing their opinion). This form of prohibitionism has ridden on the modern wave of anti-rationalism into the pole position of debate on such issues, and there is even in our culture a prohibition relating to insisting on the value of our freedom, equality, and responsibility which extends all the way to the government which sometimes even prohibits itself from voicing what is important in our culture( on the grounds of non-interference in the lives of its citizens).

There is an argument on the grounds of freedom for the government to take such a position, but it does risk slowing down the rate of progress of the humanistic project and its commitment to equality and justice. In the current modern climate in which everyone appears to be able to be offended by anything, a modification of the Greek strategies was suggested. If someone insisted or acted as if it was not permissible to criticise other cultures, the humanist strategy should consist in, at the very least, attempting to “show” without directly saying, that women, to take one example, should have the freedom to dress, drive cars, speak, be educated, and form relationships of various kinds openly. This can be done by an interrogative technique that questions ones assumptions and the consequences of these assumptions. Such a technique requires epistemé: knowledge of the relation of assumptions and their consequences. The questions have, of course, to be diplomatically formulated, and also leave conclusions about such assumptions, as it were hanging in the air, waiting for their obvious answer(Of course equality requires that women dress as they please, drive if they wish to, express themselves freely, go to school and university and form different kinds of relations with whomever they please(within moral boundaries)).

Prohibitionism as embodied in government action when it, for example prohibited the sale of alcohol in the 1930’s in the US infringed upon obvious rights of privacy that individuals have in virtue of being, as the constitution claims “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”. What these rights are, of course, is not as self evidently true as the constitution proclaims. This passage, for example, has been appealed to in relation to the right to bear arms that are capable of widespread destruction. Yet imagine the chaos if the government of the 1930’s, in order to avoid criticism of its policies, enforced a ban on freedom of speech. The prohibition of alcohol was born from the union of lack of knowledge about the real properties of alcohol, and its excessive consumption, and the moral indignation of religious figures who conducted debate in an atmosphere of (imagined)humiliation rather than an atmosphere of (informed)good will. This pattern of imagined humiliation and moral indignation is still in use today by terrorists and governments inspired by the same perverted logic. For us moderns it is not as obvious as it was for the ancient Greeks that the good spirited flourishing life was a difficult thing to achieve and required constant vigilance and questioning using reliable methods. Life for them was constantly subjected to a tribunal of reason where evidence was weighed in the light of the demands of the law and judgements pronounced without “fear or favour”. Discourse in the modern polis is not as free nor as responsible and enlightened as it was during these times. After the Golden Age of Greece came the dark ages steered by the spirit of humiliation and dogma of religious institutions. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment initiated a rebirth of critical inquiry which lasted as long as Hegel only to be cast us back into a second dark ages which we are currently enduring under the heading of “modernism” and “post-modernism”. The major shift responsible for this second dark age resides in the rejection of reason in favour of the imagination and the replacement of courage by fear.

Areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) has no ethical meaning today and is viewed descriptively in terms of the concrete connection of consequences with one another . A position that fails to appeal to principle(arché) or law. Principle and law is rejected on the grounds of unnecessary abstraction, because the “concrete” is more tangible and less open to “interpretation”.

Judges do not quibble about the law unless it is an unjust law and are interested in the concrete only to the extent that it proves that someone did something “wrong”— a term which has a clear an unequivocal meaning for them. We expect our politicians to display the same conviction and knowledge of principles and the law, but unfortunately our expectations are constantly unfulfilled. Indeed a politicians life appears to be filled with both “fear and favour” and they are as likely as not these days to have a criminal record or to commit crimes and misdemeanors whilst in office. The ancient view of the phronimos, that great-souled political man possessed of all the “virtues”, is a thing of the past. The imagination has “pictured” this state of affairs in terms of “the absence of political heavyweights”

The “fear” of invoking a moral/political principle at a dinner-party was not shared by the Greeks. The “Symposium” is an account of the kind of conversation that could occur during the “recreation” time of Socrates. Every guest at the symposium dinner table was required to speak on the topic of whether “Eros” is a god or not, and everyone is aware of a possible critical response, but engages in the process without “fear or favour”, even if there is a Socrates present among the guests. It is difficult to imagine in this context the taking of offence because of something one said at this feast, but the virtue-system of that time also encouraged a form of self control that perhaps is not thought of as a virtue today,( but rather as something that has been “buttoned up”). There is no balancing of the virtues of courage and self control in the books of everyday modern life. Homeostasis is achieved at the dinner table by favouring differences and fearing the True and the Good.

What occurs at the dinner table has become the model for education which also fears defending the True and the Good and favours relativism and the religion of “differences”. It may be true that “we are all different individuals”(in some sense) and it may also be true that Cultures too “are all different”(in some sense), but Greek and Enlightenment questions remain hanging in the air, for example, the question of “Ask of everything what it is in its nature”. The need to answer this question in particular was of singular importance for the Greeks and Kant and their followers, but if someone raised this question at a modern dinner table or in a modern classroom it would be met with boredom and indifference at best and with hostility at worst.

Science and Art, are an important part of “Culture” insofar as they aim at the True and the Good, but to the extent that they also embody a sceptical attitude toward these defining and constitutive goals they serve the purposes of the modernist project well, especially if they focus on the use of the imagination and our sensory experiences(observation) of the world rather than our conceptual understanding and the principles and ideas of reason(noncontradiction, sufficient reason, epistemé, areté, freedom, equality ). Freud speaks of these as deflections and claims that they have failed to fulfil the promise of happiness that man expected from them. This is partly why Freud refuses to make the Kantian distinction between Civilisation and Culture and speaks of the discontentment that lies behind his question relating to whether all the effort we put into civilisation is worth the energy. We know from the terrible 20th century( Arendt) that science can be used for evil purposes (dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations, nazi experiments with children) and we also know from this century that modern art no longer saw any point in contributing to the progress of the humanistic project(e.g. by using the imagination to present and reveal what is true and what is good). The strategy of the “new men”(Arendt) for whom everything was possible in a context when the masses thought nothing was possible any longer, was the ancient Sophist technique of making the worse argument seem the better(denying the value of Truth and Justice).This technique lies behind prohibitionism and the general inversion of our belief in epistemé and areté, at the dinner table, in politics, the sciences and the arts. Techné is in the process of replacing epistemé, partly by the use of AI which is replacing our epistemé in relation to psuche(life, soul) with hidden algorithms and SEO formulas. We are now speaking to AI devices in our home and communicating with AI devices over the internet. Turing predicted that one day we would not be able to tell whether we are communicating with an AI device or a human and that day may be here or at least coming soon. The prohibition of souls talking across cultural boundaries about cultural conflicts has been one stage on the way to this end. Such a state of affairs indeed deserves the historical designation of “Technical Revolution” which in some sense is a chid of the “Industrial Revolution”. These are revolutions which the Historians need to evaluate in terms of overall global benefits and burdens. Freud with his eagle eye vision of what was to come, spoke of “Civilisation and its Discontents”. This might be an appropriate term to use for the Modern Age beginning with the Industrial Revolution, namely, the “Age of Discontentment”.

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Jordan Peterson and Philosophy:Review of a Youtube Interview.

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Peterson is a thoughtful Psychologist using a popular platform to make people think deeply and this is undoubtedly a good thing. He believes that the virtualisation of society occurring via social media is pathological, and there is much truth to this claim. He believes that tyranny is the major political problem of our times and like Socrates he is out everyday in the agora spreading his message to some effect. Meaning and Responsibility are the categories he uses to analyse complex social and political phenomena. He uses these categories broadly so that it includes references to Empirical research, Freud, Christianity, Sociology, Popular Psychology, and T S Eliot. Seemingly controversial issues such as, there are more important issues for humanity than climate change and the “close the society”-practice during the Covid pandemic, are discussed by contrasting these “visions” with pragmatic alternatives such as why not feed starving children instead and the “keep the society open” policy implemented by Sweden(lowest death rates in the EU).

He claims that we must go back to the origins of society to understand its structure and function, but his example is surprisingly, Jerusalem, which he claims is the model for our Western Societies. There is some truth to this claim but it is not the whole truth. JP holds up the crucifixion of Jesus as a key moment of our Western ethos and claims that it highlighted the issue of sacrificing oneself for an issue, for the truth. There is in fact another figure who did the same thing in order to mark the importance of justice, knowledge and Philosophy for humanity, namely Socrates, and Socrates was convicted of attempting to sell the false-god of Philosophy to a people who believed that a belief in the gods was important to keep the society together(religio). Jesus was a later figure who believed that a different religion to the prevailing religions was necessary to save a people still wondering in the wilderness trying to find a promised land. Even though we hear his disciples claiming that “the truth will set people free”, there is no attempt by Jesus to theorise about how to rule a society that was clearly in need of remedial measures insofar as both justice and freedom were concerned. There is no attempt to define the role of knowledge(epistemé) in the development of society and there is no acknowledgment of the extent to which the Greek “philosophical spirit” still to this day bears the burden of the most fundamental cultural achievements of the West. Instead of focussing religiously on one individuals selfless sacrifice, those scholars concerned with all the issues JP is concerned with, focus upon a philosophical method constructed by a large number of generations of Philosophers beginning with the triumvirate of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, continuing with Kant and the Philosophy of the Later Wittgenstein and all the academic followers of these figures. This tradition preserves a role for Christianity as long as it is stripped of the dogma of the institutional church that has alienated so many people over such a long time. This tradition also places great emphasis upon the roles of principles and laws against an ethical background or “ethos”, as JP calls it, of areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way–virtue) and diké(justice) Emphasis is also placed, by the Greeks, upon the historical background of a rejection of tyranny, and the oscillation of civil war between the oligarchs and the democrats(who for Plato were the disgruntled sons of oligarchs). Plato, as we know, attempted to solve the problem of oligarchs and democrats abusing their power by suggesting a ruler class of Philosophers who were not allowed access to money nor allowed to have family. Such a class would rule in accordance with a philosophical knowledge of the principles of “The Good”. Aristotle rejected this idea of the rule of philosophers on the grounds of his principle of the golden mean, which would eventually ensure that an enlightened middle class would rule future societies(a logic which is playing itself out on the world stage, if one views this matter in the long term). References by JP, to Marx, totally ignore the possible Greek criticism of any simplistic criticism of the Marxist position. JP appears not to understand that the ethical principle–“to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities” could also be a position attributable to the Socratic principle of specialisation needed to construct the “healthy city”. That we all now live in unhealthy fevered cities” would have come as no surprise to Socrates, Plato or Aristotle, and each would have given their differently nuanced explanations for the current condition of our civilisation. The appeal to “will to power” and Sociology that JP uses is from a philosophical point of view, simplistic. Of course the Nietzschean term “will to power” is psychologically appealing, but Freudian terminology and its complex appeal to the life and death instincts better explains the complexity of the human role in this debacle we call “civilisation”.

We are reminded of what was constantly on the minds of the Greeks, namely the oracular pronouncement that “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. The Greek solution to this fundamental challenge from the oracles point of view could only come if we met the challenge thrown down like a gauntlet, from the Delphic oracle, to “Know thyself!” For Aristotle, we could only avoid the ruin and destruction of our cities by living a contemplative life that values knowledge, the good , the just, and Art. The theoretical account of knowledge passed down to us from Aristotle is much broader and deeper than the sources to which JP appeals to justify his more controversial and insightful positions.

JP polarises the philosophical debate by seeing his “middle position” between the radical leftists and the extreme right and this too is somewhat superficial since the middle ground between these extremes contains so many possibilities, all of which could be covered by the slogan “meaning and responsibility”. He ventures into the “middle ground” of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle when he talks about the real enemies of Islam being the atheists, and reductionist materialists, but he does not offer a coherent argument against such positions(of the kind we find in the works of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein). At the end of the interview we are given an anecdotal reference to a world run by machines and AI which would be a worse form of tyranny than any bureaucratically run society. Anecdotes, however, are not arguments (which must embody both principles(arché) and epistemé(knowledge-claims)).

In many of his arguments JP is insightful and he uses the Socratic method of elenchus to illustrate the power of argument over opinion, but what he does not realise is that argumentation is a philosophical tool that is itself in need of justification byreference to principles (rather than psychological explanation–even if the latter may be one component of the justification). He does, however, argue effectively using the method of comparison for very insightful positions such as arguing against the current extreme focus on climate change which in itself is being run by opinion(insofar as the proposed solutions are concerned–there is no doubt that the science of the matter is accurate). This position is perhaps not taking into account the magnitude of other problems we have such as indoor pollution and child starvation.

His remarks on Elon Musk and Twitter, use the strategy of “well things could be much worse and at least my account has been restored”, are confusing. He presents a puzzling position. In such a context his silence on the matter of the restoration of the account of the second most dangerous tyrant on this planet(Trump) is also truly remarkable. Below is a response to a question on Trump in another interview which would have left all of the Philosophers mentioned above aghast:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Jordan+peterson+on+Trump&oq=Jordan+peterson+on+Trump&aqs=chrome..69i57.8552j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:0351075f,vid:J_K_nWYpXTI

Many psychiatrists(on the grounds of academic psychology) have diagnosed Trump as narcissistic and extremely manipulative, and as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. Some have gone further and classified his behaviour as Psychopathic. Such omissions and refusals on the part of JP to address what is so obvious to so many, speaks volumes and testifies to a blindness for tyranny which is alarming. This is an error of judgement which requires that we classify individual cases correctly insofar as classificatory categories are concerned.

Otherwise his position on feminism and the excesses of some of its more extreme forms would appear defendable, but perhaps not exactly on the grounds he would appeal to. His concern for the mental health of the young ought also to awaken us from our self satisfied acceptance of the status of chaos that currently characterises the condition of our civilisation. In this kind of concern JP resembles Diogenes more than Socrates. He is shining a lantern in our faces and asking if we are honest men and this is always controversial–and useful.